COVER STORY 48 JDURLYIN 2K01te7ch NEW ZEALAND JULY 2017 HEART TO HART When you ask Kiwi comedian and broadcaster Leigh Hart what beer means to him, his face instantly splits into a huge smile. “Beer is fun,” he says, a succinct statement strangely at odds with his usual ability to “rave on about nothing for quite a while.” Then his runaway tongue gets the better of him. “Beer has been a constant in my life during some very good times,” he adds. “I have nostalgic memories of beer, particularly earlier in my life. When I think about it now, I can’t help but feel that the fun has been taken out of beer somewhat. It’s not what it used to be.” It’s one of the main reasons why the Hauraki drive-time host and Hellers spokesman decided to make a “quite nice beer” called Wakachangi, a nickname he gave to the Waikato River in some longago New Zealand comedy programme. When asked where the beer recipe comes from, he grins again. “Ummmm, shall I do this honestly…or the other way?” he ponders, one finger tapping his lips. The resultant story of the family recipe given to Portugese monks in 1648 for safekeeping, who used it to cure show blindness and ‘asparagus wees’ and then cut it into pieces for safe-keeping before the “bad Pope” of the time appropriated it, only for the parts to be found sometime later at Stonehenge, a suitcase from the Titanic and on a beach south of Greymouth for his Great Uncle Kenny to find, certainly seems a tad far-fetched. By Kathryn Calvert It’s no figment of his imagination that the beer is quite good. Sandwiched neatly between lunch and his radio show at 4pm, Hart offers me a glass of his lager in his sunfilled Auckland kitchen. This, he says fondly, is a beer that a 24-year-old can share with his 50-year-old mother and they’d both be happy. Funnily enough, that depicts my son and I perfectly. And, a little like a Steinlager Classic, the Wakachangi goes down perfectly and makes me happy. “I’m confused by the control that big breweries have in this country,” Hart – who started Wakachangi in 2011 - admits. “We were being told that Otago students drink this, and Auckland trendies drink that. I wanted to make something that students in a Dunedin flat could drink alongside my father in his seventies. I wanted an everyman’s beer, without the snob factor.” And that’s no dig at craft beers, which he says have increased beer awareness hugely. “People who relate to me, relate to my beer,” he explains. “I am what I am.” You can tell that Hart’s success with the beer caught him somewhat unprepared. Originally contracted with Harrington’s in Christchurch, Hart had to put Wakachangi on hold when things got too
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