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From Heritage New Zealand, Spring 2007On the Grapevineby Keith StewartOur rich winemaking culture is as old as our nation itself
The Treaty House at Waitangi boasts what is probably New Zealand’s most famous lawn. That it was on this front lawn that the seminal article of nationhood was formalised could explain our cultural obsession with nurturing grass. But it was not so much grass that thrived under James Busby’s botanical interest as an eclectic horticultural collection that he dearly hoped would form the basis of a virile economy on which his vision of New Zealand would be founded. Notably, Busby played his own small part in our wine industry. Not least of his collection was a small vineyard from which he harvested grapes of the 1840 vintage, days after the signing of the Treaty. These were made into the first recorded New Zealand wine. By the mid-1840s, there were at least four other vineyards in Te Tai Tokerau, and one at Akaroa, giving the impression that wine would soon be a feature of New Zealand culture, a consequence that Protestants worked assiduously against for the next century.
For all the presentation of the Treaty House as a symbol of our culture and nationhood, the site’s lack of a vineyard overlooks another important aspect of its role in our history. Busby believed wine would be of significant benefit to the new society he felt he was instrumental in creating in New Zealand: Instead of choice fruits and wines being rarities for the wealthy, they might speedily, with due attention, be made so to abound, as not only to be shared and enjoyed by the humblest, but to become staples for export to less favoured countries, and even to rival those to whom the colonists now look for supplies. Edinburgh-born Busby had learned the basics of viticulture and winemaking in Bordeaux, and when he emigrated to New South Wales with his parents in 1824 he planted vines on the family’s 809 hectares of grant land on the Hunter River, the original Hunter Valley vineyard, in a region now noted for its wine. Busby also secured a job at the Male Orphan School at Bulls Head in nearby Liverpool, teaching orphan boys viticulture with the idea that wine in New South Wales offered a valuable career path as well as income for the school. In 1825, his short work A Treatise on the Culture of the Vine and the Art of Making Wine was published in Sydney, and his future as a leader of the promising Australian wine industry seemed assured.
Unfortunately for Busby, the orphanage was taken over by the Church and School Corporation in 1827, and his sectarian face no longer fit. Fired from his teaching position, he continued with his vineyard while holding a series of temporary jobs for the New South Wales administration, all the while advocating increased investment in viticulture. In 1830, he published his Manual of Plain Directions for Planting and Cultivating Vineyards and for Making Wine in New South Wales, embarking a year later on an epic vine-collecting tour of European vineyards and nurseries, in search of varieties that would improve Australia’s winemaking. While in London, Busby also lobbied the Colonial Office on various aspects of colonial administration and future planning, and secured for himself the job of Official British Resident to New Zealand. Before he set off for his new post, he deposited at Kew Gardens, for future transport to New South Wales, 678 varieties of vines from France and Spain. These included 433 from the collection of the Botanic Gardens in Montpellier and 110 from the Luxembourg Gardens. He also had chardauney (sic) from the famous Montrachet vineyard in Burgundy, and hermitage from the Rhône Valley’s equally famous Hermitage site. These two, now known as chardonnay and shiraz, have become the dominant grape varieties in Australia’s wine industry, and were probably in the vineyard he planted at Waitangi.
Busby’s first Waitangi vines were planted soon after his arrival in the Bay of Islands in May 1833, but those vines failed, and the small vineyard was replanted successfully in 1836, when 50 grape plants and 50 cuttings were sent from his collection, now with the Sydney Botanic Gardens and down to a mere 362 varieties after losses at Kew. A further 40 vine cuttings arrived on 25 July 1836, and Busby paid Edward Callender 14 shillings ($1.40) for four days’ labour planting vines for the “nursery”. The vineyard was about 70 metres from the house, towards the sea, and had a windbreak of juvenile cabbage trees to protect it from the rain-bearing north-easterly winds that are the most disturbing of local conditions to a winegrower. The cabbage trees were cut down prior to the centenary celebrations in 1940, but some have revived and remain the only visible remnants of what is almost certainly New Zealand’s oldest vineyard. Luckily, we have a record of the wine that was produced that year. Planted in 1836, the four-year-old vines would have been in full production in 1840, and when the visiting French explorer Dumont d’Urville, on his return journey to France from Antarctica, called on Busby in May 1840, he noted: As I was going over Mr Busby’s estate, I noticed a trellis on which several flourishing vines were growing. I asked Mr Flint if the vines produced any grapes in this climate and, contrary to what I had been told in Korora Reka, I heard to my surprise that there had already been attempts to make wine from New Zealand grapes. On reaching his house, Mr Flint offered me a glass of port. I refused it, but with great pleasure I agreed to taste the product of the vineyard that I had just seen. I was given a light white wine, very sparkling, and delicious to taste, which I enjoyed very much. Judging from this sample, I have no doubt that the vines will be grown extensively all over the sandy hills of these islands, and very soon New Zealand wine may be exported to English possessions in India.
