MAHANA

Mahana wines are from one of Wollaston Estates's two organic vineyards. Woollaston Estates currently runs two vineyards, all of which are organically farmed and practices sustainable and biodynamic winemaking processes. Woollaston was founded in Nelson in 2000, when Philip and Chan Wollaston met Glenn and Renée Schaeffer. The quartet had a shared ideal of creating an estate which produced fine wines. They also shared a passion for art, literature and Nelson’s landscape. So it is part of Woollaston Estates’s mission to develop a winery that was functional as well as “sensitive to the natural aesthetic of the area and reflected their creative passion”.

Michael Glover

Our winemaker, Michael Glover, believes the best wines are “not forced or pushed, and they are definitely not manipulated. The winemaker guides the fruit in a direction that he or she thinks will best ‘capture’ or ‘reflect’ the place in which they are grown. It can be beautiful, artistic, expressive, philosophical and VERY personal. The very best wines are sincere wines and display integrity and commitment right through the process. These are wines that have a soul!”
The model of winemaking at Mahana is fundamentally centred on the expression of ‘terroir’. This ancient Burgundian philosophy is about placing the highest value on the site, season and soul of the land on which the vines are grown. With our focus on expressing terroir, we make wine without the addition of acids, enzymes and various other extraneous products and only use indigenous, ‘wild’ yeasts for fermentation. We are driven by the desire to express the uniqueness of our land and don’t shy away from exploring alternative winemaking ideas like the use of skin fermentation on whites or the traditional practice of 100% whole bunch fermentation on pinot noir to achieve this.
As Michael puts it, “A believer in terroir understands that we are not of the Old World but of the New…so our wines should reflect that. We must find our own path. We must not make wines how they ‘should be’ but, rather, be brave enough to make wines how they ‘could be’.”