New Zealand Winegrower October-November 2023

NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE NEW ZEALAND WINE INDUSTRY

NZW Fellows

Wine legends

Oz Clarke

Business Forum

Pinot Pioneers Wairarapa Wine

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023 ISSUE 142

Tai Nelson New Zealand Young Viticulturist of the Year

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023 / ISSUE 142

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ISSUE 142 – OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

Regulars 4 Sophie Preece the CEO 6 From Philip Gregan Editorial

Ideas 30 BRIght Dr Annabel Whibley in Wine 62 Women Cath Archer Profile 64 The Wilco Lam

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Project 68 Passion Michael Brajkovich of View 80 Point Dr Damian Martin

Features

Fellows 20 NZW Five legends of New Zealand wine

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62

have been named 2023 Fellows of New Zealand Winegrowers, honouring their efforts for the industry over decades of wine work. In this edition we talk to Neal and Judy Ibbotson, Dr David Jordan, Peter Holley and Mal McLennan about their extraordinary time in New Zealand wine.

Blanc genome 52 Sauvignon The Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine

Improvement Programme has obtained a complete reference genome of the Mass Select clone that underpins New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc plantings.

Clarke 66 Oz Don’t copy, don’t compromise,

64 COVER PHOTO Soljans Estate Vineyard Manager Tai Nelson is the 2023 New Zealand Young Viticulturist of the Year. Go to page 58. Photo Amber Soljan.

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and remember who you are – “the coolest, greenest, purest, most marvellously distant country in this polluting, angry, confused and hurried world”. Words of advice from the wonderful Oz Clarke, who’s set to speak at the New Zealand Winegrowers Business Forum on 1 November.

EDITOR Sophie Preece sophie@sophiepreece.co.nz CORRESPONDENTS Wellington Wine Country: Joelle Thomson mailme@joellethomson.com Hawkes Bay: Olly Styles oliverstyles@hotmail.com Canterbury: Jo Burzynska jo@joburzynska.com ADVERTISING Upper North Island: Stephen Pollard stephenp@ruralnews.co.nz Ph: 021 963 166 Central North Island: Lisa Wise lisaw@ruralnews.co.nz Ph: 027 369 9218 Lower North Island: Ron Mackay ronm@ruralnews.co.nz Ph: 021 453 914 South Island: Kaye Sutherland kayes@ruralnews.co.nz Ph: 021 221 1994 CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTIONS Carolina Paiva carolina.paiva@nzwine.com 027 700 0740 New Zealand Winegrowers PO Box 90 276, Auckland Mail Centre, New Zealand PUBLISHING & PRE-PRESS Rural News Group PO Box 331100, Takapuna, Auckland 0740 Ph: 09 307 0399 Location: Top Floor, 29 Northcroft Street, Takapuna, Auckland 0622 Publisher: Brian Hight Managing Editor: Adam Fricker Production: David Ferguson, Rebecca Williams Published by Rural News Group Ltd under authority of New Zealand Winegrowers Inc. Unless directly attributed, opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of Rural News Group and/or its directors or management, New Zealand Winegrowers Inc. or its constituent organisations. Published every second month. One free copy is mailed to every member of New Zealand Winegrowers Inc, New Zealand Society of Viticulture & Oenology and the New Zealand Vine Improvement Group, and to such other persons or organisations as directed by the owners, with provision for additional copies and other recipients to be on a subscription.

ISSN 1174-5223

From the Editor People have been “pivotal” to Dr David Jordan’s career in wine, from the generosity of those who shared their knowledge when he was starting out, to the insights he still gleans from those in the field. And this edition, which includes the story of David (DJ) and four other New Zealand Winegrowers Fellows – Neal and Judy Ibbotson, Mal McLennon and Peter Holley – is evidence of how pivotal some individuals have been to the success of this country’s wine industry.

New Zealand Winegrowers Chair Clive Jones says the Fellows award recognises “modern pioneers”, who’ve made an extraordinary contribution beyond their own business, for the betterment of the industry at large. “Thanks to their hard work, our industry punches above its weight on the world stage.”

They’re not the only champions celebrated in this edition, which includes the “Pinot Pioneers” of Wairarapa, whose bold aspirations helped transform a quiet rural region into vibrant wine country. We also profile mover, shaker and educator Cath Archer, Wairarapa winemaker Wilco Lam, and Chardonnay legend Michael Brajkovich, who is this month’s Passion Project profile.

While celebrating its pioneers, this is an industry that also works hard to shine a light on the next generation of pivotal people, including the Tonnellerie de Mercurey Young Winemaker of the Year, with its National Final coming up, and New Zealand’s new Viticulturist of the Year, won by Tai Nelson, who graces this edition’s cover.

Sophie Preece EDITOR

Contributors

Joelle Thomson In this edition writer and wine lover Joelle Thomson talks to the Pinot Pioneers of Wairarapa’s wine industry, along with winemaker Wilco Lam.

Emma Jenkins MW Emma is one of the speakers at the Aotearoa New Zealand Chardonnay Symposium in Hawke’s Bay. In the lead up to the event she talks to Chardonnay legend Michael Brajkovich.

John Saker On the launch of his newsletter Te Whenua, John Saker talks about a thirst-for-knowledge that’s accompanied the growth of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in New Zealand.

