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March 2013: Issue 590

Contents features

winemaking

24

37

Oregon – vintage postcard

54 Filtration

39

Winemakers forge ties with sommeliers

62

Wine barrel racks and handling

40

Wastewater systems in focus

70

Bottling, labelling and packaging

42

Part 2: The A-Z of wine enzymes

73

Export, insurance and finance

49

Proctase as a bentonite alternative

54

Modern cold stabilisation technology trial

56

Wineries opt for crossflow filtration

62

The latest in dry steam barrel cleaners

sales & marketing

Pruning innovations

news 6

My View: Bob Campbell

7

Viti professor brings fresh ambitions to CSU

8

Global wine challenges and opportunities

9

Wine industry focuses on future profit

64

US off-premise: why and what do they buy?

10

Mornington Pinot comes a long way

66

WCA: cost-effective communication

11

Regional Roundup: WA

67

Wine auctions offer unique path to market

71

Label templates to meet tight deadlines

72

Label Q&A: Alpha Box and Dice

grapegrowing

business & technology

14

Grower recalls family history in the vines

16

Fruit splitting of winegrape berries

20

New Zealand wine study tour

73

The exchange rate and wine competition

21

Inkwell hits the ground running

77

Wineries urged to plan for succession

23

Ben Rose: property valuations

79

Insurance policies – the devil is in the detail

24

Pruning innovation leads to new products

83

Peter Bailey: competitor analysis – Chile

28

Grapegrower in Profile: Keith Harris

The United Grower Sponsored by

10 March 2013

Reds in early for 2013 harvest Business and finance focus – helping you plan and manage

Innovative pruning products for 2013

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29

cover

regulars

Cover photo: The 2013 winegrape harvest at Inkwell Wines, in McLaren Vale.

Photo: Irina Santiago.

5 on the grapevine 14 grapegrowing 37 winemaking 84 export snapshot 85 looking forward 86 marketplace classifieds

37

In this issue March Publisher and Chief Executive Hartley Higgins Managing EDITOR Elizabeth Bouzoudis EDITOR Grahame Whyte editor@grapeandwine.com.au Editorial advisory board Dr Jim Fortune, Denis Gastin, Dr Steve Goodman, Prof. Jim Hardie, Dr Terry Lee, Paul van der Lee, Bob Campbell MW, Prof Dennis Taylor and Mary Retallack Editorial Kellie Arbuckle Contributors Ed Merrison, Ben Rose, Max Marriott, Steve Goodman, Kym Anderson, Peter Bailey Advertising Sales Chas Barter sales@grapeandwine.com.au

In our March issue we bring you a peek at how vintage is proceeding, prior to our more detailed assessment in a later edition.

Overall, it seems harvest has come a little earlier this year. Growers will be relieved to see the fruit off to the winery in good condition, no doubt, and will have some respite before winter pruning begins. On page 24, Ed Merrison delves into pruning equipment and explores the various choices, trends and new products.

Since a pruning system can involve a substantial outlay, it is important to select the most appropriate system for the vineyard size and style and the vineyard manager’s preferences will be influenced by a range of factors including cost and staff experience.

Speaking of costs, this issue has a theme of Finance and Business, so we also bring you information on valuation of vineyards and explore the impact Australia’s booming exchange rate has on our exports, through

the eyes of respected researcher, Kym Anderson, director of the Wine Economics Research Centre at the University of Adelaide.

Anderson notes that we’re all in the international competition business now – with even grapegrowers becoming vulnerable to currency rate fluctuations.

His presentation was a highlight of the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento, California, an event that was strongly supported, with record attendance and dozens of countries represented.

A bumper vintage has lifted optimism in California – and that’s something we could use a lot of right now in Australia.

Grahame Whyte Editor Australian & New Zealand Grapegrower & Winemaker editor@grapeandwine.com.au

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Print Post Approved PP535806/0019 Articles published in this issue of Grapegrower & Winemaker may also appear in full or as extracts on our website.

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4 Grapegrower & Winemaker

Contributors Ed Merrison is a British journalist specialising in travel, arts, culture and business, Ed read Modern Languages at Oxford University and has lived in Ireland, Spain and Argentina. He recently returned to Melbourne following a six-year absence, during which he served as travel contributor for the Herald Sun and multimedia producer at Sky News and Bloomberg in London. This month on page 24, Ed seeks out the latest info on pruning systems for the coming season.

Steve Goodman is senior lecturer in marketing and program director higher degrees by research at The University of Adelaide. He is supervising a number of honours and PhD students in wine-related topics of tourism, cellar door, social media and management strategy.

Steve also sits on the Grapegrower & Winemaker editorial advisory panel. This month, on page 64, we feature the second in Steve’s US series on why wines are chosen in off-premise oulets.

Max Marriott works in Central Otago as a viticulturist. He has a special affinity for artisan winegrowing and a strong interest in geology and organics. A past contributor to various Fairfax publications, including The Press and Dominion Post, Max has also written for Jancis Robinson MW and more recently, the NZ Winegrower and Wine Technology. On page 37, Max wanders through Oregon to bring us his vintage postcard from this beautiful part of the world.

www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

on the grapevine

what’s online

Bryce Rankine dies aged 87 Long-serving Australian wine researcher and educator, Bryce Rankine, has died in Adelaide, aged 87.

Born in Murray Bridge, South Australia, in 1925, Rankine began his career in the wine industry in 1950 as a research officer in the Oenological Investigations Section of CSIRO at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute in Adelaide. Out of this section was formed the Australian Wine Research Institute in 1957 which, together with John Fornachon, he helped set up. Rankine then spent the next 21 years mainly as officer in charge of technical services at the AWRI. In 1978, he moved to Roseworthy Agricultural College where he became principal lecturer, then head of the school of oenology and, finally, dean of the faculty. He officially retired in 1986 but was then invited by Len Evans and Brian Croser to establish the Australian Society of Wine Education. This he did, serving as its executive director, before retiring again in 1995.

Rankine was also the author and co-author of several books, including Making Good Wine, the Evolution of the Modern Australian Wine Industry — A Personal Appraisal, published in 1996, and Cooperage for Winemakers.

Riverina wineries urged to boost grape prices The Wine Grapes Marketing Board has urged wineries to “get real” with the grape prices they offer or growers will be forced out of the industry.

WGMB CEO Brian Simpson last month declared the region “unsustainable” following five seasons where prices for grapes fell below the cost of production despite reduced yields and increased demand.

“This will now be the fifth year in a row that many growers on average terms are on the receiving end of returns per hectare that fall well below the costs of production,” Simpson said.

To make matters worse, growers wanting to exit the industry are stuck, as farm prices have slumped, with some properties selling for less than the land value.

“Growers will be forced out of the industry in droves and if there was a viable market for their properties this would have commenced earlier,” Simpson said.

In some cases, growers are not being offered viable prices and are turning to other buyers that offer more. Lower than average yields are also upping the pressure, with many wineries using tonnage caps to reduce their intake, impacting growers’ returns per hectare.

According to Simpson, capping doesn’t just hurt growers financially, but also affects the lifespan of vines and impacts on fruit quality. He said wineries needed to lift their prices or risk the region’s sustainability.

“Continuing to lean on the grower base is leading to undesirable consequences for the region’s sustainability and wineries’ own markets due to product quality risks.

A grower cannot produce a quality product without the funds to procure the right inputs,” he said.

“I speak to grower contacts in our neighbouring regions that purportedly produce winegrapes of similar quality as they go into similar end-use price brackets and our pricing and grading system is often regarded to as a joke and smokescreen.”

Wine Australia to conduct online wine research project in UK Wine Australia has announced a new research project into the UK online wine market which aims to identify new opportunities for Australian wine producers.

The Wilson Drinks Report (WDR) will lead the study, combining both analysis of the UK online market with WDR consumer research. There will also be a program of focus groups, led by Axis Management Consulting, covering key consumer segments who buy wine online.

The research, which started late last month, will be funded by the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation, with results to be released around July of this year. Wine Australia wine sector intelligence manager Peter Bailey said the project will aim to provide insight into the online channel in the UK and identify the opportunities for the profitable and sustainable growth of Australian wine sales in the UK. Wilson Drinks Report managing director Tim Wilson said online shopping has become the norm for many British consumers and the research will help pinpoint the best opportunities for Australian wine producers to sell their wines online.

March 2013 – Issue 590

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China’s COFCO to buy Barossa winery and market wine under Great Wall label China’s largest food company wants to buy a Barossa Valley winery and market the wine under its Great Wall label. The bid is part of the global expansion plans of the Chinese government-owned conglomerate COFCO. The company’s wines and spirits division has been buying wineries across the world in recent years, aiming to become a truly global wine producer, reports The Australian.

Winemaker calls for more govt support Winemaker Treasury Wine Estates (TWE) wants federal and state government support to help rebuild Australia’s reputation as a supplier of quality wine. TWE chief executive David Dearie says the strength of the Australian dollar is making it hard to compete at more commercial and popular price points against wines from other countries. Also, Australia’s reputation as a supplier of quality regional wines had been “dumbed down” to the point that Australian wine was considered to be a commodity-style wine in many markets, reports News.com.au

Anti-Kiwi bashing just generalisation (NZ) “I’m getting pretty sick of Oz wine people bagging Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc. You don’t hear people over here dissing Oz Shiraz. There are ordinary and great examples of both,”- a tweet this week from Australian-born winemaker, Anna Flowerday, who runs Te Whare Ra in Marlborough. It neatly sums up the feelings of many in New Zealand’s wine industry concerning the current wave of Sauvignonbashing from across the Tasman. That these attacks are becoming so fierce and frequent illustrates just how threatened some in the Australian wine industry feel by the huge inroads our Sauvignons have made into their market, reports The New Zealand Herald.

.com.au Australia’s wine industry portal by Winetitles Australia’s wine industry portal by

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Grapegrower & Winemaker

5

my view Lies, damned lies ...

I’M AN ACCOUNTANT by training and a statistician by instinct. I like numbers and become irritated when they are not accurate. When I land at a foreign airport and the captain advises local time I know that it is likely to be wrong by five or 10 minutes. That makes me grumpy. With all the computer wizardry in the cockpit how hard is it to record the correct time?

Wine industry statistics are also important. They allow us to measure the size and progress of a very dynamic industry – if the figures are accurate.

New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) is, to quote its website, “... the national organisation for New Zealand’s grape and wine sector”. Part of its function is “giving the industry timely and strategic information”.

Until 2009 NZW released a Statistical Annual that included the area of productive vineyards by variety and region. Comparative figures over the past 10 years gave a useful indication of growth.

I’ve used figures extracted from the annual to support many articles in a wide range of publications over many years.

But in recent years I began to suspect that the figures were not entirely accurate.

One incident in particular cast some doubt over the veracity of the figures published by NZW. When the Marlborough District Council published its estimate of the established vineyards in the region, they were considerably greater than NZW’s estimate. The difference between the acreage figures was larger than the vineyard area of Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand’s secondlargest wine region.

There were some mitigating factors.

NZW’s figures related to productive vineyard while the council’s were of planted vineyard. Winegrowers acknowledged that their calculations were based on a survey based on an

Bob Campbell MW.

incomplete response from members.

When a member didn’t respond, their vineyard area from a previous survey was assumed (often incorrectly) to represent the current status.

Winemakers and grapegrowers started looking for a scapegoat when in 2008 the Sauvignon Blanc harvest jumped by 66% on the previous (record) year, sparking the first grape surplus experienced by the variety in 20 years. The accounting firm Price Waterhouse was commissioned to carry out a review of NZW practices and procedures. One of the recommendations to emerge from the report was the need to provide accurate statistics on vineyard area.

In 2012 NZW released the first Vineyard Register Report. It is now a requirement for all members to complete the annual survey. Failure to do so will prevent them from participating

in NZW events and they will not be allowed accreditation to the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand programme.

We now have accurate vineyard statistics – but how unreliable were the previous figures? In his introduction to the 2012 Vineyard Register Report, Philip Manson, NZW general manager sustainability, revealed that the latest figures for vineyard area were only 669ha (2%) above the estimate made in 2009. That figure disguises rather higher regional differences such as an increase of 15% in Marlborough, a decrease of 35% in Waipara/Canterbury (details of which did feature in Manson’s introduction) and an increase in Central Otago of 16%, moving the region into third place ahead of Gisborne, where the revised vineyard figure was 24% down on the earlier estimate. It’s worth noting that there was negligible vineyard expansion between 2009 and 2012.

Did Marlborough’s 3000-hectare underestimate contribute to the heady expansion of vineyard planting prior to the grape glut? Probably not, although I suspect that the vineyard statistics will now be studied more carefully by anyone planning to invest in grapevines.

Prospective investors will need to be careful when picking trends in vineyard area by region or grape variety. In NZW 2012 annual report vineyard survey, they show vineyard area by region and variety for the past 10 years. The 2012 vineyard figures are the flawed figures from the 2009 survey but at least they are compared with similarly flawed figures from past years.

When the new, accurate vineyard statistics are introduced, it will no longer be possible to connect the dots with inaccurate historical data in order to chart trends. From a statistical point of view New Zealand vineyard data makes a fresh start in 2012.

Top wine communicators awarded Highly regarded wine writers Tyson Stelzer and Mike Bennie have been crowned Australia’s top wine communicators at the Sydney Royal Wine Show Trophy Winner’s Lunch.

The lunch, run by Wine Communicators Australia (WCA), attracted nearly 400 people last month.

Stelzer named WCA Communicator of the Year while Bennie was awarded

6 Grapegrower & Winemaker

Digital Wine Communicator of the year.

The Gourmet Traveller/WCA New Wine Writer of the Year went to Adrian Corker.

Stelzer is a regular contributor to several wine magazines and is the co-creator of The Great Australian Red Competition. Bennie is the editor-atlarge of WineFront, Australia’s busiest independent wine review website, and is a freelance writer for several wine www.winebiz.com.au

publications, including Australian Gourmet Traveller.

Corker won the award for best new wine writer with his article Ageing Whine – a sage and humorous look about the rise of the senior drinker and their role in fostering the future health of the wine industry.

March 2013 – Issue 590

Viti professor brings fresh ambitions to CSU wine centre

Printed Wine Tasters

Kellie Arbuckle

AUSTRALIA IS FIRST class when it comes to wine and viticulture research, but more needs to be done in the way of multidisciplinary collaboration.

Speaking to the Grapegrower & Winemaker magazine for the first time since taking the reins as director at the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre, professor Alain Deloire said Australia is well placed to face the future.

“While there is an international wine crisis, the Australian wine industry has a lot of assets to face the challenges,” Deloire said.

“The outstanding research coming out of this country is what will really help the industry to move forward and answer tomorrow’s questions and challenges.”

At the same time, Australian universities and research institutions need to work more with each other, he said.

“The NWGIC needs to collaborate more with the University of Adelaide and the Australian Wine Research Institute,” he said.

“We, as educators, need to reinforce our relationship with the wine industry.”

He said the Australian wine industry could also stand to benefit by collaborating with Vinifera EuroMaster and the OENODOC international consortium, managed by the Universite Bordeaux Segalen.

“We need to avoid the situation where researchers are asking for money and the industry is asking for solutions. We have to work together to understand each other and have a win-win situation.”

Deloire started at the NWGIC at Charles Sturt University, at Wagga Wagga, on 14 January after accepting the position in June last year.

With a career in viticulture spanning more than 30 years – his most recent stint as chair of the Department of Viticulture and Oenology at Stellenbosch University – Deloire brings a wealth of international experience to the NWGIC. Prior to this, he spent 15 years working in academia in the south of France and 10 years in Champagne working in industry.

His main research interests are grapevine physiology and berry ripening – topics he has both published and preached extensively over the years.

Deloire first visited Australia last year as part of his application for the NWGIC March 2013 – Issue 590

position. In taking on the role as director, Deloire has three ambitions in mind.

“There are three main challenges that can be sorted out in the vineyard. The first challenge is to produce a fruity lowalcohol wine,” he said.

“The second challenge is to better understand the thresholds of vine functioning in relation to environmental factors such as temperature, light and water.”

“If we know the thresholds – as well as the timing and duration of the drought or heatwave – we can give recommendations on site selection, canopy manipulation, irrigation, etc.

Australia can be the research leader in the Southern Hemisphere and beyond.

Professor Alain Deloire.

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“The third one is to look at the value chain from the field to the consumer, to try to understand the consequences of wine style and how markets perceive them.”

Deloire is also optimistic that Australia can lead the charge in these areas of research.

“If we have an integrated program and collaborate worldwide, Australia can be the research leader in the Southern Hemisphere and beyond,” he said. www.winebiz.com.au

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Grapegrower & Winemaker

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news

Global wine challenges and opportunities The annual Unified Symposium in Sacramento opens with a forum about dynamic global markets.

This article first appeared on the Wines & Vines website on 29 January 2013.

Andrew Adams and Paul Franson

THE LARGEST WINE exhibition in North America opened in Sacramento, California, in late January with a discussion about the wine industry as an international business.

A grapegrower in Fresno, California, may still feel worlds apart from a grower in Australia’s Barossa Valley, but the two are linked by the same market dynamics and are essentially competitors. While US growers and vintners may see their margins pinched by imports, the global market also offers new markets and bolsters overall demand.

Organisers at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium said the number of registrations reached 13,400 – a new record. The January 30 schedule included the State of the Industry discussion with Nat DiBuduo, president of Allied Grape Growers, and industry expert Jon Fredrikson of Gomberg Fredrikson and Associates. The annual trade show opened the same day, featuring 643 exhibitors.

Globalisation driven by bulk Jeff O’Neil with O’Neil Vintners and Distillers moderated the session and opened the panel discussion attended by about 400 people by remarking on how quickly the industry changed in the past two decades. “Twenty-five years ago we were concerned about the franc and the lira and a little oversupply,” he said. “Today we’re concerned about a lot more.”

It wasn’t until the 1990s that wine first became a global product, said Kym Anderson, director of the Wine Economics Research Center at the University of Adelaide (Australia). He said in the 1930s the biggest wine exporter in the world was Algeria, which was sending wine to France.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, currency fluctuations and new technology to help facilitate the shipments of bulk wine turned wine into an international commodity. Anderson said Australia took advantage of its dollar’s weak value to triple its production capacity to export to the US. After Argentina devalued its currency by two-thirds in 2001, its US exports saw a seven-fold increase. “We’re all in the international competition business now,” he said. “Even grapegrowers are vulnerable to currency rate fluctuations.”

Anderson noted that China’s insatiable demand for resources

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has led to a mining boom in Australia that in turn drove up the value of the Aussie dollar and weakened demand for the nation’s bulk wine. In the UK, the dollar’s rise against the pound has softened demand for imported wine.

All eyes on China The wine industry’s best bet for future global growth will be in Asia – and especially China. Anderson said he estimates Asia will command 30% of the global spending power by 2030, up from 11% today.

China already is showing strong demand for wine across all segments. Anderson said Chinese vintners use bulk wines to raise the quality of their own products as the nation allows a winery to label its product as being from China even if only 10% of the wine is made from Chinese grapes. China’s growing middle class is gaining an appetite for premium wines, and the nation’s elite continues to buy the world’s very best wines.

China’s domestic production is growing rapidly, but Chinese wineries can’t keep up with consumption. This creates a good opportunity for imports to blend with local wines and satisfy demand by the burgeoning middle class as well as the desire for ultra premium iconic wines for gifts.

Overall, Anderson said wine still has far to go in terms of globalisation. Most countries have low rates of regular consumption and high tax rates on imports.

Growing demand in the United States and Canada has offset consumption declines in Europe, while overall global supply will likely be tight in the coming year because of the light European harvest and bulk prices will likely rise.

A case study on Moscato and Cabernet Greg Livengood, president and partner with Ciatti Co., examined the market for Moscato and Cabernet Sauvignon in 2011. He said that year California found itself short on Cabernet and unprepared for the intense consumer demand for Moscato. “We weren’t sitting on enough Cabernet, and there certainly wasn’t enough Moscato – it just wasn’t in the ground,” Livengood said.

When bulk California Cabernet shot to $7.50 per gallon, Livengood said major US producers quickly went to Chile, Spain and Australia, which were all selling Cab at around $5 per gallon. The move enabled them to hold the line on prices at a time when the U.S. consumer was in no mood to pay more for their favorite brands. “The net of it all was they were able to hold price point rather than increase margin,” he said.

For Moscato, producers faced either finding an import source of supply or being shut out of the market completely. Again, Chile and Australia had the necessary wine, and Livengood said US wineries were able to bottle the needed Moscato under their brands and retain valuable shelf space. If U.S. wineries had not been able to find that source of imports they would have lost that shelf space to foreign competition and it would have been a challenge to regain it.

For the coming year, Livengood said Ciatti estimates a strong harvest for California in the range of 3.85-3.9 million tons, but South America looks to have a strong harvest as well.

“You need to think about what’s going on around the world,” he said.

www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

Wine industry focuses on future profit opportunity

Direct Print Bottles

Grahame Whyte

A NEW PROJECT has generated significant impetus in the Australian wine industry, with all players – small, medium and large – set to benefit.

WFA president Tony D’Aloisio AM said the catalyst for the project, a comprehensive review of industry dynamics, was the financial support offered by the Wolf Blass Foundation.

D’Aloisio said the review would analyse current and potential profitability across the range of business models and market segments that make up a highly diverse Australian wine industry.

Wolf Blass said he had achieved a lot in his life and was still a major ambassador for his company.

“When I established the foundation I wanted to give something back to the industry, “We have spent $800,000 so far in different ways. The Winemakers’ Federation needs money, we are prepared to become a partner and I have got a good team of people behind me.

“We are behind the rest of the new wine world. We used to be the leaders but we are being left behind. If we don’t change rapidly it will be a drastic detriment – we are sitting on 150,000200,000 tonnes of grape surplus already.

“This overseas dumping is taking place – a dollar, $1.50 wines served in bulk – it’s destroying the image of Australia.”

Blass said there was always promotion, but there needed to be recognition that

the wine bucket was full, and people were scratching their heads wondering what to do next.

“They have never taken it into account that there is a ceiling that was reached five years ago,” Blass said.

“For that reason we have now offered this finance – we must look forward and not where we came from.”

WFA CEO Paul Evans said dramatic changes and the reality of exchange rates meant it was timely to look at the issues and make informed decisions about the industry.

“Like many in the industry, the federation is doing it pretty tight at the moment. To do this type of expert review is expensive work if you are going to bring a standard of expertise to it that I think is warranted.

“So we went to the Wolf Blass Foundation and put the proposal to them.

They very quickly captured what we were trying to do. GWRDC have put in a sum of money that is comparable to the foundation, and Wine Australia is also contributing with their economist staff.

“The data collection firm, Nielsen is also coming in as a partner, so all in all we have put together quite an impressive coalition of industry players and I think everyone has captured the importance and timeliness of this review.

“In terms of the project’s benefits, I think this will flush out the two or three key issues that we can influence.”

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Wolf Blass Foundation trustee David Robinson, left, with Wolf Blass, Tony D’Aloisio and Paul Evans.

March 2013 – Issue 590

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Grapegrower & Winemaker

9

news

Mornington Pinot comes a long way Kellie Arbuckle

NEARLY 200 PEOPLE attended the biennial Mornington Peninsula International Pinot Noir Celebration last month to showcase their wines and hear from the experts.

Now in its sixth year, the MPIPNC is a two-day event that features structured tastings of Pinot Noir from around the world and presentations from wine experts.

Jasper Morris MW, who has written for The World of Fine Wine, was the keynote speaker for this year’s event, which took place on 8-9 February.

Other guests included Domaine Grivot of Domaine Jean Grivot in France, Josh Jenson of Calera Wine Company in California, Ted Lemon of Littorai in California, and Marquis Sauvage of Burn Cottage Vineyard in New Zealand.

Moorooduc Estate marketing manager Kate McIntyre MW, who was heavily involved in the running of the MPIPNC, said the focus of this year’s event was terroir and the expression of the soil.

She said the feedback on Mornington wines was positive, with many people lauding the 2010 vintage as among the best.

“People really enjoyed the wines and there was general consensus among the guests and attendees that 2010 Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir was consistently high in quality,” McIntyre said.

She said there was already much excitement about the next MPIPNC in 2015, with the potential of this year’s vintage to be better than 2010.

Among the attendees who presented their wines was Simon Black, winemaker at Montalto, and Geraldine McFaul, winemaker at Willow Creek. Both wineries process small parcels of fruit, with minimal intervention and careful attention to the site, variety and clone, to reach the ideal flavour and structure profile of the wine. Black said it was good to compare his wines with the rest of the world and to keep informed of what was happening in the industry.

“It’s lubrication for the brain to think about possibilities and the best way to move forward,” he said.

“It’s about keeping yourself exposed to the industry and

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Winemakers Simon Black of Montalto and Geraldine McFaul of Willow Creek at the MPIPNC in the Mornington Peninsula.

keeping an open mind. We’re all searching for the holy grail of wine. Each year we have a better understanding of where we’ve been and where we’re going – and that’s part of the process.”

He said the key message from the event was that Mornington Pinot has come a long way.

“Since 2011 there’s been an evolution in quality and philosophy in making Pinot Noir. It seems people are starting to understand vineyards and winemaking practices better,” he said.

In terms of the wine style, Black said the wines were starting to show greater complexity and elegance. He said the event left him inspired to play around with fine-grained tannins and to achieve more mouth feel in the wines.

“For me, I came away thinking a lot about structure in wine, particularly the balance of tannin, fruit and acidity,” he said.

McFaul said the event provided reassurance about the quality of the region’s Pinot Noir.

“The event showed that we as a region are making some good and quite distinctive Pinot Noir,” she said.

“Jasper was very complimentary about the wines from the region which is always reassuring and I think overall people were pretty impressed.”

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Punters head west for vintage celebrations As vintage 2013 kicks into gear, wineries in Western Australia are attracting attention from the across the nation with unique events and environmental projects.

Kellie Arbuckle

MOUNT BARKER Wine meets equine Nearly 3000 people congregated at the Mount Barker Grapes and Gallops Festival in January to enjoy the region’s finest wine, fashion and racing. Grapes and Gallops is the biggest event on Mount Barker Turf Club’s calendar which features a nine-race program and includes the Great Southern’s richest race, the $90,000 Mungrup Stud Sprint over 1000 metres.

Grapes and Gallops chairwoman Kim Tyrer said the expanding event celebrates the region’s premium produce.

“Every year the percentage of people travelling down from Perth is growing, indicating the profile of our event is being raised with greater awareness statewide,” Tyrer said.

“This festival gives them an opportunity to promote and sell their wine on the day,” she said. Under the big tent, racegoers were able to sample wines from several Mount Barker producers, including Arcadia Wines, Galafrey Wines, Gilbert Wines, West Cape Howe, 3 Drops Winery, Plantagenet Wines, Hawker Ridge Wines and Chatsfield.

Wineries partner with Negociants West Cape Howe and Hay Shed Hill have started a national distribution partnership with Negociants Australia.

March 2013 – Issue 590

into the Negociants Australia principal community.

“These partnerships will provide us with specialised Western Australian regional offerings from both Margaret River and the Great Southern,” he said.

“We look forward to building on the solid reputation of both these wineries in the Australian market.”

GEOGRAPH A platinum tasting

This year’s Grapes and Gallops Festival attracted nearly 3000 people.

Effective from the first of this month, the partnership will allow both wineries to expand their reach to customers around Australia while promoting the regional differences in Western Australian wine.

Negociants Australia general manager Adam O’Neill welcomed both wineries

www.winebiz.com.au

Willow Bridge Estate has uncorked its 2010 Black Dog Shiraz, rated 96 points

by James Halliday in his 2013 Wine Companion, at a tasting for its platinum club members.

The tasting was held in the barrel store at Willow Bridge and led by senior winemaker Simon Burnell, who treated guests to a selection of four of Premium Winemaker’s wines with canapés created

by Matt Leahy, head chef at the Silo’s Bar at restaurant in Bunbury.

“Pairing the right food combinations with wine can make all the difference; the right selection can significantly enhance both the food and the wine,” said Jenna Nash, sales coordinator at Willow Bridge.

“Our 2011 G1-10 Chardonnay was paired with a canapé of pork, prawn, melon and yoghurt. The delicate flavours

Grapegrower & Winemaker

11

news of the canapé perfectly complemented the ripe rich stone fruit, citrus and creamy palate of the Chardonnay.”

Wine show

in the Alternative Varieties Wine Classes.

Judging for this year’s wine show will take place on 2-3 October, ending with an awards dinner on the evening of 3 October.

MARGARET RIVER WineWatch concludes

Wine of show winners (from left) Wayne and Ria Hammond, of Oakway Estate, with Nicholas Baudin trophy winner Stuart Pierce.

Oakway Estate scooped the award for best white wine of show late last year at the Geograph Wine Show, for its 2010 unwooded Chardonnay.

In its 11th year, the 2012 Geograph Wine Show attracted more than 130 entries, with both small and large producers taking out a number of awards.

