An Interview with Paul Mason, New Head Winemaker at Nga Waka

Interviewed by Graeme Gash, April 2025

At Martinborough’s Nga Waka Winery there has been a significant changing of the guard. The resolute and pioneering Roger Parkinson has finally relinquished the creative reins of the stellar enterprise he forged 32 vintages ago into the hands of Paul Mason, formerly head winemaker at the equally stellar Martinborough Vineyard. The transition hasn’t been totally abrupt, with ownership of Nga Waka transferring to Jay Short and Peggy Dupey in 2015 and Roger remaining on the winemaking duties until Paul Mason took over the role in November 2024.

Finally, though, time has done what it always does, and a new creative spirit has arrived in readiness for the upcoming 2025 vintage. 32 vintages is of course a formidable legacy, with some big shoes to fill, a task that the talented Paul Mason is very much up to. His in-depth understanding of Martinborough and passion for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay makes him particularly well-suited to Nga Waka.

Nga Waka has seven small vineyards scattered around the village of Martinborough, producing mainly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay and small amounts of Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Chenin Blanc and Gamay, all sustainably managed and grown. The company has also cemented itself as a ‘must-visit’ winery experience, with the opening in 2023 of a stunning new cellar door in Martinborough. The driving force behind the build, Jay Short and Peggy Dupey wanted to create an immersive wine experience for their customers and visitors to the region.

In the midst of a very busy harvest transitioning into winemaking duties, I sat down with Paul for a phone conversation about how he arrived at this point and how it’s all going.

Any comment  on your predecessor?

Roger did an excellent job here at Nga Waka. Made some great wines over his time, established a very strong brand within Martinborough, with some very good domestic reach as well. It’s been an honour to take over from him, actually. 32 years is great going.

Given Roger Parkinson’s 32 vintages, do you see yourself as a bit of a teenager at a mere 20 years? After two decades at Martinborough Vineyards, this must feel like a major shift. This is your first vintage in a new environment under new conditions. How does that feel?

Yeah, well, no two vintages are the same, so it does reinvigorate you every year when vintage comes around, and obviously with having a new job, for me it’s a new winery, a new vineyard. It does make me feel youthful again in a lot of ways. We’ve just moved house as well - we moved out to our vineyard that we bought about three or four years ago, so there’s been a lot of change for us in the last six months, which has been great.

It got to the point at Martinborough Vineyard where I was still very happy, but I needed a new challenge. I didn’t know what more was left for me to achieve there, and I certainly didn’t want to get to retirement age having only made my mark in one winery. It was a good opportunity to change, and I liked what Nga Waka were doing, and the owners were great, so it ticked a lot of boxes for me. Too good an opportunity not to grasp. I’ve done 20 years at Martinborough; if I could do twenty years here, that’d be great.
 

You’re about to get into it. How is the fruit looking?

We finished picking about ten days ago; it’s been a really good vintage; a great summer, a good-sized vintage, pretty decent-sized crops and good quality, so a good combination for us this year. The wines look really good, quite rounded and approachable early on, so looking forward to getting them in bottle in due course.

With all this talk of vintages being tossed around, do you consider longevity to be a significant aspect of Martinborough winemaking?

Yes, it’s certainly a hallmark of Martinborough wine, that the Pinots age really well. I think the fact that they age well does distinguish them. I’m also aware that the age style is not for everyone, so, for me the wines have to be great from day one. If you can make Pinots and Chardonnays that are great drinking straightaway, then they are often the ones that age well too, so you can cover all bases.

Do you think, as a winemaker, there’s value in being in one place for a long time?

Oh absolutely, yes. I mean, I’ve travelled around the world in my younger days, making wine, so had that time where I could get experience elsewhere, and bring all that knowledge back here to Martinborough. I think it certainly helps knowing the climate, knowing the soils, knowing the sites. That helps in decision-making, and gives you much more of a feel, I think, for the vintages and what to expect, and where we’re likely to get it each year.

In your heart of hearts, are you a Pinot Noir man or a Chardonnay man? Or do you love all your children equally?

It depends on the day. Much like the children. But yes, I love Pinot, I love Chardonnay; it’s one of the main attractions of being in Martinborough – it’s certainly Nga Waka’s strength, so that was a great fit. I love Pinot, and that’s what got me into winemaking and wanting to head to Martinborough. Since I’ve been in Martinborough - and I’ve also had the opportunity to work in Burgundy – Chardonnay has become an equal love for me. When I look at what I drink at home, it’s those two wines the most, and probably in equal amounts. 

