Exploring the Māori concepts of manaakitanga and kaitiakitanga
The thing about winemakers from the Antipodes is they don’t visit very often.
Wholly understandable – it’s a ruddy long way. So when Bruce Taylor, the long-standing chief winemaker at Tohu Wines, made his first UK visit in years, we wanted to make it count.
The usual program involves getting on the road, organising tastings and dinners with customers. It’s a lot of fun, but this time we wanted to try something a little different. Enter Roots Manoeuvre – a project exploring the values that lie at the heart of New Zealand’s first Māori-owned winery.
With Bruce arriving on one of May’s many bank holiday weekends, any normal customer visits on the Monday were out of the question. A day lost? Oh no. Instead, we travelled to East London, to the home of one of the UK’s leading Māori chefs.
Matt Burgess is an irrepressible force. Master of outdoor and fire cooking, food consultant, hot sauce entrepreneur, brand ambassador, and, believe it or not, the 1989 Wellington Beatbox Champion. He’s a chef who understands that food is far more than sustenance. It’s about flavour, connection, culture, and bringing people together. This is the embodiment of manaakitanga: a deep sense of hospitality, generosity and respect for others. It’s exactly what Matt offered us that bank holiday Monday.
When your home and office sit in the upper Awatere Valley, you’re used to decent views. So to make Bruce feel at home for the second part of our adventure, we took him somewhere that could rival the Kiwi landscape. That meant Cornwall, of course.
This time, we were teaming up with Jude Kereama, a legend of the Cornish food scene. Anyone who’s had the pleasure of visiting Porthleven will have at least strolled by Jude’s two brilliant restaurants; Kota and Kota Kai. The lucky ones will have dined there.
Porthleven was our setting for exploring kaitiakitanga – the Māori principle of guardianship and protection of land, water, and natural resources for future generations.
It’s the concept that informs Tohu’s 500-year plan and drives their Whenua Ora regenerative farming program.
Twenty-seven years after leaving New Zealand, Jude continues the practices he learned as a child: foraging for ingredients, understanding the land, respecting what it provides. As we filmed, he shared how this outlook shapes everything at Kota and Kota Kai, from mindful ingredient sourcing to the philosophy behind each dish. We walked the coastal path as he pointed out the foraging spots where he sourced the sea greens and rock samphire that would appear on plates at the wine dinner at Kota that evening.
For BTS content click here.