Chance a vine thing for long lost sisters
They share the same father, the same curly locks and the same love of wine, but for half their lives they did not know each other existed.
Andrea McBride grew up on a Marlborough vineyard. More than
10,000 kilometres away, her older half-sister Robin McBride was being raised on a vineyard in Monterey, California.
And that’s how things remained, until one phone call changed everything.
Andrea lost contact with her father after she and her mother moved to Blenheim when she was
4-years-old. When her mother died from cancer, when she was 6-yearsold, she was put into foster care. In year 8, she received the shock call: ‘‘This person told me ‘Hey, it’s your dad’ and I hadn’t heard from him,’’ she said. He told her he had cancer too and about Robin.
‘‘It was crazy because all these emotions came out – I was like happy, sad, angry,’’ she said. ‘‘The silver lining out of that whole story was that I had this big sister … and his family was trying to find her.’’
That started a five-year quest to track down Robin, in the days before social media.
Before he died, Andrea’s dad asked his brother to unite his daughters. ‘‘It was his last wish, ‘Whatever happens to me, please find and connect my two daughters’,’’ Andrea said.
Her uncle and aunt wrote letters to all the Robin McBrides in the US. Finally, after years, it reached the right recipient.
‘‘It was crazy,’’ Robin said about receiving the letter, which said her dad had died and that she had a younger sister. She didn’t believe it at first and wondered if it was a hoax. But she called the number anyway and spoke with a ‘‘very excited’’ family.
It just so happened then 16-yearold Andrea was visiting her American family and the pair organised to meet the next day in New York. Robin, then 25-yearsold, said it was crazy to go from learning her sister existed to meeting her within 24 hours.
‘‘As I walk towards it (a mirror) I realise the image I thought was my reflection wasn’t moving while I was walking. It took a minute to realise I was looking at my sister for the first time.’’
Andrea said they didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. ‘‘We just zeroed in and hugged and cried and then at some point I was like ‘You are Robin, right?’’’
Now, almost 20 years later, the pair have a wine business together, The McBride Sisters, comprising wines from Marlborough and California. Wines from the former include a sauvignon blanc and brut rose, while a chardonnay and red blend are from the latter.
‘‘This is crazy that we are together and we are making wine. We definitely don’t take it for granted,’’ Andrea said.
The pair live in the US, but were in Marlborough last week for harvest.
"It took a minute to realise I was looking at my sister for the first time."
Robin McBride