Profitable hobby

Press, 27 November 1980, Page 7

Profitable hobby

NZPA Apia Every three weeks or so, five of the girls in Bob Rankin’s garment factory in Apia down tools and go next door to spend a day bottling wine instead. A year ago the greying New Zealander turned a hobby into a second business — making wine with a distinctive tropical-fruit flavour. . He has been so successful that he says he cannot keep up with the local demand, let alone think about filling export inquiries.

The combination garment and fabric works and winery is on a hillsidebehind Apia near Vaillima, onre the home of Robert Louis Stevenson, whose famed memorial lies aton the next hill. The brand name of the

Rankin wine is “Talofa,” the Samoan word for welcome.

Table wines and liqueurs are made from Samoa’s own passion fruit, pawpaw, bananas and citrus fruits.

The passion fruit liqueur is the first of its kind produced commercially in the world, Mr Rankin believes. At present, three huge stainless steel tanks are used to produce about 1600 bottles of wine at a time.

The five girls borrowed from the garment factory use a small bottling machine then insert the corks and stick on the labels by hand. Mr Rankin said he was considering trebling his capacity with an eye to possible exports to Fiji, Hawaii and elsewhere. M mbers of tourist par-

ties who now’ make regular stops to taste the wine and inspect his “Island Styles” dresses and shirts have reacted favourably, he says.

Bob Rankin, from Papakura, near Auckland, moved to Samoa 30 years ago as a teacher. He and his Samoan wife have six children.

He taught for 10 years, then started a weekly newspaper which he edited for several years. He also served as a correspondent for Australian and New Zealand publications.

Then he moved into the business of printing textiles and fashioning tropical clothing, which is now exported all over the Pacific.

In time, he hopes, his wine may be, too.