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FROM THE CEO

From the CEO Meeting expectations PHILIP GREGAN I am writing this the day after the opening game of the Rugby World Cup and the All Blacks’ loss to France. For most New Zealanders going into the World Cup there will have been the normal expectations, based on a long history, that the All Blacks will perform well and will be title contenders.

“The flip side of meeting consumer expectations is not meeting them. We see how deeply felt reactions to unmet expectations can be every time the All Blacks lose a match, or don’t win a World Cup.” Philip Gregan Expectations around the All Blacks are nearly always stratospheric, reflecting their global reputation, built over more than 100 years, as probably the best known and most successful rugby team in the world.

While the France game did not play out as hoped, only time will tell how well founded the country’s high expectations are for the tournament as a whole (hopefully very well of course!).

The expectations around rugby got me thinking about the expectations around New Zealand wine. What does the public expect of New Zealand wines? I imagine a key expectation for most consumers will be that our wines reflect the reputation built in key markets over the past 20 or so years.

There are clearly various components to that reputation, but a key one will be that

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our wines are distinctive, that they are quintessentially Kiwi, that they reflect our wonderful winegrowing regions and subregions. Our wines need to reflect Oscar Wilde’s maxim: “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.”

High quality will be a related expectation, particularly given the price for which our wines sell. Our wines sit well above market average in most markets; in fact we are usually in the top two or three countries as far as average price is concerned. On that basis, consumers definitely expect something special when they buy a New Zealand wine.

Innovation is also part of the New Zealand reputation. Not only have our wines been innovative but the way we have presented them has been innovative as well. Screwcaps are the classic example, of course – the world of wine was completely changed by the New Zealand-led screwcap revolution. There are other examples, including the way our winemakers have worked together to promote our wines, and our early involvement in the lighter alcohol wine category.

Without doubt sustainability is also an expectation. Purchasing a New Zealand wine is a discretionary expenditure for consumers, and given the price at which our wines sell, they will expect producers to have done ‘the right thing’. Sustainability – in a broad sense looking after our soil, our water, our ecosystems, our people – is something that consumers expect our producers will do as a matter of course. As such it needs to be baked into our DNA, as it clearly is for many growers and wineries.

There will be other expectations as well, all of which will be based on a mix of personal experience and what consumers may have read or heard about our wines.

Whatever the expectations, what is clear is that over many years our wines have

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

met or exceeded them. That is why New Zealand wine sales have grown steadily in both volume and value over many years to the point that combined export and domestic sales are now well in excess of $2.5 billion per year. The flip side of meeting consumer expectations is not meeting them. We see how deeply felt reactions to unmet expectations can be every time the All Blacks lose a match, or don’t win a World Cup.

“Consumers definitely expect something special when they buy a New Zealand wine.”

Philip Gregan

From a New Zealand wine perspective, ensuring the consumer expectations are met is a complex exercise with thousands of different brands and labels, 1,400 growers and wineries, over 7,000 full time employees, thousands of seasonal workers, and regional bodies and New Zealand Winegrowers all involved. Alongside the industry, outside parties (including the wineries’ import, distribution and retail partners), those providing goods and services to the sector, and even the Government, have roles to play in ensuring that New Zealand wines continue to meet or exceed the expectations of our customers all over the world who buy our wines.

Do that consistently over time and the industry will be able to continue to look to the future with confidence. Long may that continue!

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NEWS BRIEFS

Concerns over Bill The new Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act (Community Participation) Amendment Bill may have unintended and serious consequences for New Zealand wine tourism, with licensing authorities able to decline to renew a license where it is inconsistent with conditions on location or licence density in a relevant Local Alcohol Policy (LAP). “While the intention of the Bill is to increase community involvement and to reduce alcohol harm, during the submission process we communicated our concerns this Bill could potentially have a major impact on wine tourism and wine trails,” says New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) Chief Executive Philip Gregan. “We will be closely monitoring the use of this legislation and its impact on businesses.”

The Bill could mean that some winery cellar doors will be unable to sell wine and be forced to close if an LAP imposes proximity provisions relating to sites such as schools or a church, or there are restrictions on the density of licenses, Philip says. “These provisions would apply irrespective of whether the winery cellar door is well run or valued by the community. This makes little or no sense given winery cellar doors are in the lowest risk category of licence, where wine is available to be tasted, enjoyed, and purchased.”

Larry McKenna

Pinot Pioneers Soil scientist Derek Milne and winemakers Dr Neil McCallum, Larry McKenna, Clive Paton and Phyll Pattie have been recognised as ‘Pinot Pioneers’ for their groundbreaking work in Martinborough. Winemaker and chairman elect of the Wairarapa Wine Region Wilco Lam (see page 64) says the commitment to the variety is as deep as ever. “The Wairarapa wine region’s focus today remains as firmly on Pinot Noir as it has been for the past four decades.”

To read about the Pinot Pioneers, go to page 52.

Cellar Doors

Annual Report NZW’s latest Annual Report shows an outlook of renewed certainty and confidence, after two years of Covid-chaos. An improved harvest, accessible markets, and consumers demanding more New Zealand wine than ever have been welcomed by grape growers and wineries, who are nonetheless also facing significant challenges. Read the report at nzwine.com/members.

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I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

NZW has welcomed the success of The Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill, proposed by Stuart Smith MP, which passed its first reading with broad support from across Parliament.

