Photo: Unsplash / Kym Ellis
"A light, white wine," read New Zealand's first ever tasting note, penned by British explorer Dumont d'Urville in 1840.
It's one of the earliest pieces of the country's rich wine history - and wine magazineTe Whenua editor Robert Saker wants a national wine museum established to properly collate and preserve it.
After stumbling across an 1897 New Zealand Herald article about a Wairarapa vineyard's vintage during research for an opinion piece, Saker was spurred to turn it into a call to action, he told Morning Report.
"This was a fascinating piece, it was just such an insight into how they made wine in 19th century New Zealand.
"To my knowledge, no one had ever seen this before. If I can stumble upon this, what other treasures are out there?"
There was a mini-museum at Church Road winery in Hawke's Bay, and another in Marlborough - and the country's oldest winery Mission Estate had relics, too, Saker said.
However, the current approach to keeping wine history was "piecemeal", with the national winegrowers association not even having an archivist on staff, he said.
"I thought, it's time to do something about this, and a national wine museum which collates all we have and gives the impetus to dig a bit deeper made perfect sense."
Aotearoa's wine history was extremely rich, Saker said - quoting the country's first tasting note in the same year Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed.
"[James] Busby made wine from the vines he planted in front of the Treaty house in Waitangi in 1840.
"We know that because the French explorer Dumont d'Urville visited Busby in that year, months after the treaty was signed, tasted the wine that Busby made, and went back to his ship Astrolabe that night, and wrote New Zealand's first tasting note.
"A light white wine," d'Urville wrote, Saker said.
"That was the beginning of the industry as we know it."
There were plenty of regions that could lay claim to be the home of a national wine museum, he said.
"I imagine Marlborough would put its hand up first, and there would be some sense in that. It is the big, beating heart of certainly the export side of the industry."
