When Luke and Vanessa Reynolds stroll via a block of cabernet franc at their winery Tūāpae, they stroll on ancestral land. Tūāpae is on Waiheke Island, on the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand. Vanessa (Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki, Te Waiohua, Ngāti Tahinga, Ngāti Hine) and different Māori use their iwi (tribe) and hapū (sub-tribe) names to take pride in and reference to their ancestors. “My tūpuna (ancestors) have been linked to this particular space in Tāmaki (Auckland) since effectively earlier than the good waka migrations,” Vanessa explains, referencing the mass migration within the 1300s when many Māori first started to inhabit the land after journeying from the Polynesian island of Hawaiki, guided by the navigator Kupe. Right here, voyagers dedicated themselves to stewardship of the land.

Regardless of a wealthy non secular relationship with the land for over 1,000 years, Māori have traditionally had little presence in considered one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest and most profitable agricultural ventures: viticulture. Vines had been first planted there in 1819 by missionary Samuel Marsden, and by 1840, when English officers and Māori chiefs met to signal the Treaty of Waitangi (a dedication to stay peacefully and in equality for the event of Aotearoa New Zealand, collectively), European grapes had already firmly taken root on unceded Māori soil. 

By means of 200 years of winemaking, Aotearoa New Zealand has developed a powerful international fame and a requirement for the nation’s wine, from Central Otago’s berry-rich pinot noir to Marlborough’s uniquely grassy sauvignon blanc. In that point, the wine trade has been vastly dominated by individuals of European descent. At present, nonetheless, a few of the most impactful wines from the area are made by a rising variety of Māori winemakers, who’re working to decolonize the trade by integrating Māori-influenced farming strategies and ideologies. Many of those practices predate European biodynamic farming, which has largely been seen because the mannequin for pure wine.

“Being a kaitiaki (guardian) for the whenua (land) and caring for the land should all the time come first,” explains Matua Murupaenga (Ngāti Kuri, Ngāti Kahu), one of many companions behind the pure wine label Tawhiti. Together with Imogen Weir (Ngāi Tahu), Murupaenga first started his journey into winemaking after assembly Amy Hopkinson-Kinds, who runs the wine label Halcyon Days and provided them mentorship and coaching. With a reputation which means “one thing within the distance,” Tawhiti provides an image of what the way forward for Aotearoa New Zealand wine may appear to be.

Because the duo see it, pure winemaking and biodynamic farming already function in step with the Māori worldview, which is guided by the thought of kaitiakitanga: a cost of guardianship of land, sea and sky for future generations. At Tiki Wine & Vineyards in North Canterbury, Royce McKean (Ngāti Uenuku, Ngāti Ranginui) sources city compost from households on tribal land as a option to each lower down on meals waste in the neighborhood and in addition to complement the soil. Additional north, a stream runs via the Tūāpae winery to Te Marae o Tai, Vanessa Reynolds’ tribal ocean and part of the Tīkapa Moana (Hauraki Gulf), a once-fertile physique of water that’s presently experiencing an pressing biodiversity disaster, partly because of air pollution. Tūāpae, in response, enacts farming practices that guarantee solely natural waste runs into the water programs.

One other Māori precept, ki uta ki tai, follows the trail of wai (water) because it falls from the sky, flows over the land and out to sea. For winemakers, it additionally embodies “the journey from soil to vine to wine and to glass,” explains McKean. “This additionally speaks to our tūrangawaewae (the place we stand), or, in a European framework, our terroir.” 

Although tūrangawaewae and terroir are comparable concepts, the Māori idea can also be “one thing that’s fully distinctive to Aotearoa New Zealand,” says Haysley MacDonald (Rangitāne o Wairau, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Rarua), who runs the te Pa vineyard in Marlborough’s Wairau Bar, the place he traces his household ancestry again over 800 years. Hugged by two our bodies of water, the land there may be fertile and the moana (ocean) ample with tāmure (snapper) and pāua (abalone), a plentiful stretch for the early tribes who lived right here.

