Our Story

The moment you step on Wairarapa soil your heart starts to beat to a calmer rhythm, time slows down enough for you to catch your breath, drink in the spectacular scenery that surrounds you and you feel your body start to relax.

Our wines are made according to the Sustainable Winegrowers New Zealand practices. Multi award winning and great to be enjoyed with friends!

Learn more about our range here and use code WELCOME for an extra 10% off.

Winemaking

Matahiwi Estate produces its wine according to the criteria of Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) over 75ha.

Grapes are predominantly grown in the Wairarapa with small volumes of Chardonnay and Syrah sourced from selected vineyard sites in Hawke’s Bay. The Wairarapa vineyards lie on the north-west outskirts of Masterton, with Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc the two main varieties plus a small amount of Pinot Gris and Chardonnay.

Inter-row plantings promote healthy soils and bio-diversity in the vineyard. The flowering buckwheat and phacelia attract natural predators for some vineyard pests, while clovers, oats, chicory and vetch provide nitrogen and other nutrients to vines when they are mown or cultivated into the ground. To a large extent homegrown mulches and products made from seaweeds and humic acids replace hard fertilisers. Sheep wander among the vines in winter and leaf pluck in summer.

Pinot Noir

Cropping rates are low and the grapes well exposed in an effort to produce consistently good-quality fruit from this most fickle of grape varieties. A mix of clones and rootstock allows greater flexibility in the final blend, resulting in a Pinot Noir of depth and complexity.

Sauvignon Blanc

The Wairarapa generally produces small crops of intensely flavoured fruit.  We work hard to introduce a range of flavours into the grapes as they ripen, for example, by leaf-plucking just the morning side of the canopy. We pick Sauvignon Blanc over differing ripeness periods to capture flavour profiles we want in the final wine.

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Our People

Meet the whole team

Our History

Matahiwi Estate, nestled in the heart of the Wairarapa, is not just a winery; we are a proud, award-winning, family-owned winery. Our commitment to crafting exceptional wines is a testament to our passion and dedication.

Our wines reflect the essence of our beautiful region, and with every bottle, we aim to capture the unique terroir of the Wairarapa. We invite you to experience the labour of love that goes into every drop and to savour the fruits of our labour.

Join us on a journey through the vineyard, and you’ll discover that at Matahiwi Estate, we not only make wine; we create a taste of our heritage in every glass.

Romeo Bragato, an Italian viticulturist & oenologist, was contracted by New Zealand’s Department of Agriculture in 1895 to advise on planting & pruning vines in New Zealand, from which he reported the ideal growing conditions that the Wairarapa & other regions in New Zealand offered potential grape growers.

French wife of early settler, William Beetham, was so inspired by our region when she left her Burgundian homeland to live in New Zealand,1880s and produced the region’s first Pinot Noir vintage in 1897. Prohibition came into force in the early 1900’s which saw an end to winemaking in the region.

Our Logo – The Phoenix

We adopted the mythical sacred firebird, the Phoenix, which has long been seen as a symbol of renewal as our logo. The Matahiwi Phoenix symbolises the rebirth of winemaking in the area for the first time since prohibition.

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Our Land

The vineyard soils are typical of the band of free-draining, fine alluvial loams running through the Opaki/Gladstone areas and south to Martinborough, coating the ancient riverbeds of the Waingawa and Ruamahanga Rivers. A relatively long and dry growing season characterises the region, with summer days typically reaching 28-32 C. The diurnal difference increased markedly in late summer and early autumn, resulting in relatively cool temperatures in the last month of ripening – ideal for premium Pinot Noir production.

Our Sustainable Future

We are proud to be long term members of Sustainable Wine New Zealand (SWNZ), the world leading wine industry sustainably programme, we successfully complete audits and benchmarking every year.

SWNZ evolved from an earlier programme to reduce chemical use in vineyards and New Zealand is a world leader. We now follow a nil residue spray programme, and have markedly reduced the use of systemic fungicides, herbicides and insecticides.

The programme focusses on all aspects of sustainability and encourages constant improvement, over time we have initiated many improvements in our processes and are doing well compared to the industry average on many measurable indices.

The big areas are energy and water use.  Power saving initiatives in the winery now see us now consistently below the average in power use for our winery size. Techniques such as such as floatation for juice clarification that uses less electricity than cold settling and cold stabilising most white wine in winter to use ambient temperature to increase efficiency.

Water use has been markedly reduced to below the industry average for our winery size. Methods include staff training, water saving nozzles, wash recipes and re using cleaning water where possible, reusing tanks and barrels immediately, where possible, to minimise cleaning passes.

We have increased our biodiversity enhancement and waterway protection for the vineyard by removing livestock and riparian planting of native species.

A big focus for SWNZ at the moment is soil health and we are using techniques such as side throw mowing, mulching, inter row planting, moving away from a bare earth under vine strip. Spreading compost and manure. All these techniques build soil fertility and the ability for soil to sequester carbon, and our regular soil tests reflect healthy soil which we are really proud of. All these efforts in the vineyard have translated into fantastic quality fruit which is a winemakers dream.

On the packaging side we use lightweight glass for our main ranges sourced from the New Zealand OI glass factory in Auckland, who recycles most of the glass from the North Island, considerably reducing the total Carbon cost. We also use NZ cardboard which also has a significant recycled component for boxes and dividers.

We have reduced our waste stream considerably through landfill diversion, recycling and re-use, of such products as plastic pallet wrap, cardboard, paper, glass, caps, pallets, posts and nets.

Sustainability for us is an everyday thing. We don’t rest of our laurels of annual accreditation checks but work everyday to make sure we are looking after our environment to ensure we preserve the quality of our natural resources for years to come.  

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Our Location

You can find us @ 286 Paierau Road, Masterton, Wairarapa, New Zealand