Danny Carson - Host with the most

He specialised in fine wines, outlandish promotions and good times, from lavish Auckland lunches, oysters and Bollinger flowing in the 80s to mystery feasts atop The Remarkables. Danny Carson knew how to throw a party.

Local rep for Negociants Fine Wines, Danny and wife Lizzie also left their mark on Queenstown’s restaurant scene, bringing their fine wine and dining know-how to Fernhill with Vknow Restaurant, Danny’s Wakatipu Wine Academy also sharing that knowledge.
A ‘westie’ from Glen Eden, Danny grew up surfing at Piha and tramping in the Waitākeres – bush at his backdoor.

“At 14 we watched Jacques Cousteau on TV, bought the gear and taught ourselves to dive,” he says.

A huge rugby league fan, he was president of the Wakatipu Giants – a regional competition force to be reckoned with at the time, his uncle former Kiwi Eric Carson and his dad having played for several Auckland sides.

“At Kelston Boys High – a leading rugby school, I had to pick up rubbish because I would only play league,” he grins. At 25 he played for the South Island against France and Australia and was under watch for the Kiwis squad until a broken hip put paid to that.

Destined to work with wine, Danny grew up around Auckland’s early Dalmatians in ‘Dalie Valley’ where they pioneered some of Auckland’s early wines. He worked school holidays in his mate, Martin Jakicevich’s family store Glengarry Wines. Martin later imported fine wines in the early 1980s and employed Danny, who’d been in Christchurch starting a family, for importing and distributing.

“People wanted to learn about Champagne and there was a lot of it floating around Auckland back then,” he says. “Glengarry got a name. Martin cracked it.

“I had three children, a credit card and a brand new company taking clients out to lunch and schmoozing,” he says. “I’d be eating oysters and drinking Bollinger by day then coming home to three mortgages and mince on toast at night.”

Eventually a ‘life lesson’ prompted him to abandon this double life and Danny took a hammer hand contract on a construction site, unfortunately landing in hospital after copping steel in his eye.

A broken back in a car accident was another bad blow but after his marriage ended a bright ray of sunshine arrived in the form of blind Queenstown nurse Jenni McBride, who’d lost her sight in a car accident locally.

“I was at a Bollinger tennis tournament party in Auckland and Jenni gate crashed with her guide dog,” he says. “It was love at first sight. We bought an old school J1 Bedford truck, and I kitted it out as a camper and we took a year heading down to Queenstown visiting schools, telling kids about guide dogs and wearing seatbelts.”

Initially Danny was a Wicked Willies barman – the legendary Fred Lynch and Barry Crump among his regulars. Glengarry had become Negociants and Danny saw a gap in the local liquor market, Martin employing him for Queenstown promotions.

“David Bradford was mayor, and I ordered everyone in hospo to come to the Village Green at 9am, ‘hungry, thirsty and in warm clothes’.” Busloads of mystery tourers headed up The Remarkables where Choppy, then new to town, was waiting with her helicopter and Tim Butson with an oyster bar and Bollinger in the snow.

Operators were also lured onto the Kingston Flyer to do a re-run of the Crunchie Bar Kid ads, locals on horseback armed with drench packs under Driza-Bones.

Danny once leased an empty 1960s conference charter plane sitting idle at the airport, charging $300 a head for a Fiordland scenic flight with Champagne and sushi.

A partner in Beaver Liquor from 2000, they’d load the trademark sponsored 1956 Mash-style ambulance with customers, loungers and chairs in the back, wining and dining them to Bannockburn.

All these skills made romancing wife Lizzie easy during a hot spell in 1999 - Champagne on ice at the lake every night, until finally he won a date.

Danny, Derek Stewart and others were instrumental in developing the Gardens skatepark – an idea sparked by Danny’s son Kris, here on school holidays. Wicked Willies stumped up with pokie money to help.

Danny also ran fundraising tennis tournaments to benefit Wakatipu Abuse Prevention Network and the Queenstown Tennis Club.

In 2003 Danny and Lizzie combined their wine and food experience launching Vknow Restaurant on the Giuseppe’s site at Fernhill, the perfect complement to Danny’s established Wakatipu Wine Academy. They’d stage tastings, degustations and host winemaker celebrities. “It was always a sellout. People came from everywhere.”

After 16 years they sold in 2019 - Vknow and their home in one week, scoring a beautiful rural property outside Kaikoura.

Danny’s happily retired but the “honest and beautiful community” of Queenstown will always be dear to his heart. “Jenni and I went to France in 1995 and left our house unlocked. Nothing got stolen. That was a magical time. Frankton Road was 100km/hr and everybody got on.”