About 150 people gathered for a gala dinner on 4 October to celebrate the diversity of Geograph wines.

Willow Bridge Estate took home two awards on the night: best red wine of show for its 2010 Black Dog Shiraz and the award for most successful exhibitor.

Barton Jones picked up the title for most successful small producer, while the Nicholas Baudin perpetual trophy for excellence in winemaking was won

by Stuart Pierce, chief winemaker for Harvey River Bridge Estate.

In 2013 the Geographe Wine Show wants to grow entries from WA producers

The Margaret River wine region has wrapped up its WineWatch program – a unique initiative that has helped local wineries and vineyards to gain significant green credentials.

Launched in 2009, the WineWatch program provided wineries and vineyards in the Margaret River wine region with assistance to achieve membership of Entwine Australia, the Australian wine industry’s voluntary environmental assurance scheme.

The scheme, managed by the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia, requires certification through a recognised, independently-audited environmental certification program.

“Industry engagement in Entwine Australia is an avenue for the wine industry to ensure they are doing what they can to protect and improve environmental values,” said Mark Gibberd, head of the Department of Environment and Agriculture at Curtin University.

“Support provided through the Caring for our Country project facilitated industry involvement and the best environmental outcomes.”

About 120 vineyards and wineries in the Margaret River, Geographe and Great Southern wine regions were assisted through the project. The type of support companies received varied and included environmental management system training, assistance to undertake property biodiversity assessments and develop environmental action plans, a subsidy towards audit costs and/or

financial assistance to implement actions to protect and enhance biodiversity values.

On-ground activities funded through the project include fencing to protect over 8km of waterways on the Wilyabrup, Boodjidup, Gunyulgup, Ellen and Chapman Brook systems, and planting of well over 40,000 local native species in riparian areas.

Support was also given to improve chemical wash-down facilities, particularly where there was a potential risk to downstream water quality and ecosystems.

SWAN VALLEY A vintage weekend in the Valley Swan Valley wineries will again be welcoming people into their wineries to experience firsthand the crafting of Swan Valley wine from vineyard to bottle.

A Vintage Weekend in the Swan Valley will be held from 15-17 March.

Swan Valley and Regional Winemakers Association president Julie Church said the weekend was a great opportunity for a behind the scenes look at how wine is made during the harvest season.

“A Vintage Weekend in the Swan Valley is a part of the Autumn River Festival and a great time to celebrate all that Perth’s eastern region has to offer,” Church said.

Some of the highlights of the weekend will include: a family concert at Houghton Wines; a four-course vintage dinner at Pinelli Wines; the annual Harvest Breakfast at Faber Vineyard; a wine tasting and small breakfast experience at Taylor’s Art and Coffee House; tours of Olive Farm Winery with the family winemakers to taste the 2013 ferments; a paella afternoon at Mandoon Estate and a Mediterranean weekend at Black Swan Winery.

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grapegrowing Grapegrower recalls a long family history in the vines This article continues our look at the Grapegrower & Winemaker’s five decades of service to the grapegrowing and winemaking sector.

Grahame Whyte

ERIC ROSSETTO IS proud to have been born on the vineyard his family first planted back in 1924.

The Yenda, New South Wales grower said his father Dio used the fruit to make wine for family and friends and eventually got into selling it. It was a small beginning to a new family tradition.

“In those days a small area would be bigger because everything was done manually,” Rossetto said.

“In the ’40s and ’50s it was all manual and slow – people didn’t have all the machinery you’ve got today of course,” he said.

“I started in the ’50s; my first year would have been 1950. I keep telling my boys that I have been the lucky one and they keep asking why, and I go, well, I’ve been through the horse days, steel-wheeled tractor days, then rubberwheeled tractors and now hydraulics and machinery.”

There was very little machinery in the ’60s – just a couple of tractors.

Dio bought the first tractor – a Case – in 1941, and it’s still running and used to cut up firewood.

Back in the 60s the majority of Rossetto’s grapes were Shiraz, Mataro and Grenache.

The Doradillo was very popular for brandy, plus a bit of Gordo and Trebbiano.

By the ’70s brandy was no longer so popular and the Doradillo vines were pulled.

“Just like today you have to move with

and children arrived, things changed and dad bought a bigger block and went into growing grapes in a bigger way while his brother continued on with the winemaking.

“We always delivered the grapes to Rossetto’s winery and that grew. My cousins took over eventually, but that’s gone now.”

Trellising

The Australian Grapegrower & Winemaker, October 1976.

the times, remove what isn’t wanted and come up with a new variety. If the winery recommends that variety you put it in and, down the track, if the customers don’t want that particular wine, out it goes.

“We were actually fortunate that dad and his brother had their own winery.

And then down the track, when families

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“In those days trellising was all manually done. I recall going out into the forest with dad using handsaws and cutting pine trees and debarking them. Then, using whatever transport we had, we’d bring them back and put them back into the ground.

“Everything was single-wire in those days. Originally when they were first planted they were fairly low and we tried to lift them up. The winegrapes were all spur pruned.

“Irrigation was all furrow and flood.

At the moment we’ve got drip and furrow and flood – we’ve got the lot – but if I could I would go back to furrow. I’d get rid of the drip; the power cost in running the system is sending us broke!”

A changing role Rossetto said that things were very different nowadays.

“I’m still out there with my three sons but I have seen some big changes you wouldn’t believe.

“My best days were when Menzies was

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Mechanical pruning is explained in the Australian Grapegrower & Winemaker, October 1976.

in power – at least you knew where you were going and you could plan for the next year and the year after.

“We worked hard. It was mostly manual work, but you were paid for it, you got something in return whereas today we’re sinking, we’re eating into profits that you may have. Wineries are paying $200-300 a tonne for their grapes, whereas back when Chardonnay first came in wineries were paying $900-1100 a tonne.

“Back in the days when I was growing up, dad had four children, it was hard work but he gave us Saturday and Sunday off. The family worked through the week and enjoyed outings on the weekend, whereas today, mum, dad and the kids have got to work to survive.”

Rossetto is not overly optimistic about future prospects.

“No, not in this area. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t want this area at all, because of the troubles with water.

It’s a nightmare that exists, even though

there are a few young men around, but they are all downhearted and talking about leaving, and the old fellas, if they could sell they’d walk away, but you can’t sell.

“To go farming these days, it’s got to be in your blood or you’re crazy – it’s the latter one for me!”

The Australian Grapegrower Rossetto can remember looking at the early editions of The Australian Grapegrower, which later became The Australian Grapegrower & Winemaker.

“It is a useful publication – I would like to see a bit more information for the grower.

“I would like to see more about what’s happening to the industry – are we going ahead or going backwards – that sort of thing.

“At the moment we’re importing too much wine from overseas.

“Where’s it going – who’s drinking it?”

“Back in the days when grapes were

picked by hand you had no hope of expanding the area because you had trouble getting labour – it was a big problem in the early days, though we were fortunate to have Queensland cane cutters come over. They were all good workers but that dried up and I was one of the first to buy a grape harvester, a UR. “We’ve changed quite a few machines but have basically stuck with the upright UR. “The boys are probably harvesting about 900ha – we do a lot of machine pruning, one of the boys goes out to do contract work. I was actually the first to kick that off, putting up a frame and putting a few saws on – but that’s what you’ve got to do to survive.

“I have reduced our varieties simply because people seem to go for a handful of varieties. I have experimented – 15 years ago I imported two new varieties from France, but it’s so difficult to get a new variety on the market, to get people to buy the darn thing.”

On the issue of grape prices, Rossetto was adamant.

“It’s an insult to the grower who’s trying to make a living. Like I said before, we’re sinking, we’re not even covering the costs. They say you’ve got to get bigger but that’s not the solution, either.

“In this area the prices are just shameful. In other areas they are fortunate that they are getting better prices, but here it’s just a disgrace.

“I received my last payment for last year’s crop in January and that was only able to repay the fuel and everything else. The number of farms that are up for sale and the number the banks carry is shocking.

“The boys do a bit of clearing work with Caterpillars and dozers for other growers, but often those growers say they can’t afford it, just leave the vines there.

“Cleaning up a vineyard can cost around $300ha, but if you are going to replant then it’s another story.”

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grapegrowing

Fruit splitting of winegrape berries With the potential for rejection of infected grapes by the winery, it is essential for growers to be aware of the causes and management strategies of fruit splitting.

Annabel Bowcher

FRUIT SPLITTING IS the bursting, cracking or rupturing of the berry skin.

It is typically associated with rainfall events that occur during berry ripening.

Splitting is an important industry issue because it impacts on both grape yield and quality. When there is significant rain during the harvest season, splitting and disease have a major impact on the volume and quality of the fruit crushed, and as a result can dramatically reduce financial returns.

Fruit splitting alters the flavour profile of the grape as the decomposition can produce compounds such as ethyl acetate and acetic acid. These compounds are undesirable for winemaking.

The absorption of abnormally large amounts of water in the absence of splitting dilutes solutes, thereby affecting sugar concentrations and potentially delaying harvest dates.

When fruit is split, the resulting moist, open surface also provides an ideal surface for a potential Botrytis fungal infection.

It is difficult to put a dollar value on the effect of fruit splitting for winemakers as there are so many variables involved.

The value of the affected fruit can be measured in a number of ways, including: 1. loss of saleable wine (reduced production) 2. loss of customer loyalty if a consumer is unable to buy their preferred product and 3. cost of replacement wine.

Typically viticulture crop insurance is only available for hail, frost and fire, and excludes rain damage. Vineyard management is the only way growers can manage the risk and consequences of fruit splitting.

Understanding the factors that lead to fruit splitting and fungal infection will assist in determining potential preventative actions that could be undertaken to reduce losses in the value of the crop.

Water balance in a ripening grape berry There are three major influences on the inflow and outflow of water into ripening grape berries (Table 1).

Under ideal berry growing conditions,

16 Grapegrower & Winemaker

Table 1.

Inflow

Outflow

Via the phloem: sugary water transported from the leaves to the fruit.

Via transpiration: water lost from the berry surface.

Via the xylem: small amount of water under some conditions.

Via the xylem: small amount of water flows back to the vine.

these three flows are very balanced and there is only a small net increase in berry water content each day.

If the increase in the net water content of the berry becomes too large, the increasing pressure stretches the grape skin. Once the stretching capability of the skin is exceeded, the fruit will split.

Influences on splitting There are a number of factors that determine the susceptibility of fruit to splitting (Table 2). They can be ranked in order of importance (highest to lowest): 1. water on fruit stalk and surface 2. berry ripeness 3. berry cultivar 4. air drying potential 5. berry temperature.

Current thinking is that grape purpose (e.g. wine vs table, largely corresponds to seeded vs seedless) and the precise time when rains fall during the post-veraison period are the most important intrinsic determinants of susceptibility.

Factors that inf luence berry

splitting vary in the degree that can be manipulated by viticultural practices.

A limited number of tactics can be strategically applied to minimise fruit splitting (Table 3).

Strategies to reduce the incidence of splitting It is difficult to identify strategies or treatments for managers to reduce splitting in their vineyard. Rainfall events are unpredictable and managers are unable to influence the relative humidity and ambient temperature of the vineyard.

However reducing the susceptibility of grapes to splitting may be assisted by the incorporation of management tactics such as (Table 3): 1. harvesting fruit prior to meteorological events that are likely to induce splitting 2. promoting water loss from the berry tissue or berry surface; and/or 3. in the long-term, planting or grafting less splitting-susceptible cultivars.

1.4

berry ripening phase

1.2

susceptible to splitting

1.0

Berry fresh weight (g)

Background to problem

susceptible to shrivel

0.8 0.6 Veraison: the onset of ripening and when the berries begin to change colour.

0.4 0.2 0.0

0

20

40

60

Days after flowering

80

100

Figure 1. Fruit splitting most often occurs early in the ripening phase, when berries rapidly accumulate sugars, skin pigments develop and water content of the berry increases. Splitting is less likely to occur once berries start to shrivel. Figure 1 illustrates the development of Shiraz berries in the Riverina relative to flowering date. www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

Table 2. Factors that determine susceptibility of ripening grape berries to splitting (ranked in order of importance: highest to lowest).

Factors

Description of process

Reason splitting may occur

Water on fruit stalk and surface.

There is a large increase in water flowing into the berry when water on the surface of the stalk (pedicel, receptacle, and receptacle/berry junction) and berry is absorbed by the berry cells (Becker et al. 2012).

Water on the surface of the stalk and berry results in a net increase in berry water content that is greater than the normal inflow.

Berry ripeness.

During ripening, berry cells bounded by intact membranes import sugar and water from leaves via the phloem (see Table 1).

Recent research has shown that many of the cell membranes in winegrape berries degrade late in the ripening process. This ultimately leads to the phenomenon of berry shrivel and cessation of sugar import because the flow of sugar-rich water into the berry is reduced.

Intact cell membranes are essential to the process of water uptake by berries during rain and condensation events. Intact cell membranes allow the absorption of water by berry cells through the process of osmosis. Without intact membranes only a small amount of water is absorbed by the berry very slowly. The progressive degradation of cell membranes during ripening reduces the ability of the berry to osmotically absorb rain and water droplets. This makes the berries less susceptible to splitting in the later stages of maximum sugar accumulation.

Berry cultivar.

Susceptibility is related to strength of the berry skin, which greatly varies between cultivars. In practice differences are of little relevance.

Grape varietal choice responds to winery and consumer demands.

As a result any genetically determined differences are not a primary concern for many growers.

Splitting susceptibility is determined by the strength of subepidermal cells. An increase in subepidermal cell layers also increases the resistance to splitting (Meynhardt 1964).

Air drying potential.

Cool, humid conditions cause the air around the berry to be saturated with moisture and therefore no transpiration occurs.

If air drying potential is low, the net increase in berry water content far exceeds the normal increase per day.

Berry temperature.

Warm temperatures cause: · lowering of berry skin strength · slight expansion of berry · large decrease in skin surface area ie shrinkage.

(Lang and Düring 1990) The rate at which pressure builds inside the berry is an important determinant of splitting.

Berry skin is weakened and pressure increases within the berry.

A rapid increase of berry temperature may cause splitting, especially if the berry water content is high. Shaded berries may warm less quickly and be less susceptible to splitting.

Becker, T., Grimm, E. and Knoche, M. (2012). Substantial water uptake into detached grape berries occurs through the stem surface. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research 18: 109–114. Considine, J.A. and Kriedemann, P.E.(1972). Fruit splitting in grapes: determination of the critical turgor pressure. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 23: 17–24. Meynhardt, J. T. (1964). A histological study of berry-splitting in some grape cultivars. South African Journal of Agricultural Science 7: 707–716.

Lang, A. and During, H. (1990). Grape berry splitting and some mechanical properties of the skin. Vitis 29: 61-70.

Case study: McWilliams Wines, MIA, New South Wales Splitting is estimated to occur approximately once every five years in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA), and probably more often in other regions, such as Tumbarumba on the southern slopes of NSW due to environmental conditions during ripening.

Split berries (often 10-30%) cause a drop in yield because they can dry up and drop off if there is no further rain. Fungal infection (Botrytis) is also

common, especially if conditions remain damp. A 5% infection can result in a complete crop rejection by the winery.

Growers will therefore try and harvest immediately after a splitting event.

(Geoff McCorkelle, technical viticulturist, McWilliam’s Wine Group, Hanwood, New South Wales)

Case study: De Bortoli Wines, MIA, New South Wales De Bortoli Wines in the MIA in NSW experienced significant losses due to

fruit splitting and subsequent loss of yield and fruit downgrading in both the 2011 and 2012 harvest.

In the 2011 season: • 11% was downgraded due to splitting and disease • 1.5% was not harvested.

In the 2012 season: • 7% was harvested for downgraded products • 11% was not harvested due to splitting, excessive disease, and inability to access vineyards. If it had

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Grapegrower & Winemaker

17

grapegrowing Table 3. Strategies to reduce the incidence of splitting.

Strategy

Method

Further information

Harvest fruit before an imminent fruit splitting event

Assess the current and expected optimal value of the crop for wine production. Assess whether this difference is greater than the depreciation expected from a fruit splitting event. Evaluate how much of the crop to pre-emptively harvest based on the relative size of the potential loss and your attitude towards risk.

In 2010 a Canberra districts grower estimated that summer storms produced splitting in 20% of Shiraz and 10-15% of Pinot Noir bunches. The combined losses were approximately $3,000 for nearly two tonnes of fruit. This equated to approximately $30,000 in lost (contracted) wine production. In this instance the crop (20°Brix or less) was unsuitable for pre-emptive harvest because the fruit was not expected to be useful for winemaking until March.

Promote water loss (evaporation) from berry tissues or berry surface

Manipulate the drying potential of the air surrounding the grapes by encouraging air movement through the canopy.

Promote mixing of moist air within the canopy with drier air above.

There have not yet been any specific trials testing the incidence of splitting in a more open canopy. It can be hypothesised that a reduction in shoot number or vigour, or a trellis design that minimises bunch shading, would reduce the degree of fruit splitting. These factors will also promote bunch drying and prevent Botrytis from taking hold.

Switch to cultivars less prone to fruit splitting

The first step in this strategy is to identify cultivars whose berries are resistant to splitting. In the context of Australian wine grape viticulture, this information is not readily available. The assessment must be based largely on personal observations and anecdotal evidence. An alternative approach is to target varieties whose ripening period is relatively short to minimise the duration the ripening crop is exposed to rainfall events. Having identified potentially suitable cultivars, the step prior to planting/grafting is cultivar assessment in terms of all viticultural demands (marketability, disease resistance, suitability to terroir, etc).

Obtaining reliable information on cultivar susceptibility to splitting will require a dedicated research effort that pays particular attention to the interaction between berry ripeness and rainfall events. Such research is likely to be of greatest relevance to cool climate vineyards where the protracted ripening period increases exposure of the fruit to rainfall events.

been possible to access the vineyard and harvest the fruit it would have been downgraded.

The financial cost of this was: • loss of (potentially) 4.5 million litres of saleable product • reduction in value of the downgraded material of approximately 50%.

(Julie Mortlock, senior winemaker, De Bortoli Wines, Bilbul, New South Wales)

Fruit splitting: research undertaken by the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre Project: Shiraz berry ripeness and fruit splitting Where: Wagga Wagga, NSW When: 2008 and 2009 Collaborators: Simon Clarke, Suzy Rogiers and Jim Hardie, NWGIC Funding: Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation-funded

Vineyard Manufacture & Maintenance specialists

Wine Growing Futures program of the National Wine and Grape Industry Centre

Aims • Identify a stage at which the susceptibility of the ripening grape berry to splitting diminishes.

• Identify attributes of the berry responsible for the changes in susceptibility to splitting.

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March 2013 – Issue 590

Method

Outcomes for industry

Two experiments were undertaken using ripening Shiraz berries (clone 1654).

1. ripening berries (field grown fruit) were immersed in a graduated series of sucrose solutions and monitored for the number of days until splitting occurred 2. ripening berries (glasshouse grown fruit) were immersed in deionised water, monitored for splitting and assessed for cell vitality.

Assuming results for Shiraz are broadly applicable to other winegrapes: 1. varieties harvested prior to maturity, perhaps for ‘green’ characteristics (e.g. Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc), will have berries that are always susceptible to splitting.

2. varieties harvested very late in the season (e.g. shrivelling Shiraz or Botrytis Semillon) are unlikely to split once their maximum sugar content has been reached.

The findings of this study are of greatest relevance to the scheduling of harvest for those varieties picked close to maximum berry fresh weight.

When berries are at maturity (maximum fresh weight) the decision making with regard to splitting is difficult. With an impending rainfall event there is no test that can be done sufficiently quickly to determine whether grapes are susceptible to splitting. The ultimate decision will still depend on the risk strategy of the vineyard manager and winemaker.

Summary of results

exists for less splitting in vineyards with grapevines that are consistently well irrigated (see further information below).

Why this strategy might work is unclear. It is possible that during a rain event berries on well-watered plants do not increase in volume as much or as quickly as berries on water-stressed plants.

A smaller rain-induced volume increase would be expected to generate less stress on the berry skin. Alternatively, a slow volume change may provide sufficient time to allow the skin to accommodate an increase in berry volume without splitting.

If soil moisture plays a role in reducing splitting grape, growers could irrigate prior to forecast rain events to reduce their losses. This is a simple strategy worthy of future research.

Berries were susceptible to splitting from veraison to 90 days after flowering (30 days after veraison). (Note: Veraison is the onset of ripening and when the berries begin to change colour).

Susceptibility to splitting remained very high over the first 30 days of Annabel Bowcher, AnDi Communications. ripening. Once berries had visibly begun to shrivel they took a very long time to Research Simon Clarke, Suzy Rogiers and Jim Hardie, NWGIC split or did not split.

Further information: www.nwgic.org Berry maturity fell in the window between these two stages. Susceptibility References Clarke, S.J., Rogiers, S.Y. and Hackett, S. (2009). The to splitting decreases dramatically frustration of fruit splitting. The Australian and New as berry maximum fresh weight is Zealand Grapegrower and Winemaker 542: 37–39. approached.

Future research Clarke, S.J., Hardie, W.J. and Rogiers, S.Y. (2010).

Changes in susceptibility of grape berries to splitting A decline in cell vitality is more effective There is a need for research on the are related to impaired osmotic water uptake than a decrease in osmotic gradient at interaction between soil moisture content in cell vitality. Australian 2 7 5 9 S l u g Ou t _ Gr a p e s G. p d f Pa ge 1 1 5 / 0 2 / 1 3 , 1 0 : associated 4 0 : 4 6withA losses M reducing the susceptibility to splitting. and fruit splitting. Anecdotal evidence Journal of Grape and Wine Research 16: 469–476.

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19

grapegrowing

VINE TALK

Vintage is a particularly demanding time of year although it is important to take the time to objectively note down any pests and diseases within the vineyard. Taking the time now to make detailed notes of actual observations and any impact on grape quality will be invaluable when you sit down to plan for next season.

Consider both the incidence and severity of any powdery and downy mildew. Whereabouts in the block was it? Was it on the rachis, the berries or in the top of the canopy? Can you identify any particular areas in the vineyard or along the canes which were infected? This could be related to a particular point in time which corresponds with a weather event or certain spray round. Hot spots within a block are often noted although perhaps the powdery was only a problem on a particular area of the canopy or where the canopy was dense, indicating inadequate spray coverage.

Was the spray interval too long due to the weather or mechanical breakdown? Was the sprayer set up correctly for each spray throughout the season? Was there any difference in concentrate water volume applied? What “dilute water volume” was used to calculate the amount of product required? Having all the relevant information in front of you when it comes to planning will result in a much more effective spray programme next season.

This time of year is also good for monitoring rust mites although not for effective control. Rust mites (Calepitrimerus vitis) feed on the leaves causing them to “bronze”. This can result in premature leaf drop, exposing grape bunches to sunburn and potentially delaying ripening. Rust mites overwinter under the bark and have a very narrow window for control just prior to budburst. Identifying areas where Rust mites are a problem is important so that effective control measures, such as a pre-budburst THIOVIT JET® and a suitable oil, can be deployed next season.

Also consider removing vineyard trash and pruning to set up an open canopy, increasing light penetration, airflow and spray coverage.

Richard Lillingstone B.Ag.Sc. M.Oen Technical Lead - Viticulture Syngenta Crop Protection richard.lillingstone@syngenta.com - 0407 868 697 For details, please call the Syngenta technical product advice line on 1800 067 108 or visit www.syngenta.com.au 20 Grapegrower & Winemaker

Growers and distributors visit New Zealand on wine study tour

Participants in the vineyard during the New Zealand study tour.

A GROUP OF 12 growers, distributors and competition winners visited New Zealand in December on a wine study tour with Bayer CropScience.

The participants had the opportunity to see first-hand New Zealand growers’ high quality standards, exchange best practices and network.

The group visited a variety of vineyards, across a number of wine growing regions specialising in various grape styles and practices.

Sessions were held to learn about the industry, grape varieties, products, and how New Zealand wine growers obtain high standards with the product limitations imposed in the drive toward low chemical residue wine.

Simon Liersch, agronomist horticulture viticulture at Elders in South Australia said, “The Bayer organised study tour was a fantastic opportunity to see and experience the New Zealand wine industry”.

“As a viticulturist with Elders, it was a great chance to meet like-minded people with similar issues and discuss the different management practices used. I particularly enjoyed the small, unique 800ha Gimblett Gravels appellation in Hawkes Bay, where grapes grow on an old gravelly river bed, resulting in some superb red wine,” Simon said.

Tour participant Brett McClen, chief viticulturist at Brown Brothers Milawa vineyard in Victoria said, “On the study tour I learnt a lot about cool climate viticulture which was really useful as we have a substantial vineyard holding in Tasmania with a similar climate.”

“There were key learnings that I will be applying in Australia for various cane and vine pruning, and canopy management techniques,” he said.

Darryl Stretton, product manager for horticulture at Bayer CropScience, said, “It was great to see Australian growers get together with those from New Zealand and share their experiences from the field. Everyone had a lot to take away from the trip.”

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March 2013 – Issue 590

Inkwell hits the ground running

NEED VINEYARD MACHINERY?

Kellie Arbuckle

INKWELL WINES KICKED off the Shiraz harvest in McLaren Vale last month with plenty of help from keen friends and backpackers.

This is the second time the boutique winery has been the first to pick Shiraz in the region, having picked Shiraz on 1 February 2009, just before a heatwave struck.

Nearly 20 volunteers helped to handpick just under a hectare of grapes before they were de-stemmed with the

winery’s new Puleo Vega 7 destemmer on Sunday 10 February.

Inkwell winemaker Dudley Brown said perfect weather and good company made for an exciting start to the Shiraz vintage.

“Everything was great. There was a great vibe, the weather was perfect and the fruit was ideal. It was just one of those magical days you hope happens every year,” he said.

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Inkwell winemaker Dudley Brown is hoping to achieve more fresh fruit flavours in the wine.

March 2013 – Issue 590

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21

grapegrowing vineyard wines from sustainably managed vineyards. Its varieties include Shiraz, Primitivo (Zinfandel), Viognier and blends of the same.

Brown said picking grapes earlier would result in more fresh fruit flavours in the wine.

“We’re hoping to produce wine of 14-14.3Bé with a pH3.53.6,” he said.

Inkwell was just getting ready to pick its Block 2 Shiraz and Viognier at the time Grapegrower & Winemaker went to print in late February.

“Reds are fast and whites are slow this year. It’s very strange,” Brown said.

From left is Chalk Hill viticulturist Jock Harvey, with Irina Santiago and Dudley Brown of Inkwell Wines.

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March 2013 – Issue 590

Expert advice crucial in property valuations Ben Rose I need to have my vineyard and winery valued, and have heard the term ‘as is and in use’ in reference to this. Can you please explain what this is?

As property valuers we are generally asked to value properties at a certain date (generally the date of inspection) on a market value based on the highest and best use (which may not be the current use).

Property valuers generally adopt the International Valuation Standards Committee’s (IVSC) definition of market value, which in the International Valuation Standards (2003) is defined as: The estimated amount for which an asset should exchange on the date of valuation between a willing buyer and a willing seller in an arm’s length transaction, after proper marketing, wherein the parties had each acted knowledgeably, prudently and without compulsion.

A valuer must take into account all known factors at the time the valuation is being prepared that could affect the market value of the property as at the valuation date, including but not limited to: • the physical and legal state of the property • interest in the land • improvements • buildings and machinery fixed to the land (fixed plant and equipment)

• any property rights connected to the property • the approved zoning and any permits or existing use rights for the current use.

Generally we are asked to determine the market value ‘as is’. That is, to value the property in the state that it is in when we inspect the property, assuming vacant possession. Sometime we are asked to value the property ‘as if complete’, assuming that certain changes are undertaken and complete, or on an ‘alternate use’ basis whereby the value is based on the next highest and best use, rather than the current use of the property, making allowances for the costs involved in the change of use. These methods of valuation generally look at the value of the items in the list above, and are often referred to as a ‘land and buildings’ valuations.

Sometimes the value of the improvements, particularly specialised improvements such as a specialised winery building, can have a greater value if they are being utilised for their intended purpose. For example a winery with a process floor on one level, fermenters and tanks on another and a barrel/bottling hall on a third, with large areas of hardstand constructed for a certain winemaker may not be desirable or suitable for another winemaker or another purpose. These specialised improvements can be valued ‘in use’, where we assume that the current use

continues and that all the associated fixed plant and equipment is in a condition where it can be used by a prospective purchaser. These values are called ‘as is and in use’. If the improvements are specialised, we may also be asked to provide an ‘alternate use’ value.

Generally we are asked to assume ‘vacant possession’, that is, with no leases or contracts in place. In some cases however there may be a contract for the grapes to a certain company, or a lease in place for the winery building and we may be asked to value a property ‘as is, subject to contract’ or ‘as is, subject to lease’.