Do you have a favourite Nga Waka wine?

My favourite drinking at the moment would be the ‘23 Home Block Chardonnay. From what was a fairly challenging vintage, it’s a cracking wine.

In general terms, how important is sustainability to you?

The way I see it - and that’s going back to Burgundy as well – you want to leave the place better than you found it, and that to me is the ultimate sustainability: that we’re guardians of this bit of land for now, but we want to leave it a better place for whoever takes over down the line, so they can carry on making wine, and carry on making better wine.

Acknowledging the cost and labour involved, do you think Nga Waka could or should be doing more?

It’s a bit of slowly evolving process, and part of my role in taking over here is to start creating some more reserve-level single vineyard wines, so that’s something I’m keen to get involved in, and that is requiring more hands-on work in the vineyard right through the growing season, to make better wines at that higher reserve level. It requires more resources, both financial and human, to make that all work.

But it’s definitely worth it; I mean I look at the work we’ve done in the Home Block Chardonnay and Pinot this year, in terms of fruit thinning, leaf plucking, all the hand work. It certainly brought the vintage forward – that was our earliest pick by a number of days across other vineyards. We were one of the first to harvest here. I thought the work we did certainly made a difference in the quality, looking at the fruit we were getting in the harvest dump. But I mean, it’s good to show people – the vineyard crew, the owners - what all that work results in.

You’ve been in Martinborough for some time now. While climatic conditions can be a moving feast, what broader changes have you seen in the local climate over decades, and have they influenced your approach to winemaking?

Vintage has moved forward quite a bit in that 20 years. We used to start vintage here the last week of March, and my birthday has just been. When we first arrived, my birthday was always bang in the middle of vintage, in fact I’d had a couple of vintages where we hadn’t even started picking by my birthday. Whereas, nowadays, we’re normally pretty much finished by the time my birthday comes around. So it’s moved about two to three weeks earlier, I think.

So as a general shift, Martinborough’s getting warmer?

Yep, I think so, if you’re looking at the growing degree days. Roger has great climatic records on his database here, and it definitely shows that the growing degree days have become warmer since the ‘90s, which has brought vintage forward quite bit.

Will that change the approach to how you do things?

I think it’s just a gradual approach; that change is not happening instantly, it’s happened over twenty years, and I’m sure our approach has changed over twenty years, in terms of how we make wine, how we grow the vines and look after them, compared to what we did then. And I think the winemaking has changed as well, as a result. It’s sort of hard to know whether that is a result of just winemaking change or is a result of climate change. We’re definitely not doing things the same way we used to do them.

No, and I mean, who knows what varieties, in the end, will respond well.

Exactly. All things considered, this is a pretty good spot for Pinot and Chardonnay. I’m a big fan of Martinborough Syrah; we don’t have any Syrah here at the moment, but I think it has huge potential going forward.

So, you’re trying to get it in there, are you?

(Laughs) We were having a chat about it the other day. We also have newer varieties coming online this year for the first time; we picked our first Gamay; it’ll be really interesting to see how that goes in Martinborough. And we’ve just picked our first Chenin Blanc as well, so, really interesting to see how those wines perform in the Martinborough climate and soil.

Let’s veer left: does involving yourself in cricket have any positive spin-off (see what I did there?) for your winemaking?

It gives me something to take my mind off wine, having a fairly full-on job and then my own little vineyard – it can become all-consuming. The cricket’s a great outlet, a great bunch of guys. The team is the WOMBLES, which stands for the Winemakers of Martinborough, and must involve thirty years, at least, of history now. Originally it was mainly just winemakers. The group are very similar, like-minded cricket tragics, getting together every now and then to try and convince themselves that they can still throw a cricket ball more than twenty metres. It’s a great group to be a part of and a lot of fun.

While we’re out to the left, who is your favourite Kiwi musical artist or band?

My era was The Exponents, when I was a young kid and loved going to concerts, with many memorable nights dancing and singing along to their music. More recently I’ve got into Drax Project. And The Beths, I really like their music as well.

There’s no wrong answer to that question.

Probably the same with wine.

