From Wine to Water at NZILA Firth Wānanga 2025 : A ‘must go’ for everyone

As chair of NZILA’s Hawkes Bay/ Manawatū/ Taranaki branch, Daniel McEwan, rates one of his best, and frequently taken on-the-road experiences as “traversing the Ruahine ranges from the south-west or Kaweka Ranges from the north into Hawkes Bay”.

“Driving through the viticulture and horticultural vernacular of the plains always gives me a greater understanding of the people and their place”, says Daniel.

“I’m also transported by the spiritual experience of journeying up Te Mata peak, whenever I can, and attempting to imagine what this vast landscape meant and afforded mana whenua pre-colonisation of the area”.

As members and supporters of the NZILA look ahead to the prospect of visiting Heretaunga Hastings for the NZILA Firth Wānanga 2025 in May, a definite feature of the region’s landscape that will beckon to many will be the land used for wine-growing.

Although a distant second to Marlborough’s quantum of vineyards, the Hawkes Bay has a sizeable 11% of New Zealand’s total producing area of 41,860ha according to the Vineyard Report 2023 published by New Zealand Winegrowers.

The Mission Estate Winery in Taradale, where French Missionaries planted vines in 1851, can lay claim to being our oldest vineyard. Te Mata Estate near Havelock North didn’t enter the picture until 1896 and Church Road Winery (then Mcdonalds Winery) a year later.

This is a heritage that would be impossible without the slow movement over thousands of years of soil, stones and sediment down rivers and across the plains that dominate the landscape. It also benefits hugely from a series of subtly influential microclimates.

It also raises an interesting point that there are up to 16 wine regions – four of them in France - that have gained UNESCO World Heritage status since 1999. That status alone is a huge boost to wine tourism, albeit that it involves a rocky road to selection.

An alternative feather in the cap for the Hawkes Bay wine region was achieved in 2023 when it joined a select company of 12 regions deemed to be ‘Great Wine Capitals’, joining the wine tourism destinations of Adelaide, Bilbao – Rioja, Bordeaux, Cape Town – Cape Winelands, Lausanne, Mainz – Rheinhessen, Mendoza, Porto, San Francisco – Napa Valley, Valparaiso – Casablanca Valley, and Verona.

(Editor’s note: For a more academic perspective on this same topic, LAA recommends looking up this postgraduate dissertation by Yajing Xu of the School of Landscape Architecture at Lincoln University from 2022: Experiencing the terroir: An exploration into the relationship between landscape architecture and viticulture).

A taster of ‘all the things’

Daniel McEwan: “As tempting as it is to stay distracted or busy in our own rohe, I highly recommend journeying to Heretaunga for this year’s NZILA Firth Wānanga. The conference is themed around food and landscape and who doesn’t like food and whenua in our profession?”.

A sampler of what the region has to offer by way of culinary options can be seen on the website of the Hawkes Bay F.A.W.C. (Food And Wine Classic) event taking place in March. As a sign of the active arts scene an inaugural Bridge Pa Sculpture Trail of 25 installations will run from 14 March - 11 April at Paritua winery, organised by Heretaunga Arts Inc.

*Dick Frizzell’s upcoming book is published by* *Massey University Press*.

Separately, on 13 March, celebrated artist Dick Frizzell will be launching his memoir about growing up in Hastings surrounded by a clan of Frizzells in the 1950s . It’s written in the form of 30 short stories.

“If I’d been asked to vote on it I would’ve said I’d landed at the centre of the universe,” he writes of that time. “Standing on our corner of Sylvan Road and Victoria Street, with Te Mata Peak, the Tukituki River and the mad wilderness of Windsor Park to the back of me and the distinctly non-wilderness of Cornwall Park and the misty vista of the Ruahines in front of me, I was the master of all I could barely survey.”

One other reminder of attractions that will feature at the NZILA Firth Wānanga 2025 in May will be the firsthand opportunity for participants to get close up to the award-winning Waiaroha Heretaunga Water Discovery Centre – see also he r e.

Note: Earlybird tickets for the NZILA Firth Wānanga 2025 are on sale now. Check out the ‘Getting There” section on the NZILA website for tips on travel and accommodation.