WINEMAKER TIKI Wine & Vineyards

They started small by planting only 60 hectares of the new vineyard in Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris varieties. Small they say, but this is still more than 130,000 plants that needed to be planted and watered and trained in quite a limited amount of time. It was thousands of posts and miles of irrigation line that needed to be fitted, checked, run and maintained.

They learnt a lot that first year - what to do and what not to do - and their passion just grew stronger. They had a very busy year ahead preparing the land for the next stage, planting the rest of the vineyard all 260 hectares of it. When you see a fully developed vineyard you can sometimes forget how much work goes into preparing the soil, putting in the posts, digging wells and planting the vines and then the years of tending those vines before you receive the satisfaction of harvesting your first grapes.

By the end of 2006 their Waiata Vineyard in Waipara was fully planted and they had found some more vineyard land in the unplanted Upper Wairau Valley in Marlborough that they thought showed real promise. They decided to expand into the Marlborough region and over the next few years they kept busy developing the new sites. In 2009 finally got to taste the fruits of their labour with the release of the first vintage Tiki Single Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc.