Pioneers of New Zealand Wine

This is a book about the people who made the wine industry of New Zealand. They came from every wine country in Europe, stubborn, dedicated men, slightly odd in the eyes of their neighbours, who set themselves to clothe despised corners of the land in vines. Pioneers of New Zealand Wine is a beautifully told and spectacularly illustrated history of this country's wine industry -- from the first production of wines by the British Resident James Busby in the late 1830s through to the 1960s, when the industry was emerging as a major domestic supplier and exporter. It was not an easy passage from backyard enterprise to today's 53 million litre a year industry. The predominantly British immigrants to New Zealand had little cultural appreciation of the wines being produced by Dalmatians, Germans, Spaniards and Lebanese. The herculean efforts of early government viticulturist Romeo Bragato were stifled by bureaucratic meddling. Natural setbacks like the disastrous phylloxera outbreak of the late nineteenth century were compounded by prohibition and licensing restrictions in the twentieth century. But the tenacity and skill of New Zealand's winemaking pioneers surmounted all obstacles.
Pioneers of Wine is a celebration of their spirit, and a valuable record of their achievements. Dick Scott here revises and represents the contents of his classic 1964 book Winemakers of New Zealand, in the company of photographer Marti Friedlander, whose stunning record of winemakers and industry events in the 1960s reveals a side of New Zealand familiar and yet at times looking more like Southern Europe than West Auckland or Hawkes Bay.