Does music play any role in your approach to winemaking? Hey, I’m a musician - just asking.

No, not at all. As long as there’s good music playing in the winery, then I’m happy.

Well that could be construed as an influence. How do you approach your role at Nga Waka, given its 32 vintages of provenance, in terms of putting your own stamp on things? I know it’s early days, but can you see a path forward that does that?

I think it’s more an evolution rather than a revolution. It’ll be slow and steady changes. I mean, I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and tell me how much they love Nga Waka Chardonnay. I don’t know if that’s them telling me not to change anything, or whether they’re just saying that because they do generally like the wine. What I’d like to see is the Nga Waka brand remain strong, with the Chardonnays and Pinots still delivering on value, price and quality. And then looking at that top tier, that reserve level, single vineyard sites, starting to make a few more of them and making them truly great wines.

What influence, if any, do the Burgundian Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wine styles have on your own approach?

I think what the top Burgundian wines certainly do really well is the expressionist site -  the differentiation between vineyards, and how those wines taste different, and how the winemakers express those. I think it’s something we’re still getting to grips with in New Zealand; even within Martinborough there’s a certain variation in the soils, even within the Terrace, and then going from on the Terrace to off the Terrace into the heavier soils. I think that’s quite exciting for Martinborough going forward, getting a little bit more in-depth and more single vineyard-release wines that explore a site really well.

So do you find you have to move very far to get a different result?

No, I don’t think you do at all; it’s much the same as what you see in Burgundy, where simply crossing the road can change the geology and the types quite a bit. Here, maybe it’s a bit of a broader scale, but I think we’re starting to see a lot more of that, and so it’s quite exciting to explore it a bit more. And then from a winery point of view, I think the ‘less is more’ was the big take-home for me when I worked in Burgundy; that they were confident in the quality of their site and their vines to lessen the winery to make that show through. Certainly I have taken that route as well - that if you get it right in the vineyard, it enables a lighter hand in the winery.

They do say that great wines start in the vineyard. Tell us something about Vineyard Manager Matt Harper that we can hold over him at a later date.

I don’t think I’ve got anything on Matt – he’s squeaky clean. We actually worked together at Martinborough Vineyard for five or six years, so it’s been great to get back reunited with him. He’s awesome to have on site, born and bred around here and with a wealth of local knowledge. He’s the first here in the morning every day. He does all the hard work, and without that, you can’t make great wines. It’s good to have him on the team.

Would you generally agree with the premise that a glass of wine is a purely subjective experience, that in the right conditions, a cheap and friendly wine can be just as enjoyable an experience as an expensive one? And that for assessing a wine, all the astute words in the world can’t beat a glass in one hand and a fork in the other. With perhaps some good company and great musical choices?

Absolutely agree, 100 percent. One of the things that made me believe in that was before I came to Martinborough, I was a fly-in winemaker working in Italy and South America, and one of the first vintages I did there was in Apulia, down on the heel of Italy, making a lot of Negroamaro, Primitivo and Chardonnay. Amy and I were living there, and it was just a great time, young, without kids and without a mortgage, and a lovely family to work for as well. I just loved the wines in that setting - in the south of Italy, beautiful sun, just amazing scenery all around you. Trying these wines we were making, I was thinking, ‘How come these wines aren’t everywhere in the world, how come they aren’t really well known?’ This was 23 years ago now.

I remember grabbing a bottle of their reserve Negroamaro Primitivo blend and stashing it in my backpack, and we went around France for a couple of months, through the Rhône Valley and then up to Burgundy, trying the wines around there with my wife’s brother and sister-in-law. We’d sampled a lot of French wines with them by this time, and one night I pulled one of these Apulian reds out of my backpack to try, and I don’t think we could get through a bottle between the four of us; it was such a massive, concentrated, thick red, and such a contrast to what we’d been tasting in France, especially in Burgundy.

It just made me think, wow, we were loving this wine a month ago, when we were in the south of Italy eating Italian food around the area, and then a month later when we were in Burgundy, we were finding the same wine unrecognisable. So that made me think that time and place and surroundings have a massive effect on how you perceive wine. It's very much about the company  you’re with. For me, some of the best wine moments I’ve ever had have been during memorable occasions with friends or family.

