Aquiferra – the story

...where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man
down to the sunless sea
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

Our Xanadu

An ancient course of the Ngaruroro River runs beneath our grove, a massive aquifer collecting water from the Ruahine mountains to the west, flowing under the Heretaunga Plains south of Hastings and disgorging a kilometre offshore into the Pacific Ocean in Hawke Bay. We draw water from this source to irrigate our olive trees.

The Heretaunga Aquifer, as it is known, is the secret to agricultural production in this area. Without it the land would be dry, brown and barren for a large part of the year. Farmers of our fathers' generation viewed this land as "useless"; too dry to grow crops or sustain animals all year round. The region's pioneering grape growers have since discovered otherwise and it is now one of New Zealand's major, classic Bordeaux-style wine producing areas.

We bought our 10 acres on Maraekakaho Road one rainy Monday in June, 2002. You couldn't say it was an impulsive buy - we had been looking at land in the area for about five years, on and off, - but it took only a few minutes to decide this was the place. A key factor was the little green pump-shed, standing lonesome in the back paddock, housing the magical machine that would gently lift water from the aquifer to nourish the olive trees we were planning to plant.

Water is a recurring theme around us, surprisingly because it's not immediately obvious. Our patch of land was once part of the immense pastoral property called Washpool Station, owned by the long-established Glazebrook family. The station got its name, Garry Glazebrook told us, from a large natural pool in a creek on the farm through which thousands of sheep would be driven before shearing to wash their wool clean of accumulated dust. Washpool is also renowned for its old and elaborate system of floodways, considered revolutionary in their time, that carry water from the Ngaruroro River via a massive holding lake to irrigate vast expanses of grazing land.

Behind us and to the east are the grape plantings of Paritua vineyard, named after the stream that flows through it. When their frost-protection system is turned on, mist sprays from the tops of thousands of wooden posts, veiling the entire area in a fine watery lace. The beauty of the hidden aquifer then becomes visible, as it does when pearls of water dripping from our suspended irrigation lines catch the sun and glisten.

Our name, "Aquiferra", combines aquifer, the geological term for an underground water system, with "terra", the Latin word for earth. We are located 12 kilometres south east of Hastings in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, between the villages of Bridge Pa and Maraekakaho on the edge of the wine district known as the Ngatarawa Triangle. Around us are remnants of the traditional colonial use of the land, grazing sheep and cattle, and the more recent, ever-increasing plantings of crops and grapevines. North of us are soft rolling hills, including Roy's Hill, made famous on a label of CJ Pask's red wine. To the west the distant Ruahine mountains merge with the Kaweka range. Both are snow-capped in winter. The sky dominates, often brilliant blue with dramatic cloud formations. Equinox winds from the west can be ferocious.

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