Winery cellar doors are an important part of wine tourism, yet the current legislation does not permit wineries holding an off-licence to charge for tastings, says NZW Chief Executive Philip Gregan “The current legislation is out of date. It either forces wineries to give wine away for free, or forces them to go through significant cost and time to acquire and maintain a separate on-licence.”

The regulatory change would ensure that winery cellar doors can provide tastings without the unnecessary extra red-tape, he says. Public submissions closed on 14 September and NZW will be presenting to the Select Committee after the election.

NEWS BRIEFS

Vine to Wine Bragato Research Institute (BRI) has announced a joint event collaboration with WinePRO. The international trade event, to run from 25 to 27 June 2024 in Blenheim, will showcase new products and technology, bringing together suppliers, innovators and

producers under the tagline Vine to Wine.

Chief Executive Jeffrey Clarke says BRI is invested in the future success of the New Zealand wine industry. “We look forward to developing an engaging and worthwhile programme that appeals to a wide cross-

section of the industry.” The event will include workshops, masterclasses, and panel discussions on a wide range of topics, covering everything from viticulture and winemaking techniques to marketing and distribution strategies. winepro.nz

Wine People The founders of a new wine internship hope to kickstart careers in Marlborough this summer, offering work and training from vines to wines, logistics to cellar doors. Wine People co-owner Tayla Walker says the 18-month Wine People Internship has been developed to increase pathways into the wine industry, grow training for new wine workers, and ease labour pressure for wine companies. She established Wine People with her mother Kathryn Walker, who was formerly Chief Executive of a large Marlborough wine company, after the duo saw opportunity to mentor new wine workers while liaising with education providers and wine companies.

The internship, starting in January 2024, offers training through Te Pūkenga – Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology and the Primary ITO – and work opportunities in a range of Marlborough wine companies, from boutique to major. In the first year, interns will have a taste of vineyard, cellar and vintage work, as well as experiences in the likes of cellar door, nursery, and logistics operations. In the second year they will focus on areas they are best suited to, says Tayla.

“The whole point of this is to open more pathways to people coming into the industry.” The Walkers plan to start the process with 12 to 16 interns this summer. winepeople.co.nz Professor Paul Kilmartin

Repurposing Grape Marc

Grape marc from New Zealand’s wine industry is set to be transformed into high-value products in a $9.8 million project led by the University of Auckland. The stems, skins and seeds left over from winemaking offer opportunities for food, paper, pharmaceutical, building and chemical products. Professor Paul Kilmartin, an expert in wine chemistry, will lead the research programme, which has been awarded funding by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Endeavour Fund. Food additives, chemicals for specialised applications, and paper products with fire-retardant and antimicrobial properties are among potential uses. “Our research team holds several patents and has developed leading-edge technological approaches that will be applied to grape marc components,” the funding application reads. As well as scientists from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, the team includes researchers from AUT, Crown research institute Scion and the University of Canterbury. The programme will be “an example of how to create substantial new high-value product revenue streams for New Zealand companies while eliminating a primary industry waste stream as part of our future circular economy,” says the application. Paul’s background in wine chemistry includes setting up the University’s postgraduate Wine Science programme in 2003, which is now located at the Goldwater Wine Science Centre on Waiheke Island.

NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023 I

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Upcoming events

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To have events added to our calendar contact sophie@sophiepreece.co.nz

Altogether Unique A Celebration 1 November nzwine.com/en/events

Christina Pickard

Chardonnay Symposium 5-6 October hawkesbaywine.co.nz/symposium

Wine writer Christina Pickard, Elizabeth Kelly MW, and Emma Jenkins MW are three of the speakers at the inaugural Aotearoa New Zealand Chardonnay Symposium in Te Matau-a-Māui Hawke’s Bay in October. The symposium, organised by Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers in collaboration with New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) and the New Zealand Society for Oenology and Viticulture (NZSVO), kicks off with a NZSVO technical workshop on Chardonnay on day one, followed by the Great New Zealand Chardonnay Celebration.

For more see Emma’s preview of the event on page 72.

This NZW event will unite winemakers, grape growers, industry partners, and media in celebration of New Zealand’s wine industry, from vine to glass. The event will honour the 2023 NZW Fellows, announce the 2023 Young Winemaker of the Year, and recognise outstanding efforts during Cyclone Gabrielle recovery.

to honour the incredible transformation of Marlborough since Montana planted its first vines in 1973. Industry members will gather to celebrate historic and current successes, with the announcement of trophy winners from the Marlborough Wine Show, sponsored by QuayConnect, including the winners of three new subregional trophies.

Two recipients of the Marlborough Wine Lifetime Achievement Award will also be honoured for their contribution to the region’s industry.

Women in Wine National Networking Event 2 November nzwine.com/en/events

This networking event will be held at Kate Sheppard House, where women connected to change the political structure of New Zealand. Enjoy a guided tour of the house, presentations, topical discussions and the opportunity to network. This event is being held in Christchurch the morning after ‘Altogether Unique - A Celebration’ on 1 November. All members are welcome.

South Island Wine & Food Festival 2 December winefestival.co.nz

An unforgettable day of great wine, delicious eats, and live music in Hagley Park, Christchurch.

Pinot Noir Workshop 18-21 January pinotworkshop.com

Craggy Range

Syrah Workshop 1-3 November syrahworkshop.co.nz

Young Winemaker

31 October nzwine.com/en/events/youngwinemaker

Three regional finalists will compete in the 2023 Tonnellerie de Mercurey Young Winemaker of the Year National Final at The Bone Line in North Canterbury on October 31, with the winner to be announced at the NZW Altogether Unique – A Celebration event in Ōtautahi Christchurch on 1 November.

