NZ's first grapevines planted?

Revd Samuel Marsden is generally credited with planting the first grapevines in New Zealand. The vines were planted as part of Marsden’s efforts to establish a settlement for the Church Missionary Society at Kerikeri. He recorded the planting in the journal of his second visit to New Zealand:

We had a small spot of land cleared and broken up, in which I planted about a hundred grape vines of different kinds brought from Port Jackson. New Zealand promises to be very favourable to the vine, as far as I can judge at the present of the nature of the soil and climate. Should the vine succeed, it will prove of vast importance in this part of the globe. As the grapes blight so much in New South Wales, there is little prospect that New Holland [Australia] will become a wine country.

Marsden does not claim that these were the first grapevines planted in New Zealand. Frank Thorpy suggests in Wine in New Zealand that Charles Gordon, the Society’s superintendent of agriculture, may have already planted vines at the Society’s other settlements of Rangihoua and Waitangi, perhaps as early as 1817.

While Marsden may not have been first viticulturist in New Zealand, his belief that the country would prove ‘favourable to the vine’ were well-founded. In 2013/14 New Zealand’s wine exports were worth $1.3 billion. Market New Zealand describes New Zealand’s wine-growing region as ‘spanning the latitudes of 34 to 47 degrees and covering the length of 1,600 kilometres’, and states that ‘grapes are grown in a diverse range of climates and soil types, producing an exciting array of styles’.

Image: Marlborough vineyards (GNS Science - see full image on Te Ara)