Huia Vineyards

The Free Bacchus Story

The huia was a New Zealand bird, a taonga, a treasure, to Māori, and it is gone. The last confirmed sighting was in the Tararua Ranges on 28 December 1907. Claire and Mike Allan put it on every label when they started their Marlborough winery in the mid-1990s, and the estate keeps it there as a reminder of how easily what we value is lost.

The Allans had both made wine in Champagne, Mike at Veuve Clicquot and Claire at Taittinger, and they went organic early and on their own terms. When they started, Claire said in 2014, there was little information about organic growing, so it took some courage. She used biodynamic preparations too, because for her organics alone was not enough, but she had no patience for the more esoteric parts. “I hate dogma,” she said.

The Allans separated in 2020 and sold. Tom Pegler bought Huia in 2022, and the company he formed for it holds the BioGro licence today.

Huia made its name on aromatic whites and on sparkling wine, and the sparkling is still riddled by hand: each bottle is turned once a day for 24 days to walk the yeast sediment into its neck. The new owner is frank that Gewürztraminer, the wine Huia was once known for, has a very small market. The home block in Rapaura is 6.5 hectares, with a further ten hectares of Sauvignon Blanc at Cat Creek joining it, and the estate works with a handful of Marlborough growers for the rest of its fruit. About nine-tenths of the wine is exported, and the bottle most people will find is the Sauvignon Blanc, part of it fermented in neutral oak.