Dr Richard Smart began shining a light on grape growing in the late 1960s, increasingly fascinated by how sunlight interception by vineyards impacted yields and fruit quality.

New Zealand's wine industry has undergone a significant shift over the past few decades, with increasing numbers of talented women found throughout vineyards and wineries. In celebration of International Women's Day on 8 March, Emma Jenkins MW speaks to five inspiring winemakers who have helped pave the way, thanks to perserverance, passion, and some of New Zealand's best wines.

The first thing Tanya Pouwhare does when someone seeking employment steps through her doorway is print out the 'Know Your Rights' sheet from the New Zealand Employment Guide.

It took a hole in the ground and a slurp from the hose to convince Ben and Frances Wickham to buy a block of land on the outskirts of Blenheim.

Joe Stenberg was studying physiology at Auckland University when he opted for an elective paper in viticulture, delving a little deeper into the wines he was pouring in his part time bar job.

Nick McArthur grew up working the land on his family’s market garden in Outram, literally hands on in horticulture. By his early teens he was up at 4am each Saturday morning, travelling to Dunedin to help his parents sell their vegetables and berries at the Dunedin Farmers’ Market.

It’s a blue-skied, post-frost Central Otago morning as Owen Calvert drives through Bendigo and up to Tarras.

It says a lot about Paul Mooney that the most satisfying vintage in more than four decades at Mission Estate was the cyclonestruck 2023 season.

Watching her parents and their friends at dinner parties helped launch Kate Curd into a winemaking career she loves.

Grant Taylor’s winemaking career owes its genesis to a bunch of pesky worms. Without them, the fruit on his family’s apple tree might never have yielded such formative, jeopardy-rich beverage adventures.