As for ‘as is’ valuations, we look to the market for evidence (comparable sales) of the value at which these properties sell, including a contract to sell the grapes or with a lease in place. We generally ask, “What is the added value of the contract or lease?” and this may be based on what an investor would pay for this income and security.

Ben Rose is the principal advisor of Performance Viticulture (www.performanceviticulture.com.au) and manager – rural and agribusiness at Opteon Property ( www.opteonproperty.com.au). Ben grew up on his family’s Rising Vineyard in the Yarra Valley and graduated with first class honours in Agricultural Science at Melbourne University. He established Performance Viticulture in 1997 and is now also a Certified Practising Valuer specialising in wine industry assets, specialist rural properties and agribusiness valuations. Contact Ben at: 0418 836 773 or ben@performanceviticulture.com.au

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12:36 PM Grapegrower16/03/12 & Winemaker 23

grapegrowing

Pruning innovation sees host of new products for 2013 With a wide variety of choices now available, vineyard managers can now choose a system to best suit their particular needs.

Ed Merrison

EVEN AS VINTAGE absorbs the undivided attention of winemakers across Australia and New Zealand, a new Pruning crop of pruning tools is springing up in time for the 2013 pruning season.

A host of upgrades spanning the spectrum from tractor-mounted to handoperated devices are coming onto the market.

In the former category, Ausvine is introducing the new model Collard pre-pruner into Australia. The Collard PCI 3000LPR comes with a redesigned mounting frame, more cutting discs and a range of optional extras. Likewise,

FMR is unveiling a new version of its ERO VSL07 barrel pruner. “It’s been customised for Australian conditions,” FMR’s Chris Clifford said of the VSL07P. “It has a pre-cutter board and tracking saws to achieve the desired result in a single pass on Australian canopies.”

In McLaren Vale, Ledgard has been busy testing a lightweight version of its Vineshaper – the hand-held shears that run off tractor hydraulics and can cut through 100mm diameter vines.

“The Vineshaper’s been on the market for around 10 years but it weighs 12kg.

Our core aim is to halve it to 6kg,” said Ledgard boss John Harnett. “That would obviously be great for occupational health and safety, and for productivity.”

Collard’s new pre-pruner offers more cutting discs.

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March 2013 – Issue 590

Invention lightens the load The new owner of Ledgard Pruning Systems, John Harnett, had no doubt that his Vineshaper fulfilled a vital role in the marketplace. The handheld shears, which run from tractor hydraulics, are geared towards contractors and owners of large sites who wish to carry out a major vineyard refurbishment. They have two functions: either to cut the vine completely for grafting purposes or, when older vines need reshaping, to cut off thick cordons in order to lay down a new cane.

“It’s a robustly engineered, specialised machine,” says Harnett. “People who don’t have it may try to make do with something less suitable and less safe.”

The problem, though, was the bulk. The unit weighed 12kg, and Harnett knew something had to be done when he saw it in use last pruning season.

“You’d have one person on the tractor and another on the Vineshaper, and they’d literally have to swap at the end of the row because it’s such a heavy load to carry and use,” he said.

And so he resolved to build a machine that is not only lighter but also available at a The revolutionary Ledgard Vineshaper can more accessible price point. handle massive cuts of up to 100mm.

“The biggest change is we’ve re-engineered the blade system to dramatically reduce the hydraulic stroke and therefore shorten the hydraulic cylinder,” he says.

The less expensive, 6kg Vineshaper has been undergoing rigorous testing since early February. Harnett expects to have it on the market from the beginning of April.

Pellenc’s latest releases include its new Multiviti frame. This can have multiple heads fitted to it, such as a barrel pruner, wire lifter and green trimmer, as well another new Pellenc product: the TRP tight-precision pruner. This promises to cut the need for hand clean-up by allowing closer mechanical pruning.

On the hand-operated side, the industry is seeing a continued focus on electric products. Pellenc’s Lixion Evolution is among the new offerings seeking to tap into that trend. “Improvements on this model from the last one include containing the battery in a bum bagstyle pack rather than velcroed on the

March 2013 – Issue 590

harness,” said Jeremy Karlovsky of Pellenc. “The new blades also have wear lines and sharpening guides to allow the end user to understand how and when to sharpen them.”

Karlovsky said the 787g handpiece and 1.9kg battery – claimed to last up to three days between charges – answers the industry’s need for fast, reliable equipment that can be used all day, every day.

George Atsalis, who sells Campagnola equipment at Eclipse Enterprises, has also seen a shift towards electric devices. Campagnola made its name with pneumatic systems, which many smaller growers still favour, according to Atsalis.

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But he said health and safety principles are pushing bigger players in a different direction. “They see the overwhelming advantages of electric over pneumatic from a mobility and safety standpoint.”

Blaise Vinot, Melbourne-based managing director of Felco Australia, believes most contractors find pneumatic gear too cumbersome. Vinot’s company will release its Felco 820 this year, an electric pruner that promises high precision on cuts of up to 45mm. Vinot said electric sets may be the more expensive option, but that is their only drawback when compared with pneumatics.

“With electric, you’ve got full control

Grapegrower & Winemaker

25

grapegrowing

FMR’s ERO VSL07P reduces vines from tangled to tidy in moments.

It has a pre-cutter board and tracking saws to achieve the desired result in a single pass Chris Clifford, FMR.

of the blade, no kick-back or twist,” he said. “They’re simpler; there’s less maintenance to worry about and you can have long battery life at the same time as precision of the cut. People think they can get away with cheap tools, but cheap tools result in more fatigue and bad cuts.

If you don’t do a good job on pruning, you pay a big cost down the track.”

Ken Bray, of Hunter Vineyard Management Services, echoed Vinot’s thoughts on the drawbacks of pneumatic pruners, adding that noise is another safety hazard. He uses a team of 20 to prune 90 hectares, starting mid-May and finishing in late August.

His workers operate in teams of two,

one equipped with electric secateurs while another follows behind to tidy up.

“With electric cutters everyone operates independently,” said Bray, who also runs Braemore Wines. “Maintenance is easier and so is management. They’re more efficient, and that makes them worth the extra cost.”

But that extra cost has been enough to persuade Mornington Peninsula producer Yabby Lake to stick to the pneumatic system it started out with 15 years ago.

A kit comprising an air compressor, handpieces and hoses for a team of six set the winery back about $8000. There’s also one pair of electric cutters, which alone cost almost half as much as the six-man

pneumatic system. They are generally used to clean up the ends of the long rows, which the 300m-long hoses cannot reach. Yabby Lake vineyard manager Keith Harris rates his current set-up as safe, easy, durable and efficient. But not as efficient as it might be; the workers do not get to work at their own pace and it takes up to half an hour to shift to a new spot. Plus, they still struggle with the very fine cuts. As the vines get older and tougher, the time will come to go all electric, Harris said.

For Margaret River-based viticultural consultant Bruce Pearse, the biggest game-changer has been the Klima canepruning process. Previously, Pearse

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March 2013 – Issue 590

Top – Felco’s 820 combines form with function in this highly regarded brand.

found spur pruning struggled to deliver the right yields, while cane pruning was often too expensive and labour-intensive to be a viable alternative. But thanks to the New Zealand innovation, this is no longer the case.

Pearse uses electric secateurs for the initial cuts, and the wrapping-down is done by hand. In between, the Klima machine works its magic.

This entails collecting the vines on the fruiting-wire side of the trellis, lifting them vertically and lifting off all the unused canes from the vines. In doing so, the Klima mulches everything including canes, tendrils and vine ties into very small pieces, so there is no need for under-vine sweeping or mulching.

“It’s reduced the cost of cane pruning by up to 30% and, on top of that, we’re getting the benefit of changing to cane,” Pearse said. “The crop load increases because the buds that are left over are more fruitful. The fruit distribution is also better and so are the canopy attributes. You get better airflow in the canopy and the requirement for shoot-thinning is removed.”

Pearse said Klima comes into its own in cool climate viticulture, where spurs do not traditionally allow the retention of fruitful buds.

“It’s providing an opportunity to improve the crop load-tocanopy ratio and we’re encouraging higher cropping levels,” he added. “It’s also solved the problems we had with hand labour.

There are occupational health issues with stripping canes from wires; it’s not a pleasant job.”

But not everyone is convinced that is the way forward.

Across in Frankland River, Alkoomi Wines used to have around 60% of its 104 hectares cane pruned. But dry conditions over recent years have persuaded vineyard manager Rod Hallett to switch to spur. “We’re flexible but at the moment we find things are doing better that way,” explained Hallett. “It’s easier to look after and we have better control of the bud numbers per vine.

It’s still pretty expensive to cane prune, even though they’ve got some good machines out there. We’ve got some pretty old vines here and those just won’t work for us in our position.”

Hallett has his own pair of Electrocoup secateurs, but Alkoomi mostly opts for hand secateurs and loppers to do the cleanup work once the Pellenc single-row barrel-pruner has been through. “I just find you get a better result,” said Hallett. “With upright shoot positioning – and theoretically two cuts per spur positioning – if you’re doing it right, it’s not that many cuts.”

March 2013 – Issue 590

Pellenc’s Lixion Evolution is a cutting-edge pruning system.

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www.winebiz.com.au

Grapegrower & Winemaker

27

grapegrowing grapegrower

Keith Harris

Originally from Waikari, New Zealand, began his career in viticulture in Australia while in his 40s after deciding a career in marketing and advertising wasn’t for him. Today, he is the group viticulturist for Yabby Lake Vineyard, in the Mornington Peninsula, and Heathcote Estate, in Victoria’s Heathcote region. Keith first gained viticultural experience at Hoddles Creek in the Yarra Valley, where he worked for 10 years before becoming the founding viticulturist at Yabby Lake International in 1998.

What inspired you to work in viticulture and how have you got to where you are now?

I had bought a Kiwi fruit orchard in the Yarra Valley and in my second year of operation lost my entire crop to a hailstorm. Hoddles Creek Vineyard was just starting a new vineyard across the road and I joined them as a casual vineyard hand to pay the bills until my next crop came in. I was in on the development of the vineyard and learnt it all from the ground up, and found I loved it. When asked if I would like to start Yabby Lake as a new business on the Peninsula I sold the farm and became a full-time viticulturist.

What aspect of your work do you enjoy the most or get the most satisfaction from?

As the vineyard matures, fine-tuning separate blocks to bring out interesting flavours and then seeing them expressed in block wines gives me a great sense of achievement.

Who do you think is the most influential person in the Australian wine industry?

I can’t pick just one. James Halliday with his amazing knowledge of wines and his love of Burgundy is a real inspiration to any serious Pinot grower. Richard Smart also influenced a lot of my early thinking about vineyards with his book Sunlight into wine and John Gladsone’s book Viticulture and Environment continues to make me think.

What is your favourite time in the vineyard and why?

Watching dormant vines burst into life in spring and watching the development of the crop to come always inspires me.

Tell us about your most memorable winetasting experience.

At the 2007 MPINPNC tasting a flight of Domaine de la Romanée-Contee wines

28 Grapegrower & Winemaker

which included Echezeaux, Grands Echezeaux, Saint-Vivant, Richebourg and La Tache. All Grand Crus from the 2004 vintage.

What do you like to do when you’re not working in vineyards?

Travelling around the vast and beautiful country that is Australia. I never tire of it.

What keeps you awake at night?

Not much, but birds and rain at vintage can lead to some anxious moments.

How do you de-stress after vintage?

Getting away from it all and maybe doing a little fishing.

What was the last big-ticket equipment purchase you made for your business?

Would you recommend the equipment to colleagues?

As most of our vineyard work is done by hand we don’t have a lot of capital expenditure on machinery. The last big item I bought was a New Holland tractor and that was a few years ago. I find them to be effective and reliable tractors for our vineyard.

I have always found the Australian & New Zealand Grapegrower & Winemaker magazine to be a reliable source of industry news, research papers and a handy reference for suppliers.

What has been the best business decision you’ve made for your business?

I encouraged the owners to buy the land at Heathcote and start Heathcote Estate. The Shiraz wine that comes from this region’s ancient Cambrian soils is savoury and complex.

From a research and development perspective, is there one single piece of research in the wine industry that has influenced you or your directions in viticulture?

I have always been interested in the concept of deficit irrigation and am continually working to find the best balance for flavour development in

www.winebiz.com.au

the grapes. I am also taking part in an ongoing program measuring bunchzone temperatures during the ripening period and looking at ways of manipulating the canopy to influence flavour outcomes.

The world is flooding ... which two wines (white and red) would you take onto the Ark?

I would be very happy with a Mornington Peninsula Chardonnay and Pinot Noir but more importantly I would take cuttings from my best Chardonnay and Pinot Noir blocks so I could start the vineyard again.

March 2013 – Issue 590

The United Grower March 2013 The newsletter of Wine Grape Growers Australia

The United Grower

is produced by

for the winegrape industry Sponsored by

WGGA proudly acknowledges its associate members – Advanced Viticulture and Management, AHA Viticulture, Belvino Investments, Red Acre, Retallack Viticulture, SCE-Energy Solutions, Vine Sight, Vitibit and Woodshield.

Address: Level 1, Industry House, National Wine Centre Corner Botanic and Hackney Roads Adelaide, SA 5000 Telephone: (08) 8133 4400 Facsimile: (08) 8133 4466 Email: info@wgga.com.au Website: www.wgga.com.au

Growers and winemakers say objective measures need to improve In May 2012, The Australian Wine Research Institute, in collaboration with WGGA and the National Measurement Institute, conducted a survey on the measurement of grape quality in the Australian wine industry and the report was recently released to the key partners. The survey invited ‘grape sellers’ and ‘grape buyers’ to participate in an on-line survey on how measures of winegrape quality are made and used. The aim was to create a better understanding of the processes involved and the uses made of these measurements.

WGGA believes the survey findings endorse WGGA’s policy on objective measures and its belief that transparent systems of objective measures is one the last frontiers for the Australian wine sector to achieve maturity as a market-responsive and globally competitive industry (see The United Grower, September 2012, and the policy at www.wgga.com.au/policy).

An encouraging response to the survey of 350 industry participants was culled to 294 responses for analysis, based on those that satisfied the statistical requirements. The report assembles the data for interpretation but does not perform the latter role. Rather, the reader should be aware that the interpretation that follows is WGGA’s.

At the time of writing, the report was not generally available although it is understood that it will be published by AWRI soon. The AWRI report is must-read for any industry member with an interest in objective measurements and WGGA hopes it will provide direction to the industry on productive outcomes available from its findings.

Key observations from the report follow: • Measurements of grape juice composition (sugar, pH and TA, colour, tannin, YAN, smoke taint, seasonal comparisons), physical characteristics (weight or yield, a visual vineyard assessment, MOG) and pests and diseases are all assessed in

•

•

•

•

•

by far the majority of grape transactions while sensory assessments, being more subjective and thus more difficult to measure, tended to be less preferred for assessment.

Buyers and sellers generally agreed on the measures that are used (although there are some differences in emphasis) with the exception that buyers mentioned ‘taste and quality of the grape and wine’ while sellers didn’t.

Sellers reported that the locations of grape composition assessments were split, roughly by thirds, between the vineyard, at the weighbridge or in both locations.

The buyers’ purposes of the measures were for price setting and/or for winemaking practice. Among the top five uses for each purpose, three of them were common to both price-setting and winemaking namely; pests and diseases, yield and grape/wine taste; while visual vineyard assessment and MOG were used principally for price setting and sugar and pH/TA were used principally for winemaking.

Across both buyers and sellers, sizeable shares of the respondents, at between 40% - 60% depending on the factor, thought that sampling procedures and measurement methods could be improved (see associated table).

Nevertheless, while these proportions thought sampling and measurement could be improved, fewer (at 27 - 29%) registered ‘dissatisfaction’ with them.

While buyers and sellers were roughly similar in their belief that improvement could occur, more sellers were dissatisfied than buyers. Where 27-29% of sellers were dissatisfied, only 9% of the buyers were (not shown in the table, page 2).

Continued page 2…

www.wgga.com.au March 2013 The United Grower 1

Committee and staff news

Your WGGA executive committee's views Victor Patrick (chair)

Justin Jarrett (deputy chair)

“Static indicative prices and below average crops in many regions suggest that the green shoots to build on will not arrive at the farm gate in vintage 2013.”

“The way forward is to only grow the right variety, at the right grade, and the right price – without this, we are all going backwards.”

victorpatrick@bigpond.com Electoral zone: South Australia (voting member)

jarrettswines@bigpond.com Electoral zone: New South Wales/Queensland (voting member)

Bob Bellato

rvb4@bigpond.com Electoral zone: New South Wales/Riverina (voting member)

Kerry Smart

ksmart@westnet.com.au Electoral zone: Greater Western Australia (voting member)

“With very low yields on average and some grape varieties in the Riverina dropped, I believe we will see the exit of many growers from this region.”

“Growers with a long term view of the industry need to work closely with their winery clients to identify trends, and plant new varieties and clones to keep ahead of competition from imported wines.”

Dennis Mills

mvw@murrayvalleywinegrapes.com.au Electoral zone: Murray Valley (voting member)

Simon Berry

“At early February, Chardonnay for both sparkling base and wine are good crops of quality fruit, Merlot and Shiraz are coming off. Big disappointment in below cost of production prices for most varieties.”

simon@berry2wine.com.au Electoral zone: South Australia (voting member) “Started sampling, season looking good, moderate yields, demand tempered as growers rightly assert their need for profitable grape sales as grape buyers also need to assert with their buyers that they will be able to market a wine product that is also profitable.”

ANDREW WEEKS Email: Andrew.weeks@cwines.com.au Electoral Zone: Riverland (voting member) “With vintage 2013 under way, yields are variable and quality is good. After two difficult seasons growers are grateful for a quiet season, but remain hopeful for better returns.”

Kym Ludvigsen

ludvigsn@vic.chariot.net.au Electoral zone: Greater Victoria/Tasmania (voting member)

“The future of every vine improvement body in Australia is in the balance as low demand for grapevine cuttings in the last few years has caused severe funding shortfalls. As an industry, we need to act to prevent the market failure facing this important grape sector. Without high health grapevines available to plant, our businesses are placed at increased risk of underperforming.”

Lawrie Stanford (executive director)

lawrie.stanford@wgga.com.au (non-voting member) “Initial offers of disappointing prices will hopefully edge up as lower yields become apparent, but if they don’t, it will be a tell-tale signal about the status of ‘balance’ in the industry.”

…from page 1 • More than half the sellers reported that they only sell to 1 or 2 different buyers and almost 60% of the sellers in these instances did not have contracts.

• In a part of the survey where respondents were asked for further comments there were extensive and variable responses but two major themes seemed apparent: - Firstly, there were a number of comments about the desirability of removing the use of colour for price setting. These comments reflected a number of problems including the need for independent assessments and, for a number of reasons, the difficulty of relating grape colour to wine characteristics and the consequent

fairness of using the measure.

- Secondly, roughly three-quarters of the comments stated that there were benefits in a standardised approach to sampling and measurement. The benefits were identified as increased efficiency, quantifiable and repeatable results, transparency, avoiding disputes, improving relationships between seller and buyer and finally, enabling better responses to winery requirements.

2 The United Grower March 2013 www.wgga.com.au

The most prescient comment that summed up grower dissatisfaction with existing objective measurement practices, was provided by a winemaker – “If I was a grower I would not tolerate such a poor, arbitrary and inconsistent approach to my remuneration.”

Touché!

WGGA works in this area to improve the deal for grower/sellers – get in touch to ask how or to offer your support.

Grape juice composition

Could be improved Dissatisfied with the processes

Pests and diseases

Sampling

Measuring

Sampling

53%

45%

49%

29%

Measuring 40% 27%

WGGA Opinions

Green shoots bearing fruit?

In the last opinion piece it was related that the take-away message from the Wine Industry Outlook Conference was that there were some potentially good signs emerging for the wine industry.

Recent industry data, compliments of Wine Australia ‘Winefacts’ information, suggests that recent smaller vintages of approximately 1.6million tonnes are manageable, stock-to-sales ratios are lower than we have experienced in the recent past, total Australian wine sales (domestic and overseas) have only fallen marginally (exports marginally up and domestic marginally down). Wine imports continue to grow.

This data, with the exception of import growth, implies that the rate of decline has slowed and that we may be turning the corner.

The central challenge remains ‘low profitability’ caused by margin squeeze through the high AUD hampering export shipments and with more product at home in the domestic market, volumes to move here.

Several articles produced by WGGA in the last year suggested that winegrape growing profitability might well be negative in 2012 as it was in 2011. This proved to be the case when the production data came in and yields were known.

In my opinion, based on anecdotal evidence that suggests modest crops (low in many regions) and grape pricing at 2012 levels, or lower means negative returns on average can be expected again in 2013.

In other words the ‘green shoots to build on’ remain a challenge and have not arrived at the farm gate.

Growers need to be cautious about thinking

there is a return to better times for growing.

Profitability varies between regions and enterprises, averages provide signposts to build individual enterprise data.

Wine Australia recently approved for all winegrape growers, free, unrestricted access to their on-line statistical resource ‘Winefacts’. Growers must be registered.

A registration form is available through the WGGA website www.wgga.com.au. Predating this great initiative, some of the data is also available on the WGGA website under the heading of Industry Statistics.

Interest from growers has been modest to date. I recommend that growers access the data available, use it as a basis for enterprise planning and negotiation and form their own opinions on their future in the industry.

‘Balance’ – the role of sharing risk This newsletter contains an article with some key observations on an AWRI report about practices in objectively measuring winegrape characteristics. WGGA believes improvement in this area has the potential to create better market signals and better reading of consumer demand and through these two things, better supply and demand balance. But this is not the only way to improve market signals. Another is through the equal sharing of risk. In general terms, risk is not shared equally between grower and off-taker in the Australian wine sector. If it were, there’s a good chance both parties would more carefully assess what was sustainable and with this factor in focus, subsequent decisions would improve supply and demand balance.

The perennial niggle at this time of the year is the fact that growers bear all the financial risk of raising a crop, often to the exacting standards set by a contracting winemaker, with no knowledge of the degree to which receipts will cover the costs. The industry’s agreed compensator, via the Wine Industry Code, is for indicative prices to be released prior to harvest (December in the warm areas and January in the cool). While late in the piece, being after most of the vineyard investment is made, it’s something, at least.

Of course, off-takers complain that to release prices is anti-competitive. If there’s any truth in this the solution is to state upfront what kind of fruit is required (this is where objective measures come in) and what price will be paid for it. If ‘anticompetitive’ means the off-taker doesn’t know if they can sell what they buy, they

need to remember that this is their risk and maybe they aren’t doing enough to manage it. The grower took on production risk, the off-taker should take on the marketing risk.

Even then, indicative prices sometimes have little to do with providing accurate market signals but rather, they can be released to ‘test’ the market. Indicative prices should also be tested by growers to see how serious the off-taker is about them.

Adding further imbalance, and unlike most other commercial arrangements that have much stricter terms of payment (say, 30 days), the wine sector spins it out over what can end up being eight months and three separate payments. Why? The best I can ascertain is because there is an historical understanding that winemakers have to carry their winemaking processing costs over a long period of time before an income stream commences. The three-stage payments help to alleviate the risk. Well, hello – growers are carrying the production risk (see above), why can’t winemakers carry their own processing risk? Effectively, these payment arrangements institutionalise the borrowing of grower money to run winery business. Winemakers should go to a bank for operating cash, that’s what banks are for.

If the consolation prize for growers is that three-stage payments gives some kind of security of payment, that’s all it is – a consolation prize. Even then, there are plenty of examples where these payment terms being abused. Hence, WGCSA’s moves to get the Wine Grapes Act, that enshrines the arrangement in SA, tightened

up (see last newsletter).

Be that as it may, in an extra-ordinary display of goodwill on behalf of growers, both indicative prices and the threestage terms of payments are a part of the industry’s Code. But the industry’s Code is not a legal document – it is a statement of intent about good commercial practice, and minimalist at that, ‘providing a framework for fair and equitable dealings between signatories and winegrape growers’.

A legalistic approach to the Code is inappropriate. Rather, the Code attempts to create a self-regulatory environment in which ethical behaviour rests on good relationships and trust not legal thrust.

These thoughts reflect some doubts about the adequacy of the Code, but for the time being, it’s the best we’ve got. We can, and probably should, make changes to it but in the meantime, the industry needs to be guided by the existing interpretation of good commercial practice that the Code represents.

Adding to the small number of existing signatories to the Code, there are a number of new signatories since October last year that are to be congratulated for signing on.

They are; d'Arenberg, Ballast Stone Estate Wines, Seppeltsfield Wines, Tinlins, Wirra Wirra Vineyards and Yalumba. Big raps from WGGA also to Treasury Wine Estates for spreading the word about signing on.

Of course, WGGA recognises there are a lot of good off-takers out there who transact in all of the desirable ways implied above.

The next step is to do more of what TWE is doing with the Code.

www.wgga.com.au March 2013 The United Grower 3

News

Harvest 2013: early report, lower yields and good quality A nationwide review of the 2013 harvest in mid to late January captured the progress of the white harvest and canvassed the effects of challenging weather episode at the time.

In different areas of Australia there were heatwaves (early January) and bushfires as well as cyclone-inspired rainfall on the eastern seaboard that swept down the coast, and someway inland, from south east Queensland to Sydney.

Nothing is more certain than the fact that this story will be well out of date by the time this newsletter reaches our readers, but some pointers to the nature of the vintage are available.

Widespread agreement among the reports received by WGGA, were that yields (tonnes per hectare) were less than average.

After a string of volatile seasons, what is ‘average’ these days is a moot point and with the 2013 season being so young, it was not possible at the time of writing to determine if lower yields in 2013 would match or underscore the lower yields of the last two seasons.

General agreement sat around yield shortfalls of between 5-10% on the average.

While the early-January heatwaves had an influence, their effects on yields were downplayed in favour of a lower yield potential in 2013 stemming from fruiting buds in 2013 that were first forming in the latter part of 2011 – the horror year for coolness and damp – which constrained the buds’ development. Moreover, the effects of the heatwaves were mitigated to some degree with good winter rains (prior to the onset of dry conditions commencing in spring) and therefore, good soil moisture profiles, plus ample availability of water for irrigation, meaning that on the one hand, healthy canopies protected the fruit and on the other, irrigation replenished vines where water was available.

General reporting of yields since WGGA collected feedback for this account of the harvest, give the strong impression that there is further downward risk to yields.

Eastern seaboard rains were too recent to be fully reported in this account.

Nevertheless, in Queensland, the Granite Belt appears to have escaped the full force of the drenching although the Burnett was more in harm’s way. Rain in the Lower Hunter hit the latter part of the white harvest, with the effects yet to be determined, while there was hope that the red harvest, yet to

come off at the time of writing, would come through unaffected. Further inland from the NSW coast, in places like Mudgee and Orange, the rain was a bonus since the on-farm dam storages they rely on for supplementary watering, were depleting in the dry and the rain that came in on the margins of the cyclone activity had a positive replenishing effect.

WGGA’s belief is that the heralded ‘balance’ rests on continued sales of wine at unsustainable prices, with growers bearing most of the pain they bring, and this means supply and demand cannot be considered as balanced at all.

Bushfires raised concerns in the more southern growing districts of Australia.

Reports of some burned vineyards is clearly devastating for their owners but it was not evident that such damage was widespread or significant for the national harvest outcome. Smoke taint did not appear to be a concern because of the early stages of fruit development, the general separation of the fires from growing districts and where the drift of smoke reached vineyards, the smoke’s volatile compounds had dispersed were therefore not absorbed.

Among Australia’s foremost varieties, Chardonnay in the warm districts has been reported to have had restricted spring growth, Shiraz yields are widely reported to be down and there were occasional reports of low Cabernet yields.

The general dryness of the season and absence of disease has been a large factor in meaning good quality. While too early to talk about intensified colour, with the reds still developing, intensified flavours in the whites were evident. Also contributing to quality was the steady vine and fruit development prior to the heat in early January, which left the fruit in a healthy state that resisted the adverse conditions. Any shrivelling of the fruit from the heat meant the affected fruit dropped from the vine which left the bunches clean. Finally, reports of cooler nights received from many areas means steady, slow growth which in turn means full development of character. It is encouraging to note also that the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting cooler days and nights over a large region in the southeast of Australia albeit that warmer days and nights are likely over western and southern WA in February to April 2013.

Early announcements of winegrape indicative prices were disappointing, and confusing, to growers. While higher-value fruit appeared to attract good prices, consistent with the current green shoot demand for higher-priced wines, mid to lower grades of fruit were attracting prices that were the same, if not more frequently lower, than last year. Grower confusion comes from a disconnection between these price offers and talk in the industry of a turnaround.

While a strong AUD is a clear constraining influence on the ability of winemakers to pay better prices the much vaunted drawdown of national stocks have been heralded as an indication that the industry may be back in balance. WGGA’s belief is that this ‘balance’ rests on continued sales of wine at unsustainable prices, with growers bearing most of the pain of uneconomic prices, and this means supply and demand cannot be considered as balanced at all (see November 2012 United Grower).

