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Tohu means mark, emblem or signature and Tohu Wines' high quality product and distinctive Maori branding is hitting the mark in international wine circles.
The Tohu story begins in the meeting room of Wakatu Incorporation. Nelson-based Wakatu comprises four Iwi Ad has investments in property, seafood, horticulture and forestry. It exports apples, kiwifruit, crayfish, paua and mussels, none of which - except mussels - are the type of products that can be branded.
In 1995, in a brainstorming session, board members talked about what they could diversify into that could carry Maori branding.
It dawned on them that Wakatu is based in one of the greatest wine-growing areas of New Zealand, that Maori are traditionally land and seafood-based people, and that wine would go well with this.
Wine would allow Wakatu to put something about Maori culture and history on the label and export the brand of Maori overseas.
Wakatu is good at joint venture operations so over the next two years members visited other Maori entities and talked with them about forming a Maori wine company. As a result of these discussions Tohu Wines was established.
Tohu has three shareholders: Wakatu Incorporation in Nelson, Ngati Rarua Atiawa Iwi Trust in the Nelson/Marlborough area and Wi Pere Trust based just south of Gisborne.
Each of these incorporations, or trusts, has many members - hundreds - from extended families. Tohu's key decisionmakers come from all three trusts. Board members include high fliers like Paul Morgan and Alan Haronga, who are chairmen of Wakatu and Wi Pere respectively, Henry Lardelli of Wi Pere, James Wheeler and Wari Ward-Holmes from Te Atiawa and Peter Mason from Ngati Rarua. Keith Palmer is a director of Tohu as well as CEO of Wakatu.
James Wheeler is the chief executive, "but I prefer to see myself as a man who owns a wine company with a whole lot of my cousins".
Wheeler explains that there is a lot of wine in the world, "and if you haven't got good quality wine you may as well stay in bed. Once you have a good quality wine, as Tohu has and we have proved it consistently, you need to have a point of difference. Tohu has a remarkable...