As MacDonald places it, tūrangawaewae are locations the place one feels empowered, linked and at house. That concept is mirrored in each the wines and the stewardship of the land. A member of Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ), which is widely known as a world-leading sustainability program within the trade, MacDonald exceeds the present requirements of inclusion together with his Māori-influenced farming. To create a powerful tūrangawaewae, he incorporates practices like spreading grape marc (returning the stays of the pressed grapes to the soil for his or her vitamins and antioxidants), planting inter-row cowl crops (which assist soil vitality and encourage helpful bugs) and grazing sheep within the winter (which creates and provides carbon- and potassium-rich matter again into the soil). With te Pa’s Reserve Assortment wines, made with grapes from a single winery, MacDonald showcases the minerality of the Awatere area, strongly current from the extremely cared-for soils.

Past farming, Māori winemakers are additionally acutely aware of the language and concepts used to advertise their wines. For instance, whereas the time period “property wine” is used to explain these made out of grapes grown within the label’s personal winery, Vanessa Reynolds feels it’s necessary to make use of language that displays Māori worldviews, eschewing the naming conference.“It simply didn’t really feel just like the colonized sense of a boundary match us or our kaupapa (guiding rules),” she says.

The act of selecting your phrases has by no means held extra weight than it does at present in Aotearoa New Zealand. The nation has skilled a renaissance of te reo Māori, the unique language of the land, which grew throughout the pandemic as isolation compelled the nation to look even additional inward. From 2018 to 2021, the variety of residents who may converse some fundamental te reo phrases rose from 24 % to 30 %. In 2024, te reo exhibits up in nationwide information broadcasts (interspersed with English) and on highway indicators throughout the nation; it’s printed in additional books than ever. Nonetheless, not everybody shares the sentiment that the language, which holds non secular significance for Māori and was initially a spoken, however not written, language, is on the rise. Resistance from some white New Zealanders persists. Older generations of Māori, who had been overwhelmed for talking te reo at school, nonetheless keep in mind the cruelty.

For some, nonetheless, utilizing te reo on Māori wine labels is an act of reclamation. Regardless of being underrepresented in Aotearoa New Zealand’s wine historical past, the language and Māori symbols have been utilized in branding and advertising of the nation’s wines made by Pākehā (New Zealanders of non-Māori descent). And not using a Māori understanding of the language, sure ideas which are tapu (sacred and forbidden) may be misrepresented, particularly in the case of alcohol. 

For the Reynoldses, “it was actually necessary to us to take our identify via the trademarking course of and have it put up earlier than the Māori Advisory Committee for approval,” Luke says. The group is a part of the New Zealand mental property workplace that helps decide if one thing could also be discovered offensive to Māori. McKean provides that the usage of te reo and Māori symbols by Pākehā ought to profit precise Māori individuals, via funding or elevating consciousness, “to assist appeal to and educate Māori within the wine trade.”

Rising up, Jannine Rickards of Huntress Wines discovered to register a sure type of questioning look from others at her options and colours, as if she had been a puzzle prompting the necessity for a clue. Rickards pieced collectively her Māori heritage from quieted dialog and banter between her mother and father. “I didn’t develop up linked to my Māori tradition… I didn’t really feel Māori,” she says. “New Zealand went via a interval like most colonized nations the place the language and tradition was suppressed, and from the early 1900s to the Nineteen Seventies Māori language was discouraged. At all times with the suppression of language, the tradition and connection turns into impacted.”

Studying about tikanga (conventional information and protocols) in her maturity gave Rickards an perception into Māori tradition and a mind-set about herself, and the atmosphere, that she may simply connect with. At Huntress, that interprets to minimal intervention and natural farming strategies. The wines encapsulate over 20 years of Rickards’ studying and experiences, each as a winemaker and as an individual present process the lengthy and sluggish journey to find, and reclaim, their id. 

Although Rickards first adopted a historically European path to winemaking, she has slowly, over time, matched her winemaking fashion, ethos and strategy along with her Māori heritage. This has modified her wines, but additionally drew her nearer to herself—and her ancestors. “With the revitalisation of Māori tradition it is extremely fulfilling and tika (proper), and I now ‘really feel’ Māori,” she says. “Now I do know my tīpuna (ancestors) are inside me and assist me in my journey.”