The whānau behind Tohu Wines

Separated by chasms of oceans and circumstance, these four are united by whānau, whakapapa and tūrangawaewae, and by the bottle of Tohu they’ll likely pour for friends, proudly showcasing wines made on their behalf.

“The great thing about being part of such a big family is there are so many brand ambassadors the world over, championing what we do,” says Rōpata Taylor, General Manager (People and Culture) at Wakatū Incorporation, which is owned by around 4,000 shareholders and their families, who are descendants of the customary Māori land owners of the Whakatū (Nelson), Motueka and Mōhua (Golden Bay) rohe.

Everything Wakatū does – including Kono, its food and beverage arm, and Tohu Wines, the world’s first Māori-owned export wine company - is on behalf of that whānau, the land they belong to, and the generations yet to come, says Rōpata. “We’re in the legacy business… Longevity is what it is all about for us, ultimately.”

Wakatū moved into vineyard development in the Awatere Valley in 2002, with what is now Whenua Awa, then in the Moutere Hills in 2005, developing Whenua Matua on land handed down through generations. These days Whenua Awa, poised above the Awatere River, is being steadily planted with pockets of native species, and Whenua Matua’s stunning vineyard shares space with a flourishing wetland, native plantings and increasing populations of native birds.

The company’s progression into vineyards in the early 2000s made perfect sense to Rōpata, talking of the “magic” of wine “when climate meets land and meets the human endeavour”. That coming together “in wonderful ways” is what terroir is all about, “and that is a good way to understand our approach to what it is we are doing and why we are in the wine industry,” he says. “We are an intergenerational legacy-based organisation, so wine just made lots of sense on lots of levels… Fundamentally for us, it is about people and place and the particular climate we have in Te Tauihu, the top of the south, to make these fantastic wines.”

Speaking at Pinot Noir NZ 2017, Rōpata explored the concept of tūrangawaewae when it comes to Whenua Awa and Whenua Matua, describing the sense of “belonging” to a place and acknowledging a “reciprocal responsibility”. The relationship between people, water and land is at the heart of everything Wakatū does, “and that’s what we have tried to reflect and what we have done with our wines”, says Rōpata. “It’s about us being authentically true to ourselves.”

In 2020 Wakatū launched its Whenua Ora programme, which is focussed on the mauri or wellbeing of the whenua and its people. Its priorities are to connect and re-connect whānau to their whenua and wai, transition from conventional farming practices to tikanga-led regenerative practices, and to be zero waste to landfill by 2028 and zero carbon by 2050.

It’s a “modern manifestation of intergenerational values that go back a long time”, says Rōpata, recognising that obligation to place, to the broader family, and to those who are not yet born. “Trying to pass forward the legacy of the land to the next generation and the generation after that is one of the drivers behind Whenua Ora.”

The other driver has got nothing to do with people, he adds. “It has got to do with the reverence we have independently for the natural world and the right of the natural world to exist independently of us and humanity. The mountain has a right to be a mountain and the river has a right to be a river. And Whenua Ora is about recognising the right of the environment to just be, with no reference to any use that we might have for it. It’s just recognition of the mana and respect we have for the natural world.”

Whenua Awa. Photo by Kate Macpherson

Meanwhile, for the likes of Mike in the US, Garry in Nelson and Rachael in Dubai, the accolades afforded Tohu wines engender a lot of pride. “I hear from a lot of our family about how it makes them feel, when our wines win awards,” Rōpata says, reflecting that media coverage when Māori businesspeople and businesses are successful is a positive counteraction to the negative discourse many Māori have endured in New Zealand.

“Wakatū and Kono have worked hard to ensure the way we present our culture in the wine sector is truly authentic and culturally appropriate,” says Rōpata. “That we are not appropriating our culture, that we are not commercialising our culture; that we are culturalising our commerce, so to say.”

It is an important distinction to make, he adds. “That’s about where the power lies, and in our case, we have empowered ourselves to determine how we present ourselves, and how we reflect it. So that’s an important element to our people as well.”

The wine made by Wakatū is all about family. “If there was a commonality that is shared by all of the owners - all of the whānau of Wakatū - it is that we are in this together,” says Rōpata. “This is something we were born into and something that we will pass on to those who follow us. That sense of something enduring is very much part of everything we do.”