The Wines of New Zealand by Rebecca Gibb

Author:Rebecca Gibb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Infinite Ideas

PART 3

SOUTH ISLAND

9

MARLBOROUGH

It’s not the Smithsonian, but Marlborough Museum should be on every wine visitor’s list of places to visit. It took me six years of living in New Zealand to step inside its doors and when I mentioned I’d finally visited its wine exhibition, most local winemakers responded with ‘Oh, I’ve still not been there’. They should: a community that does not know its past is like a vine without roots. The history of Marlborough’s wine industry is a wonderful reminder of how young it is and how quickly success has graced its vineyards. It celebrates the pioneers of the modern era, which started in 1973, and commemorates those who first planted vines a century earlier.

One of the region’s earliest pioneers was David Herd. Look left as you leave Blenheim airport and there is a bronze statue of the Scotsman who first planted vines circa 1873, a hundred years before Montana made the first plantings of the modern era. Leaving the mills of Dundee behind in 1852, Herd set sail with his wife and daughter for Australia before making the journey to New Zealand in 1854. He managed a 20,000 acre station in Marlborough for two decades and was finally able to purchase a piece of land in what is known as the Southern Valleys today. He named the property Auntsfield and planted Muscat vines supported by manuka posts, and made wine until his death in 1905. His son-in-law Bill Paynter continued his winemaking legacy in the face of the growing temperance movement but the vines were removed in 1931. This part of Marlborough’s history might have been forgotten if it wasn’t for cinematographer Graeme Cowley. Having been involved in Kiwi classics like Goodbye Pork Pie and Smash Palace, he was in the market for a piece of land. In 1998, after a ‘nightmarish’ two-year process, he purchased a piece of land in the hills: ‘We weren’t allowed to check on the soils but there was a comment that “they used to grow grapes up here in the old days” and it was something that stayed with me. I started doing some research.’ And so the history of David Herd and Auntsfield was revived. The Muscat vineyard with manuka posts has been recreated; the original winery, which had collapsed and was buried under a pile of rubbish, has been restored. And there’s a bronze statue of the pioneering Scotsman at the airport.

Herd wasn’t the only man making wine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born to English parents, George Freeth established a vineyard near Picton just a few years after Herd founded Auntsfield. His company, Mount Pleasant Wine Vaults, made fruit wine for the local community and operated until 1958. Another important figure in the early history of Marlborough wine was Mansoor Peters. He left his native Lebanon for New Zealand in the 1890s and ran the general store in Blenheim. He also had a licence to make wine but it wouldn’t have been particularly fine –

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