Winemaker Brian Bicknell has made wine in various parts of the world over the last fifteen years and has been making wine with grapes from Marlborough for most of that time. Having arrived from Chile to live in Marlborough in 1996 he could see that the various valleys and sites within Marlborough were making quite different styles of wines. Most of the Marlborough wines at the time were being blended across the different areas, with the individual characteristics being lost in the construction of a truly regional blend. In other areas of the world these differences were being celebrated and so the idea of a label celebrating these different sites was hatched.

At the same time many Marlborough wineries were getting bigger and there was comment in the international press that Marlborough was perhaps losing some of its personality and many of the wines tasted the same. The obvious solution was to use a new label to show these differences so that people could see that Marlborough had true depth and complexity across the region.

The idea had been formed for some time but the final factor that started it all was when Brian’s father developed terminal cancer, and as happens to us all, the realization of our own mortality proved to be the impetus that was needed to finally start making the wines of Mahi.

The name Mahi was chosen, meaning ‘our work, our craft’ to show that the label was owned by wine-focused people, who lived wine, rather than just a label dreamt up to fulfill a market segment for a couple of years.

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