As the lower-yielding character of the season becomes more apparent, WGGA believes there will be upward pressure on grape prices and encourages growers to negotiate more favourable prices with their off-takers. If lower prices than 2012 do prevail, it will then be at least four years in a row that the average grower in Australia will have receipts that are less than the cost of production (see more in the September 2012 United Grower).

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The grower behind the brand Grower: Ken Bray WINERY: Thomas Wines WINEMAKER:Andrew Thomas Brand: Braemore Semillon Region: Hunter Valley The wine and the wine company Andrew Thomas’ philosophy is to specialise in the signature varieties of the Hunter Valley: Shiraz and Semillon. All his fruit is sourced from independent growers. He has been buying Semillon from Ken Bray for nearly 20 years, since he first went looking for top shelf Semillon on a particular strip of highly regarded soil in the Hunter Valley.

Andrew sees his job as being to preserve the quality of fruit from the vineyard, not to perform any winemaking tricks. Throughout the year he leaves all the vineyard decisions up to Ken, but does spend a lot of time in the vineyard as vintage approaches.

The grower Ken has been growing grapes since the 1960s, when he first worked for Brian McGuigan. He purchased the 6ha block from Orlando in 1992 – but the vines were planted in the 1970s. Ken and his wife named the vineyard Braemore – a poetic blend of their two surnames. Their thinking was that having a name was important to give the vineyard an identity and promote its fruit. Now that it has become so successful, they have trademarked the name jointly with Andrew Thomas – a very unusual arrangement that reflects their special relationship.

With vines that are over 40 years old, Ken spends a lot of effort rejuvenating them.

“Nothing special – but consistent husbandry”, as Ken puts it. The grapes are all handpicked, at the request of the winemaker and the wine has received many awards.

The relationship The arrangement between Ken and Andrew has always been based on an old-fashioned handshake.

Andrew gets first refusal on the fruit each season; he has taken more and more over the years as the product has become increasingly popular and recognised for its

®

quality. The two men share an attention to detail and pride in the success of the label. Ken’s experience working in winemaking at Wyndham Estate in the 1970s has helped him to understand a winemaker’s requirements. They both recognise the importance of this particular fruit for this single vineyard wine. In 2003, Ken paid to install irrigation to ensure the reliability of supply – “otherwise it causes all sorts of problems for Andrew”. Andrew, for his part, says that the first person he delivers the new wine to each year is Ken – “straight off the bottling line”.

What makes the relationship work?

“They treat us as special,” Ken says. Grower and winemaker discuss how things are going on a very regular basis. It helps that the winery is just around the corner from the vineyard. Ken says that it gives him satisfaction to be part of a team that has had such success in the marketplace and on the show circuit, and to receive recognition for his efforts from Andrew and from his fellow growers in the Valley.

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News

Tax related depreciation of vineyards – changes for pre-2004 vines mean less impact on over-production The claim is sometimes made to this office that accelerated depreciation provisions are still encouraging over-production. The other tax culprit that is more frequently identified today is the WET Rebate. While this article does not attempt to quantify the relative impacts of the two it does suggest that the impact of accelerated depreciation is much less after the tax provisions for vineyards planted after October 2004 were changed.

The depreciation rate for vines planted before October 2004 is 13% and the maximum time over which a grapevine is fully depreciated is therefore just under 8 years. This contrasts with the special provisions that apply to grapevines planted before October 2004, where capital

Rate of depreciation

expenditure on establishment (preparing the land, the cost of the vines and planting) could be written off over a 4 year period (ie 25% per annum). Note that the effective life of a grapevine is estimated by the Tax Office to be between 15 and 20 years, hence depreciation is still “accelerated” but the amendment means vines are now treated the same as other horticultural plants.

Another amendment changed the commencement time for deductions based on depreciation. For vines planted before October 2004, this time is from planting but for those planted after October 2004, deductions commence from the income year of the grapevine’s first commercial crop.

Grapevines planted prior to October 2004

Grapevines planted after October 2004

25% per annum

13% per annum

Time period for write-off of establishment costs Income year of first claim Tax provision

4 years

8 years

Year when vines first used in the business

Year of first commercial season

Special provision for grapevines

Grapevines treated same as all horticultural plants

New industry biosecurity arrangements progressing The National Winegrape Biosecurity Committee (NWBC) that had existed for over a year after the hand-over of the industry’s biosecurity management function to WGGA, met in December 2012 and agreed to a proposal that a National Viticulture Biosecurity Committee (NVBC) be formed that would include all of the vine industries: winegrapes, table grapes, dried fruit and nursery. An inaugural meeting of the NVBC occurred on February 1 and began the process of carefully scoping its mission and identifying key tasks. Importantly, with industry representatives, relevant state technical agencies and bureaucracies and

the relevant commonwealth bureaucracy around the table, the NVBC represents a strong conduit for communicating and harmonising regulatory arrangements for biosecurity across Australian viticulture. The old NWBC agreed to morph into group that will be of the nature of an industry reference group that will recruit industry members to feed industry proposals to both the WGGA and WFA executive committees for approval and then into the NVBC. It will also change its name to better reflect this role. At the time of writing, recruiting for the reference group was underway.

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6 The United Grower March 2013 www.wgga.com.au

WGGA Constitution upgraded At the WGGA AGM in November 2012, a number of changes to the Constitution were approved. Most of these changes simply updated the constitution by removing or amending references to the various Interim Period arrangements specified at the time WGGA was constituted in 2005.

This included transitioning the ‘convening bodies’, which were responsible for making Electoral Zone nominations of representatives onto the WGGA Executive Committee, into ‘representative bodies’ with the same function. Other changes included streamlining committee decision-making, by reducing the number of members required to call a special general meeting from 50 to 20 members, making the appointment of a Treasurer optional, and setting a more reasonable time for notifying members of General Meetings (one month’s notice instead of two). For more information on these changes or a copy of the new Constitution, check the website or contact the office.

Merger will proceed In early December 2012 the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Sen the Hon Joe Ludwig approved the industry proposal to merge the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation (GWRDC) and the Wine Australia Corporation (Wine Australia). At the time of the announcement, it was expected that the new single body would commence in July 2014, following the usual processes for creating the required legislation. Now that the election has been announced for September 2013, it is yet to be seen if this program is disrupted. The Minister confirmed that key expectations expressed by industry during the consultation process would be supported in the new body.

These included that the new body would perform the existing functions of the GWRDC and Wine Australia Corporation, without change to the structure or amount of levies that currently fund each authority and a guarantee that R&D funding will be safeguarded for R&D and related extension purposes only.

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Fact Box

Regional associations revisited Errata The fact box on regional associations in the last edition of the United Grower contained two errors needing correction.

Firstly the graph was incorrectly labelled and populated. A new graph is printed here and the relevant interpretation repeated.

70

4 000

60

3 500

Number of members

Number of Associations

• The 69% of regional associations that are combined grower/ winemaker associations account for 54% of the total membership in all associations in Australia while the 17% of associations that are dedicated grower associations account for 38% and the 14% of associations that are winemaker associations account for 9% of the total membership.

Secondly, point 4 was incorrect - the correct version is: • Over two thirds of the total number of members in Australia’s regional associations are independent growers, at 68%, with another 28% being winemaker-growers and the final 4% being winemakers.

3 000

50

2 500

40

2 000

30

1 500

20

1 000

10

Grower

Members

Associations

Members

Associations

Members

Associations

500

Winemaker/grower Winemaker

There was a promise in the last newsletter to expand on the level of grower representation in regional associations. The associated table contains the relevant data with the caveat that the data used does not allow definitive but rather, indicative conclusions.

Two sets of data are compared. First, WGGA’s 2011-12 contact database in which the regional associations are described as either independent grower associations, combined winemaker and grower associations or dedicated winemaker associations, together with a breakdown of their membership on the same terms. Second, an Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) dataset, based on the Vineyard Survey, which describes the total set of winegrape growers in Australia in 2009-10 as either independent growers or winemaker-growers.

This comparison yields the conclusion that winegrape growers in Australia are generally well represented through regional associations. The exception seems to be representation of cooler temperate independent growers. Keeping in mind the caveats on the data, some observations follow: • A healthy 83% of Australia’s winegrape growers are represented through regional associations.

• With the result driven in the warm inland districts (Riverina, Murray Valley and the Riverland) by various forms of levy arrangements, independent growers are better represented than than winemaker growers (86% compared to 76%). A 109% representation of warm inland growers through the grower associations is an anomaly nevertheless.

• However, independent growers in the cooler temperate districts are less well represented than their warm inland counterparts, with a 30% shortfall in association membership relative to the ABS statistic for grower numbers, compared to a 9% membership oversubscription in the warm districts relative to the ABS statistic for grower numbers.

• In the cooler temperate districts, winemaker-growers appear more involved in regional associations than their independent grower counterparts, with 80% of the winemaker-growers represented compared to 71% of the independent growers.

• In the cooler temperate districts, combined grower/winemaker associations are the dominant form of representative organisation.

Comparisons of grower membership in regional wine sector associations across Australia.

Independent Growers

% WGGA represent database ation* 77 na

ABS na

Combined grower/winemaker associations

na

1882

na

na

1326

na

2851

2012

71%

1753

1403

80%

1982

2153

109%

93

8

9%

4833

4165

86%

1846

1411

76%

Total Grower Associations

Grand Total

Totals

Winemaker Growers

Source Cooler Temperate Grower Associations

Warm inland**

% WGGA represent database ation* 130 na

ABS na

ABS

6679

% WGGA represent database ation*

5576

83%

Sources: ABS, special data service to WGGA based on the 2009-10 Vineyard Survey; WGGA database, WGGA's 2011-12 Contact Database based on feedback from regional associations * indicative ** Note there are no combined grower/winemaker associations in the warm districts (Riverland, Murray Valley and Riverina)

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8 The United Grower March 2013 www.wgga.com.au

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winemaking Oregon – vintage postcard In 2012, unlike previous vintages, the Oregon, US harvest conditions proved ideal, with warm days, blue skies and cool nights meaning winemakers actually had to make decisions about harvest, instead of simply waiting for the rain to stop.

Max Marriott

MY FIRST EXPERIENCE of the Oregon vintage happened years ago when listening to friends recount their animated stories of long lunches, great wines, pumping music and notorious parties. I knew of the Oregon vintage by reputation.

But interwoven throughout these tales were mentions – even just snippets – of innovation, desire, perseverance, hard work and above all, passion. A raw, primal incarnation for those few precious weeks during and after harvest when the grape became a deity worshipped with aberrant reverence. Nothing was outside the realm of possibility.

You have no idea what to expect. As an Oregon vintage virgin, it was supremely exciting but also a little daunting heading over to this fabled wine region, arguably the New World mecca for Pinot. I say arguably, but I do believe the Oregonians are ahead of the game and there is much we can learn from their craftsmanship of Pinot. It is true, too, that they have taken time to create their identity, with several stylistic shifts over the 50-year tenure of the region. I remember drinking Oregon Pinots of the late ‘90s when I lived in Brisbane, not a decade ago, that were rich, dark and full-bodied (often with alcohols in the 14-15% territory). Very enjoyable wines, mind you, but very different to the current trend that appears to be defining Oregon Pinot: elegance, medium body, higher acid, lower alcohol and flavour tempered by restraint.

I think I speak for most interns when I remark on how accommodating the people of Oregon are. It should really be classed as a different country to the rest of the US. They’re fiercely green-minded, fiscal conservatives, laid back, friendly and a little bit quirky. It’s a place that automatically scores big points among the thirsty wine clergy – Portland has the highest number of breweries of any city in the world (matched almost by its adoration for coffee – another tick in the box). People will queue in the rain (it rains a lot) for donuts (yes, donuts), everyone rides bikes (or drives hybrids) and there are lots of hipsters. You get the picture. So after a 22-hour commute from Queenstown, New Zealand to Portland, it was only normal that I was collected from the airport and whisked March 2013 – Issue 590

straight to a 60th birthday party for a local winemaker (in a Prius). I was working for Steve Doerner, at Cristom, a man whose wines I had great respect for and a man of whom the Willamette Valley had great respect for (evident by a woman at the party stopping me midsentence and asking me what I’d done to get a gig working for Steve).

The Willamette Valley AVA (American Viticultural Area) is loosely situated between Portland and Eugene (Salem is roughly halfway), bordered by the Coast Range to the west and Cascade Mountains to the east. The soils are a mix of sedimentary and volcanic, the lowlands quite fertile as a result of the sediment deposited by the ancient Lake Missoula floods. I was a little taken aback by the thriving agricultural community in the region, not too dissimilar to the roads leading into Burgundy. The region is broken down into six sub-AVAs: Chehalem Mountains, Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills (home to Cristom), McMinville, Ribbon Ridge and YamhillCarlton. The expression of each of these AVAs – aside from the common factors of soil type, aspect and altitude – is partly influenced by their proximity to the neighbouring ranges and the Van Duzer Corridor; a break in the Coast Range that provides moderating Pacific winds to parts of the Willamette Valley.

Contrary to previous vintages, 2012 harvest conditions were idyllic: a string of warm days, blue skies and cool nights that had winemakers in a quandary; now they had to actually make decisions about harvest, instead of just waiting for the rain to stop. The fruit was healthy, the birds were kept at bay and the bees were on their best behaviour. Interestingly, the only hiccup came from a labour shortage that seemed to affect everyone across the region (the first time this had ever happened).

The reliance on Mexican labour for contract fruit purchases in conjunction with a massively compressed harvest window saw vineyard managers turning up to vineyards with no staff to pick the fruit. It usually meant that fruit only hung on the vine for an extra couple of days, so no real detriment to the vintage, just a logistical inconvenience. www.winebiz.com.au

Max Marriott travels from NZ to get up close and personal with a standout Oregon vintage.

I asked Steve for this thoughts on the 2012 vintage, and he replied with an unmistakably wry Steve Doerner quip of, “I guarantee, it was the best vintage of the year”. Truth be told, Steve often prefers a vintage that might be more widely regarded as a challenging year, “I find it more difficult to make wines with balance in warm years than the cool ones. It’s a dilemma I think many regions are facing; making wine with flavour but still maintaining the balance of acid and alcohol”.

It’s this desirable balance, particular from the cooler years, that Jessica MozeicoBlair of Et Fille Wines attributes to Oregon Pinot’s longevity. “The ageing ability of our Pinots is the result of a relatively cool climate that keeps alcohol and acidity in balance. Our alcohols generally hover in the 12-13% range, except in very warm years. I think that helps keep the acidity in check, contributing to the lifespan of our wines.” It’s a sentiment that Chris Williams of Brooks Wines fondly echoes.

Grapegrower & Winemaker

37

winemaking “The most excitement I’ve seen for wine lately is over lower alcohol levels and higher acid levels. Fortunately for me, that describes the wines we have been making all along.”

Lower alcohols, higher acidities and preferences for cooler years. It’s a far cry from the Oregon modus operandi of 15 years ago, when wine critics and seemingly the wine consumers were asking for bigger, bolder, blacker Pinots, steeped in the spell of California. The pursuit of a new, leaner, sleeker Pinot – reminiscent more of the typicity defined

by Burgundy – is a recent elucidation and realisation by Oregon winemakers as much as it is a more learned Pinotdrinking public.

Josh Bergstrom of Bergstrom Wines elaborates: “There was a brief fashion for enormous, well-endowed Pinot coming out of the warmer climates of California.

Most Americans have only recently been turned onto Pinot Noir en masse, so I don’t know if the newbie really knows what to expect or what they really want from the grape; they just know that they like it. Although I am guilty as charged of making brash and opulent wines in my youth, I have now settled into a style that balances the elegant side of opulence and

is a correct interpretation of the vintage.

It’s where I hope to be for many decades to come regardless of fad or fashion”.

The ageing ability of our Pinots is the result of a relatively cool climate that keeps alcohol and acidity in balance.

Jessica Mozeico-Blair.

David Paige of Adelsheim is one of the few who remained consistent with his winemaking approach: “Fortunately I think most Pinot Noir drinkers have a growing appreciation for elegance and complexity, which suits our style well and makes it unnecessary for us to wonder whether we should pander to them. We used to worry more about this

around 10 years ago, when the press and consumers still seemed to be caught up in the ‘bigger is better’ mode. We stuck to our guns and couldn’t be happier”.

If it’s relatively easy for a winemaker or wine company to make a conscious decision to alter their styles of wine, whether the result of changing market preferences, imbalance in the wines or a transition in one’s predilections, how does this happen? And what is to be said of the identity of a region if that identity can be manipulated? Or is it just a natural stage in the path of evolution?

The hand of the winemaker – whether devastatingly obvious or surreptitiously concealed – is no secret. Nor is the ability for the winemaker – and grower for that matter – to change, affect and/or direct the final destination of a wine.

At the end of the day, the ultimate goal that we all strive for is to grow the best possible grapes from our patch of dirt, guiding those grapes through the winemaking process to make the best possible wine. Each vintage, each year, you get one chance to nail it, taking the lessons learnt into the future. It’s a neverending work in progress, but I have a feeling that the Oregon winegrowers are on the right track.

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March 2013 – Issue 590

Winemakers forge ties with sommeliers

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Kellie Arbuckle

IT’S JUST AFTER five in the afternoon at the Coffee Branch, one of the latest hotspot cafes to line the inner streets of Adelaide. Rows of polished wine glasses are neatly placed on a table, next to slices of prosciutto and crusty bread. An array of Aglianico wines, Australian and international, are tucked away in the background, ready to be poured as part of a benchmark tasting, held by not-forprofit organisation Sommeliers Australia.

What’s interesting about this event is the mix of attendees waiting patiently for the tasting: hospitality professionals, interested consumers, marketers, educators and distributors – and wine producers. According to David Clarke, former executive officer of Sommeliers Australia, it’s not uncommon for winemakers and viticulturists to sit in on the wine tastings.

Clarke, who resigned from the organisation in November to pursue a life with his family in South Africa, says producers are becoming increasingly interested in how sommeliers think about wine.

“Winemakers come to the tastings to get a real insight into how sommeliers see wines, and what they like and dislike.

They’re mindful that there is a growing marketplace for wine and, with the domination of the two major players in the retail sector, it’s either export or restaurants for a lot of them,” Clarke said.

Prior to working for Sommeliers Australia, a position he held for just over a year, Clarke worked for three years as head sommelier at Vue de monde in Melbourne. He has judged at Australia’s Alternative Varieties Wine Show, undertaken a vintage at Best’s at Great Western, and has held several specialist wine roles in Melbourne and the UK. Reflecting on his time as a sommelier, Clarke says the role of sommeliers has changed dramatically over the years.

“Over the past 10 years there has been a diminishing number of restaurants offering BYO, thus creating a captive audience at a restaurant that does not exist in the retail environment,” he said.

“New wine – or food and wine – experiences for the consumer are usually the result of a sommelier. Being a sommelier is a passion – no one does it for money. As such, there is a constant push to get better at service, March 2013 – Issue 590

more knowledgeable about products and produce. Sommeliers are innovators and it seems the Australian consumer is receptive. Sommeliers are also providing another avenue for boutique wineries to reach consumers in high-end restaurants and independent bottle shops.”

South Australian winemaker Greg Clack, who makes wine for Chain of Ponds in the Adelaide Hills and Haselgrove Wines in McLaren Vale, is among a number of winemakers who makes time for the tastings. He says it’s an opportunity to get an insight into what tickles the fancy of wine drinkers.

“Sommeliers seem to be more in tune with what the customers are wanting these days so by being friends with them, we get a closer insight into what people are enjoying as opposed to what’s being forced upon them,” Clack said.

“I often ask them what flavours the consumer expects to drink at a certain price point. It’s also good to listen to what people have to say about the wine.

Winemakers will tend to look out for faults or how it was made, whereas a lot of the people who attend the tastings will speak more of the flavour.”

According to Clarke, with Wine Australia focused on marketing activities overseas, Sommeliers Australia provides an important opportunity for wineries wanting to build relationships in the domestic market.

“Wine Australia has thus far been solely concerned with export markets and is very interested in sommeliers from overseas. From an Australian sommelier’s point of view, this is frustrating – we want to look after our domestic producers and provide an avenue for quality wine.

It’s important for them and it also gives the restaurant industry credibility in the eyes of the consumer.”

Having just settled into South Africa, Clarke’s next chapter will see him immersed in the South African wine industry.

“My aim is to increase the awareness and knowledge of wine in South Africa.

I want to work with wines of quality and sense of place, and give them more exposure – whether it be Australian, South African or anything else,” he said.

For more information on Sommeliers Australia, visit: www.sommeliers.com.au www.winebiz.com.au

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39

winemaking

Wastewater systems in focus Recycled knowledge and good relationships are key to winery wastewater management in Victoria’s Yarra Valley.

Ed Merrison

DOMAINE CHANDON’S PROWESS with sparkling wines has brought pleasure to many. But there are those who have enjoyed the benefits of its mastery of another, less alluring liquid: wastewater.

One of those is former Chandon winemaker Matt Steel, who started drawing up plans for Medhurst’s winery back in August 2009. The other is Dominic Valentine of Oakridge Wines, who began overhauling the existing system there in late 2011.

“They’re the gurus,” Valentine says of Adam Keath and the team at Chandon.

“They’ve gone through various cycles of construction on winery waste, and troubleshot to the point they have a rocking system. They don’t want anybody to go through what they went through getting to this point.”

Chandon, Medhurst and Oakridge are clustered in the Coldstream area of the Yarra Valley, where they sit outside the water grid. Chandon was the model as Steel and Valentine opted to treat their wastewater with activated sludge in a sequencing batch reactor (SBR). To work, the system needs a careful balance of reactor waste loading rate, oxygen supply and bacterial sludge. It produces treated water which can be used in the vineyard, plus nutrient-rich sludge beneficial to agriculture.

Different strokes for different folks Though Steel and Valentine shared the same basic premise, the eventual solution would have to suit their budget constraints and operational needs.

The search took them down distinct paths,and to very different conclusions.

Steel called upon JJC Group consultant John Constable, who he met during his Chandon days, to help design a system to cope with a 250-tonne crush. They envisaged a flow of 500kL wastewater per annum, with a peak flow of 3kL per day during vintage and a maximum BOD (biological oxygen demand – the amount of oxygen the micro-organisms need to break down the waste) of 10,000mg/L. Simplicity and flexibility were priorities.

Steel says the project, which came in at roughly $80,000, more than met expectations. The winery waste is pumped into a 90kL capacity concrete SBR, which contains an ecosystem of bugs. A 5-kilowatt Roots-style positivedisplacement blower pumps in dissolved oxygen (DO), which is dispersed via a coarse-bubble diffuser. In quieter times, the blower runs at 50 Hertz for half an hour, every four hours.

Weekly testing and monitoring Steel tests the mixed liquor at least once a week to see how it settles out, and

The dam at Medhurst Wines in the Yarra Valley.

40 Grapegrower & Winemaker

www.winebiz.com.au

periodically sends a batch of samples to Melbourne where EML Chem conducts a suite of analyses. The results, along with observations in the winery, are used to inform Steel’s decisions about running the blower and recycling the waste.

“From here, we have choices everywhere,” Steel says, indicating the pipes running to and from the SBR. “All the valves are manually controlled; there’s no automation about this. The design gives us total discretion. We can either take the supernatant, the solids, or both.”

The central option is to decant to a pair of storage tanks beside the dam, from where Steel can irrigate practically anywhere on the property. He can pump supernatant or a solids-and-supernatant blend through a poly tube to feed the adjacent bush block. The solids can also be sucked from the SBR into the sludge tank for storage, or pumped directly into a spray cart for use. In addition, the sludge tank can double up as a safety net, storing wastewater when volumes are excessive or if there’s a problem with the SBR. While the 2012 vintage was stresstesting Steel’s system, Oakridge was still carting its wastewater off-site. But a rethink had been under way for some time, triggered by high fuel and wastetreatment costs. Winemaker Dominic Valentine was immersed in creating a brand-new installation for a crush which could run to 400t this year. As with Steel, simplicity and flexibility were of the essence. But unlike his opposite number at Medhurst, Valentine leaned towards a system that could be pre-programmed to run with minimal monitoring and intervention.

A drop-in unit with associated labour and consultancy costs might start at $250,000 – way beyond the budget. So instead, he teamed up with Warren Bradford, an industrial electrician with Healesville-based Deacam. Together they pored over a range of options. Valentine ended up aiming for the very top of the spectrum, a decision Bradford describes as “gutsy”. Both acknowledge it mightn’t have worked without the constant, local support of an industrial-control specialist like Deacam.

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Effects of full automation There were other implications. “To get full automation obviously took up a large portion of the budget, so it required shaving funds off the installation side of things,” says Valentine. He recycled anything from Oakridge that could be adapted for the new system, scoured the valley for secondhand odds and ends, borrowed equipment to dig holes and did the plumbing himself. “I guess the biggest thing is having resources and good relationships with your tradesmen, who you can quite comfortably call or if they’re in the area they’ll drop by, give you advice on what can and can’t be done, and then it’s up to you to make the decision whether to go ahead and perform it or to engage them.”

Matt Steel and his former Chandon colleagues were also on this unofficial advisory panel. But while Steel is reserving judgement on whether Medhurst’s lesser workflow warrants cutting-edge automation, Valentine made it the cornerstone of his set-up. Oakridge has a variable speed drive (VSD) by SEWEurodrive to moderate the power of the 7.5kW blower.

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Electronics yield valuable data An Endress+Hauser DO probe ensures the dissolved oxygen dispersed by fine-bubble diffuser remains in the ideal range for the aerobic bugs. All the controls are set on a Unitronics touchscreen with built-in PLC (programmable logic controller). Valentine and Bradford spent hours huddled around a whiteboard with a computer-code writer, painstakingly refining its look, feel and functions. “It’s very simple, and that’s the benefit of having the touchscreen with it all laid out in this schematic, diagrammatical way,” says Valentine. “The language on the screen and the visualisation is for a winemaker, not for an electrical engineer. I want to adjust parameters that are relevant to me.”

The Unitronics system allows Oakridge to log five-minute snapshots of waste production, DO supply and the condition of the SBR. These can be graphed on demand and stored for 10 years. Such detailed feedback should pave the way for further efficiencies.

Valentine hopes to decant at 20% per cycle from the 40kL recycled wine tank that serves as his SBR. He’ll aim for two batches a day, meaning 16,000L of winery waste digested, decanted and stored in a 24-hour period.

Like Medhurst, Oakridge now has a low-odour, user-friendly system which recycles winery waste for on-site use. On top of this, automation promises to allow Oakridge to make power savings while tackling its heavier workload. And Valentine believes the investment will really tell when vintage is in full swing and he can focus on wine, not wastewater. “There’ll be some tweaking, some fine-tuning but there’s everything in there for the system to run completely by itself,” he says.

March 2013 – Issue 590

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Grapegrower & Winemaker

41

winemaking

The A–Z of wine enzymes: Part 2 Enzymes selection plays a vital role in quality winemaking.

Karien O’Kennedy and Rose-Marie Canal-Llaubères

Settling or flotation is a very important process in white and rosé winemaking as it enhances the aromatic finesse of wines. It is also essential to young red wine quality produced by thermo treatment. Grape macromolecules such as polysaccharides affect the colloidal makeup of wine by keeping grape solid particles in suspension. Degradation of pectins with pectinases will greatly diminish the colloidal load and lead to agglomeration of the particles (1). In the case of settling, sedimentation then follows since these compounds become too big to stay in suspension. The time it takes to achieve complete de-pectinisation will depend on the quality of the enzyme used, dosage, settling temperature, grape variety and maturity level, as well as the physical treatment of the grapes prior to entering the settling tank. It could take anywhere between one to eight hours to occur, or it may only happen partially if the enzyme quality or concentration is weak. The length of sedimentation will depend on the geometry of the tanks. In the case of flotation, all of the above factors will also determine the speed and efficiency of the process. Flotation is usually the clarification method of choice in wineries without sufficient cooling capacity for cold settling, or where producers want to save time by doing continuous flotation instead of overnight settling. Rapid de-pectinisation is therefore essential for efficient results. Winemakers are advised to do pectin tests and measure clarity (NTU) to compare the performance of different supplier’s settling/flotation enzymes.

Settling/flotation enzymes consist mainly of the three key pectolytic enzymes: polygalacturonase (PG), pectin lyase (PL) and pectin methyl esterase (PME), since it is adequate to quickly degrade the pectin structure of grape pulp cells. Other activities are present, but not in high concentrations and can influence the results.

42 Grapegrower & Winemaker

PG. The balance between the various activities and their mode of action (endo or exo) as well as the concentration of the enzyme preparation will then greatly impact the difference in performance between various commercial enzyme preparations. This is why LAFFORT has chosen to increase the PG activity of its preparations for settling.

In addition to a purified granulated preparation named LAFAZYM CL, LAFFORT has introduced liquid enzyme formulations called LAFASE 600 XL and LAFASE XL for winemakers preferring to work with liquid products.

