How New Zealand hopped to it – and gave Americans a kick in the palate
Saturday, 6 June 2026
Mike “MOD” O'Donnell is a US-based commentator with extensive experience as a director and adviser to New Zealand businesses, including as a former chair of the Garage Project brewery. He is currently NZTE’s regional trade director for North America. This column represents his personal opinions.
OPINION: One of the privileges of living in Santa Monica for a few years is occasionally being asked to do things that are weird and unexpected.
Last weekend's assignment involved standing behind a beer tap in a sandy corner of California wine country, pouring Wellington-brewed beer for several thousand enthusiastic Americans.
There are worse ways to spend a Saturday.
The occasion was the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Festival in Paso Robles. Unless you're a serious beer geek, you've probably never heard of it. Yet in the brewing world it sits somewhere between Wimbledon, the Masters and an invitation to George Clooney's holiday home.
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This is not a festival where breweries buy a stand and turn up with a marketing team. Every brewery is personally invited. The brewers themselves are expected to attend. Attendance is capped. Tickets disappear instantly. Around 60 of the world's most respected breweries gather from America, Europe, Japan and elsewhere for what is essentially a family reunion of the global beer elite.
Garage Project has been attending since 2014, when Firestone Walker brewmaster Matt Brynildson discovered what weird stuff Pete Gillespie and Jos Ruffell were creating in an old petrol station in Aro Valley and decided they belonged at the table.
Twelve years later, there I was helping pour beer beneath a cloudless Californian sky.
The Garage Project lineup was a reminder of why they were invited in the first place.
There was Yuzu Sunrise, a bright and refreshing layered sour brewed with Japanese citrus and raspberries. There was Tūtaki Haze showcasing New Zealand hops from Nelson Lakes. There was Chance, Luck & Magic 22, a spontaneously fermented Belgium ale.
And then there was the Red Hot Poker Stout.
Now, many breweries would be content simply serving a stout.
Garage Project instead produced an actual red-hot poker heated until it glowed. As each glass was poured, the poker was plunged directly into barrel-aged cinnamon chocolate stout, caramelising sugars, releasing waves of aroma and creating toasted flavours that hadn't existed moments before.
The reaction from festival-goers was immediate. Partly because the beer tasted wonderful. Partly because watching someone thrust a glowing metal rod into a glass of beer is not something most people expect to encounter on a Saturday afternoon.
It was vintage GP. Equal parts brewing science, theatre and mischief.
The Americans loved it.
But interestingly, what caught my attention over the weekend wasn't the beer. It was the hops. As I wandered around the festival, brewery after brewery proudly told visitors they were using New Zealand hops.
Not American hops. Not German hops. Not English hops.
New Zealand hops.
The breweries said it with a certain pride. Sometimes it appeared on the tap badge. Sometimes it featured prominently in the brewer's introduction. Sometimes it emerged midway through a discussion about flavour, aroma and brewing technique.
But it kept coming up. Nelson Sauvin. Nectaron. Riwaka. Peacharine. Again and again.
American brewers did not discover New Zealand hops all at once. They discovered Nelson Sauvin first.
That combination of gooseberry, white wine and tropical fruit was unlike anything else in their toolkit. Brewers noticed. Then they started looking beyond Nelson itself to other hop-growing pockets around the top of the South Island. Places like Murchison, Battery Hill and Garston entered the conversation. New varieties followed. So did products such as Clayton Hops’ hop oil and Phantasm’s thiol powder.
You could dismiss all this as niche beer-geek chatter. But I think it points to something more interesting.
What I was watching in Paso Robles was a small New Zealand agricultural sector establishing itself, quietly and convincingly, as a premium supplier to a global industry. Not through marketing spin or patriotic goodwill, but through quality. The hops are world class, and brewers know it.
That is a lesson New Zealand keeps relearning. People in North America do not buy something because it comes from New Zealand. They buy it because it is excellent. If the New Zealand story adds a bit of romance on top, all well and good. But quality comes first.
Our best export successes often follow that pattern. They do not usually arrive with fanfare. They simply become so good that customers start seeking them out. A software company solving a problem better than its competitors. A geothermal firm exporting expertise built over generations. A grower producing an ingredient that helps define the flavour of modern craft beer on the other side of the world.
A generation ago, most Americans would have struggled to find Murchison, Battery Hill or Garston on a map. Hell, some of them would probably have looked in Scandinavia.
The modern IPA became juicier, fruitier and more aromatic. Brewers began hunting for flavours that would stand apart from the crowd. That search led many of them to New Zealand.
Today, some of the world’s best brewers are building recipes around what grows there. New Zealand is never going to beat bigger countries at scale. Our only real chance is to be better: more distinctive, more useful, harder to copy.
Happily, that seems to be working. Even in a dusty field in California. And I feel ridiculously proud to be riding the coattails of it.