Unfortunately, Busby was not at home to entertain the admiral. If he had been, we may have found out more details about this “light white wine, very sparkling”, such as whether it was the product of Busby’s favourite chardauney variety. Nevertheless, D’Urville’s assessment was already proving accurate as there were three, probably four vineyards planted in the colony for the production of wine, two in the Whangaroa area where the Marist Fathers had planted vines in recent months, and where Captain William Powditch had a vineyard from which he was supplying cuttings to other settlers in the north. The French settlement in Akaroa also had its first vineyard in the ground, and Busby’s competitive associate, the British Resident at Horeke, Thomas McDonnell, claimed to have a small vineyard, although there is little evidence of this.
Like Busby’s, which was destroyed
by British troops during their war against Heke and Kawiti, none of these vineyards
has survived, although the Marists did take their winemaking hopes with them when
they moved to Hawke’s Bay, and there established the oldest winegrowing operation
in New Zealand. At odds with Pompallier’s grandiose Pacific plans, the Marists
were banished to Wellington, where they came under the direction of Bishop Viard,
while Pompallier remained in charge in the north. Viard despatched the Marists
under Father Lampilla to Hawke’s Bay to establish
A barrel of wine was made in 1852 after Father Reignier trekked north to the original Gisborne vineyard, only to be lost to sailors’ thirst on its voyage back to the Bay. Ironically, it would be 1854 before the Marist fathers managed to produce their first New Zealand wine, 15 years after Brother Elie-Regis planted their original vineyard on the shore of Whangaroa in 1839. The Society
of Mary would play a key role in winemaking in The rambling 19th century wooden buildings that dominate the Greenmeadows site are the most striking historic wine property in the country, one that has preserved its links with its origins and continues to make wine for the public as well as operating as a visitors’ centre for wine tastings, dining, concerts and wine industry functions. The original mission house was built at Meeanee in 1880, and moved to Greenmeadows in 1910, by which time the hillside vineyards at Greenmeadows were well established. The gardens, chapel and accommodation block were added at various stages on the elevated Greenmeadows site, with the house offering views out across Hawke’s Bay towards Napier city.
This site has been well utilised by the contemporary indoor-outdoor café and restaurant operation that is now one of the most popular winery venues in Hawke’s Bay. The house that once served as accommodation and seminary, library and administration for the Marist brothers’ farming and educational operations has been transformed. It now has shopping, wine-tasting and restaurant facilities, and the upstairs has become the administration and marketing centre for Mission Estate Winery. Once, Mission’s vineyards were all on estate land at Meeanee and Greenmeadows, but now the wine operation is supplied by Mission vineyards in various locations around Hawke’s Bay, and grapes are also supplied by independent growers. While wine has a long history at the Mission, and is now central to the Society of Mary operations in New Zealand, it was very much an adjunct of the Marist Fathers’ activities until Brother Cyprian arrived from France in 1871. A winemaker from a wine-growing family, he energised viticulture and winemaking at the Mission, and in 1895 the winery was producing enough wine for sale to the general public, making the Mission a feature of Hawke’s Bay’s wine culture for 112 years.