Figure 1. A simplified schematic diagram indicating where the main pectinases act on the pectin chain.

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Polygalacturonase (PG) activity – in particular endo PG – is important to hydrolyse pectin efficiently and reduce must viscosity rapidly. Pectin lyase (PL) recognises pectin that has methyl groups attached to the sugar units making up the chain. They do not exist in grapes and are only produced by fungi. As grapes ripen, grape PME activity increases, and as a result the methyl groups are removed from the pectin chain, forming methanol (2). The result is that the exo PG, which cleaves the pectin chain between non-methylated sugar units, becomes active in addition to the endo

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LAST MONTH IN Part 1 of “The A – Z of Wine Enzymes” the different types of wine enzymes and the importance of enzyme purification were discussed.

The second article in this two-part series discusses the various applications for enzymes in winemaking.

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Figure 2. The effect of the use of LAFAZYM PRESS compared with a control (no enzyme) on juice yield. It is evident that apart from a significant process time saving, an increase in quality free run juice is obtained, coupled with a decrease in the quantity of lower quality press juices. www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

110

Free run volume (L)

105

Skin contact – white grapes The technique of skin contact on white grapes with enzymes is done for two reasons (2). The first is to increase both the quantity of good quality free run juice, as well as the overall quantity of juice per tonne of grapes crushed. The second is to extract more varietal aromas from the grape skins and thus increase the aromatic potential of the wine. In the case of volatile thiol precursors, an important fraction is also localised in the skin. The grape quality and variety determine whether or not skin contact will be beneficial for wine quality. It is well documented that the use of specialised skin contact enzymes can increase juice yield and aroma extraction in shorter time. It is important to note that there can be significant differences between results obtained with different suppliers’ enzymes. One requires a more concentrated “blend” of pectinase enzymes with additional activities to achieve complete de-pectinisation and extraction of valuable compounds when doing skin contact as opposed to doing only settling. LAFFORT’s skin contact enzymes, such as LAFAZYM PRESS for direct pressing and LAFAZYM EXTRACT for cold maceration, are concentrated pectinases with many additional wanted side activities and none of the unwanted side activities.

100

95

90

85

Control 04

Lafase HE GC 04

Control 05

Lafase HE GC 05

Control 06

Figure 3. A trial conducted over a three-year period (2004-2006) with a control (no enzyme added) and LAFASE HE GRAND CRU (40g/ton) treated wines. The graph indicates a significant increase in the quality free run wine volume in the LAFASE HE GRAND CRU treated wines.

TURBIDITY MEASUREMENTS OVER TIME (Merlot 2004) 300

250

Control 200

LAFASE® HE GRAND CRU

150

100

50

0

0.5 Months

3 Months

5 Months

19 Months

Figure 4. A comparison between a control (no enzyme) and LAFASE HE GRAND CRU treated red wine. The LAFASE HE GRAND CRU allowed for a rapid decrease of viscosity and turbidity. The result is increased clarification and improved pressing and filtration.

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43

winemaking Skin contact – red grapes LAFFORT has invested much time and effort in recent years on increasing the performance of its red winemaking extraction enzymes. Part of this investment has been the development of a specialised experimental cellar in Bordeaux, where enzymes and other oenological ingredients can be tested under pilot plant conditions (170kg grapes per vat). This experimental cellar provides a unique tool for the sensory evaluation and monitoring of enzyme trials from the start of vinification until finished wines.

The results of research have led to the development of a specialised LAFASE HE GRAND CRU enzyme, rich in rhamnogalacturonase activity.

After 20 months, wines treated with LAFASE HE GRAND CRU were richer in RG II (rhamnogalacturonan II) – a 60% increase compared with nonenzyme treated wines – with reduced amount of PRAG (polysaccharides rich in arabinose and galactose), enabling good wine clarification prior to ageing.

Also, the increase in colour intensity was due to derived pigments with condensed tannins that are resistant to sulphite bleaching as analysed by Ducasse (3).

As for white skin contact enzymes, an

important benefit of applying specialised macerating enzymes is the increased yield of free run wine. Both LAFASE HE GRAND CRU and LAFASE FRUIT result in yields of between 7-10% higher free run wine volume. Besides increasing the yield, there are numerous advantages associated with the use of macerating enzymes in red winemaking: • pectinases greatly facilitates colour and tannin extraction, since anthocyanins and tannins are located in the skins of red grapes • improved tannin extraction promotes better colour stabilisation compared with wines produced without the use of enzymes • it has been observed that press wine from musts treated with red wine macerating enzymes have a lower residual sugar than press wines made from musts without the addition of enzymes. This is very beneficial, as it can limit the potential growth of spoilage organisms such as Brettanomyces and spoilage bacteria • since pectinases reduce the size of the polysaccharide chains in red wine, wine clarity and filterability is greatly improved • chain length reduction also leads to

a decrease in PRAG (polysaccharides rich in arabinose and galactose) and an increase in RGII (rhamnogalacturonan II). The result is an improvement in mouthfeel and “sweetness.”

• winemakers report enzyme-treated wines to have more pronounced fruit and softer tannins Many winemakers feel they obtain enough colour and tannin without the addition of enzymes. This is quite often the case with very dark coloured, tannic grape varieties. However, one must not forget the other added advantages of using red wine macerating enzymes such as increased yield, clarity, colour stability, filterability and sensory effects.

Depending on the objective that one wants to achieve, different formulations of red wine enzymes can be used.

The different formulations in the two enzymes LAFASE HE GRAND CRU and LAFASE FRUIT facilitate different targeted extractions and wine styles.

Due to the fact that enzymes are proteins, they can bind to wine tannins.

The more tannic the variety, the more the enzymes will be inactivated. This is an important consideration in deciding a proper dosage. For this reason, red wine enzyme dosage recommendations are

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March 2013 – Issue 590

mostly higher than those of white wine enzymes. When exogenous oenological tannins are used during fermentation, they should be added about 24 hours after enzyme addition.

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80 70

Thermovinification

60

There are various thermo treatment processes operating at different temperatures. Of late, large wineries are using thermovinification with flashrelease technology. This involves red grapes being crushed, destemmed and heated to 85°C for two to five minutes and then cooled down under vacuum. Usually after the heat treatment, winemakers separate the juice from the grape solids either via flotation, centrifugation or filtration. Enzymes are needed to obtain a rapid clarification, as time is essential in order to avoid the fermentation starting on very turbid juice. One can treat the juice with a specialised red wine settling enzyme. LAFASE THERMO LIQUID is an example of a specialised red juice enzyme that is both purified from cinnamyl esterases and ß-Glucosidase (anthocyanase) activity. It is important to note that any enzymes added at crushing before the heat treatment would have been inactivated during the treatment,

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so therefore cannot aid the settling and clarification process.

Ageing on lees and filtration The practice of ageing wines after fermentation on either the gross or fine lees is very common. Scientists reported the release of various compounds such as amino acids, nucleotides, polysaccharides, mannoproteins and low molecular weight peptides into the wine (2). All these compounds have a direct

Now

or indirect positive influence on wine quality. Of particular interest are the peptides released as they have a profound effect on the perception of “sweetness” of the wine (umami taste), as well as a masking effect on wine astringency.

However wineries often do not have the capacity or time to allow for long periods of ageing on the lees to achieve the best results. The use of glucanase enzymes such as LAFFORT EXTRALYSE can speed up the process drastically, as

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Grapegrower & Winemaker

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winemaking they act directly on the glucan chains in the yeast cell wall and favour the release of mannoproteins and peptides. A process that would normally take months can be reduced to weeks, allowing for earlier processing of more stable wines – resulting from the action of released mannoproteins which increases tartrate and protein stability.

Glucanases are usually combined with pectinases, and this combination is particularly effective in improving wine filterability. Botrytis and Saccharomyces secrete long chain glucans into grape juice and wine, resulting in poor filterability that can also be worsened by the presence of residual pectins. The best results in improving filterability are achieved with a glucanase/pectinase combination rather than glucanase on its own, as demonstrated by HumbertGoffard (4). LAFFORT EXTRALYSE is a combination of ß 1.3-1.6 glucanases and various pectinases in specific ratios for preparing wines for filtration.

EXTRALYSE is applied on the yeast lees after the completion of primary fermentation if the objective is ageing on lees. At that stage, the enzyme will benefit from the temperature. The minimum contact time depends on the dosage; a minimum contact time of three to four weeks with regular lees stirring is an average recommendation. If the objective is to improve filterability, a shorter contact time (five to seven days) is advisable.

With glucanase enzymes best results are obtained at wine temperatures above 5°C. To obtain an “ageing on lees character” one can also treat the yeast lees on its own (as opposed to the whole

tank of wine) with a higher dosage of enzyme at elevated temperature to speed up the process.

Aroma release post fermentation Glycosidases can release aroma precursors from the sugar molecules that render them non-aromatic, thereby greatly enhancing the aromatic potential of wines (2). Wines that benefit from this treatment are those made from monoterpenes containing grape varieties, such as Riesling, Gewürztraminer, all the Muscat varieties and certain neutral varieties to some extent. Most of the aromatic potential of these grape varieties exist in the glycosylated form and are therefore not aromatic. These aroma precursors are converted to the free aromatic form over time via acid hydrolysis, but the process is very slow.

The advantage of the slow process, however, is that it ensures longevity of these styles of wine. But for wines with short shelf lives, exogenous enzyme addition is key to the release the aromas.

Glycosidases are inhibited by glucose and can therefore only be used on finished wines with a residual sugar of less than 20g/L. The suggested dosage for LAFFORT’s LAFAZYM AROM is 3-5g/ hL. The time depends on the dosage used, but usually treatment does not last longer than one month. The enzyme activity must be stopped using 20g/hL bentonite. It is advised to monitor the SO2 levels during the treatment and adjust it regularly. The use of LAFAZYM AROM results in a very quick release of a large concentration of aroma. It can be advised that only part of the wine

is treated for varieties such as Muscat and Muscat Gordo to serve as an “aroma reservoir,” which can be used later on for blending purposes. It is imperative that the enzyme is removed first before the final blend is made.

In conclusion, there are clear quality and economic benefits in using enzymes in winemaking. Significant differences in quality and performance exist between suppliers’ offerings. LAFASE and LAFAZYM enzymes are highly concentrated, purified, well-researched and constantly benchmarked to ensure LAFFORT enzymes are unparalleled in quality and efficacy.

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LAFASE and LAFAZYM are registered trademarks of LAFFORT.

References

Canal-Llaubères, R-M (2010). Enzymes and wine quality. In: Managing wine quality Vol. 2, 93 – 132.

Edited by Andrew G. Reynolds, Woodhead Publishing.

Van Rensburg, P. and Pretorius, I.S. (2000). Enzymes in Winemaking: Harnessing Natural Catalysts for Efficient Biotransformations – A Review. S. Afr. Enol.

Vitic., Vol. 21, 52 – 73. Special Issue.

Ducasse, M.-A., Canal-Llaubères, R.-M., De Lumley, M., Williams, P. Souquet J.-M. Fulcrand H. Doco T. and Cheynier V. (2009). Effect of macerating enzyme treatment on polyphenol and polysaccharide composition of red wines. Food Chemistry 118, 369 – 376.

Humbert-Goffard A., Basque E., Vatin L. and CanalLlaubères R.-M., 2003. Rôle des preparations enzymatiques à base de β-glucanases sur la mise au propre et la filtration des vins. Rev. Fr. Oenol., 201, 28-31.

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March 2013 – Issue 590

Tassie Pinot wins top gong at Sydney Royal Wine Show Tasmania’s Bay of Fires has scooped the prestigious award for Best Wine of Show for its 2011 Pinot Noir at the Sydney Royal Wine Show, held last month.

The same drop was also named Best Red Wine of Show and Best Varietal Wine, Pinot Noir, while the 2011 Best’s Bin 1 Shiraz won the coveted Fine Wine Partners Perpetual Trophy.

Chairman of judges Iain Riggs led the judging at this year’s event, which attracted 2354 entries, from red and white table wines to sparkling, fortified wines and brandy, submitted by 372 exhibitors.

A total of 36 trophies and 1024 medals were awarded, with Chardonnay, Semillon, Pinot Noir and sparkling among the standout varieties.

In the white wine classes, Peter Lehmann Wines won the award for Best White Wine of Show and trophy for the Best Premium Dry White Wine two years and older for its 2008 Wigan Riesling.

The Tanunda-based vineyard also picked up the trophy for the Best Varietal

Wine, Riesling for its 2010 Wigan Riesling, as well as a further 16 medals, including four Gold in a variety of classes.

Tasmania’s House of Arras took home the award for Best Sparkling White Wine of Show with its 2004 Arras Grand Vintage, while Rutherglen winery Morris Wines went away with the trophy for Most Successful Exhibitor in Wines and Brandy Classes. The winery also won the trophy for Best Fortified Wine for its Old Premium Liqueur Tokay, along with 12 medals including five gold, five silver and two bronze in a variety of classes.

Warning issued after bin incident South Australia’s peak wine body is urging winery employees, contractors and carriers to carefully monitor the maintenance of bin conditions to avoid an injury or fatality.

The South Australian Wine Industry Association issued a safety alert to its members following an incident where

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the lifting shackle on a carrier grape bin failed whilst tipping.

SAWIA has issued the following recommendations: 1. Develop guidelines on bin conditions, monitoring and maintenance 2. Contact your contractors and truck carriers, and request them to review the serviceability of bins – you could provide them with a copy of this alert 3. Crusher operators should conduct a visual check of all lifting shackles on bins before tipping, looking for any signs of stretching or faults 4. If bin condition appears questionable or faulty, the operator should inform the relevant supervisor 5. Whilst bins are being tipped, the area must be clear of all operators 6. Review and update risk assessments procedures and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to reflect any relevant changes for your operations.

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winemaking New range of pneumatic presses, New models crushers & a selection of grape equipment

Must chillers allow effective cooling for wide range of must consistencies

Each tube module is easily accessible for maintenance on the Dimpleflo must chiller.

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Teralba INDUSTRIES, SPECIALISTS in heat transfer systems, mixing and stainless steel fabrication, have increased the Dimpleflo range to provide increased efficiency in the processing of must and juices.

The company’s fully modular units offer wineries the flexibility to increase, decrease or reconfigure their heat exchangers as needed, into the future.

The range now includes up to 200mm diameter product and service flows and up to 12-metre module lengths, with each module being removable for maintenance and reconfiguring.

Dimpleflo heat exchangers include a single product flow path which minimises the possibility of blockages in must flow and allows effective cooling within a wide and varying range of must consistencies. Each tube module is easily accessible for maintenance, with removable bends allowing inspection of the internal tube surfaces of the Dimpleflo within minutes.

Dimpleflo heat exchangers are designed individually for every application and pass a range of quality assurance tests. The hazard level of each application is examined in accordance with AS 4343 and hydrostatic testing for both product and service sides of the heat exchanger are performed in accordance with AS 1210-2010.

Marketing manager Chris Waters said the new range was very reliable and boasted a number of benefits.

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house, are kept in stock and are ready for deliver,” Waters said.

“The simple connection of the heat transfer unit not only drastically improves time and production efficiency, but is also considered to produce superior tasting wine.

“The new range also allows you to specify equipment to perform a certain duty. This is important because if you get it wrong at the start, then the process can be delayed in the winery.”

For all must chiller inquiries, contact Murray Baker at Teralba Industries on 1300 207 020.

The Teralba must chiller in action.

March 2013 – Issue 590

Proctase as a bentonite alternative – what’s the latest?

AWRI researchers have discovered information about the mechanisms of wine protein haze formation and have identified Proctase – with its ability to break down haze-forming grape proteins – as a potential alternative to bentonite.

Ella Robinson, Neil Scrimgeour, Matteo Marangon, Richard Muhlack, Paul Smith and Peter Godden

the temperatures at which the target proteins unfold (around 70°C), leaving them susceptible to enzyme attack. For this reason, Proctase is used to treat juice prior to fermentation, rather than wine, because short-term heating of juice has been shown to have no negative sensory impact.

Laboratory trials of Proctase, followed by a pilot-scale vintage trial in 2011 (AWRI publication #1444), were very successful, leading to a trial of Proctase under commercial conditions in vintage 2012. The key objectives of the trial were to investigate how well this alternative

method for protein removal would work using existing winery equipment rather than specialised facilities and how easily it could be incorporated into winery processes.

2012 vintage trial Two industry partners willing to assess this alternative treatment for protein removal were recruited. The AWRI specified the time/temperature combination required for the juice treatment (75˚C for one minute) and worked closely with local engineering staff at both sites.

100 90

87.4

89.6 80.5

80 Protien content (mg/L OVA)

BENTONITE COULD BE regarded as a necessary evil within the global wine industry. While it is a very effective way to remove the grape proteins that might otherwise cause haze in white, sparkling and rosé wines, it brings with it significant costs, both processing and environmental. The bentonite fining step tends to tie up tank time, cause volume and quality loss and present waste disposal challenges. A recent study, in fact, estimated the hidden cost of bentonite fining to be around $1 billion dollars worldwide (AWRI publication #1307). Because of these downsides to bentonite use, considerable efforts have been made by researchers around the world to try to identify an alternative process for preventing protein haze.

The proteins known to cause wine haze are the grape pathogenesis-related (PR) proteins, in particular the chitinases and thaumatin-like proteins (TLPs).

Recent research has found that of these it is the chitinases that contribute most to wine haze, due to their irreversible unfolding behaviour when heated (AWRI publication #1187).

After gaining new understanding of the mechanisms of wine protein haze formation, AWRI researchers identified Proctase as an enzyme with the potential to break down haze-forming grape proteins and provide a realistic alternative to bentonite. Proctase is most effective when samples are heated to

70 60 50 40 30 13.5

20 10

12.4 6.2

6.8

5.4

15.8 6.7

4.0

11.7

0 RIE juice RIE juice RIE wine RIE wine SAB juice SAB juice SAB wine SAB wine CHA juice CHA juice CHA wine CHA wine control proctase bentonite proctase control proctase bentonite proctase control proctase bentonite proctase Figure 1. Average protein content of control and treated Riesling (RIE), Sauvignon Blanc (SAB) and Chardonnay (CHA) juice and wine samples. Error bars indicate standard deviation across three replicates.

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winemaking

Protein quantification and characterisation Juices (pre- and post-treatment) and wines (treated and control) were analysed for total protein content using the EZQ Protein Quantitation Kit. Results are summarised in Figure 1.

200

196

Thaumatin-like proteins Chitinases 150

79

67 47

42

0

0 0

4 0 CHA wine proctase

15 0

CHA wine bentonite

6

CHA juice proctase

0

CHA juice control

10

4 0

3 0

SAB wine proctase

0

SAB Wine bentonite

RIE juice proctase

RIE juice control

0

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SAB juice Proctase

40

SAB juice control

50

98

RIE wine Proctase

100

RIE wine bentonite

Protein content as mg/L thaumatin

Bot h wineries assembled a combination of heat exchangers able to achieve the temperature/time conditions required, and a total of three juices (a Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay) were treated across the two wineries at a 5000 L-scale. Each juice was split into two parcels, with one parcel heat-treated with Proctase, and the other parcel left untreated to act as the control. The two parcels were then fermented under identical conditions, with the control wine subsequently fined with bentonite postfermentation. At the completion of the trial, the industry partners provided feedback that it had been relatively straightforward to set up for the juice treatment using their own equipment and that they had drawn on experience gained during the 2011 vintage when laccase-affected red wines were heat treated.

Figure 2. Average levels of chitinases and thaumatin-like proteins (TLPs) in Riesling (RIE), Sauvignon Blanc (SAB) and Chardonnay (CHA) juice and wine samples. Error bars indicate standard deviation across three replicates.

In all three juices, Proctase treatment caused a reduction in protein content from over 80mg/L to below 16mg/L, similar to the results achieved with bentonite fining – excellent results which echoed those from the 2011 pilot-scale experiments.

To gain a greater understanding of how different types of proteins were affected by the two treatments, further

analysis was carried out using High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) to characterise the types of proteins present in the samples. This allowed an examination of the relative amounts of chitinases and thaumatinlike proteins (TLPs) that were present in the juice and wine samples.

The HPLC results show that while chitinases were present in all of the

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March 2013 – Issue 590

control (untreated) juices, the Proctase treatment successfully removed them and also reduced the concentration of TLPs dramatically. In two out of three varieties, the wine made from the Proctase-treated juice contained lower levels of TLPs than the equivalent bentonite-treated control wine.

What about sensory impact?

Sensory evaluation is obviously a very important step in the assessment of any new additive or processing step – particularly one that aims to replace something used as widely as bentonite.

Formal sensory evaluation was therefore conducted on the six wines made during the 2012 trial. For each variety, the control and treated wines were presented to an expert panel of eight experienced tasters.

The tasters were asked to describe the wines’ colour and condition, aroma and palate attributes and to provide ratings for quality of the wines. For each variety, the average scores for the Proctase-treated and control wines were not significantly different, suggesting no sensory impact from the Proctase + heat treatment. When a slight preference was shown by the panel, it was the treated wine rather than the control wine which

received the slightly higher average score.

Heat stability testing – work in progress Changing the way wines are stabilised for protein hazes also has implications for the way that wine heat stability is tested.

Bentonite is a non-specific method for protein removal – i.e., it targets all of the proteins in wine, including both those that contribute to haze and those that do not. Proctase, on the other hand, is a selective method which targets proteins responsible for haze but does not affect other non-haze forming proteins.

The current industry standard test (80˚C for six hours) is very stringent and brings out of solution all proteins from the wine. This is generally appropriate for wines treated with bentonite (although it is likely to overestimate the amount of bentonite needed for protein stability), but when applied to a wine stabilised using Proctase, it can result in a false positive result, incorrectly suggesting that the wine will be protein unstable.

For research trials, HPLC can be used to characterise the protein profile in a wine sample and identify if any haze-forming ones are still present, but this is not a technique commonly used by winery labs.

A new heat stability test, suitable for wines treated with Proctase is therefore needed.

Work to develop a new test is currently underway at the AWRI. Preliminary experiments have been completed, comparing the performance of a range of possible methods using wines from the 2011 and 2012 Proctase trials.

HPLC analysis will be used to gain an understanding of which protein types are precipitated by the different methods.

The work will then be extended to a range of commercial wines, both protein stable and unstable. It is hoped that the eventual outcome of this work will be a new industry ‘standard’ test suitable for the analysis of protein stability in all white wines, irrespective of the method used for protein stabilisation. If the new test identified requires less time than the current six hour heat test, that will provide a spin-off benefit for the entire industry.

Cost comparison For any new product or technology to be adopted, its economic impact must be understood and ideally it should provide a definitive cost saving. To assess this, detailed economic analysis has been conducted to compare the costs of batch

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winemaking

2.50

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bentonite processing (industry standard), Proctase plus heat treatment and in-line bentonite addition (a technique used by some larger wineries).

The study took a wide range of factors into account including: processing conditions, energy costs, wine volume and quality losses, Proctase cost, filtration and centrifuge performance and labour requirements. Results are shown in Figure 3. The cost of the Proctase plus heat treatment was shown to compare favourably with the industrystandard batch bentonite addition. While in-line bentonite addition is even more cost effective, it requires a considerable infrastructure investment and is beyond the reach of most Australian wineries.

Is Proctase approved for use in winemaking?

The AWRI is currently seeking clarification on the regulatory status of the enzymes present in Proctase from the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). A review of the Food Standards Code indicates that enzymes of the same class and origin (Aspergillus niger var. macrosporus) as those present in Proctase are listed (as Carboxyl proteinases) as permitted enzymes under clause 17 of the Food Standards Code 1.3.3. The AWRI is pursuing formal recognition of Proctase with FSANZ, but until such formal registration has been obtained, Proctase should not be use in commercial winemaking. In parallel with cooperation with FSANZ, the AWRI will also be working with the OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine) to gain approval for Proctase-treated wines to be permitted for export to the EU.

52 Grapegrower & Winemaker mep_alcolyzer_1302_059x272.indd 1

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Where to next?

Now that the efficacy of Proctase has been shown on laboratory-, pilot- and commercial-scales, the AWRI’s role will be to pursue and clarify regulatory issues regarding its use and to provide support and advice to any Australian wine companies that wish to trial Proctase as a bentonite-alternative during the 2013 vintage and beyond. In addition, bottled samples of the 2012 trial wines will soon be available for independent assessment by wine producers who are interested in this alternative approach to protein stabilisation. For further information, please contact Ella Robinson at ella.robinson@awri.com.au

Ella Robinson, project manager, ella.robinson@ awri.com.au, Neil Scrimgeour, research manager, industry applications, Matteo Marangon, research scientist, Richard Muhlack, process/environmental engineer, Paul Smith research manager, chemistry and Peter Godden, group manager, industry applications; all at the Australian Wine Research Institute.

References AWRI publication #1307. Majewski, P., Barbalet, A., Waters, E. $1 billion hidden cost of bentonite fining.

Aust. N.Z.Grapegrower Winemaker 569, 58–62; 2011.

AWRI publication #1187. Falconer, R. J., Marangon, M., Van Sluyter, S. C., Neilson, K. A., Chan, C., Waters, E. J. (2010) Thermal stability of thaumatinlike protein, chitinase and invertase isolated from Sauvignon blanc and Semillon juice, and their role in haze formation in wine. J. Agric. Food Chem. 58: 975–980.

AWRI publication #1444. Marangon, M., Van Sluyter, S.C., Robinson, E.M.C., Muhlack, R., Holt, H., Haynes, P.A., Godden, P.W., Smith, P.A., Waters, E.J., Degradation of white wine haze proteins

by Aspergillopepsin I and II during juice flash pasteurization. Food Chemistry, 135, 1157-1165; 2012.

March 2013 – Issue 590

WineEng 2013

NATIONAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION Tastes for the Future For further information visit www.wea.org.au or contact Trevor Leighton 0417 597 956 tleighto@bigpond.net.au

SERAFINO WINERY, McLAREN VALE | JUNE 5th & 6th 2013

winemaking

Modern cold stabilisation technology saves time and energy Winery works with supplier to develop tailor-made unit to achieve efficient tartrate stability.

Kellie Arbuckle

A BAROSSA WINERY ha s sig n if ica nt ly cut back on time and energy inputs during cold stabilisation after Filtration ditching its chilling tanks in favour of the Della Toffola Pacific PolarCyro Unit.

Dorrien Estate has been trialling the Della Toffola system since August last year, after the company expanded its winemaking operations at Nuriootpa.

With limited refrigeration capacity at the new site, the winery was keen to revamp its traditional method for cold stabilisation with technology that would allow for a more efficient process.

The PolarCyro is a unit designed for the continuous cold stabilisation of wine. Unlike traditional methods of cold stabilisation that rely on external refrigeration sources, which often consume vast amounts of energy, the Della Toffola unit comes with its own refrigeration unit.

The PolarCyro is also set up with an inline heat exchanger to use wine temperatures to do a lot of the work.

The inbuilt refrigeration unit does not require external refrigeration sources and, according to Montgomery, is far more energy efficient compared with the winery’s existing ammonia refrigeration system.

Although the Della Toffola PolarCyro unit has been around in Europe for about 30 years, the technology is new to Australia.

Having taken an interest in the technology, Dorrien Estate winery operations manager and winemaker Julie Montgomery set out to trial the PolarCryo unit.

“We wanted to see how it worked on our wines and get a feel for the actual process,” Montgomery told Grapegrower & Winemaker.

“Admittedly it wasn’t the best time to trial the unit as a lot of our wines had already been stabilised, but we knew we would be receiving unfinished wine from other sites that would need to be stabilised.

“We also wanted to see the effect on stabilising red wines that were still being blended. So whilst it has taken us longer than expected, we are happy with the amount of wines we have been able to put through the system.”

Montgomery was also keen to look at ways to modify the machine to make it more suitable for the winery’s requirements.

One significant modification was the replacement of the unit’s inbuilt filtration unit with that of a crossflow filtration system to allow greater turbidity of the wines going through the system.

“The filtration system that was installed on the trial unit required wines to be filtered prior to cold stabilising,” Montgomery said.

“After discussions with the supplier and technical team, we organised for the trial unit to be set up with a crossflow

filter in place. This allowed us a lot more flexibility as more turbid wines are able to be processed in a single operation.”

Reflecting back on the past six months of the trial, the result that immediately took Montgomery by surprise was the amount of time saved; using the PolarCyro unit, Montgomery effectively reduced three stages of cold stabilisation to one.

“We’re now doing the processes ‘inline’ – we can take the wine, put them through cold stabilisation and have them filtered ready for bottling in the one step, with little or no potassium bitartrate required,” she said.

“The traditional method can take up to two weeks to get temperature down but now we can process large volumes of wine in less than two days.

“On top of that, there’s no need to warm the wine post-stabilisation – the plate heat exchanger at the front of the system uses the incoming wine temperature to do that. As such, the wines are stable and ready for bottling as they come out of the unit.”