Read about previous winner Alun Kilby on page 16.

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The New Zealand Syrah Workshop, run by the Syrah Symposium and supported

by NZW, will be held at Lake Taupō. Join fellow winemakers and growers to taste, discuss and evaluate recent finished vintages and current barrel samples in a collegial environment with the aim of improving the understanding of the Syrah variety.

Marlborough Wine Celebration

17 November marlboroughwineshow.com

The Marlborough Wine Show Celebration – Honouring 50 Years, is a special event

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

The Southern Pinot Noir Workshop, held in Hanmer, will welcome guest speaker Dr Amber Parker, Senior Lecturer in Viticulture and Director of the Centre for Viticulture and Oenology at Lincoln University. Amber’s research focusses on phenological modelling and understanding environmental drivers of phenology, investigating the effects of source-sink modifications of the grapevine on phenology and asynchrony of fruit composition, and understanding impacts and adaptations for viticulture in the context of climate change. She also has a keen interest in developing and implementing precision agriculture techniques in viticulture. Conference attendees will bring along problematic batches of Pinots in order to seek advice from their peers and ensure better wines, while growing industry relationships and connections.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Wine Business Forum CHARLOTTE READ

The New Zealand Winegrowers Wine Business Forum will focus on the importance of brand, and has been designed to inform, connect and inspire those with a connection to our wine sector.

Experts at the one-day event, to be held in Christchurch on 1 November, will explore the need to understand our consumers, the use of brand story to stand out from the crowd, and the excitement around opportunities in future innovations.

The forum has an impressive lineup of both New Zealand based and international speakers, attending in person and virtually, including brand experts, industry practitioners, leading wine industry commentators, and trade.

Oz Clarke (see page 66), who’s long been a champion for New Zealand wine, will share his perspectives on what contributes to the strength of the New Zealand brand, and how we can sustain that in the future.

Attendees will also hear from David Downs, Chief Executive of New Zealand Story Group, speaking on the value of

Oz Clarke at the International Sauvignon Blanc Celebration in Marlborough in 2016

‘our New Zealand-ness’. Mike O’Sullivan, Creative Director of Many Minds, the agency behind this year’s New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) branding refresh, will share his views on the New Zealand Wine brand and our future potential.

Lulie Halstead, founder of Wine Intelligence and now a strategic marketing consultant, will speak to Why Marketing and Consumers should be at the Centre of your Wine Business. Rob McMillan

of Silicon Valley Bank, one of the world’s most renowned wine analysts, will talk on Tomorrow’s Wine Consumers. NZW plans to hold the Wine Business Forum annually, with theme selection based on feedback from members.

This inaugural event will be followed on the evening of 1 November with a NZW event, Altogether Unique – A Celebration.

1 November nzwine.com/en/events/wbf

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Altogether Unique Growing the reputation of New Zealand Wine

Read On

Kia ora, The New Zealand Winegrowers Wine Business Forum, focussed on the importance of brand, will be held in Christchurch on 1 November.

We are excited about the opportunities of this one-day event, which has been designed to inform, connect and inspire those involved in the New Zealand wine sector. We plan to hold a Wine Business Forum on an annual basis and will select the theme based on feedback from our members on what information they would like to focus on.

There’s an impressive lineup of speakers at the forum, including Oz Clarke, as well as brand experts, industry practitioners, leading wine industry commentators, and trade. The programme – divided into Brand, Consumer, Markets and Innovation – will build upon our industry’s momentum and how we can leverage learnings to continue to advance New Zealand’s premium global position. To read more on the forum and its speakers, go to page 11.

We look forward to seeing you in Christchurch soon.

Kia kaha Charlotte Read, NZW General Manager Brand For the full programme, go to nzwine.com/en/events/wbf

The Blind Tasting

Kathrin Jankowiec. Photo Richard Briggs

Congratulations to this year’s member Associate Panellists for The Blind Tasting – Kathrin Jankowiec, Winemaker for Villa Maria Estate, and Nick Pett, Winemaker for Seresin Estate. Kathrin and Nick were selected from a pool of 74 applicants and will join two viticultural associates, Katie Cameron (Technical Assistant for Escarpment) and Tai Nelson (Vineyard Manager for Soljans). Our trade associates this year are Ina Yoon (Founder of New Zealand Wine Boutique), Leola King (Founder and Director of Candela Bar) and Martyn Norris (Category Manager - Liquor, Beverages & Tobacco for Foodstuffs North Island - Gilmours). There is a strong focus on diversity of panel in The Blind Tasting, with associate and senior panellists spanning all elements of production, from grape growing through to sales, and spanning the full trade spectrum, inlcuding education, media, distribution, off-premise and onpremise. Cameron Douglas MS and Stephen Wong MW will form one of this year’s panels, tasting specifically for activity targeted to on-premise trade, as we increase our sommelier-focussed activity in international markets.

The full list of panellists and associate panellists can be found at nzwine.com/members/marketing/education/blind-tasting.

International Pinot Noir Day 2023

Some of the speakers at the Wine Forum. Clockwise from top, New Zealand Story Chief Executive David Downs, founder of Wine Intelligence Lulie Halstead, Founder of Silicon Valley Bank Wine Division Rob McMillan, Creative Director Mike O’Sullivan, Many Minds.

