The couple purchased a small, long-neglected vineyard at the southern end of Te Muna Valley in November 2021, naming the remote and sunny sloping gully Hidden Vineyard.
The site was originally planted in 2001 by the late Bill Brink, but by 2021, its vines were overgrown, with wires “all over the place”, says Paul. “We chopped it right back and retrunked most of the vines. It’s a real basket case set-up, entirely planted in Pinot Noir but with six clones on seven different rootstocks, including some I had never heard of.”
The Masons launched their eponymous wine brand two years later, with the 2023 Mason Pinot Noir and 2023 Mason Rosé, which is bone dry in style, followed by the 2024 Pinot Noir and two more vintages of 2024 and 2025 Mason Rosé . “It was a bloody tough vintage for the first one,” Paul says. “But it gave us the confidence that the land could produce excellent grapes in a trying vintage.”
The Masons aim to make wines to reflect their unique place, and their ownership of the land and the hard work that goes into making great wine, says Paul. “Pruning, hand leaf plucking, shoot positioning, spraying, hand picking; it’s all done by us.”
In 2024, a year after launching their label, Paul became winemaker at Nga Waka, one of Martinborough’s oldest wineries, stepping into the shoes of Roger Parkinson, who founded the winery in 1988. The winery was purchased in 2015 by Jay Short and Peggy Dupey, who kept Roger on as winemaker and added a vineyard in Pirinoa, 5km south of Martinborough, to complement their five vineyard parcels on the Martinborough Terrace.
Paul, who spent 20 years as winemaker at Martinborough Vineyard before joining Nga Waka in 2024, says the winery is thriving, with a new cellar door, opened in 2022, forging a strong following for its tastings, lunchtime platters and pizzas. Recent new plantings of Chenin Blanc and Gamay, alongside the mainstays of the brand’s production, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, combined with developing his own vineyard site, gives Paul plenty of work to keep him busy. “With a combination of new sites and existing older vineyards, its exciting times ahead for what Martinborough can produce.”
