The Big Picture

The curved architectural lines of The Big Picture rise up from the bare golden Central Otago landscape, while inside a generous selection of wines and the stirring beauty of Maori art work radiates a personal warmth into the building's industrial design that follows through into the spacious restaurant. But it is in the smaller, more intimate, tucked away spaces of the Aroma Room and Auditorium that an uplifting, all-absorbing sensory journey awaits.

The Big Picture is an innovative business concept that acts as an interface between tourists and the local wine industry. It is the brainchild of Phil and Cath Parker, who are keen to deliver "spatial awareness of the bigger picture of wine," says Phil.

The couple have extensive experience in the wine industry in the North Island. They hail from the warm climate and beautiful coastlines of Gisborne. It is the Maori homeland of Ngati Porou - Phil's people. Cath is of Tainui descent in the central North Island. But the couple chose Central Otago, with its continental climate and mountainous terrain, to launch The Big Picture because of the sustainable flow of tourists and the cohesive, new, nature of the local wine industry.

The Big Picture adds tertiary infrastructure to a local industry already doing the primary and secondary activities of growing vines and making wines, says Phil. At The Big Picture, "we are talking about it, showing it, selling it; helping people understand it."

The Aroma room is small and square with seemingly endless aromatic possibilities listed on the walls: by lifting any of the levers lining the benches you expose an aromatic spike that teases your nostrils and challenges your intellect. "If you smell a smell, it goes from here to here in an instant," says Phil gesturing from his nose to his forehead. These aromas leave 'aromatic fingerprints,' on the mind and are key to understanding wine.

The Auditorium is a curved room with rows of high curved tables with bar stools. At each setting there are five glasses of wine. The lights go down and the big screen comes to life taking you on a helicopter flight across Central Otago wine country; with beautiful music complementing the ride. Along the way you stop off at five different wineries where the wine makers explain their wines. As they taste their wines you do too, from the glasses lined up in front of you. "This experience suits the novice, and by meeting the wine makers, it's also very good for the experienced wine person," says Phil.

The auditorium can seat 45 people at a time, and in the high season accommodates around 200 people a day, up to seven days a week. Local wineries are contracted to supply the wine, and the video presentation changes with the suppliers.

Phil describes The Big Picture as a strong marketing force specific to the local wine industry. "We are better than export because we show it to a lot more people, who learn about it, and then buy," he says.

There are plans to reproduce the venture in Australasia. "It's such a new way of showing wine; such a simple concept and easily reproduced," says Phil.

The Big Picture has been in business since Christmas 2003 and already it has won the Innovation Section of the Westpac Otago Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Award (2004-2006); and the Monteiths Wild Food Restaurant Challenge Business Service Award.

Sitting in the restaurant with its furnishings reminiscent of a film set, Cath say their teenagers have enjoyed the move south, too. "They're pretty adaptable and into snowboarding," she says. Central Otago has given her the space to indulge her personal passion for art. "It's a way of expressing what this environment means to me," she says of her Maori art works on the walls.