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I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

To celebrate New Zealand’s top exported red variety, NZW ran a PR and social media campaign to mark Pinot Noir Day on 18 August, in conjunction with the provision of a toolkit for use by members, wider trade and media.

NZW was thrilled with the engagement from our members, with more than 1,800 toolkit downloads.

NZW also worked with media to tell the New Zealand Pinot Noir story by providing a media kit with a series of stories, including facts about New Zealand Pinot Noir, Pinot personalities, and imagery, with particularly strong pick up in Australian and Canadian media publications.

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ALTOGETHER UNIQUE

New Zealand to Australia Parochial buying has never been stronger in the Australian market, but New Zealand wine is deemed ‘almost local’ across the Tasman, says Catherine Wansink, Australia market consultant for New Zealand Winegrowers. In this Q&A Catherine looks at why that’s both a challenge and an opportunity, and offers other insights into New Zealand wine’s third largest export market.

How is New Zealand wine performing in Australia?

New Zealand is the largest country of origin wine imported to Australia, comprising about 11.8% of the market by value and 9.6% by volume. That’s followed

by France with about 9.3% share by value and 2.6% by volume. Unsurprisingly, Australian wine dominates the market with about 75% share by value and 85% by volume. Herein lies the challenge for New Zealand wine – to carve out a position of what makes New Zealand wine unique and different to local cool climate offerings in a highly parochial market. Chardonnay is an opportunity with momentum. According to the latest Australian scan data (Circana Australia Weighted Liquor) total Chardonnay grew +2.6% value but declined -0.2% volume.

New Zealand Chardonnay outperformed the category, growing +5.9% value and +9.9% volume. New Zealand Chardonnay is priced at a 44% premium to the market.

What are the greatest challenges and opportunities in this market?

Growing the premium end of the market, in particular Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. There is demand and interest for premium New Zealand Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in both retail and on-premise; the challenge is telling the story of what makes our wines unique and different, and to articulate the premium messaging to support the price premium. Securing a suitable distributor to support and grow the brand is also a challenge as distributor portfolios are often at capacity.

The premiumisation of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc is an ongoing challenge in what is a mature market for the

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Cameron Douglas MS, centre, at the Somewhat Sommit in Melbourne

“It’s important to engage with sommeliers as they are an influential cohort that can educate, drive wine trends and shape the drinking culture and mood of our wine bars and restaurants.”

Catherine Wansink

What is the Somewhat Sommit initiative?

It’s an in-depth technical New Zealand wine tutorial, providing an update and a snapshot of what’s happening in New Zealand wine right now, including smaller planted varieties, a Chardonnay bracket and some new wave wines. Offered by New Zealand Winegrowers in partnership with Sommeliers Australia, it is based on the original ‘Sommit’ format hosted by Cameron Douglas MS and Stephen Wong MW – but this time on Australian soil rather than in New Zealand. It’s important to engage with sommeliers as they are an influential cohort that can educate, drive wine trends and shape the drinking culture and mood of our wine bars and restaurants, which is where the magic happens.

Supporting local and buying Australian has never been stronger in the Australian market. However, consumer perception research tells us that when it comes to food and beverage, Australians consider New Zealand as ‘almost local’ and will buy New Zealand produce if it offers something unique and different to local offerings. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity for New Zealand wine, to be held in the ‘almost local’ consideration set, while maintaining a story of provenance and what makes New Zealand wine Altogether Unique.

What else has been rolled out in your market?

Following the Somewhat Sommits in each city we take the opportunity to open up a wider trade and media tasting which includes the wines from the tutorial and some additional wines. In addition to our partnership with Sommeliers Australia, we have just become a partner with Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and will have a presence at this year’s award ceremony. We have also developed a year-round publicity programme to ensure we are raising the visibility of New Zealand wine in Australia.

category. We are seeing the divide deepen within the category, with the lower price points at one end and a positive story at the premium end.

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

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ALTOGETHER UNIQUE

Tonnellerie de Mercurey Young Winemaker of the Year Alun Kilby has been “inundated with opportunities” since he won Tonnellerie de Mercurey Young Winemaker of the Year last year. “It has helped me with continuing with my professional growth and also networking within the wine community” says Marisco’s Production Winemaker of doing media interviews, judging events, and being asked to host tastings.

The 2023 National Final will be held at The Bone Line in North Canterbury on October 31, after regional competitions in Marlborough (won by Matua’s Callum Haynes on 13 September), Central Otago, to be held on 21 September, and the North Island, to be held in Hawke’s Bay on 28 September. The winner will be announced at the New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) Altogether Unique - A Celebration event in Ōtautahi Christchurch on 1 November.

Alun says the competition helped him grow in his vocation, with the judging section particularly beneficial. “It gives an insight not only to the wine competition environment but also gives you the

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Alun Kilby judges in the 2023 New World Wine Awards

opportunity to see what’s out there on offer. It also involves taking the time to analyse and focus on different wines – varietally and stylistically,” Alun says, having recently served as an associate judge for the New World Wine Awards. It was “fascinating to be on the other side of the curtain,” he says of that competition.

“I have stewarded the Marlborough Wine Show a couple of times now which really gives you an insight into the blindness, but also complications of hosting a wine show.” His palate still needs training – “it’s a marathon after all, not a sprint” – but the Young Winemaker and subsequent judging opportunity is a great introduction into the wine show world.

