Tohu Wines in Blenheim, the first Māori-owned and operated winery in the world, was launched in 1998. (Photo: Tohu Wines)

Māori are relative newcomers to the wine industry — the first Māori-owned and run winery in the world, Tohu Wines in Blenheim, is only 27 years old. Yet, as Mark Derby reports here, Māori involvement in winemaking dates back to at least the mid to late 1800s.

Narrow river canoes laden with freshly picked grapes were paddled down the Whanganui River throughout the late 19th century. Their cargoes of fruit were delivered to Joseph Soler’s large winery in Bell Street, just off the river in central Whanganui.

Soler was a Spaniard, a third-generation winemaker from Tarragona in northeastern Spain. In 1866, he arrived in New Zealand, on the very opposite side of the world from his own country, and settled in Whanganui. Perhaps without realising it, he arrived during a temporary and fragile peace from the intermittent conflict along the great river that served as a supply route to the battlefronts in both Taranaki and the Waikato.

Joseph Soler was determined to create a local wine industry, and he planted several varieties of vines on his Bell Street property. Over the next 40 years, however, he also bought grapes from middle-river Māori communities such as Kauaeroa, a traditional settlement of the Ngāti Hau and Ngāti Ruaka hapū of Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi.

In 1852, in the decade before Soler arrived, Father John Lampila, a former soldier turned Catholic Marist missionary, founded a mission at Kaiwhaiki, 18 kilometres upriver from Whanganui. Two years later, he formed another at Kauaeroa, 45 kilometres further upstream and opposite Hiruhārama, or Jerusalem, which was originally named Patiārero. At both missions, he planted grapes along with other introduced plant varieties.

Many other early missionaries, whether from wine-producing countries such as France or elsewhere, did the same. Introducing Māori to new forms of agriculture was considered as much of a “civilising pursuit” as converting them to Christianity. One historian has written that, for the missionaries, the sight of well-tended harvests of European crops was also “a means of subduing and controlling what they experienced as a strange and exotic land.”

Grapes and the wine they produced were particularly rich in religious symbolism and associations with cultural advancement, and grapevines were often the first imports planted on mission land. Descendants of the vines planted by Father Lampila at Kauaeroa were still thriving there 150 years later.

This river-borne viticultural trade seems to have worked well for both Soler and his Māori growers. Whether the Spaniard ever learned to speak Māori is not known, but he apparently maintained friendly terms with the small riverside communities who kept him supplied with grapes. In the late 19th century, the Whanganui River district upstream of Kaiwhaiki was occupied almost exclusively by Māori, many of them staunch Kīngitanga supporters. The people of Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi who dealt with Soler did so not as wage workers or forced labourers like the Indigenous people of other colonised wine-producing countries, but as independent growers negotiating their own terms.

According to a Canadian historian, Professor Adrian Shubert, “Māori exercised greater agency than other Indigenous peoples entangled in settler vines. They acted as independent suppliers of grapes to settler winemakers and even encouraged settlers to take up winemaking in order to expand their market.”

The pamphlet produced by Joseph Soler in 1896 may be unique in the world. “No other colonised wine-producing country seems to have produced any information on winemaking in an Indigenous language,” says Canadian historian Adrian Shubert.

Striking proof of the mutually respectful relationship between the Spanish-born winemaker and his Māori grape-growers appeared about 30 years after Soler began working in Whanganui. In 1896, he wrote a brief, illustrated pamphlet and had it translated into Māori. Kupu tohutohu mo te mahi whakato tapahanga waina karepe (Directions for propagating grapevines from cuttings) sets out in straightforward language how to grow and train vines, and how to prune them to ensure the best quality fruit.

Professor Shubert thinks this modest double-sided pamphlet may be unique in the world. “No other colonised wine-producing country seems to have produced any information on winemaking in an Indigenous language.”

Adrian Shubert is taking part in an international project on the global history of wine production. His academic specialty is modern Spanish history, so he explored the role of Spaniards as global winemakers, “and this led me to ask whether Spaniards had played a part in creating the wine industry in the colony of New Zealand.”

He discovered Soler’s pamphlet in the Auckland War Memorial Museum and had it translated into English. None of the other historians working on this globe-spanning research project, nor others who have researched the same subject, could find an equivalent document in any of the countries they studied.

Soler was a skilled and dedicated winemaker whose products eventually won international awards. By 1897, in addition to his original few acres in Bell Street, he had five more acres planted in vines in Westmere, north of the city, and was producing six tonnes of grapes annually in his glasshouse and another 15 tonnes in open fields. From 21 varieties of grapes, he made seven different “wholesome, pleasant, and palatable” wines.