That the quality of wine being produced has not changed is another major benefit, according to Montgomery.

“The beauty about the PolarCyro Unit is that it’s the closest thing to the traditional cold stabilisation method – it’s basically doing the same process but in a shorter amount of time,” she said.

Dorrien Estate is also looking to automate the system to allow the

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March 2013 – Issue 590

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The Della Toffola Pacific PolarCyro Unit at Dorrien Estate’s Nuriootpa site.

software to communicate more readily with the crossflow filter.

The winery is also looking to enable the machine to manage inert gases to better manage dissolved oxygen levels in the wine throughout the system.

The final modification will see the unit adjusted so it can process both large and small batches of wine.

“The machine can currently process batch sizes of 30,000 litres, but because we have requirements for both small and large batches, we’d like to adjust the minimum volume to around 9000 litres,” Montgomery said.

Della Toffola managing director Paul Baggio said it was good to see the technology have a positive impact in the winery.

“To see the PolarCryo CTS operating in an Australian winery, showcasing the significant energy, water and labour hour savings, that were validated by the AWRI in their CTS study, is very satisfying to realise,” Baggio said.

“Winemakers now have a proven solution to propel greater productivity and efficiency in the winery that will deliver a more cost-effective produced wine to compete overseas.”

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engineering for a better world Dorrien Estate operations manager and winemaker Julie Montgomery.

March 2013 – Issue 590

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winemaking

Wineries choose crossflow for reliable filtration Wineries seeking a competitive edge are embracing filtration technologies, particularly crossflow, for its ability to produce quality results with reduced intervention. Grapegrower & Winemaker journalist Kellie Arbuckle spoke with four winemakers to get their thoughts on the topic: Sarah Crowe of Bimbadgen, in NSW; Craig Thompson of Paringa Estate, in VIC; Clive Jones of Nautilus Estate, NZ; and Matthew Large of Wither Hills, NZ.

Bimbadgen winemaker Sarah Crowe.

Crowe: Pad filtration, earth filtration (Rotary Drum Vacuum (RDV), plate and frame, and pressure leaf filter) and crossflow.

Thompson: In the early days I used an RDV for lees filtration and an earth filter for polishing finished wine. After that, I used plate and frame, centrifuge, crossflow, depth filter cartridges and membrane filtration.

Jones: Earth filtration in the early days and more recently crossflow filtration.

Large: Pad, plate and frame, earth (both RDV and vertical/horizontal plate), lenticular, crossflow and membrane.

What do you think has been the most significant research or development in wine filtration and why?

Jones: Certainly crossflow filtration has been a big advancement, and the concept of having alternative cartridges for lees and wine filtration looks very promising.

Large: Over the past 10 years it has to be the development in better automated crossflow technology and winemakers getting a better understanding of its application, especially in New Zealand.

There has been a real push from a health and safety point of view to get away from the use of DE and also the fact that the new crossflow machines can be run with minimal operator input.

What form/s of filtration are you currently using in the winery? Can you briefly describe the machines and the outcomes you are trying to deliver with each?

Crowe: Pad filtration for premium reds and whites for gentle polishing before bottling; earth filtration for large volume whites, clarification and polishing for bottling; and crossflow for some large red wine batches and insurance for exporting, especially if there’s an amount of residual sugar.

Thompson: We use a Bucher FX2 crossflow filtration system in the winery. With the majority of our wines being Pinot Noir, Paringa Estate winemaker Craig Thompson.

What winery filtration equipment you have been exposed to over the years?

Crowe: Probably crossflow and the insurance it can give when you need it.

Thompson: The movement away from filters requiring the addition of a filtration mediums such as diatomaceous earth (DE) to filtration such as centrifuge and crossflow which operate on the principles of physics.

we are aiming to reduce microbiological load with minimal impact on the fragile nature of the variety’s character.

Jones: We have a Della Toffola ceramic membrane crossflow filter which we use for all our wine filtration including our Pinot Noir. We also have an RDV for juice lees filtration.

Large: For all finished wine we use a Pall XL6. This is used to filter our wine straight from protein and cold stabilisation to bottle-ready wine in one pass. Since the move to crossflow technology, we have minimised the need for multiple filtration steps. For juice lees we use an RDV, mainly due to the speed and quality of the juice we get.

The slightly higher DO pick up gives us good results as far as a clean and healthy fermentation.

Are any of your wines not filtered? If so, can you tell us the reason behind this?

Crowe: No, I’m a safety girl when it comes to bottling wines for a company that isn’t my own.

Thompson: All our wines pass through the crossflow. This decision is based on commercial risk. We are a medium-sized boutique winery with a market presence that punches above its weight. As such we want to keep the risk of spoilage and disappointing our fans to a minimum.

Jones: We filter all our wines. We export all over the world and want to minimise the risk of any spoilage. We have done post-filtration triangle tests and don’t see any sensory difference between filtered and unfiltered wines (that’s after a postfiltration rest period).

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March 2013 – Issue 590

winemaking

With regards to wine export, have you seen many changes to standards and specifications that affect the way you have to filter? If so, how have you achieved these demands?

Nautilus Estate winemaker Clive Jones.

Crowe: Some markets prefer red wines that have an amount of residual sugar which is why I’ve adopted crossflow.

Thompson: Not that I am aware of. As unrelated as it is, we do have to put a ‘best before’ or ‘spoilage’ date on wine we send to the Ukraine.

Jones: No. Large: Not really, standards are still very high and I think that by using a crossflow we are achieving a better result with less pumping of the wine. Some pressure has come on from a health and safety point of view, hence the move towards technology that doesn’t use DE.

Have you suffered any wine quality repercussions while using any form of filtration medium over the years?

Crowe: Different wines respond to filtration differently; sometimes a wine will immediately look better and sometimes it will look flat. After a mini-heart attack, they always seem to bounce back.

Thompson: The detractors of plate and frame and DE filtration express concern with regard to the aroma profile of the filtration medium entering the wine. I believe the quality repercussions with regard to centrifugation, crossflow and depth filters is more subtle and based around the stripping of character and components of the wine. That said, I have never sat down to taste a controlled trial of filtered versus unfiltered wine after a year in bottle. Coming at the question from another angle, I have witnessed devastating repercussion due to not using filtration.

Jones: No. Large: No, I think the move to crossflow has eliminated any potential issues around filtration mediums, such as contaminated DE. What are the hardest wines to filter in your region and why?

Crowe: Pinot Noir is the hardest wine I’ve ever had to filter. In the Hunter Valley we

58 Grapegrower & Winemaker

don’t seem to have any difficult varieties to filter.

Thompson: Pinot Noir is notoriously difficult to filter. That said, we do not have any issues with the crossflow.

Jones: Pinot has the lowest flow rates through the filter due to the colloidal structure of the wine. We find temperature has a large effect on flow rates and we will filter at cellar temperature if we can, rather than cold.

Large: Pinot Noir seems to be the hardest.

Flow rates are more than half compared with Sauvignon Blanc. We think this is a combination of higher protein (Pinot Noir not protein stabilised) and the various polymers within the wine. We tend to find that a light egg-white fining greatly increases the ability to filter difficult wines.

What new ideas and developments would you like to see from suppliers/manufacturers to improve current filtration regimes?

Thompson: While we don’t involve ourselves with lees filtration this is an area that can be improved for bigger wineries.

While I have not used a crossflow for this application the processes I have been involved with in the past were very slow, clumsy and detrimental in quality to juice that was already of low potential quality. In the end any form of filtration that can be proven to have the least impact on wine while achieving the desired outcome will win out.

Jones: Bring down the cost of juice lees crossflow filters.

Large: Some of the new technology around high solids filtration is looking attractive. A one-stop machine that can filter juice, juice lees, stabilised wine and finished wine lees at a high rate would be the ultimate.

Wither Hills South Island operations winemaker Matthew Large.

Large: No, all of our wines are filtered to maintain quality and microbial stability as they age in the bottle.

With the introduction of crossflow filtration – how has this changed the working philosophy of the cellar in regards to planning? Do you operate on a 24-hour basis? If so, what fail-safe procedures are in place?

Crowe: No. When I do crossflow I use a mobile service.

Thompson: While we have no need to run 24 hours in the winery our crossflow will shut down when wine supply becomes an issue and can be set to shut down after www.winebiz.com.au

an entered volume. The crossflow is also programmed to take a certain course of action in the case of extreme blocking and will shut down if that action cannot be taken. Having said all that, there is still no fail safe for operator, leaking racking doors or wine hose issues.

Jones: Yes, we happily operate our crossflow 24 hours and over the weekends if we need to. This virtually eliminates time pressure with our filtration program. We use rubber hoses, back flow preventers, and we installed double block and bleed valves on the inlet and outlet.

Large: It has drastically reduced the amount of physical filtering we do and the amount of time in which a cellarhand is busy dealing directly with filtration.

We don’t operate it 24 hours without a cellarhand onsite, mainly due the fact that we are using flexible wines and we’re not 100% confident in them. We have looked into automated float level alarms, solenoid valves and fixed lines, but we haven’t gone down that road as of yet. We have no issues around the technology in the machines to be able to do it; it is just the winery environment we are unsure of.

Do you think winemakers are embracing the newer filtration technologies? Or should this be addressed with more education on a wider scale, i.e., regional filtration seminars?

Crowe: Some people are moving away from filtration while others are embracing things like crossflow. Like everything in winemaking, we’re all different! We can always learn something new and my aim is to continually improve my wines and winemaking. Anything to help that is worthwhile.

Thompson: I believe winemakers in general have embraced filtration, especially since the Brettanomyces heyday of the late ‘90s. The capital required for more sophisticated forms of filtration such as crossflow is prohibitive for many small producers, but contract filtration is available. Additionally, our regional Bucher representative already runs seminars aimed at getting the most out of the crossflow and general best practice.

Jones: Yes, I think winemakers are open to new ideas in filtration, and education through seminars is a good idea.

Large: Yes, I think we are. Although it may take a few years of trial work before we feel 100% confident, I think with the increasing pressure on cost savings and competition through quality of wines, winemakers are looking for that competitive advantage and if better filtration technology is out there, then we will go looking for it.

March 2013 – Issue 590

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winemaking

Seven million litres of wine saved MOST WINERIES BATTLE the issue of wine taints – TCA, TBA, TeCA or geosmin – at some stage. These taints have a mouldy odour that people can detect in wine at levels as low as 5 parts per trillion. Surprisingly, even at levels from one to two parts per trillion, it can affect a wine’s taste and bouquet.

Filtration specialist Progressive Group Australia operations manager Philip Tudor said that these wine taints may leach from barrels, shipping containers – or in fact anywhere timber is present.

“The Rona Fibrafix is the latest in the battle against wine taint, with over seven million bottles of wine treated and a 100% success rate,” Tudor said.

“By using this quality filtration product, you can recover your wine and hard work from as little as 6 cents a bottle,” he said.

The filter sheet media is coated with a patented product – Triex. The Triex absorbs the TCA, TeCA or TBA compounds while preserving all of the aromas and delicate flavours of the wine.

“Other methods to treat TCA-tainted wine have proven to be less than ideal,” Tudor said.

“Polyethylene treatment methods are costly, time consuming and diminish or ‘scalp’ the complex aromas that give a wine its rich bouquet and flavour.

“Methods employing the addition of milk-products are sometimes used, but they also reduce the aromas and flavours and might result in the wine containing residual allergens.

“The method of using mustard seed as a TCA deodorant is also associated with severe taste and aroma distorting effects.

“Don’t risk your precious wine,” Tudor said.

If you would like to try the Rona Fibrafix, please contact Progressive Group on 03 9872 6811 or email: feedback@ progressivegroup.com.au.

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March 2013 – Issue 590

winemaking

Dry steam cleans barrels with less water and time Kellie Arbuckle

STICKS WINERY IN the Yarra Valley last month played host to Barrel racks a demonstration of the latest dry steam systems & handling used for cleaning wine barrels.

Duplex imported the latest models to Australia from Italy in January and demonstrated the top performing systems on 20 February.

Unlike traditional water pressure cleaning methods which often require large amounts of water and chemicals, the Duplex machines operate at 94% dry steam.

“Traditional methods involve cold water and high water pressures, whereas these units use dry superheated steam at 6% moisture. Therefore these machines use a lot less water and are able to build the temperature up in the barrel a lot quicker,” explains Nick Gibbs, sales manager for Duplex.

“The more power means more steam which means a shorter cleaning time.

The main use for these machines is wine barrel and wine bottling line cleaning.”

The machines demonstrated were: • Bacchus steam pressure machine – used for facility cleaning, production cleaning equipment, disinfecting, cleaning small components and

62 Grapegrower & Winemaker

tubes, and cleaning and disinfecting bottle lines • Bacchus industrial – a three-phase steam generator with a stainless steel chassis and body, watertight IPX5, automatic refilling system with electromechanical water level control inside the boiler – True Temp, direct connection for water supply, low voltage control panel. Used for barrel cleaning • Bacchus single phase – a monophase or three-phase steam generator with an automatic refilling system with electromechanical water level control inside the boiler – True Temp, stainless steel chassis and body watertight IPX5. Digital device with: thermometer, pressure gauge, hour meter, automatic switching on/off.

Used for barrel cleaning.

All machines work the same: a diffuser goes into the wine barrel and builds up steam pressure, which hydrates and sanitises the wine barrel; according to Gibbs, the temperature inside the barrel after cleaning can reach up to 130-150°C. The single-phase unit takes about 10 minutes per barrel to clean, while a three-phase unit takes about five minutes per barrel.

Gibbs says wineries of all sizes could benefit from the Bacchus steam machines.

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The Bacchus dynamic is a mono-phase or three-phase steam generator with an automatic refilling system. It was among the machines demonstrated at Sticks Winery in the Yarra Valley last month.

“If they’re only operating with 50 barrels and are in little rush to get them clean then a single-phase unit would be fine,” he said.

March 2013 – Issue 590

Duplex director Murray McDonald providing a wine barrel cleaning demonstration in the Yarra Valley of the Bacchus steam pressure machine.

“That said, it also depends on the power wineries have available. At the end of the day it’s up to winery for what they could justify financially and how quickly they need results.”

Sticks Winery was among the first wineries in Australia to purchase a Bacchus wine barrel dry steam cleaning machine from Duplex.

The winery has an annual winemaking capacity of about 3000 tonnes and fills about 1500 barrels each vintage.

Senior winemaker Travis Bush said he chose the Bacchus static 14.4kW three-

phase steam generator because of its high-pressure ability.

“This machine also diffuses the steam via a diffuser spear that goes into the barrel and has holes drilled at different levels, whereas other machines have a barrel spear-type system which delivers steam to the bottom of the barrel, thereby intensifying the steam in one spot,” he said.

“We’re also looking to control any sort of bacterial or microbial issues that we may see and to try to prolong the life of the barrel. If we can get two more years out of each barrel then the unit would

The Bacchus steam pressure machine’s diffuser inserted into a wine barrel.

have more than have paid for itself.”

Gibbs says there has been significant interest from other winemakers, particularly in South Australia, where he hopes to exhibit the machines later this year.

“We’ve been pleasantly surprised by the interest, particularly from McLaren Vale and the Barossa,” he said.

The single-phase units are about $5000 plus GST, while the three-phase start at about $7000 plus GST. For more information, visit: www.winebarrelcleaning.com.au

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March 2013 – Issue 590

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sales & marketing US off-premise: why do they buy what they buy?

This paper is one in a series from research funded by the GWRDC to examine the decision influencers along the wine supply chain. Previous papers have discussed the Chinese market and US and Australian distributors. They are available through the University of Adelaide Wine 2030 Research Network – www.adelaide.edu.au/wine2030.

Dr Steve Goodman and Dr Cullen Habel

ALL WELL AND good to think about selling wine to consumers, but the fact is for a consumer to buy a bottle of your wine off a retail shelf there has to be a decision made by a distributor and then a retailer to buy your wine – if not your wine would not be available for the consumer to purchase. This is the driving reason for the research we have been undertaking for the past three years – and the insights we’ve been identifying offer something to most wine producers, whether they be small or large. Whilst none of it give a prescriptive ‘do this’ or ‘do that’, it gives more than enough empirical evidence to develop your strategies and tactics around to ensure you increase your chances of success.

The research approach has been covered in detail in previous papers, (Goodman 2012 – Australian Data; Goodman & Altschwager 2012 – China Data, Goodman & Habel 2013US Distributors – contact author for details) so a brief outline here only. An experimental design was used to ask those involved in the US Off-Premise trade the question, ‘what influences your

decision when buying in a new wine’.

The method used is called Best: Worse, where people are asked, across a series of tables, to nominate which one of the available choice ‘Most’ influences their decision, and which one least’. There are a number of strengths top this – notably, the fact it is not a rating, it is a ‘best’ and ‘worst’, as such it is comparable across cultures, ages, genders – most is most and least is least, whereas scoring on a 1-7... some people’s 5 is someone else’s 7 (See Goodman 2009 and Cohen 2009 for a full description of the method). Best is that it gives you clear insights into the strength of the influencers, twice as much or three times as much, rather than a difference between 4.2 and 4.7 – something which carries very little practical implication.

Figure 1 shows the results from the US Off-Premise sample.

Confirming earlier qualitative work, the single biggest influence on the decision is ‘the retail price point’, followed by ‘customer request’ and then ‘margin’, both of which had strong influence. At first glance the price point and customer

request may seem counter intuitive, but the discussions in the qualitative phase highlighted the extent to which, not surprisingly, that off-premise wine sellers were listening to their customers and stocking wine at the price point most relevant to their market. This is well worth considering the importance when you are approaching distribution and retail buyers. You need to scope the price points of the wines sold and ensure yours has a good fit – standing out is not likely to suit in this case.

Put in the influence with margin and that appears to be where the battle is fought. Many, in fact most, of the other marketing elements play a minor role in the decision at a sample level. The impact of this though is mitigated somewhat when using segmentation of ‘who’ the retail business is.

When we look at the US in regions we begin to see ways in which the offer might be tailored to some areas and maintained as constant in others. The Mid-West and the North-East are quite different in their influencers to the other regions. Whilst there is some variation (customer request, margin is greater in the mid-west) they differ in most other choice influencers. The South-West is much more influenced by ‘margin’ than any other area – this is an area not prolific for Australian wine exporters, but the opportunities there exist as it is not the first choice for exporting wineries to doorknock.

Other area for differences, especially those that might offer avenues for wineries in their pitch strategies appear to exist when looking at the percentage of total sales that wine makes up. This is a case of thinking in terms of ‘liquor’ and ‘convenience’ stores. Although we

Off Premise Attributes.

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Figure 1. US Off Premise Retailers Wine Attribute Importance. www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

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all like to think of the dream of our customer buying more, marketing tells us that we are going to sell more if we can get the many ‘light buyers’ to buy one, rather than getting existing customer to buy more. What does this mean to us? Figure 3 gives some insight. The ‘non-specialty’ stores show more of an influence in the two areas of ‘advertising support’ and ‘point-ofsale material’. So what might the opportunity be? The thousands of smaller proportion wine sales stores might be reached with assistance in these areas; why – well it may be that wine is not that important to them, they don’t know mnuch about it, but they know they sell some – so they want help, and not education.

Education, ‘tasting’ is a much bigger influence where the stores have a higher proportion of wine – as is ‘tasting support’. The fact is most likely, where a lower proportion of wine is sold, the market may not have an interest in the education activities of tasting. So to sell to ‘light buyers’, maybe education is not the way to go, respect their business method and offer to help rather ‘educating’ them to become knowledgeable about wine.

The final area where differences were found is shown in Figure 4, Outlet Type. We know that supermarkets differ from wine stores and fine wine stores, but here we see how the influencers on their purchase decisions differ. Supermarkets place nearly equal importance on ‘price point’ and ‘customer request’, it appears they are driven by responding to what they know about their market. Conversely, Fine Wine Stores are much less driven by ‘customer request’, possibly seeing their role in their customer’s eyes of providing the information. As a winery this may offer an opportunity to tap into; they are far more influenced by ‘taste’, so handselling is somewhat required. The role of the distributor appears key in selling into supermarkets and ‘point of sale material’ and ‘advertising support’ is also much more of an influence.

We see that, in line with the other country markets and supply chain positions investigated that there are similarities

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Supermarket/Grocery store (n=176) Independent Liqour store/bottle shop (n=43) Fine wine store (n=51)

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Figure 4. Attribute importance – outlet type.

and differences that can assist in developing our market offering and who it is we target. The one thing that remains clear in almost every analysis we have done is that there is a role for understanding who it is we are talking with – before we talk to them. Like all aspects of marketing, we do this so we increase our chances of appealing to the person we are talking with. Get to know who you are targeting and see how your offer stacks up – in THEIR eyes, rather than in your opinion.

Steve Goodman, senior lecturer in marketing and program director higher degrees by research at The University of Adelaide Business School: steve.goodman@adelaide.edu.au Cullen Habel, independent market research consultant and adjunct lecturer in marketing and market research at the University of Adelaide – www.cullenofadelaid.com.

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<=25% Sales are wine (n=89) >50% Sales are wine (n=103) 80

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Figure 3. Attribute importance –wine proportion of sales.

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sales & marketing

Knowing who and why is key to cost-effective communication Jen Barwick

HOW LONG IS a piece of string?

It’s the reply you go to when the question is so broad – a multitude of answers could apply. Much like, what are some of the most cost-effective communication tools available to wineries?

To even begin to answer this question, you need to first ask if you’re ready, as a company and a brand, to begin communicating with your consumer.

This column is the first instalment of a two-part article that attempts to explain ways to successful and cost-effective wine communication.

Getting your message out to the right audience doesn’t have to cost a bundle of cash but it does need to be relevant, engaging and consistent. In this modern world of blogs, social media and 24-hour news cycles the ability to communicate with your consumer has never been so accessible.

Accessible yes, easy no. The style of communication has evolved right along with the mediums.

No longer do you talk at or tell the consumer how they should act or what to think. Today, it’s a two-way street.

It’s about listening to your consumer as much as it is about talking to them.

Age of the consumer Lane Vineyard sales and marketing manager Ben Tolstoshev says it’s the age of the consumer and an authentic story is key.

“The first step is making sure you understand your vineyards and wines, and what you bring to the market. Once this is established, it’s critical to start having conversations and building relationships in all the markets you sell through,” Tolstoshev said.

“Every market has its unique requirements – you can’t force-feed information or brands, nor are the conversations you have a form of seeking validation.

“It’s about hearing what they – be it sommelier, restaurant, bottle-shop or general public – like about wine, about styles of wine, what foods they’re eating with your wine, when are they drinking it and where are they seeing it.”

But how ready are you to listen? Do you have resources in place to record and use the information you get back

66 Grapegrower & Winemaker

from your consumer – be it in person, at events or via social media and cellar door sales?

Capturing the right information and using it to inform your communication strategies does take time and effort. It can be information based on observation or maybe part of a quick customer survey through your cellar door, but it all counts and should be regularly recorded and discussed.

to decipher and allocate value to. A good rule to keep in mind is don’t just measure data, measure behaviour.

Most websites have usage statistics, and Facebook and Twitter also have the ability to record reach and interactions.

Look at how people navigate through your site. It’s not just about how many people clicked on a link but how many bought the wine, signed up to your winery newsletter etc.

Facebook is also more than just how many friends you have. Actual comments and likes are where the real engagement and conversations can begin.

Role of your communicator

Every market is has its unique requirements – you can’t force-feed information or brands …

Ben Tolstoshev, Lane Vineyard

Harvesting consumer preferences Information such as age, sex and location of consumers, words they used to describe your wine and what foods they like to match with the wine, can ensure what you have to say about your brand is what the consumer will be interested in hearing.

It can be easier to capture this data via social media – though sometimes harder www.winebiz.com.au

Another critical aspect to getting the most value out of your communication is understanding who and what role a communicator can have in the company.

And this doesn’t just mean those who have communication in the job title.

The best communicators in your wine business are those who are passionate, professional and committed to sharing their knowledge and interest in wine.

It is not just up to the managing director, the marketing executive or the highly experienced winemaker.

Communication goes way beyond a job description.

Look around your business. Can any of the younger staff add their experience or voice in the social media world? Do you have loyal and long-time staff with interesting stories that would engage your wine club membership or make a fun video for the website?

Empowering the right people to assist in communicating the right messages will be one of the most cost-effective tools you can employ. Matching your message and communicator to the right audience will create engaging, meaningful dialogue – and add value to the consumer and the end result.

Next month we discuss choosing the right message and getting the most out of the right communication tools for wineries.

Wine Communicators of Australia is the national organisation for professionals who talk about – and talk up – wine for a living. Go to www.winecommunicators.com.au to find out more about events, programs and becoming a member.

March 2013 – Issue 590

Wine auctions offer a unique pathway to market Grapegrower & Winemaker editor Grahame Whyte takes a look at the Australian wine auction market to see what makes it tick.

ACCORDING TO MARK Wickham at Wickman’s Fine Wine Auctions, 2012 sales through the five specialist wine auction houses in Australia reached a combined $17.5 million dollars.

“This is a small figure compared with domestic online sales – which is also miniscule when compared with domestic wine sales in bricks and mortar establishments,” Wickham said.

“Overseas sales are also strong, with a single US auction house, Acker Merrall, turning over $80.3 million in 2012 (down from $110 million in 2011),” he said.

Although most wine sold at auction is sourced from private collectors or the wine trade, there is still a perception amongst many private collectors that it is immoral to trade their wine through auction.

“Perhaps 10 years ago when there was a significant lag between cellar door and the secondary market it was fashionable to distance oneself from the speculators, but those days have passed and the main people who are selling today are those whose wine tastes have matured or changed, who are running out of cellar space or whose wives have finally found the credit card statements,” Wickham said.

With his experience in the auction system, Wickham has made these observations: The main difference between specialist wine auction houses and some emerging models that are using the term 'auction' in a retail sense, is that they depend on the buyer’s lack of knowledge about a wine, leaving them to believe that the retail price is a fair price, when in fact they are being deceived as they don’t have all the facts, such as what that wine has sold for in the past (information that they could easily supply). They are in fact breaching the definition of how business values an asset: “the price that would be negotiated in an open and unrestricted market between a knowledgeable, willing but not anxious buyer and a knowledgeable, willing but not anxious seller acting at

What to bring to auction?

What fetches the best price?

• At least two years old and not available at retail • Great initial marketing and PR plus continual social chatter reinforcing the wine in the general consciousness over time • From a great vintage • Unopened cartons • Being able to prove the provenance • The auction price is a reflection of a wine’s overall acceptance in the wine community • It is normal for the secondary market price to greatly lag retail • Retail prices are made up by a collaboration between accountants and marketers, while secondary market prices a reflection of the demand in the community.

• Wines that currently have a profitable differential between mailing list prices (NOT retail) and secondary market price (also depends on vintage): - Rockford (basket press and SVS shiraz).

- Noon Winery (reserve Cabernet and reserve Shiraz).

- Greenock Creek Shiraz (Alice and Apricot Block Shiraz).

- Wendouree (Shiraz only).

NB: NOT Penfolds Grange! This is a misconception and has not been correct since the late 1990s.

arm’s length”.¹ Auctions are traditionally about establishing a fair price for both the buyer and the seller.

Australia has the potential to be an international hub for wine auctions in Asia, but the government’s treatment of tax on secondary market wines means that we will not have any kind of real market advantage against Hong Kong anytime soon.

Traditionally, in Europe, wine auctions have always worked hand in hand with wineries, as an essential component of establishing, enhancing and supporting their brands over the years.

In Australia, a taboo has evolved where wine auctions are often seen as a pariah, underselling or overselling their wines.

However, secondary market price should not be the focus of the wineries as auctions can be extremely powerful advocates and influencers of a wine brand and serve to keep the wines and their reputation circulating long after the wine has been removed from the shelf and from wine show circuits.

Convert your surplus stock into cash • We can quickly move large quantities of packaged wine to the domestic market.

• We can sell your excess stock quietly without damaging your brand.

• We are not a broker - we will purchase the wine directly from you.

For all enquiries please contact Philip Heyman P 1300 667 602 F 03 9415 9057 M 0418 555 655 E philip@destinywines.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

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67

sales & marketing How much has the market for fine wine changed in the past five years?

• Langton’s was sold to Woolworths • Penfolds, the undisputed leader of secondary market wines, has undergone major changes and ownership • around the beginning of 2007, wine flooded into the secondary market from collapsed investment funds and also from a change in the way Australian wine was treated by Robert Parker, when he appointed Jay Miller to start reviewing Australian wines • in early 2008, Hong Kong slashed its

wine tax, which exploded into the current boom in the wine auction market in Asia • 2008-2009 was the year that many speculators disappeared from the wine investment market (it was also time of worldwide financial crises).

This took the majority of heat from the secondary market and the more classical wines started to re-emerge, whilst the so called ‘cult wines’ started to collapse in on themselves.

a matter of numbers rather than anything else.