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

The speech segment of the Young Winemaker Competition was also a major learning, with his ability to speak in public, and share an opinion, having grown tenfold, which “has really helped me out at work doing presentations and tasting sessions with the wider team”.

The competition is open to those aged 30 years or younger working in any winemaking role within New Zealand.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for our future winemakers to stretch themselves as well as meet other fellow young winemakers, senior winemakers and suppliers to our industry,” says Nicky Grandorge, Leadership and Communities Manager at NZW. “It’s a really positive environment.”

ALTOGETHER UNIQUE

Pinot Noir New Zealand 2025

Michael Henley MW

Pinot Noir NZ With a date set for Pinot Noir New Zealand 2025, to be held in Ōtautahi Christchurch in February 2025, Committee Chair Michael Henley MW gives us a taste of what’s to come.

Lock it in.

11-13 February 2025 Ōtautahi Christchurch

Save the date for ... 11-13 February 2025, with Pinot Noir NZ to be held at the newly opened Te Pae conference centre, as well as other venues around the city.

Our latest news is ... that we have an amazing and exciting event geared up to take place in a new city and venue from previous events. After an eight-year hiatus, showcasing all that a rebuilding Christchurch has to offer will be a real highlight.

Knowledgeable and influential international speakers and guests, great Pinot Noir tastings with fanatical Pinot producers, and a delicious culinary programme will all be part of the event.

The committee is ... building on the platform created by the 2021 committee. Those plans had to be cancelled because of Covid-19, and we’re really excited to be bringing back this flagship event for New Zealand’s wine industry. The chance to reconnect with international guests and get them back to New Zealand to spend time with our growers and makers to discuss all things Pinot is truly amazing.

New Zealand Pinot is ... all encompassing – in mind as well as geography. It grows exceptionally well in nearly all of our wine regions, and with those areas maturing we are starting to see more regional differences. This adds layers to the offering internationally and makes the wines that much more interesting when the sense of place starts to drive the conversation. Especially when those conversations are being championed by makers who live and breathe the grape!

One thing you should know about me is ... that I have an intense drive and commitment to highlight to the world the amazing talent and quality that makes up the New Zealand wine industry. Pinot Noir NZ 2025 is another chance to do this, and I am really excited to be leading a talented team to bring this together.

More details to be announced soon.

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NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023 I

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ALTOGETHER UNIQUE

The Social Place Sharing the stories of New Zealand wine SOPHIE PREECE Living in the heart of Waiheke wine country gives Chrissy Powlesland seasonal insights that delight her in life and work. “The buzz and excitement of harvest, chilly mornings, and the joy of bud burst. Every year’s vintage is a chance to try new release wines – it’s such a cool circle of life throughout the year,” says New Zealand Winegrowers’ (NZW) new Communications Manager. “Living in wine country definitely influences my approach, and I like to think that I have members’ needs at the heart of everything I do.”

“Farming, science, sustainability, branding and marketing all have their role to play, and that makes it a unique and interesting industry to be part of.”

Chrissy Powlesland Chrissy’s path to wine came via real estate. “After 10 years working in advertising agencies in Auckland, I decided to shift to Picton. I was ready to buy a house and not only was Marlborough stunningly beautiful,

Chrissy Powlesland at home on Waiheke Island

but property prices were very affordable versus Auckland,” she says. “That was when I discovered Marlborough was a wine producing region.” In 2013 she joined the Mud House (now Accolade) marketing team “and that was the start of my career in wine”.

Chrissy moved to Waiheke Island two years ago, and spent 12 months with boutique producer Tantalus Estate, “from one paradise at the top of the south to a tropical island in the Hauraki Gulf ”. There are similarities between the two wine regions, with a strong sense of community, lush native forests, and stunning sea views, Chrissy says. “ It’s nice living close to the vineyards, olive groves and sandy beaches.

And there are no traffic lights on the island – just like Marlborough.”

She enjoys the “vine to table” nature

of working in wine. “Farming, science, sustainability, branding and marketing all have their role to play, and that makes it a unique and interesting industry to be part of.” She’s also found collegiality, hospitality and generosity. “It feels like we are part of something bigger and I think that is evident when talking about New Zealand wine on the global stage. It is an industry to be very proud of.”

In her time in wine, Chrissy has seen plenty of changes, including in digital marketing, which was emerging as a “nice to have” 15 years ago, but is now an essential part of the marketing mix. “Bringing stories to life through rich content allows people in every corner of the world to connect and explore the uniqueness of New Zealand wine.”

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I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

ALTOGETHER UNIQUE

The global lockdowns of the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the use of digital platforms, “and in some ways connected the world with a common experience”, she adds. “Dreaming of a getaway to the pristine shores and stunning wine regions of New Zealand would have been pretty attractive to someone living in London, New York or Melbourne.”

When it comes to a future involving artificial intelligence (AI), she recalls the beginning of her work life, when fax machine and cellular phones were exciting new technology. “I believe that AI will help us to save time by making mundane tasks seamless, and in turn allow more time for creative endeavours and connection.

Online shopping is part of the mix, but nothing beats a real experience with wine at a cellar door, in a restaurant, festival, or from a retailer.”

“Bringing stories to life through rich content allows people in every corner of the world to connect and explore the uniqueness of New Zealand wine.”