Visual evidence of Mission’s wine history lies with the original house, now fully restored and renovated, which is at the centre of the Greenmeadows estate. The vineyards that were originally planted here have long gone, and those on the flat land below the house are relatively recent. The winery itself, located next to these vines, is new, as modern as any in the Bay, with swathes of stainless steel and banks of expensive French oak.To match the longevity of the Mission house there are just two remnants of winery buildings. The oldest is the Central Otago winery of Jean Desire Feraud, built sometime between 1864 and 1870. Feraud was an innovator, a gold digger who arrived on the Central Otago fields in 1863, and struck it rich near Alexandra at what is now known as Frenchman’s Creek. With the proceeds of his find, Feraud abandoned gold digging and invested his small fortune in Central Otago land, buying 40 hectares not far from Clyde on the Waikerikeri River between Clyde and Alexandra. Part of this, he planted in vines, and in 1870 had a small winery and 1200 vines producing fruit. He named the property Monte Christo, and had some success with his wine at various exhibitions in New Zealand and New South Wales, but in 1882 he sold up and moved to Dunedin, where he continued winemaking. The old winery building still stands, somewhat modified, not far off State Highway 8, a kilometre or so south of Clyde. Feraud was an anomaly, a man who aspired to winemaking at a time and in a place where neither the climate nor the culture were conducive to such dreams. Innovation, however, was a feature of the earliest wine pioneers in New Zealand, as evidenced by Busby’s lateral thinking on matters of governance and economics, and also by Feraud’s belief in irrigation to sustain his viticulture. There is reason to believe his final departure from Monte Christo was due to his failure to secure water rights to the Waikerikeri for his vines when local mining had precedence. He continued making wine, but nature and gold fever conspired against his growing it. Bernard Chambers had similarly divergent ideas, in part due to the radical Quaker thinking of his father, John Chambers, who had established Te Mata Estate along the banks of the Tukituki River in the late 1850s, shortly after the Marists moved to nearby Pakowhai. By the time Bernard Chambers inherited the heart of the station in 1892, it was part of a 7500-hectare sheep and cattle run, but Bernard fancied the land could yield more than meat and wool. Bernard had been farming Te Mata Station separately from two of his brothers since 1885, when John Chambers decided on his sons’ legacy, of which Bernard, the youngest, took the grand, two-storeyed homestead and 1960 hectares. Bernard immediately began looking for options, and in 1884, while returning from one of his regular trips to Europe, he stopped in California to investigate the burgeoning wine industry. A year earlier, William and Hermanze Beetham had planted vines at their “Lansdowne” property in the Wairarapa, and French-born Hermanze had convinced both Bernard Chambers and his fellow Hawke’s Bay pastoralist Henry Tiffen that New Zealand had the land and climate in which fine winegrowing could thrive. In the early 1890s, after Chambers had made another exploratory trip to California’s vineyards, both Chambers and Tiffen planted their first vines. Bernard Chambers planted on the lower, north-facing slopes of Te Mata Peak vineyards that remain the oldest continuous winegrowing site in New Zealand. The first vines were planted at the foot of a breast-shaped hill that gave the vineyard its original name, Mamelon. The vines he planted were, according to the visiting vinicultural expert Bragato, who called in 1895, “Pinots and Black Hamburghs”, and a year later, in 1896, Te Mata had its first vintage. That first wine was processed in make-do facilities in the brick stables that still survive at the back of the modern Te Mata Estate winery. A new winery was built next to the Chambers homestead in time for the 1897 vintage. Currently, Te Mata Estate occupies the land that Chambers’ original did, with parts of the old winery retained in Ian Athfield’s reinterpretation of the property. The brick stables where the 1896 vintage was made survive in their original form, used as a barrel cellar with a stained-glass window on the northern wall that helps convey the sense of sophistication that Chambers sought. The most historically significant reminder of Chambers’ Te Mata wine venture remains the vineyard that straddles Te Mata Road on the Havelock North side of the winery. This slope includes, at the very top, the hill of Mamelon, which has recently been put into vines, close planted and staked in the fashion of the Northern Rhône Valley in France. Below is the original Mamelon vineyard, now extensively replanted and renamed “1896” in honour of the first Te Mata vintage. The vines continue north of the road, where part of the vineyard is the famous Elston Chardonnay site, with Awatea at the northern edge of the terrace, substantially the same area of vineyard that in 1913 made it the largest in the country. Both Elston and Awatea are represented by wines that carry their names, although they are no longer single vineyard wines. For some time, Awatea was, however, produced solely from the vineyard called The Terrace by Bernard Chambers. It was sold in 1917 to Hastings wine producer Vidals at the same time that Chambers quit winemaking under the pressure of prohibition politics. When the current owners of Te Mata Estate bought the old winery and remaining vineyards in 1974, they also gained access to fruit from the Awatea vineyard that was essentially unchanged in its varietal makeup since 1911. The cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc vines were used to make the first Te Mata Estate Cabernet Sauvignon of the new era, a wine that in 1980 and 1981 vintages was judged the best red wine in New Zealand. It could also have been the most historic, as it was in 1983 that the 72-year-old vines produced their last crop, and it remains one of the most remarkable wines ever made here. New Zealand is firmly established as a New World wine producer, but, with the rare exceptions of the Mission House and Te Mata Estate, there is little about this wine culture that reveals much history. Perhaps more could be done to remind New Zealanders that their wine traditions began with James Busby at Waitangi, at least acknowledge that wine has been here as long as there has been a recognisable New Zealand. Elsewhere, traces remain: at Mount Lebanon, the old Corbans property at Henderson, where there are no longer vines or any concrete links to a long and rich West Auckland wine tradition; and Auntsfield in Marlborough carries the remnants of that region’s original producers dating from 1873. But, on the whole, the hope and promise Busby recognised in 1833 lacked general recognition for almost as long as the Treaty he helped draft. | 
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