This may be a loaded question, not to mention unpredictable, but what are your personal thoughts re the Tariff Wars and their effect on the NZ wine industry?

I kind of missed a lot of it; with the middle of vintage I just turn off all the news, I’m so busy with the winemaking. It seems to change one day to the next. It can’t be good, so hopefully common sense prevails. We do a little bit into the US, but the domestic market is our strongest. It would be good if it were per bottle - a fixed cost rather than a percentage based on the cost of the wine. It's going to make more expensive wines even more expensive.

Tell me about your Mason wines and how that project feels for you compared to your role at Nga Waka.

It’s a tiny little project on the side for me, a bit of a hobby, a bit of fun. We bought a piece of land just at the southern end of Te Muna Road about four years ago. Unfortunately, it came with a vineyard. It was only a tiny one-hectare block with vines that were about twenty years old. It had been neglected for the previous five or ten years, so it was fairly overgrown and a total disaster zone really. We took it on ourselves to rehabilitate the vineyard, so it’s been a lot of time and energy to get it back up and producing again, which has been quite a rewarding experience; it has really made us fall in love with the land.

It’s a beautiful bit of land, right on the river. We just sold our house in town and we’re living in cabins out there waiting to build a house on the site, and hopefully that’ll be our forever home. There are 1800 vines, all Pinot. Some severe pruning was involved, so basically we retrained trunks up and cut all the dead wood out; we seemed to have saved about 98 percent of them. Pretty much all the end posts had caved in, so they were all over the place. We got our first crop in 2023 and have just harvested our third vintage, so really exciting. It’s been a lot of effort, but it’s also been really good for my winemaking, a bit more time in the vineyard. As you said, it’s where it all begins. It’s made me a better winemaker, I think, doing all this work.

I’m a Westie. I hear you married a Shore girl. Does Amy play a large role in the whole process?

Actually, it was her father who suggested I get into winemaking. We met when we were 18, at her high school ball. I went to Auckland University and studied marine biology – didn’t really want a job in marine biology but it was a very cool social degree to do. About halfway through I started getting into wine. Amy’s dad, Bruce, was a keen wine enthusiast. I learned not to store my wine at his house many years ago. He suggested getting into winemaking over a lunch or dinner one day. It was something I hadn’t really thought about. Something just started off in my mind and I got into wine from there.

Amy has a really good palate; she has always been good for appraising my wines. She’ll tell me whether she likes it or not, which is the closest I get to the truth about the wines that I’ve made. And also with our Mason wines project, she’s obviously helping with doing a lot of the vineyard work – the  pruning, the leaf plucking, the shoot positioning, all those things.

Do you have a particular vintage of a particular wine where you thought, ‘Yeah, nailed it.’

I’ve got my favourite wines within vintages; more recently the 2023 Chardonnay, the one I’d done at Martinborough Vineyard before leaving. I thought that was a really good wine; and across the board, actually, a lot of the ’23 wines. Probably the most challenging vintage I’ve had in Martinborough, but I know the work that we did in the vineyard to make a lot of those wines happen. It was worth it in the end, because we did a really good job. Might not be the best wines we’ve ever made, but I’m really happy with the quality.

But then, looking back, I’ve got other ones. 2008 was always a special wine for me; it’s my daughter’s birth year as well. That was a vintage that wasn’t great across New Zealand, but was actually, I thought, really good in Martinborough. Those wines I regard as very reflective of what Martinborough Pinot and Chardonnay are about. I’ve always had a special spot for them, and they’re still drinking really well today.

In terms of personal goals or achievement, where would you aspire to be at the point of 32 vintages in Martinborough?

Still here in Martinborough, at Nga Waka making great wines, that’s really the goal. I still want to be here to make a statement, and that’s going to take time. I’ve just turned 50, so another 15 or 20 years here gives me ample opportunity to put my mark on it, build a legacy for the next person to take over from me.

That’s great. All the best for your first vintage at Nga Waka.

It's been really exciting, really good fun. It has been challenging in terms of the new vintage, to try and figure out…  like I was so accustomed to the old winery where I was working, where you just knew where everything was. But I’m slowly getting it set up the way I want it. It’s a good vintage to start on, the ‘25, I’m quite excited by it. I look forward to getting it out on the shelf one day.

Yes, we look forward to that too.

Meet Paul in person at our Jervois Supper Club // 21st May 2025