Chrissy Powlesland During her nine years living in Marlborough, Chrissy worked with the volunteers of Kaipupu Wildlife Sanctuary and of the predator free charity Picton Dawn Chorus. And in 2019 she helped lead the Tuia 250 ki Tōtaranui team activating five days of commemorations that marked the first meetings between Pakeha and Māori with the arrival of Captain James Cook.

She says sustainability is a key differentiator for New Zealand wine “and as an industry we are focused on demonstrating our commitment to the future”. Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) encourages social and environmental practices, and many in the industry are already very active in the space, Chrissy says. “It’s a long-term view, but ultimately these initiatives will see cost savings, and future proofing as the climate changes.”

When it comes to her new role, Chrissy says there’s a lot happening behind the scenes at NZW in the areas of advocacy, environment, brand, and research, with the communications team providing support to each. “What’s most challenging is ensuring our members are aware of everything that is happening.”

She’s looking forward to attending an exciting lineup of industry events in Christchurch this November, starting with the Wine Business Forum (see page 11). With international speakers including Oz Clarke, Rob McMillian, and Lulie Halsted, members will have access to a global view of the opportunities and challenges the industry faces, Chrissy says. “This year’s theme, ‘The Importance of Brand’, is a great choice, given the recent work to refresh the New Zealand Wine brand.”

The Altogether Unique – A Celebration industry dinner follows on from the forum, and will include the announcement of the 2023 Young Winemaker of the Year, recognition of the 2023 Fellows of NZW, and acknowledgement of the efforts of those impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle. The following day is a morning at Te Whare Waiutuutu Kate Sheppard House for the Women In Wine networking event. “It is going to be a wonderful 24 hours of inspiration, information and connection.”

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The Focus

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Neal and Judy Ibbotson Swine to vine to wine

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David Jordan Growing science in the field

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Peter Holley Man on a Misson

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Mal McLennan Aiming high at Maimai

THE FOCUS

Legendary Fellows Five legends of New Zealand wine have been named 2023 New Zealand Winegrowers Fellows, honouring their efforts for the industry. In this Focus feature Neal and Judy Ibbotson, Dr David Jordan, Peter Holley, and Mal McLennan talk about their extraordinary time in New Zealand wine.

Neal and Judy Ibbotson: From swine to vine to wine SOPHIE PREECE When Judy and Neal Ibbotson met in the late 1960s, he was a farm adviser, she was a dental nurse, and they were each dating the other’s flatmate. “We swapped partners,” explains Neal. “It was the best thing we ever did.”

Fifty-five years on, the pioneering founders of Saint Clair Family Estate, both of them New Zealand Winegrowers Fellows for 2023, say good timing and good people have characterised their journey in wine. “The names on the accolades might be Judy and Neal, but it’s not about Judy and Neal. We are proud to receive this award on behalf of all those great people.”

In the early 1970s the Ibbotsons borrowed money to buy 13 hectares on the outskirts of Blenheim, along with 100 pigs. Judy’s father developed mobile pig sties which they dragged around the paddocks with a tractor, so that their swine got fat while fertilising the land. “Today this practice would have been called sustainable organic farming,” Neal notes.

In 1973 Montana, now Pernod Ricard, started planted vines in Marlborough, and before too long the company was looking for contract growers. Meanwhile, the price of pork had plummeted and the Ibbotsons were casting around for a more viable land use. The timing was perfect, and they

joined nine other pioneering landowners in growing grapes for the company. “We were on a voyage of discovery,” says Neal, reflecting that the steep learning curve has yet to let up.

“We have been extremely fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time, surrounded by amazing people and to have been part of the Marlborough wine industry, and part of the Sauvignon Blanc phenomenon.”

These days there are nearly 30,000ha of vines in Marlborough, but back then the land was dominated by dry, dusty, stony paddocks, growing sheep, crops, “and the odd orchard”, Neal says. “There were no contract labour or machinery gangs, so Judy and a team of ladies planted our first Müller Thurgau vines.”

For 13 years, Judy’s team worked during school hours, starting out with cuttings from Montana’s nursery, transported to

the block in her lowlight Morris Minor, resplendent in turquois. The car was their substitute for a Range Rover, Neal says. “It didn’t have 4-wheel-drive, but it was less capital intensive and still made it up and down the rows of grape plants.”

Neal stuck with his job, but each weekend took to the vineyard, establishing vines and trellis, and loosening the soil with a post hole borer, so the “group of ladies” could plant the cuttings, “stamping the vine in three times” Judy says, recalling a lot of laughs amid a lot of hard work.

“The night before our first harvest some of the ladies arrived out to celebrate with a flagon of sherry – needless to say it was a long day when the harvester actually started.” Then there was winter pruning.

“An early morning job was to pull out the old wood to get us warmed up then prune and wrap and tie vines down.”

In those early days, irrigating vines was considered a ‘no-no’, as they thought it might affect wine quality, Neal says. “Then Henk Ruesink – a Dutch immigrant who became a hard-working horticulturist, then viticulturist – became the first person to introduce trickle irrigation of grape vines to Marlborough”. That was “industry changing”, with vines flourishing under the combination of free draining soils, Photo on left, Neal and Judy Ibbotson

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THE FOCUS

Neal and Judy Ibbotson

sunshine and water, he adds. “Henk was never officially recognised for showing the way. He should have been knighted.”