A business on that scale required dedicated staff, and from 1888, Soler was joined by his 22-year-old nephew, Antonio José Vidal. After almost 20 years in Whanganui, Vidal founded his own winery in converted racing stables in Hastings, Hawke’s Bay. There, he became a pioneer of what is now one of New Zealand’s major wine-producing regions. Vidal’s was the first winery to sell direct from the cellar door, and the first to incorporate a restaurant. Today, it’s part of the Villa Maria conglomerate, and one of the oldest surviving wineries in the country.

Māori are still growing wine grapes, but now they’re also centrally involved in every stage of the industry, from vineyard management to marketing. There are at least six Māori-owned and run wineries in Aotearoa — the oldest, and the first of its kind in the world, is Tohu Wines in Blenheim. The winery is part of Wakatū Incorporation, formed in 1977 to administer tribal lands reserved from the 1841 sale of land in Nelson to the New Zealand Company.

Rōpata Taylor, of Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Rārua, Ngāti Tama and Ngāti Koata, is the general manager manatū at Wakatū Incorporation. As he explains: “Wakatū could see that winemaking was an attractive proposition on our lands, as it provided a good return on land use. It could provide employment and training for our people, and as a business, it fitted with our social objectives. So we started in 1998 as a partnership with two other tribal entities, and they later sold their interests to us.”

Tohu’s vineyard manager, Anthony Walsh, is Te Āti Haunui, the same Whanganui River people who once supplied Joseph Soler with his grapes. He told me that the advice Soler gave them in his 1896 pamphlet would still be useful for small-scale growers today. “That’s how I would explain how to do it to my mum. On the larger scale that we grow, it’s a bit different, but it’s still good, commonsense advice.”

“We’re always focused on whakapapa and whenua. The flavour of the land is exhibited in the wine.” Anthony Walsh, Tohu Wines’ vineyard manager. (Photo: Chris Brooks)

From classic grape varieties like sauvignon blanc, pinot gris, pinot noir, albariño and riesling, Tohu now make red and white wines reflecting the sub-regions of Marlborough, Nelson and Hawke’s Bay, single-vineyard wines, and a Rewa range of sparkling wines.

“When I started working here,” says Anthony, “I felt I was coming home, because it’s very heavily Māori-focused, and profit isn’t the priority. Tīkanga Māori influences everything we do, like welcoming and farewelling visitors and staff.

“My biggest role here is caring for the whenua. We’re always improving the soil. Our vineyard planning schedule is aligned with the maramataka, the Māori lunar calendar. And Matāriki is an important time for us — it’s the time for the land to rest.”

Te reo Māori is also strongly encouraged and supported throughout the organisation, with workshops run for kaimahi to learn and practise reo, waiata and karakia.

Rōpata says succession planning is also important to the organisation. “We’ve had whānau interns working in the winery, in the vineyard, and in the marketing department. Even our current tumu whakarae (chief executive) and general manager for AuOra (a Wakatū business) were mentored into their roles in an internal professional development programme.”

Māori are world leaders among Indigenous wine producers, although there are now also several wineries run by First Nations people in North America. The oldest of them is Nk’Mip (pronounced “In-ka-meep”) Cellars, owned and run by the Osoyoos Indian band of British Columbia, Canada. Rōpata has been there to share ideas with them and taste each other’s products.

Tohu makes delicious wines, and Adrian Shubert and his wife buy them whenever a bottle shows up in shops in their hometown of Toronto. However, it’s not just the winemaking Tohu is proud of — there’s also their approach to sharing the whenua with native wildlife, which includes the kārearea, the native falcon, that thrive in the trees behind the winery.

“They’re ground-nesting birds,” says Anthony, “so we use special mowers under the vines to ensure that their habitat is safe, and to provide food for them in the winter months. We’re trialling natural biocontrols of predators. We co-exist here with other species — the mokomoko (skinks and lizards), poraka (frogs), tuna (eels), kōura (freshwater crayfish) — so we have to create a habitat for them.

“We’re always focused on whakapapa and whenua. The flavour of the land is exhibited in the wine.”

Tohu whenua Awatere Valley, Blenheim. (Photo Tohu Wines)

Mark Derby is a Wellington historian, writer and lifelong learner of te reo Māori. His books have been published in several countries and languages, including te reo Māori. He has also written historical reports for the Waitangi Tribunal and Te Arawhiti, a unit in the Ministry of Justice.

E-Tangata, 2025