A family owned winery in North Canterbury has become the first vineyard and winery business in New Zealand to be independently certified as regenerative, after six years of rebuilding the soil on a property that was once an old sheep farm.
Tiki Wine & Vineyards, founded by Royce and Sue McKean and based in the Waipara Valley about an hour north of Christchurch, has been awarded Certified Regenerative status by A Greener World, an international farm certifier. The Otago Daily Times reported the certification on Sunday, and Royce McKean spoke to RNZ about it last week.
Unlike organic certification, which is largely a list of things a grower may not use, the A Greener World scheme works from a plan. The farmer and their own advisers write a regenerative plan for the property, a panel of outside experts signs off on the vision, and progress against it is then measured and audited on an ongoing basis. The certifier says the approach covers soil, water, air, biodiversity, animal welfare and the treatment of workers, and that its auditors visit every farm in the programme.
A Greener World regional executive director Wayne Copp said Tiki had shown a clear commitment to measurable and continuing improvement across the vineyard.
“We are proud to recognise Tiki as the first vineyard and winery business in New Zealand to achieve Certified Regenerative by AGW status, and look forward to supporting the team as its regenerative journey continues,” Copp said.
McKean, who is the founder and managing director, said the certificate was the result of years of work by staff “across numerous growing seasons”.
“We are grateful to the growers, researchers and organisations around the world who openly share their experience and expertise, and help others make the transition to regenerative farming,” he said.
The road there was not smooth. The McKeans bought a run down sheep farm at Waipara and planted their first vines in 2005 and 2006, with very little experience in growing grapes. Early on they ploughed the land and then watched the topsoil lift off it in the nor’wester. They moved to organic practices next, and found that stripping out the conventional sprays and fertilisers without putting a working system in their place left the vines struggling.
“We made plenty of mistakes along the way,” McKean told RNZ. “The intention was to do it, you know, and try and learn from it.”
What eventually worked was a change of posture rather than a change of product. “You’re looking to farm with nature as versus against it,” he said. In practice that has meant sowing mixed cover crops and wildflowers between the rows instead of keeping bare ground, cutting back on cultivation and chemical intervention, spreading compost, running sheep through the vineyard instead of mowing it, and driving fewer tractor passes.
“When you see things in nature, it’s pretty rare to see a monoculture. Generally, it’s lots of different things growing together and that’s what regen is trying to do,” McKean said. “You walk into a regen farm… and you just feel it. It’s friggin’ beautiful. There’s life and energy, there’s a lot of diversity in terms of what’s going on.”
He argues the wine is better for it. “Healthier vines produce healthier fruit and, we believe, better wine.”
McKean traces the thinking back to his mother, Sally Hariata McKean, and to the idea of kaitiakitanga, which means caring for the land so it can be handed on in better shape than it was received.
“Mum was a very big part of it, so we had the feeling with kaitiakitanga,” he said. “It’s not so much just that you decide to, it was more that Mum had instilled in us, that we had an obligation really around it. It was not an obligation in terms of a negative weight, it was that we were very lucky to have that obligation.”
The winery is named after his great great great grandfather, a chief and farmer. Tiki belongs to TUKU, a collective of Māori winemakers, and sells under the Tiki, Maui and Waiata labels, with Master of Wine Alastair Maling heading the winemaking team.
This is not a boutique block. Tiki says on its own website that its single estate, the Waiata Vineyard, runs to about 319 hectares under vine and more than 700,000 vines, with the capacity to make upwards of 300,000 cases a year, which it describes as one of the largest vineyards in North Canterbury. Waipara is a comparatively young district, with the first commercial vines going in around 1981, and it is best known for riesling, pinot noir and chardonnay.
New Zealand wine already carries a sustainability story, and a fairly well audited one. Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand was set up in 1995, the first national scheme of its kind in the wine world, and New Zealand Winegrowers says 98 percent of the country’s vineyard area is now certified under it, with about 10 percent of wineries also holding organic certification. What has not existed until now is a New Zealand vineyard holding an outside regenerative certificate, which asks a different question. Rather than checking that a grower is doing less harm, it asks whether the soil, water and biodiversity are measurably better than they were.
McKean wants other growers to try it, and points to the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation’s One Block Challenge as a low risk way in.
“Initiatives such as the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation’s One Block Challenge give growers a practical way to trial regenerative practices in a single vineyard block, learn from the results and build from there,” he said. “We believe healthier soils and more resilient vineyards can support both better fruit and wine and a stronger future for wine growing and the planet.”
There is a commercial calculation in it too. Tiki is heading to a sustainability and drinks event in London to look for distributors and retailers, and New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s head of Māori export customers, Jeremy Gardiner, said an audited certificate helps overseas buyers understand values they might otherwise struggle to place.
“Sustainability, regenerative practices become a bit of a translation tool to help people understand that story,” Gardiner said. He added a warning that applies to every producer making claims about how it farms. “You can tell a good story, but if it’s not true, consumers will hear it pretty quickly.”
For the McKeans, the certificate mostly puts an outside signature on something the family says it was going to do anyway. “Right from the outset, we would think of things that we could do that would make the land better and things that would make it better for our people,” McKean said.
You can see where Waipara sits among the country’s winegrowing districts, and browse producers region by region, in our New Zealand wineries map.
Does a regenerative certificate change what you would pay for a bottle, or is a good wine simply a good wine? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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