Other wine auctions are: http://www. w ic k m a n.net.au /w i neauc t ion /w i ne auction-guide.aspx

Do you expect any significant market shifts in the next five years?

What do you look for when it is time to add some wine to your own cellar?

• I am very downbeat about the world’s financial situation and believe it will get worse over the next five years and we will see a lot more wine on the secondary market • I believe that the Asian secondary wine market is here to stay and will continue to dominate for at least 10 years; the wine market itself will undergo major upheavals whilst the Chinese economy shakes itself out • I see the emergence of some other major players – but that is a longer term prospect – first for Mexico and then India • massive use of mobile and tablets will increase consumer confidence and knowledge about wine, making them more savvy • information will be the key and social networks will emerge as the main way for the wine trade to get in front of their consumers.

Why do Sth Aust wineries dominate auctions?

Isn’t SA the “engine room” of Australian wine? It stands to reason then that they would dominate in turnover in the secondary market. I suspect that it’s just

What is your own personal favourite out of the Top 25?

Henschke Mount Edelstone. Always a fantastic wine and such great value too – in excellent vintages it is absolutely superb.

I usually look for recommendations from other wine collectors and enthusiasts.

I like to watch the Australian wine blogs and wine forums. They are a fantastic source of information, with a huge variety of talents and tastes. You know that if a good cross-section of wine drinkers, whose opinion you trust, (with no interest in the wine other than their own passion) are recommending a particular wine, then you know it’s got to be good.

Recommended wine forum: http:// forum.auswine.com.au Recommended wine blogs: http:// w w w.w ic k m a n.net.au /w i neauc t ion / wine_blog_reviews.aspx

How much satisfaction do you gain from your role?

An enormous amount – I am very fortunate to have discovered a niche that gives me a great deal of pleasure on a dayto-day basis.

For more information on Wickman’s Fine Wine Auctions see www.wickman. net.au. ¹ www.ato.gov.au

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™

sales & marketing

Nomacorc celebrates 100 million milestones of Select Series closure line NOMACORC, THE WORLD’S largest producer of synthetic wine closures, has announced the Bottling production and shipment of its 100 millionth labelling & Select Series closure.

First introduced in 2011 with the Select packaging 700, the complete Select Series portfolio was fully commercialised in January 2012.

Premium VDP winery Robert König from the Rheingau region in Germany bottled its 2011 Frankenthal Spätlese with Nomacorc’s 100 millionth Select Series closure.

Nomacorc president and CEO Lars von Kantzow said the success of the Select Series was a direct result of the innovation and technology behind Nomacorc’s oxygen management research and product development.

“We are extremely proud to reach such a milestone in our first year of commercialisation and we look forward to serving more winemakers in the future by providing them with the necessary tools to make wine just as they intend,” von Kantzow said.

Tailored to meet the unique needs of artisan winemakers and their premium wines, the Select Series was developed based on the results of Nomacorc’s pioneering oxygen management research and experience working with winemakers around the world. The series offers four product options, each consisting of

Nomacorc’s 100 millionth Select Series closure line.

different oxygen ingress rates and designed to provide optimum wine preservation and development.

“The benefits of Nomacorc closures were extremely convincing,” said Robert König of Premium VDP winery Robert König.

“That is why last year we placed our first order for Nomacorc’s Select Series. When we understand how it works with our wines in the long run, we look forward to deepening our relations with Nomacorc in the future.”

Nomacorc produces nearly 2.4 billion closures annually and represents roughly 13% of the still wine closure market.

Amcor unveils new Stelvin Inside liners for wine bottles AMCOR FLEXIBLES CAPSULES, a part of the Amcor Flexibles Europe and Americas business group that manufactures Stelvin aluminum overcaps and screw caps for drinks industry, has unveiled a range of four new Stelvin Inside liners for wine bottles.

Each of the four liners is lined with different polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC-free) films that ensure the oxygen distribution is even in all the bottles.

The new range also offers winemakers more choice of regulating the oxygen transmission rate (OTR) in a wine to make it perfect, claims Amcor.

While the PVDC-free films are developed by Amcor, the liners are manufactured by Amcor development partner MGJ, a container seal specialist based in France.

Amcor Flexibles Capsules general manager Nicolas Freynet said as many winemakers are switching to Stelvin screw caps, they are happy to provide winemakers with an increased liner OTR choice for their wine bottles.

The four Stelvin Inside liners were showcased for the first time at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in California in January.

70 Grapegrower & Winemaker

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March 2013 – Issue 590

Label templates allow wineries to meet tight deadlines Kellie Arbuckle

PRINTING COMPANY IMPRESSTIK has developed its own label design templates to allow wineries to have printed labels in time to meet demanding export requirements.

Launched last year, Labels by Design is an online web service that provides winemakers with an alternative in speedy label design by allowing them to browse through various templates and place an order in one step.

Once the order is placed, Impresstik can print the label and have the finished labels delivered to the bottling facility in as little as 10-15 days.

Impresstik sales and marketing manager Mark Easton said the system was created to allow wineries the ability to achieve quick turnaround.

“We were finding that customers needed to react fast to their customer’s orders and demands, especially in

March 2013 – Issue 590

growing export markets, like Asia, where they’re asked to provide wine under different brand and market requirements,” Easton said.

“Our service allows our customers a quick response: they select a predesigned template via our website and we adjust it to suit the final requirements,

Our service allows our customers a quick response: they select a pre-designed template via our website and we adjust it to suit the final requirements Matt Eaton, Impresstik

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whether it’s mandatory or brand details.”

Where wineries have bottled wine and are in need of a label application service, Impresstik can apply labels to wine bottles at its contract labelling division Impresstik HI DEC at Rhodes, in Sydney.

Impresstik can also embellish the label designs with foils, embossing and a selection of varnish and label stock finishes to lift the appeal of the finished label to the end markets.

Easton says the service is not designed for main brand-branding but rather for labelling bottled bulk wine requirements.

“I would recommend this service to any winery that has a need for a lowcost brand or buyers own brand export requirement,” Easton said.

Though prices vary, the cost equals the total cost of the printed label, incorporating final design, preparation and label charges.

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71

sales & marketing label design

&

Alpha Box – a dangerous road, a major standout

Dom Roberts is the owner and creative director of Mash, a creative studio based in Adelaide that works in the fields of branding, packaging and publication design for industries including food and wine. Over the past decade, Dom has designed and art-directed a variety of communication projects around the globe. He has been involved in industry education and mentoring, and in judging the 2012 Australian Graphic Design Awards.

What inspired you to work in design, and what aspect of label design do you enjoy the most or derive the most satisfaction from?

alphabet when we get there. That would be one very special collection of wines.

The creative aspect of label design is what I love most – working out what the idea is going to be, what it’s going to look like, etc. Seeing the finished result is always rewarding, too.

What are the most important labelling concepts to impact on wine sales and marketing success?

What was the inspiration or key branding message behind this particular wine label?

Justin Lane, the loveable rogue and wine evangelist of Alpha Box and Dice, was a part of the inspiration for the labels. We worked together to devise the brand name, its personality and how it would take shape. The result was an entire alphabet of wines, each wine representing an individual letter, each letter representing a particular story from Justin. Twentysix letters, 26 stories all interconnected.

I just bank on getting a set of the entire

With so many variables depending on the success of one wine over the other it’s often hard to know what the reasons for success are. We are lucky enough to have a few great case studies, where certain variables stayed intact so we could really measure the effect of what we do.

We have one client who came to us to rebrand their wines. The wine remained unchanged, the sales and distribution methods also remained intact, and the only major variable was the packaging, label and branding. This particular client went from being on the verge of losing their US distributor to not being able to make enough wine to meet demand.

Have you seen many changes in label designs over the past decade and what labelling trends do you see emerging into the future?

I see a lot more illustrative and creative labels out there now. It seems that the pioneers with this more daring approach have been put to the test and now that they have success in the marketplace there is a certain element of other wineries jumping on the same bandwagon.

To what extent do countries respond differently to labels and/or wine marketing images?

China and Japan are generally a lot more conservative than say the US or Australia.

This is changing as subcultures, especially in China, are now appearing.

New wealth and discovery of the growing Chinese upper and middle class means that China will eventually be crying out for more interesting wine packaging.

France is generally quite traditional, but everywhere has its niche and there are definitely a lot of interesting wines and packaging coming from France. Spain seems to be a little more open to wine labels that push the envelope; the good ones do it with class and style that is hard to beat.

How can label designers overcome the challenge of helping a wine bottle stand out as the market becomes increasingly congested?

Believe in their convictions and take the time to get to know the client. Try to instil in them that you have experience and knowledge and that if they can look at the designer’s services as a source of expert advice, as well as the provision of a physical label – then they will reap the rewards.

In an increasingly congested market each project needs to be thought through individually. Take the dangerous road because the risk of not standing out is greater than the risk of looking like all the others.

72 Grapegrower & Winemaker

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March 2013 – Issue 590

business & technology How much have exchange rate movements reduced competitiveness of Australian wines?

Australia’s wine trade has been adversely affected by real currency changes since 2007 and it has also seen a considerable increase in imports – a third of them from across the Tasman.

Kym Anderson and Glyn Wittwer

BECAUSE THE WINE industry has become Export, more globalised in the past two decades, and insurance most countries now have & finance flexible exchange rates, winemakers in most countries are highly exposed to exchange rate movements. They are affected by an appreciation or depreciation not only in their own country’s currency but also that of their competitors and their import markets. The extent of direct exposure varies among the main wineexporting countries partly because of large differences in the share of national production that is exported (shown in Figure 1). However, even those countries with a relatively low export to production ratio, such as the United States, are also exposed to the extent their wine markets are open to import competition. And if winemakers are vulnerable, then so too are grapegrowers: even though winegrapes themselves are not traded internationally, their prices are soon adjusted when wine price prospects alter.

Exchange rate changes since 2007 have been large. One reason is that the global financial crisis has affected countries differently, not least because governments have responded to it differently. Another reason is that the international terms of trade (the price of all imports relative to the price of all exports) have changed dramatically for some countries because of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of emerging economies in Asia, most notably China. Rapid growth in such natural resource-poor economies boosts the demand for primary products

and hence imports from resource-rich economies such as Australia’s.

How important have recent exchange rate changes been in altering (a) the competitiveness of the Australian wine industry vis-à-vis the industry in other wine-exporting countries and (b) domestic wine consumption and the demand for imported wine in key markets?

To answer that question requires an economic model of the world’s wine markets. We have therefore revised and updated a model we built a decade ago (Wittwer, Berger and Anderson 2003),

compiled data on nominal exchange rate changes and inflation rates so as to obtain changes in real exchange rates between 2007 and 2011, and then ‘shocked’ the model with those (and no other) changes to get estimates of just their effects on various countries’ wine markets. This paper provides a non-technical summary of those results. (Technical details and more-extensive results are freely available in Anderson and Wittwer 2012.)

Exchange rate changes, 2007 to 2011 It is clear from column (1) of Tables 1 and 2 that Japan and China (like other

90 1980-84

80

2007

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

ile

Ch

lia

al

ug

tra

s Au

rt Po

w d th Ne alan Sou ica r e Af Z

ly

Ita

ain

Sp

y an rm e G

ce

n Fra

na

nti

e rg

A

ia

str

Au

A

EC

A

US

Figure 1. Export volume as a percent of production volume, 1980-84 and 2007a (per cent). a For 2007 the Australian number refers to 2006-08, because 2007 was a severe drought year Source: Anderson and Nelgen (2011, Tables 51 and 120).

Table 1. Changes in real exchange rates and their estimated impact on domestic prices (in real local currency) and quantities of wine, main exporters, 2007 to 2011 (per cent).

Real exchange rate

Grape price

Comm. premium wineb producer price

Super premium wineb producer price

Comm. premium wineb volume

Super premium wineb volume

Domestic wine consum. volume (model)

Domestic wine consum. volume (actual) (-10)

Western Europe 6a

0

5

7

5

2

1

-1

United States

0

4

8

3

1

0

-4

(2)

New Zealand

9

-8

-5

-7

-1

-2

-1

(0)

Chile

16

-13

-11

-13

-3

-4

-2

(-5)

South Africa

23

-8

-4

-1

-9

-7

0

(-1)

Australia

33

-32

-31

-26

-10

-6

3

(3)

France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Austria. b Commercial-premium wines are defined by Anderson and Nelgen (2011) to be those between US$2.50 and $7.50 per litre pre-tax wholesale or at a country’s border. Source: Authors’ model results a

March 2013 – Issue 590

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Grapegrower & Winemaker

73

business & technology rapidly emerging East Asian economies) and natural resource-rich Australia have appreciated their real exchange rates heavily against the US dollar (by 29-35 percent) during the 2007 to 2011 period. Other southern hemisphere wine exporters (Chile, New Zealand, South Africa) also saw their real exchange rates appreciate, albeit more moderately (by 9-24 percent). By contrast, the British pound depreciated heavily against the US dollar (by 18 percent), while for other West European countries – both wine-exporting and wine-importing – their real exchange rates have remained close to the US dollar.

If there were no other shocks to the world’s wine markets over this 2007-11 period, what would those real exchange rate changes lead one to expect? Since Australia has experienced the largest real appreciation among the wine exporters, its wineries are likely to have been affected most adversely: receiving less AUD for their exports, and facing more foreign competition in their home market.

As for wine-importing countries, those whose real exchange rates appreciated most (notably China and Japan) would be expected to import more wine, if all other things were equal, while for those experiencing a real depreciation, most notably the United Kingdom, wine imports would be expected to fall.

Estimated effects of exchange rate changes The model of the world’s wine markets enables us to depict changes in international competitiveness by imposing on it the changes in exchange rates summarised in column (1) of Tables 1 and 2. The impacts on key domestic wine markets of that set of shocks – leaving aside all other influences – are shown in the other columns of Tables 1 and 2, and the impacts on bilateral wine trade are summarised in Table 3.

Not surprisingly, the real exchange rate changes are responsible for declines in grape and wine production in the southern hemisphere where real exchange rates appreciated, and for slight production increases in the United States and Europe where real exchange rates changed relatively little.

Since Australia has had the largest appreciation of all wine-exporting countries, its winemakers and hence grapegrowers are estimated to suffer the largest reduction in domestic prices in real local currency terms from this shock: winegrape and commercial premium wine producer prices are reduced by almost one-third, and super premium wine prices by one-quarter. Associated with that is a 10 percent decline in the volume of Australia’s commercial

74 Grapegrower & Winemaker

Table 2: Changes in real exchange rates and their estimated impact on domestic prices (in real local currency) and quantities of wine consumed, main importers, 2007 to 2011 (percent).

Super premium wineb consumer price

Domestic wine consum. volume (model)

Domestic wine consum. volume (actual)

Real exchange rate

Comm. premium wineb consumer price

United Kingdom

-18

49

47

-8

(-7)

Other W. Europea

4

-6

-12

-0

(na)

Japan

29

-41

-43

14

(20)

China

35

-17

-18

0

(22)

Other W. Europe = Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. b Commercial-premium wines are defined by Anderson and Nelgen (2011) to be those between US$2.50 and $7.50 per litre pre-tax wholesale or at a country’s border. Source: Authors’ model results a

Table 3: Impact of real exchange rate changes on export volume of Australia and other wine-exporting countries, 2007 to 2011 (ML) Exporter: Importer:

Australia

Other Southern Hemisphere

United States

Western European exporters

United Kingdom

-48

-49

3

-10

United States

-52

-44

0

6

Canada

-8

-10

7

8

New Zealand

-2

0

0

0

Germany

-4

-25

1

1

Other W. Europea

-11

-29

2

40

China

4

14

5

21

Other Asia

-4

0

8

43

Other countries

-6

25

15

197

TOTAL WORLD

-131

-118

33

306

a Other W. Europe = Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Source: authors’ model results.

wine production, and a 6 percent decline in the output of super premium wine. Real prices in domestic currency terms decline in the other Southern Hemisphere countries shown in Table 1 as well, but by between only oneand two-fifths as much as in Australia.

Furthermore, real grape and wine prices (again in domestic currency terms) rise in the United States and Western Europe, by between 3 and 8 percent, so output is estimated not to have been reduced at all in those regions as a consequence of recent exchange rate movements. Clearly those real exchange rate shocks have been a major contributor to the decline in the international competitiveness of Australian wine producers since 2007.

The trade consequences of that set of real exchange rate shocks also depend on how it affects wine consumption. With lowered prices for both domestic and

imported wines, Australian consumption has been boosted by 3 percent because of these exchange rate changes. That is also the proportional change in actual consumption during that period (see final two columns of Table 1), suggesting the net effect on domestic consumption of all other influences over the four years since 2007 was zero.

In Europe’s key wine exporting countries and in the United States, by contrast, the rise in wine prices would have reduced domestic wine consumption in the absence of other influences. Other influences evidently were not absent, however, as wine consumption actually rose by 2 per cent in the United States over that period (perhaps as the economy there began recovering from the global financial crisis by 2011), and yet it fell by 10 percent in Western Europe’s wineexporting countries (perhaps because

Table 4. Impact of real exchange rate changes on Australia’s wine export and import volumes and values, by wine category, 2007 to 2011.

Volume (ML)

Value (AUS$m)

Exports

Imports (and % from NZ)

Exports

Imports

Non-premium wine

-37

0.8 (50)

-106

0

Commercial-premiumc

-77

3.2a(31)

-635

6

Super-premium

-10

1.5 (85)

-107

12

Sparkling wine

-6

2.9b (3)

-42

3

-130

8.3 (34)

-890

21

Total

32 percent of the increase in commercial-premium wine is from Italy. b 39 per cent of the increase in sparkling wine is from France. c Commercial-premium wines are defined by Anderson and Nelgen (2011) to be those between US$2.50 and $7.50 per litre pre-tax wholesale or at a country’s border. Source: authors’ model results a

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March 2013 – Issue 590

those economies have yet to rebound 80 from the financial crisis).

Old World 4 Estimated changes in consumption in 70 wine-importing countries are shown in Southern Hemisphere Table 2. The 18 percent real depreciation 60 of the UK pound against the US dollar on its own is estimated to have caused the 50 consumer price of wine in that market to rise by nearly 50 percent more than 40 the CPI. This contributes to a decrease in wine consumption of 8 percent, which 30 is very close to the actual decrease over that period of 7 percent. Discrepancies 20 arise when the net effect of economic changes other than in real exchange 10 rates is non-trivial. For example, China’s rapid income growth and increasing 0 absorption of western tastes meant that 2000 Before currency shock After currency shock 1990 there was a substantial increase in wine demand there between 2007 and 2011, so Figure 2. Shares in global wine export volume,a 1990, 2000 and before and after real exchange rate that observed wine consumption grew changes during 2007-11 (per cent). a ‘Old World 4’ refers to France, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Source: Authors’ model results. by 22 percent over that period despite almost no contribution (0.2 percent) from real exchange rate changes. In the case of to all other Southern Hemisphere exporters of 118 ML, and nations that went into recession, income deterioration between it contrasts with export gains of 33 ML to the United States 2007 and 2011 affected actual consumption markedly. and just over 300 ML to Western Europe’s key wine-exporting The negative impact on consumption of the real depreciation countries. This reverses somewhat the massive gains of the in the United Kingdom is bad news for all wine-exporting Southern Hemisphere exporters at the expense of the Old World countries, but the impact is even worse for Australia (which was over the past two decades (Figure 2). It also strengthens the the 2nd most important supplier in volume terms of wine to the competitiveness of the US wine industry relative to other New UK market after Italy, and 3rd in value terms after France and Italy). The first set of rows of Table 3 shows the impact on the UK’s import volumes by country of origin. Australia and other Southern Hemisphere countries (most notably South Africa) are the standout losers in this scenario, with annual demand for their wine falling by nearly 100 ML – half of which is borne

by Australia. By contrast, the Old World’s annual sales fall by only 10 ML as a consequence of real exchange rate movements between 2007 and 2011, and US sales rise by 3 ML. The modelled reduction in wine consumption in the United States is borne almost entirely by Australian and other Southern Hemisphere producers, whose wines become more expensive than US or Old World wines in the US market. That set of currency shocks reduces the Southern Hemisphere’s share of US total wine consumption from 21 to 18 percent. The pattern of impact on bilateral wine trades with Canada, Germany and other Western European wine-importing countries is not quite Need a helping hand but not looking as severe, but in all those cases Australian and other Southern for a full time permanent employee?

Hemisphere producers lose out to US and Old World suppliers.

China remains the market in which wine exporters anticipate Benefits Hosting with AgriVenture: the highest rate of import growth in the future. China’s renminbi • Guaranteed valuable labour source without the need to appreciated in real terms more than most major currencies employ on a permanent basis for 12 months of the year between 2007 and 2011, the effect of which in isolation would • Access to a 24 hour support network in the event of be for China to increase its share of global wine consumption. any issues or problems Table 2 shows that real local currency prices of wine in China • All VISA’s, flights, travel insurance and placement fell by one-sixth due to observed real exchange rate movements. details taken care of This induces increased imports of wine from all sources, with • Flexibility in choice of your requirements of a trainee similar increases from both the New World and Old World (23 (age, gender, experience, timing of placement) ML including USA versus 21 ML). Those imports substituted for

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domestic wine, whose consumption is discouraged by the real appreciation: consumption of domestic wine decreases by 42 ML while imports increase by 45 ML. As for other Asian markets and the rest of the world, Australia loses while the US and Old World wine exporters gain. In aggregate the real exchange rate movements over the 2007-2011 period are estimated to have reduced Australia’s annual wine exports by 131 ML. This is larger than the loss March 2013 – Issue 590

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AgriVenture is run by the International Agricultural Exchange Association

For further details: Visit: www.agriventure.com Call Australia on +61 88 627 2125 or email sarah@agriventure.com Call New Zealand +64 09 420 5212 or email pauline@agriventure.com

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business & technology World wine producers in both the US and European markets.

Import competition too Clearly, Australia is the country whose wine trade has been most adversely affected by real currency changes since 2007. But in addition to losing export sales, it has also seen a considerable increase in imports. One-third of the estimated extra imports due to currency changes are from New Zealand, because of the greater real appreciation of the AUD compared with the NZD. The bracketed numbers in Table 4 show that New Zealand’s extra penetration of the Australian market is especially strong in the super-premium category (predominately Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir, while France’s is in sparkling wine and Italy’s is in commercial-premium wines).

We can check modelled outcomes against observed market changes in Australia. Available data indicate that between 2006-07 and 2010-11, the

JAPAN

Wine consumption rises New figures released by the IWSR show wine consumption in Japan surged by 20.21% between 2007 and 2011 to 30.64 million 9-litre cases, equivalent to 367.68 million bottles.

The figures are part of the IWSR’s research into the global wine market, commissioned by Vinexpo. The study also predicts that between 2011 and 2016 the strongest growth will come from the under 5USD segment where the IWSR expects consumption to soar by 29.71% over the period.

Conversely, it predicts that wines retailing for between five and 10USD will witness a decline of 8.48% in sales.

At the top end, there is slightly more encouraging news with sales of wines over 10USD expected to remain flat.

During the period, overall consumption of wine is forecast to continue to growth, this time at a slower rate though of +3.25%.

- La Journée Vinicole

HONG KONG

Consultation starts on bottle tax Environment protection services in Hong Kong last month opened a three-month public consultation procedure that could ultimately lead to a tax on glass bottles.

The tax, which may be as high as $HK 1 per bottle according to local media sources, would be used to introduce a recycling system for the bottles.

76 Grapegrower & Winemaker

volume of Australia’s wine exports fell only slightly, from 768 ML to 727 ML; but, in domestic currency terms, exports dropped from almost $2.9 billion to just under $2.0 billion over that period (www.wineaustralia.com). Therefore, the modelled effect of exchange rate changes slightly overstates the drop in the volume of wine exports, but the modelled drop in value is close to the observed change (Table 4).

These results suggest real exchange rate changes go a long way towards explaining why market shares and producer prices have changed so much for some New World wine-exporting countries in recent years, and in particular the improvement in competitiveness of the US and the decline for Australia. This does not necessarily mean that the era in which the New World has gradually increased its share of global wine exports is over, because real exchange rate changes can easily reverse. What it does mean, however, is that if exchange rates are

going to continually be realigned in our ever more globalising world, more wine producers in the New World are likely to benefit from hedging against currency movements in the years ahead.

According to the South China Morning Post about 1700 importers and distributors would be liable for the tax if the government decides to go ahead with the move. The proceeds of the tax would be used to hire a contractor to collect and recycle the bottles.

However, at the moment, wine distributors are reported by the South China Morning Post to be hostile to the change. They claim the consumers themselves should have to pay the tax directly to generate greater environmental awareness in Hong Kong. The government has set up a dedicated website to collect comments and has put forward a framework for involvement of the various stakeholders in the new system.

The Hong Kong government is increasingly faced with the problem of mounting quantities of used bottles, many of which come from the drinks business.

- La Journée Vinicole

many different aspects of advice on alcohol consumption. Advice differed between countries about what constitutes harmful or excessive drinking, whether it is safe for women to drink as much as men and also on drink-driving.

Dr Richard de Visser and Nina Furtwangler conducted the research, which has been published in the Drug and Alcohol Review.

- The Drinks Business

UNITED KINGDOM

Countries disagree on safe drinking advice New research has found that there is little agreement between countries on what is considered safe or sensible levels of alcohol consumption.

Psychologists from the University of Sussex researched government advice on drinking in 57 different countries, including all 27 EU member states.

The research found there was a “remarkable lack of agreement” about www.winebiz.com.au

Kym Anderson, executive director, Wine Economics Research Centre, School of Economics, University of Adelaide, phone +61 8 8313 4712, kym.anderson@ adelaide.edu.au and Glyn Wittwer, Centre of Policy Studies, Monash University, glyn.wittwer@monash. edu. The authors are grateful for funding support from Australia’s Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation. Views expressed are the authors’ alone.

References

Anderson, K. and G. Wittwer (2012), ‘Modelling the Impact of Exchange Rate Movements on the World’s Wine Markets, 2007-2011’, Working Paper 0312, Wine Economics Research Centre, University of Adelaide, November. www.adelaide.edu.au/wine-econ/pubs/working_ papers Anderson, K. and S. Nelgen (2011), Global Wine Markets, 1961 to 2009: A Statistical Compendium, Adelaide: University of Adelaide Press. Freely available as an e-book at www.adelaide.edu.au/press/titles/global-wine Wittwer, G., N. Berger and K. Anderson (2003), ‘A Model of the World’s Wine Markets’, Economic Modelling 20(3): 487-506, May.

FRANCE

Burgundy and Champagne miss out on UNESCO status The two French wine regions hoping for UNESCO World Heritage Status in 2014 have been told their candidature has not been successful – for now.

Both the mosaic of winegrowing plots in Burgundy, known as climats, and the cellars and caves of Champagne, had submitted applications to the French ministries of Culture and the Environment, to be put forward for protected status through UNESCO. The Burgundy Climats project had been worked on for a number of years, while President Hollande recently agreed to support the Champagne dossier.

Instead, the 25,000-year-old cave paintings in Chauvet and the volcanoes of the Auvergne will represent France at the 38th session of the World Heritage Committee in July 2014.

- Decanter March 2013 – Issue 590

Wineries urged to plan for succession The Henschke family

The Henschke family from left: Stephen, Prue, Andreas, Justine and Johann Henschke. Photo: Dragan Radocaj.

Kellie Arbuckle

AUSTRALIAN WINERIES AR E increasingly considering succession planning to be an important aspect of their business, according to Finlaysons partner Will Taylor.

Speaking to Grapegrower & Winemaker magazine, Taylor said a combination of factors was behind the trend.

“Those who got into the industry during the boom years in the mid to late ’90s for a second career are getting to the stage where they want to hand the property over to the next generation,” Taylor said.

“Succession planning has also had airplay in the press, which has made wineries more aware and encouraged them to take it seriously.

“Finally, many multigenerational families seem to be getting to the stage where the current owners want to retire or at least are thinking about the next generation.”

But while the topic of succession planning is gaining traction in the industry, the number of wineries actually taking it up is hardly significant.

Barriers to succession planning According to Taylor, cost – particularly in relation to tax and stamp duty, which can often be major implications where succession results in the restructuring of the business – is a major barrier for many wineries.

What’s more of an issue, however, are the people who don’t appreciate the importance of succession planning.

“Cost is an issue but the most common hurdle is the non-believer – the winery owner who thinks it’s a waste of time and money. The second biggest issue is March 2013 – Issue 590

failure to agree on how succession should proceed. Often one member of the family will want a certain succession plan but then there’s a stick in the mud so they’re stymied,” he said.

And while issues like time and cost might stop a lot of wineries from implementing a succession plan, the savings in the long-term – for the business and family relationships – make the upfront investment all the more worthwhile. “To do succession properly involves an initial investment but it can save a huge amount of money down the track,” Taylor said.

Developing a robust plan Like marriage, there is no template for the perfect solution when it comes to succession planning. All plans are dependent on the business structure, the size of the business, the age of the business assets and the aspirations of individual family members, to name a few.

