Making a SPLASH

Marlborough, New Zealand’s top wine region, serves up a hospitality all its own

On a sunny day in November, I’m driving between precise rows of green vines on the South Island’s northeastern corner. Flanked by brown hills on the south and the Richmond Ranges to the north, it’s a bucolic scene — the result of order in an otherwise wild place.

Through it all flows the Wairau River, a sublime blue from its silt. Like all of New Zealand’s braided rivers, the Wairau’s tentacles have wandered over time, carving out a terraced valley like a trench, dropping rich alluvial deposits in their path. Combined with Marlborough’s status as the country’s sunniest spot, it’s not surprising this is New Zealand’s top wine-producing region.

Every year, Marlborough’s roughly 160 wineries produce more than three-quarters of the country’s wine exports, including the Sauvignon Blancs so beloved by North Americans. Yet, despite the region’s prime grape-growing conditions, the first commercial vines weren’t planted here until 1973.

This August, the wine region will celebrate its 50th anniversary. It’s an auspicious occasion — and a reminder that in the world of wine, Marlborough is barely an adolescent. Bordeaux, in contrast, was exporting wine by 1302; Spain since the Roman Empire. Even Ontario had 35 commercial wineries by 1890.

And like any young adult, Marlborough is in the midst of trying to define its identity. Already, one thing is clear: The varietal that put it on the map may not determine its future.

“We’re not a one-trick pony,” says Anna Flowerday, co-winemaker of Te Whare Ra Wines, when we meet for dinner in Blenheim, Marlborough’s commercial centre. “People visit Marlborough because they’re adorers of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, but there are a lot of other things waiting in the wings.”

Sauvignon Blanc still accounts for 80 per cent of the vines planted, but Flowerday says it’s in the region’s complex Chardonnays, peppery Syrahs, plummy Merlots and bright Albariños (a relatively new varietal in the country) that Marlborough is coming into its own. And what’s in the glass isn’t the only point of difference: the way it’s being poured and shared is unique, too.

Increasingly, winemakers across the country are using the Maori word “turangawaewae” (which translates loosely as “a place to stand”) rather than “terroir” to talk about provenance during tastings. It may seem like a small detail, but it illustrates New Zealand’s willingness to depart from tradition and carve out its own path.

I encountered this a month earlier, when I visited Smith & Sheth, an oenothèque in Hawke’s Bay on the North Island. When I arrived at its Heretaunga Wine Studio for a tailored tasting, I was surprised to be greeted by the recording of a karanga. This melodic call-out forms part of the powhiri, a traditional Maori welcome ceremony.

“That greeting was gifted to us to by our local iwi or tribe,” explained sommelier Jason Lambert. He told me that everything Smith & Sheth and its parent company, Aotearoa New Zealand Fine Wines, does is in consultation with the local iwi, Ngati Kahungunu. This, in part, is an act of reconciliation. Before Europeans settlers arrived in the 19th century, the land where most vineyards now sit was Maori homeland.

“The world is waking up to the power of Maori iconography and language,” says Mikela Dennison-Burgess, spokesperson for Tuku, a collective of Maori winemakers. She says the use of turangawaewae isn’t a marketing tactic; it reflects that winemaking in Aotearoa (the Maori name for New Zealand) is unlike anywhere else in the world.

“Yes, it’s about the geography, but it’s also about whakapapa — the ancestry of the people — and having that strong connection to the land,” she says. She points to the example of Te Pa. At the edges of Te Koko-oKupe/Cloudy Bay, the winery sits at one of the earliest known landing sites in Aotearoa. Its Maori owner, Haysley MacDonald, can trace his ancestry and connection to the land back 800 years. “When we’re talking about ‘one’s place to stand,’ it goes deeper than ‘these grapes are grown in this area,’” says Dennison-Burgess.

It’s also not the only Maori concept reflected in the country’s viticulture. New Zealand Winegrowers, the national industry body, centres its sustainability framework around kaitiakitanga, or intergenerational guardianship of the land. Already, over 96 per cent of the country’s vineyards are certified as sustainable.

Just call Marlborough the Gen Z of the wine world: It’s deeply concerned with climate change, diversity and inclusion, and social justice. Sustainable, biodynamic and regenerative growing practices are the norm, not the exception. And while its childhood party trick of churning out mass-market Sauvignon Blancs may have gotten the region attention, it’s ready for its second act, including experimenting with grapes such as arneis and Tempranillo.

But as with any young adult, Marlborough is also ripe for rebellion. If you expect big-box hotels or glossy tasting rooms catering primarily to coach-bus tourists, you’re in the wrong place.

“It’s not like we don’t take our wine seriously, but we often like showing them in a fairly relaxed, casual kind of setting,” says Flowerday.

Here, it’s not unusual to enter a cellar door (that’s Kiwi for “tasting room”) and see a dog asleep on the floor. You have a good chance of being served by the winemaker, owner or another family member. You might even hear the musical stylings of an in-house rock band, as is the case at Framingham Wines in Renwick.

And if you get bored of the good drop? You can head to a beer garden among the vineyards. Moa Brewing Company, located next to mega-brand Cloudy Bay, has been known to experiment with beerwine fusions, like a sour beer made with (what else?) Sauvignon Blanc.

There’s a Maori concept for this kind of hospitality, too: manaakitanga.

“It’s that mutual respect between host and visitor,” explains Dennison-Burgess. “Manaakitanga is inherent to wine. We do everything we do to be able to share that glass of wine and a special moment together.” J E SSI CA WYNNE LOCKHART TRAVE L L E D AS A GUEST OF DESTINATION MARLBOROUGH AND HAWKE’S BAY TOURISM, WHICH DID NOT REVIEW OR APPROVE THIS ARTICLE