Call for National Wine Museum in New Zealand

New Zealand wine writer John Saker has called for the creation of a National Wine Museum, saying it is a crucial part of preserving New Zealand’s wine history and would have significant tourist appeal.

Saker makes the plea in an opinion piece in the January issue of monthly subscription wine newsletter Te Whenua, which he edits.

In the piece, Saker writes: “New Zealand’s wine history is a cellar in which we’ve only really started having a serious poke around.”

He describes efforts so far to collate and preserve the country’s wine history as “piecemeal and uncoordinated” and suggests that wine industry body New Zealand Winegrowers should employ an archivist. “Someone whose job it is to gather together every picture and printed word (and whatever else) that pertains to the nation’s wine history from 1840 (the probable year of our first vintage) to the present.”

From there, Saker says that planning should begin for the establishment of a National Wine Museum.

With wine tourism already a significant market segment, he says such an institution would become a magnet for tourists “…and a source of pride for the industry and indeed, all Kiwis. It would be the right thing to do. Our past deserves no less.”