Taylor says an appropriate first step is to have an open family discussion.

Where there is the potential for conflict, he recommends inviting someone independent – whether it is a lawyer, accountant or business friend – to facilitate the meeting.

“Once the family has a general idea of what they want to do, they really need to see a lawyer to look at the structure of their business and work out how they can achieve their goals legally and costeffectively,” Taylor said.

Taylor says there are three different ways to be involved in a family company: • owner (shareholder) • manager (employee) • director (board member). www.winebiz.com.au

Renowned Barossa winery Henschke can trace its winemaking roots back to 1862, when Johann Christian Henschke first planted a small vineyard at Keyneton. The establishment of the Henschke name is one of pioneering struggle and innovation.

Today, it is fifth generation Stephen Henschke and his wife Prue who uphold the family name and company.

The sixth generation, Johann, Justine and Andreas, are all actively involved in helping Stephen and Prue explore new and exciting developments, including organic and biodynamic principles to enrich the land.

For Stephen, having a succession plan is one of the most important aspects for a family business.

“If you take into account the blood, sweat and the tears that my ancestors went through over five generations to get the business to where it’s at now, the intrinsic value to the business is far greater than the financial value,” Stephen said.

“The reputation, the heritage and the history is really important, and to be able to maintain that in the bloodline and not be sold out is the most critical thing for a family business.

“Parents would love to see their children continue the business but it is hard to do that successfully without a plan and a process involving the whole family.”

Stephen and Prue started considering succession planning in their forties. With the help of their legal advisor, they set up a succession plan and a structure to manage the business and involve the children.

“We thought it was good to be totally open, meet regularly and have open conversations so that everyone was fully involved in the decisions,” Stephen said.

“Having a plan gives us the security to know that if something were to happen to Prue or me, at least we have a structure and a plan in place to keep the business operating properly in the Henschke family for perpetuity.”

“Unfortunately, the distinction between each is not well understood in family business circles – a family member can play one, two or three of these roles,” he said.

“Being involved in the family business doesn’t necessarily require them to be at the winery on a full-time basis. They could be passive shareholders – they may have gone off and studied or gone overseas to gain experience before coming home or they may have a completely different profession.

“But that doesn’t necessarily preclude them from being a shareholder or director of the business.”

Grapegrower & Winemaker

77

business & technology

Why use an insurance broker?

EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT by using a broker to organise and source your insurance needs for Insurance your business, you will be much better off.

Insurance unfortunately is a necessary evil for all winemakers and wineries. As a winemaker or a grower you face unique risks that are not always easily understood by most insurance underwriters.

Making wine or growing it, is more often than not a family business and/or a labour of love. As you have striven to make your business special and unique (much like the wine you produce) you should be aiming to ensure that all of your possible risks are covered.

When approaching an insurance broker or considering an off the shelf insurance policy for your situation, you should be asking yourself the following questions; • Does the policy clearly and specifically recognise all aspects of your operation?

• Is the insurance policy value for money?

• Is the insurance policy written in plain language? Can you understand it?

• Will you be assisted with your paperwork and claim management in the event of a claim?

Finding the right policy to fit your wine situation can be an exercise that ends up being fraught with frustration and you could end up with a policy that just doesn’t quite perform when you need it too. Whereas, an insurance broker who understands your business will be able to work with you to help identify risks, determine the level of cover and to understand the language of insurance.

It’s important to differentiate at this point between an insurance broker and an insurance agent – an agent is obliged

78 Grapegrower & Winemaker

Having adequate insurance is a bit like expecting the unexpected in your vineyard or winery.

Using an insurance broker goes some way towards ensuring your livelihood will be well protected in the future.

George Zaal principal of Longfellows

to act for the insurer’s best interest whereas a broker acts in the best interest of the client.

A broker will research for policies and in most cases will negotiate terms with underwriters to build an insurance program that is unique to you and your

www.winebiz.com.au

business. They strive to seek terms that are not only value for money but policies that will work when they are needed.

If the moment of ‘it won’t happen to me’ arrives and you have a possible claim; and you are using a broker, you should expect to have the claim managed by your broker to ensure that the process is a smooth one and your best interests are met. If you have bought an off the shelf policy over the internet – this is a process where you will be going alone – it can can be lengthy and daunting.

Statistics suggest that Australians are notoriously underinsured for their homes and businesses – people find insurance too complex and costly. Using an insurance broker goes some way towards ensuring your livelihood will be well protected in the future.

Contact Longfellows on Freecall 1800 337 701 or email info@longfellows.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

Insurance policies – the devil is in the detail Kellie Arbuckle

WINERIES ARE BEING urged to reassess their insurance policies after an incident where more than $500,000 worth of wine went missing while in transit.

More than 60,000 bottles of South Australian wine were reported to have been stolen after trailers arrived at the depot in New South Wales with no stock on board.

The incident happened over the Australia Day long weekend and is reported to have affected up to 12 wineries.

They include Gemtree Vineyards, Chapel Hill Winery, Lake Breeze, Tapestry Wines, Setanta Wines, Zonte’s Footsteps, Paxton Vineyards, Geoff Hardy/Pertaringa Wines and Dandelion Vineyards.

MGA insurance broker Steven McInerney said the incident should come as a reminder for wineries to ensure they are covered.

“It is important wineries reassess their insurance policies at least once a year because everything changes,” he said.

“Stock levels can change, their operations may change and the situation of where they’re storing wine

A lot of time and money goes into the production of wine and, as such, an appropriate risk management strategy should be adopted.

Tim Duval, Donaldson Walsh associate.

may change. These are all risk factors insurance companies use to rate a policy. And if you’re storing wine in a separate situation and haven’t notified the insurance company then invariably that situation isn’t covered.”

According to McInerney, there are two main ways for wineries to cover their wine while it’s in transport.

The most basic form of insurance covers fire, collision and overturning, whereas an accidental damage policy will cover the winery for goods during transit and loading/unloading. Unlike

the basic insurance, this option also covers the perils of theft, non-delivery and accidental damage.

McInerney says wineries relying on the carrier for insurance should make an effort to find out what transit insurance they are covered for.

Donaldson Walsh law firm associate Tim Duval agrees.

“Wineries will need to consider the terms and conditions of the relevant freight contract to confirm who holds the risk in transportation of the wine; the devil is often in the detail,” he said.

“A lot of time and money goes into the production of wine and, as such, an appropriate risk management strategy should be adopted, particularly for when the wine is out of control of the winery.”

He said wineries should refer to the Personal Properties Security Act when their wine is out of their control.

“The traditional concepts of ownership and possession have been modified and wineries should seek specific professional advice on how best to protect their products.”

Some spills are worth crying over At MGA we understand that your winery requires specialist covers and that no two businesses are the same.

It’s that ‘hands on’ approach that sets us apart from the crowd.

We specialise in: • Contamination, spoilage & leakage • Property covers • Museum & maturing stock cover • Exports & product recall • Professional Indemnity cover • Public & Products liability • Vineyard & farm insurance covers • Management liability Contact MGA for a quote. It costs nothing to compare.

www.mga.com Ph: 1300 642 000 Branches throughout South Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia

March 2013 – Issue 590

www.winebiz.com.au

Grapegrower & Winemaker

79

business & technology

Wineries chill out with temperature related shipping products Grapegrower & Winemaker profiles some of the innovative shipping products designed to give wineries peace of mind regarding wine in transit.

Kellie Arbuckle

THERMAL PROTECTION LINERS Envirotuff Thermal Liner – JMP Holdings GLOBAL PACKAGING SUPPLIER JMP Holdings was awarded Australian Supplier of the Year by the Wine Industry Suppliers Association in 2008 for its Envirotuff Thermal Liner, first launched at WineTech in 2004.

The Envirotuff Thermal Liner (ETL) was designed for the transportation of wine and other goods sensitive to temperature fluctuations.

According to JMP Holdings regional sales manager Matthew Moate, the Envirotuff liner was the first thermal

protection liner available as a complete liner that fitted inside a shipping container.

“Previously there were only thermal quilts that went over the top of the cargo,” Moate said.

“The ETL seals the container, creating its own environment that has an eskylike effect, allowing it to control peaks and troughs during transit.”

Moate says the liner will generally maintain a temperature within 10-15°C of the packing temperature, allowing it to remove the extreme peaks and troughs in temperature.

The Envirotuff Liner is a fully woven

JMP Holdings regional sales manager Matthew Moate shows off the Envirotuff Thermal Liner.

A L B AT R A N S

reflective liner that is hung into a general-purpose ISO shipping container and allows for forklift loading, hand loading and slip sheet. Once loaded it is fully sealed, protecting all six walls and providing a closed off temperature and humidity controlled environment for the goods within.

Existing customers include Orlando, Premium Wine Brands, Yellow Tail, Casella and Langmeil.

The cost is about $300 a liner for a 20ft container, fitted – depending on volumes.

VinLiner – JF Hillebrand The VinLiner is a protective system, fitted to dry containers or covering pallets, to help reduce the effect that thermal shocks and humidity infiltration cause to sensitive cargoes during transport.

Made from aluminium coated woven polyethylene fabric, the VinLiner can dramatically decrease deterioration in quality or taste of the product, and can reduce wine leakage, overheating and freezing.

JF Hillebrand Australia national sales manager Trent McLachlan says the VinLiner comes in eight different sizes and is easy to install.

“It takes one person just five to seven minutes per 20ft container, and creates a sealed, zip-closed protective barrier,” McLachlan said.

“The protective barrier can also protect wine, spirits and point-of-sales packages, from condensation, moisture

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80 Grapegrower & Winemaker

T: 08 8362 2204 - Contact: Brian Dundon T: 02 8338 0477 - Contact: Connie Situ E: infoadl@albatrans.com W: www.albatrans.com www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

All Australian markets and winespirits import-export routes are covered

by VinRoute using data gathered by the member states of the World Meteorological Organisation.

and from other possible irritants inside the container – from water spills, to bad odours, to the potential presence of contaminants (affecting in particular PET, bag-in-the-box, wine bricks, corks and wooden barrels).”

The VinLiner can also be used with marine insurance through JF Hillebrand, which covers the stock against theft and breakage as well as heat damage.

For more information, including prices, contact JF Hillebrand Australia national sales manager Trent McLachlan on 0417 817 262 or t.mclachlan@hillebrandgroup.com

TEMPERATURE PREDICTIORS VinRoute – JF Hillebrand VinRoute is an online database of historical shipping routes and temperature and humidity data.

It provides the average outside temperature and humidity conditions that wine and spirit shipments face as they travel from origin to destination.

“By using VinRoute, shippers can see the typical door-to-door route their cargo is making from origin to destination, what the historical average temperature and humidity conditions are (measured

TEMPERATURE LOGGERS Wireless Temperature Logger – OnSolution

The VinRoute by JF Hillebrand records temperature and humidity conditions that wine shipments face during transit.

every four hours per day of transit), and what temperature fluctuations and climatic conditions their precious cargo is facing,” McLachlan said.

“A useful risk management tool, it allows shippers to identify what climatic conditions their shipment is likely to face and, based on that, choose and select the most appropriate container equipment – be it a dry container, a reefer or an insulated container.”

Suppliers of temperature loggers and logging software, OnSolution, are about to release a wireless temperature logger with a built-in shock logger.

The logger measures only 5cm by 2cm and can be easily placed within a case of wine. Like all temperature loggers, it will automatically record the date and time throughout the journey, but if the box is dropped and knocked, it will also record the date, time and maximum impact.

“When it arrives at the destination (or returned to the sender), it will automatically transmit the results back to the PC,” said Shane van de Vorstenbosch of OnSolution.

“It can also transmit through the box so results can be automatically retrieved without opening or locating the device.”

At $180 a unit, it is more expensive than a plug-in logger but is reusable.

Our purpose is to provide buyers the best choice and sellers the best opportunities when dealing with Australian Bulk Wines.

POST - PO Box 1039 • Kent Town • South Australia 5071 OFFICE - 5 / 5-7 Union Street • Stepney • South Australia 5069 CONTACT - Ph +61 8 8363 5188 • Fax +61 8 8363 6188 • info@austwine.net.au

www.austwine.net.au March 2013 – Issue 590

www.winebiz.com.au

Grapegrower & Winemaker

81

business & technology

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Assistant Australian program manager, Sarah Horne said there was an increasing demand for placements in Australia and New Zealand.

“We need to expand and increase our placement opportunities and would love to be able to offer viticultural placements,” Horne said.

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www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

Competitor analysis: Chile Peter bailey

Figure 1: Comparative Statistics, 2012 Measure

This article will shine the spotlight on one of Australia’s key competitors in the global wine market, Chile. Using a range of statistics such as production and exports, Chile will be benchmarked against Australia. Figure 1 summarises some of the key statistics for 2012.

Vineyard area According to Chile’s National Agricultural Society, there were 117,000 hectares of winegrapes under vine in Chile in 2012 compared to 148,000 hectares in Australia. While Chile’s vineyard area is double what it was 10 years ago, the area has stabilised in the last five years, with very little additional plantings. In comparison, Australia’s vineyard area over the last five years has been reduced by around 20,000 hectares.

With the exception of Carmenere, Chile’s top ten varieties also feature prominently in Australia. Cabernet Sauvignon is the most planted variety in Chile with almost 41,000 ha under vine (Australia has 26,000 ha). Chardonnay is the second most planted with 13,000 ha, roughly half of Australia’s Chardonnay area. The area of Sauvignon Blanc in Chile is more than double that in Australia. In contrast, Australia has seven times the area of Shiraz compared to Chile.

Wine production Wine production in Chile has almost doubled over the last decade, climbing to just over 1 billion litres in 2011 and just behind Australia’s level of wine production of 1.1 billion litres. Chile is the seventh largest wine producer in the world, with Australia placed sixth.

Australia’s wine production peaked at 1.4 billion litres in 2005 and has since declined to more sustainable levels.

The fact that the level of wine production in Chile and Australia is similar while Australia has a substantially greater vineyard area suggests that yields on average are much higher in Chile.

Unit

Chile

'000 hectares

117

148

Wine produced

million litres

1046

1109

Exports

million litres

709

721

Vineyard area

Bottled exports

million litres

450

323

Bottled exports

$US per litre

3.18

4.61

Bulk exports

million litres

255

391

Bulk exports

$US per litre

1.21

1.07

Source: Wine Australia, Wines of Chile, GTA, SNA

countries are similar, the average value of bottled exports from Australia is significantly higher than that recorded

by Chile. In 2012, total bottled exports averaged US$4.61 per litre compared to US$3.18 per litre for Chile.

The top five export markets for Chile in 2012 were the US (161 ML), the UK (101 ML), China (57 ML), Japan (44 ML) and Germany (37 ML). In comparison, Australia’s top five markets were the UK (256 ML), US (194 ML), Canada (48 ML), China (44 ML), and Germany (38 ML).

Japan was the 9th biggest destination for Australian exports (9 ML). Australia leads Chile in imported volume share in all the markets listed above with the exception of China and Japan. In both countries, Chile has advantages through Free Trade Agreements. However, in China, the trade advantage is reflected in bulk exports rather than in bottled exports. In 2012, Chile exported 26 ML of bulk to China compared to 8 ML from Australia. In contrast, Chile trails Australia in bottled exports (19 ML versus 35 ML). Furthermore, Australia’s average bottled export value to China of US$6.17 per litre is far higher than Chile’s at US$4.17 per litre.

Global competitiveness In a report on bulk wine trade released in 20121, Rabobank compared the competitive positioning of Chile and

Australia in relation to the supply of bulk wine to the UK, US and China.

They considered a range of factors such as vineyard yields and operation costs, grower gross margin, in-country transport costs, sea freight costs to destination market, import tariffs, and currency strength relative to markets and competitors. Rabobank concluded that while the production costs (including labour) of Chile and Australia were comparable, Chile gained an advantage over Australia though lower import duties as a result of preferential trade agreements. This means that for Australian producers to compete with Chile in the bulk wine market, they need to produce the wine at a lower cost.

Conclusion While the volumes of production and exports for Chile and Australia are similar, the trading profile of each country is somewhat different. Chile may have an advantage in the supply of low-cost bulk wine but Australia clearly outperforms Chile in the average value of bottled exports and has a greater market share than Chile in most key markets.

References 1 “The Incredible Bulk – The Rise in Global Bulk Wine Trade”, January 2012, Rabobank Industry Note #296

900 800 700

Wine exports

600

Chilean wine exports have followed a similar trajectory to Australia since 1999 (see figure 2). While exports from both countries started from a similar base, growth in Australian exports accelerated through to 2007 before easing in recent years as wine production has declined.

In contrast, Chile exports showed steady growth through to a peak in 2010, before declining in the last two years.

While the volumes exported by both

500

March 2013 – Issue 590

Australia

400

Chile Australia

300 200 100 0

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

Figure 2. Wine exports from Chile and Australia over time (million litres) Source: Wine Australia, GTA www.winebiz.com.au

Grapegrower & Winemaker

83

Australian Wine Export Market Snapshot The Australian Wine Export Market Snapshot is prepared by Wine Australia and provides the latest key statistics on exports of Australian wine.

Updated monthly, the snapshot looks at the movement in total volume and value

for the past 12 months and then drills down into more detail such as the top five destinations by value growth, movements in container type, colour, winestyle, and price point, and the top five varietal and regional label claims on bottles.

The main purpose of the report is to provide some high-level trends for the Australian wine category.

For more information please visit www. wineaustralia.com/winefacts, email to info@ wineaustralia.com or ring 08 8228 2010.

Highlights â&#x20AC;&#x201C; year ended January 2013 Key statistics Total

2013

Change

Volume ML

727

4%

Value $AM (fob)

1855

-1%

Destinations (by value growth)

$Am

Growth ($Am)

China, Pr

240

36

Hong Kong

65

10

Japan

45

5

Germany, Federal Republic

56

3

New Zealand

66

2

Share

% point change

Glass bottle

Container type (by volume)

44%

-5.1

Bulk

54%

5.1

Soft-pack

1%

0.0

Alternative packaging1

0%

0.0

Share

% point change

Red

Still wine by colour (by volume)

60%

-3.3

White

40%

3.3

Share

% point change

Red still wine

59%

-3.2

White still wine

39%

3.3

Sparkling

2%

-0.2

Wine style (by volume)

Fortified

0.1%

0.0

Other

0.2%

0.1

Price points (by volume)

Share

% point change

$A2.49/L and under 2

57%

3.1

$A2.50/L to A$4.99/L

34%

-2.0

$A5.00/L to A$7.49/L

5%

-0.9

$A7.50/L to A$9.99/L

2%

-0.2

$A10.00/L and over

2%

0.1 Share

Top five varietal label claims on bottles (by volume)

ML

Shiraz and Shiraz blends

113

37%

Chardonnay and Chardonnay blends

63

20%

NOTES & DEFINITIONS

Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Sauvignon blends

56

18%

Merlot and Merlot blends

28

9%

Sauvignon Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc blends

10

3%

Prepared: February 2013, updated monthly 1 Alternative packaging includes flagon, tetra, PET and other packaging types 2 The growth in this segment is due to growth bulk shipments as more Australian wine is being packaged overseas for a combination of reasons, including economic, environmental and scale rationale together with meeting the requirements of some customers.

The change in share represents percentage point change in share between the current twelve month period compared to the preceding 12 month period.

Based on data compiled from the AWBC Wine Export Approval System.

Average Value ($AUD) calculated on FOB value. Free on Board (FOB) value includes production and other costs up until placement on international carrier but excludes international insurance and transport costs.

Data is based on wine shipped from Australia to the country of destination - in some instances, wine is then transshipped to other countries for consumption.

Top five regional label claims on bottles (by volume)

ML

Share

South Eastern Australia

203

71%

South Australia

32

11%

Barossa

7

2.4%

McLaren Vale

6

2.1%

Barossa Valley

4

1.3%

84 Grapegrower & Winemaker

Disclaimer: While Wine Australia makes every effort to ensure the accuracy and currency of information within this report, we accept no responsibility for information, which may later prove to be misrepresented or inaccurate, or reliance placed on that information by readers.

Provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 apply to the contents of this publication, all other right reserved.

For further copyright authorisation please see the www.wineaustralia.com website

www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Issue 590

looking forward 2013 Australia & New Zealand March

6-14 Adelaide Food and Wine Festival.

Across the state, SA. www.adelaidefoodandwinefestival.org

16 Fowles Wines - 'Are you game for a wild lunch?' Melbourne, VIC. www.fowleswine.com

6-21 Sydney Wine Trail & Harvest Festival. Sydney, NSW. www.hawkesbury. net.au/sydneywine/harvestfestival

16-17 Pyrenees Petanque Club Mixed Doubles. Avoca, VIC. www.avoca.vic.au

7 Anderson's Mill Festival. Smeaton, VIC. www.andersonsmillfest.org.au

17 Bacchus Marsh Harvest Festival.

Bacchus Marsh, VIC. www.visitbacchusmarsh.com.au

12-13 Coonawarra After Dark Weekend.

Coonawarra, SA. www.coonawarra.org

23 Public Exhibitions of the 2013 TOP 100 & Blue-Gold Award Winners. Sydney, NSW. www.top100wines.com 24 Waipara Valley Wine & Food Festival.

Waipara, NZ. www.waiparawineandfood.co.nz

12-14 Yarra Valley Food & Wine Festival.

Yarra Valley, VIC. www.yarravalleyfestival.com.au 12-21 F.O.O.D Week (Food of Orange District). Orange & surrounding Shires, NSW. www.orangefoodweek.com.au

29 March-1 April Easter Performances @ Sinclair's Gully. Nortin Summit, SA. www.sinclairsgully.com

13 The 15th Blackheath Wine Fair - The Blue Mountains Regional Food & Wine Fair. Blackheath, NSW. www.blackheathvillage.com.au

30 Griffith La Festa - Faces of Australia.

Griffith, NSW. www.lafesta.org.au

International

30-31 Brown Brothers Easter Festival.

Milawa, VIC. www.brownbrothers.com.au 30-31 Campbells Easter Picnic.

Rutherglen, VIC. www.campbellswines.com.au 30 March-7 April Barossa Vintage Festival. Various Barossa venues, SA. www.barossavintagefestival.com.au

March 15-17 International Wine Tourism Conference & Workshop. Zagreb, Croatia. www.iwinetc.com 17-18 The Real Wine Fair. London, UK. www.therealwinefair.com 17-20 IFE13. London, UK. www.ife.co.uk 17-20 Pro2Pac. ExCel, London, UK. www.pro2pac.co.uk

April

23 MEININGER´S INTERNATIONAL WINE CONFERENCE 2013. Düsseldorf, Germany. www.meiningers-conference.com

4 Grand Cellar Dinner. Angaston, SA. www.baronsofbarossa.com 6 Brokenwood Winery - "Winemaker for a day". Pokolbin, NSW. www.brokenwood.com.au 6-7 Canberra District Wine Harvest Festival. Canberra & Region, ACT. www.canberrawines.com.au 6-7 Harvest Festival at Shaw Vineyard Estate & Flint in the Vines.

Murrumbateman, NSW. www.shawvineyards.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

We step back in time to see what was happening through the pages of Grapegrower and Winemaker this month 10, 20 and 30 years ago.

March 1983 Winemakers from the McLaren Vale region have rejected the name Wine Coast for their products. The decision was made by 19 members of the region’s 38-member Winemakers’ Association at a special meeting. The meeting was called because of what the association’s chairman, Mr Trott, said was “confusion” over the name of produce from the area.

A statement from the association said the names of wines from the area had been in contention since former Premier Mr Tonkin and his Minister of Tourism, Mrs Adamson, advocated the name Wine Coast for the region a year ago.

March 1993

31 Bendigo Winegrowers Festival.

Castlemaine, VIC. www.bendigowine.org.au

2-5 Barossa Meets Bordeaux with Shotfire Quartage. Angaston, SA. www.thornclarkewines.com.au

looking back

23 Wine Symposium of the Finger Lakes.

New York, USA. www.winesymposiumfingerlakes.com 24-26 ProWein 2013. Düsseldorf, Germany. www.prowein.de 25-31 (JD) Wine Masters Challenge - XV World Wine Contest. Estoril, Portugal. www.winemasterschallenge.com JD = judging date CD = closing date For a comprehensive list of events, visit www.winebiz.com.au/calendar

www.winebiz.com.au

A Hunter Valley winery has pleaded with the Federal Government to immediately remove the taxes on profits from wine exports to open the way for Australia to achieve its maximum potential as one of the world’s finest wine-producing nations.

In a letter to the prime minister appealing for far greater government support for the Australian wine industry, the chairman of Rosemount Estate, Bob Oatley, called for a five-year exemption from the corporate and other income taxes on profits arising from wine export sales.

March 2003 Australian wine exports climbed to record levels in 2002, figures released by the Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation have revealed. In dollar terms, overseas sales increased by a record $531 million (up 30%) to reach a total of $2.3 billion while the volume of exports rose by a record 96 million litres to reach 471 million litres (up 26%). These rates of growth are the strongest in four years despite being off a base approaching twice the size. At a time when the industry is facing an abundance of wine supplies, the result is good news for the nation’s wine producers.

Grapegrower & Winemaker

85

Marketplace WINE PRESS SERVICING • Preventative maintenance & breakdown repairs for all makes and models.

• 24/7 coverage during vintage • Large inventory of spare parts.

• Membrane replacement.

• PLC upgrades and design improvements.

Electrical & mechanical expertise.

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BIRD NETTING • Permanent canopy or throw over net • Fully UV stabilised • Cable, wire and all canopy supplies in stock

Looking for staff?

Certified Biodynamic Grapes

Visit www.winejobs.com.au

Chardonnay, Marsanne Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon

for wine industry related job postings

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up to 5-10 tonnes each variety Low yields, hand picked, quality fruit Nagambie Lakes GI

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Grapes for Sale Canberra district grapes renowned for award winning wines. www.canberragrapes.net.au

OBLOMOV TRADING CO. PO Box 207, Rozelle, NSW 2039 Phone (02) 9660 6845 Fax (02) 9518 8372 e-mail: sales@otcobirdnet.com.au

Quality Grapevines Paul Wright PO Box 180 Mt Pleasant South Australia 5235 Ph 08 8568 2385 www.vinewright.com.au

Visit our website at: www.otcobirdnet.com.au

Vine Industry Nursery Assoc.

USED VINEYARD POSTS FOR SALE - CCA

www.vina.net.au

x Hillston & Orange NSW (bundled) Intermediate - $1.65 Strainers - $5.50 Tom - 0428 443 263 www.vinesight.com.au

MALLEE POINT NURSERY Orders taken for 2013 plantings NOW. Phone 02 6968 1086 Fax 02 6968 1786 Mobile 0428 690 208 PO Box 438, Yenda, NSW 2681

Marketplace

s? a e s r e v o Vintage

VINE GRAFTING Bruce Gilbert 0428 233 544 Brian Phillips 0417 131 764 fax 03 5025 2321

Talk to us!

brucethegrafter@gmail.com www.brucethegrafter.com

www.bibber.com.au info@bibber.com.au 08 8374 077

86 Grapegrower & Winemaker

www.winebiz.com.au

March 2013 – Issue 590

What if you could...

• Be part of Australia’s largest wine exhibition featuring 150+ suppliers • Network with 1,500+ grapegrowers, winemakers and industry professionals • Join 1,000+ conference delegates to keep abreast of current trends

It’s all possible at WineTech 2013

15 – 17 JULY 2013 SYDNEY CONVENTION & EXHIBITION CENTRE | NSW

PRESENTED BY:

ORGANISED BY:

Australia’s premier showcase of wine technology, equipment and services.

EXHIBITOR ENQUIRIES call Guy Freebody on 02 9422 2568 VISITOR REGISTRATION opens April 2013

winetechexpo.com.au

Equipment

FROM GRAPE TO THE BOTTLE

REFRIGERATION MONOBLOCS Europe’s leading refrigeration supplier now in Australia Kreyer are specialists in manufacture of products for temperature controlled processing of grape juice, fruit juice and wine. All products are made in Germany and carry a 2 year warranty and a 24 hour customer support service.

Kreyer’s range includes ‘MCK” and ‘Chilly Max’ monobloc chillers and heaters for all sized wineries as well as the unique ‘Kreyopack’ range with built in tube n tube for fast and efficient temperature control.

Also available are individual and multi tank temperature control systems.

KREYOPACK 9-100KW Cooling Capacity

MCK 18-85KW Cooling Capacity

Tank Control Systems with Digital Thermometer

CHILLY MAX 6 – 11KW Cooling Capacity

For further details, contact us on: Melbourne 59 Banbury Rd, Reservoir Ph. 1300 882 850 Adelaide 12 Hamilton Tce, Newton Ph. 08 8365 0044 New Zealand 4c Titoki Place, Albany, Auckland Ph. 0800 699 599 E. sales@winequip.com.au www.winequip.com.au www.winequip.co.nz

Solenoid Valves and simple control boxes with BUS interface