July 24, 2018
Andy Corles was already an accomplished chef when he moved to the Coromandel to establish a successful cafe with family in 2011.
The Castle Rock Cafe in Te Rerenga took off, with customers raving about Corles' culinary creations, including a successful range of dressings and chutneys.
But in 2014, all that changed during a torrential downpour on the way to picking up his daughter Madaleine from a friend's house.
"It was basically 2kms from home, I came around one of the corners and it just started pouring down with rain," he said.
"[The car] hit a puddle and aqua-planed, it spun and hit the bank and flipped. I wasn't speeding, I was only doing about 45km/h around a corner."
Corles' neck was broken at C5 and dislocated between C6 and C7, which damaged his spinal cord, leaving him quadriplegic and in a wheelchair.
He survived three cardiac arrests during a 27-day stint in intensive care, followed by many months in hospital.
Despite the severity of his injuries, Corles says he feels lucky to have the support of his family after the accident and decided to "just get on with business".
"I've always had the attitude from being at the spinal unit to make the most of what you've got," he said.
"You can feel sorry for yourself or get on with life because there's always somebody worse off than you are - I met plenty of them in the spinal unit, people without family and people that have [worse injuries] than me.
"At least I had my home to come to, I had my family and everything else. I'm very grateful for what I've got."
After his recovery, Corles took up hand-cycling, competing in the gruelling 50km K2 Road Cycle Classic Nicholas Browne Challenge from Tairua to Whitianga to raise funds for the Auckland Helicopter Rescue Trust. He planned compete again this year, he said.
Family and friends pitched in to help in the cafe after his accident, however, Corles decided to eventually close it because it wasn't as profitable without him. Instead, they decided to focus on making the chutneys and dressings, which were always a huge hit with cafe customers, he said.
Corles comes up with the ideas and recipes for their products, and takes care of marketing and paperwork, while his wife and school teacher Shelley Corles and mother-in-law and Well Child nurse Margaret Briggs help make, bottle and label the products after work.
Andy Corles said all their products contain New Zealand fruit and produce, and are packaged in glass bottles "because we don't want to use plastic".
"All the fruit we buy is as local as possible, we try and source it within the Waikato. We source really good ingredients," he said.
The products have no preservatives, are gluten free and vegan friendly and the dressings are vinegar-based with no oil, which is their point of difference.
"You go to the supermarket and buy what they call a vinegarette, but three-quarters of it is oil, and there's no flavour in it, all you can taste is the oil," he said.
"Whereas with ours, you get that intense fruit flavour. It's the sort of thing you need to taste it to believe it."
With flavours like strawberry, lemon and mint, the dressings were versatile, he said.
"It's not just for salads, some of them you can use over pancakes, icecream, some you can use for marinades over meats, there's so many different things you can do with them."
Corles was recently invited to enter their chilli lime chutney and tamarillo and cinnamon dressing in the Cuisine Artisan Awards, which celebrates small New Zealand producers.
Products are sold online at castlerockcafe.co.nz, available in several stores around the Coromandel Peninsula, Waikato and Auckland, and they also promote their products at food shows.
For the past three years, they have been part of the Coromandel Food Collective, a group of top Coromandel food producers who will promote the region with Thames Coromandel District Council at the Auckland Food Show on July 26-29.
Corles said they loved being part of the collective.
"It's good to promote the Coromandel because that's something I believe in. Without tourism and people coming to the Coromandel, none of us would have jobs in the Coromandel," he said.
"There's all these great small businesses around the Coromandel people don't realise are there - there's a lot of talent on the Coromandel."