Judy recalls the work that came with trickle irrigation. “A back breaking job was to lay irrigation polythene pipe and use a nail in a piece of wood to make a hole, then insert a microtube whisker. We would be crawling by the end of the row.”

But the grape vines responded and they ultimately proved an easier proposition than pigs, which periodically escaped, and had to be chased down. “One neighbour thought he was a cowboy and tried using a lasso,” recalls Neal. “He was useless.”

Despite the toil they were “great days”, with a group of 10 contract growers all new to the industry, and all “thirsty for knowledge”, Neal says. “The vines were all of the Müller Thurgau variety destined for bag-in-a-box wine for the New Zealand market, and all planted on their own roots.” There were no exports back then, and in the 1980s a domestic oversupply led to the Government-funded vine pull.

“As exports opened up, we replanted and changed varieties – mainly to Sauvignon Blanc.”

Their children Sarina, Tony and Julie helped in the weekends and holidays.

“They were paid 20 cents per hour and still describe this as slave labour,” Neal

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says. But something clearly stuck, because in the decades since, Tony has led the company’s branding, while Sarina and Julie redirected their previous careers into wine marketing studies, and now manage the business. Neal and Judy say their children were all urged to leave Blenheim and find their own path. But they’re clearly delighted that that path somehow led back to the business.

Saint Clair Family Estate has come a long way since 1994, when the family came up with the company name over a Sunday roast on a cold winter’s night.

“Following a couple of wines and some hokey pokey ice cream, discussion took place regarding the all-important brand name to be given to the new wine in the tank,” Judy says. “It was eventually unanimously decided that what was required was something to last, something to be remembered and something to be sensational. But above all else, core family values would be the base for the brand.”

One of Marlborough’s earliest European settlers was James Sinclair, a pioneer known as King of The Beaver, in recognition of the town’s tendency to flood. His descendants owned the land that Judy and Neal planted in 1978 and still live on today, so they adopted his

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

name for the pioneering brand, using the original Scottish translation.

“As we progressed unknowingly into producing wine there were many dramas and we made many mistakes, but we slowly moved up the steep learning curve,” Neal says. “We were lucky to follow the successful footsteps of Marlborough’s early winery exporters: Hunters, Montana, Cloudy Bay, Jackson Estate and Wairau River. As they say the rest was history and we were extremely fortunate to be part of it.”

If they were to go back 50 years, there’s not much they would change, he adds, while noting the learnings gained from every challenge. “Our business has been like a river, always flowing, sometimes rapid and occasionally turbulent, but more often rippling, meandering and winding. Often not knowing which tributary we should take to help us on our journey.”

The couple’s 55-year partnership has been successful “because we both loved what we were doing”, he adds. “We have been extremely fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time, surrounded by amazing people and to have been part of the Marlborough wine industry, and part of the Sauvignon Blanc phenomenon.”

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THE FELLOWS

Dr David Jordan: Growing science in the field SOPHIE PREECE Dr David Jordan has spent his career taking science into New Zealand vineyards, while heeding the knowledge and experience of those in the field.

“I like to think it’s more collaborative than prescriptive,” says the viticultural scientist, who has been named a New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) Fellow for his services to the industry and its research over the past 40 years. DJ, as he’s known to most, adopted a synergistic and adaptive approach to the introduction of Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ), to the development of the Lighter Wines programme, and to the Vine to Wine consulting business he’s run throughout the country for nearly 30 years.

“I would rather foster people coming along and everyone having an input,” he says.

“We need to continue to evolve new initiatives that give our industry a spark and bring international attention to what we’re doing.”

Dr David Jordan DJ’s contribution to the industry includes 34 years on The New Zealand Society for Viticulture and Oenology, many of them as its president, an extended period as a member of the NZW Research Committee, and working on the organising committee for three International Cool Climate Symposiums.

In the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle this year, DJ has been part of a NZW project offering technical advice to impacted industry members. No two visits have been the same, ranging from young newcomers to wine, with nascent operations devastated by the floods, to near retirees who lost their nest egg when the cyclone hit, after decades of work, he says. “And some were grappling with the loss of the family home, which was more overwhelming than the damage to their vineyard.”

DJ reckons 95% of his job is about people and 5% technical knowledge. “The people part has been pivotal, starting with my

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Dr David Jordan

formative years,” he says, recalling members of the Dalmatian/Croatian families that had pioneered winegrowing in Auckland, who were “very welcoming and inclusive”, openly sharing their intergenerational knowledge and experience with new entrants into the industry.

He continues that tradition, sharing his own knowledge and insights with the next generation in wine. “I take a lot of joy and encouragement in seeing how their own careers have flourished. I was playing the same role that some of the founding members of our industry did for me. And long may that continue.”

DJ grew up on a sheep and beef farm in Katikati in the 1960 and 70s, when farming was in the “doldrums”, but horticulture bloomed. Citrus, kiwifruit and avocado plantations were progressively taking over land in the region, and while farmers tightened their belts, horticulturists were spending. The rural lifestyle was in his blood, but what he saw over the fence excited him more than pastoral pursuits.

Part of that excitement was in the generous information sharing he found in his school jobs on a strawberry farm and a vegetable block, each owned by political leaders in their respective industries. They were also leaders in the community, says DJ, who learned about the politics and commercial aspects of the operations, while getting dirt under his fingernails, “because they were out there running their commercial operations; physically involved”.

In 1983, after completing his Lincoln University horticultural science degree with First Class Honours, DJ got job at Ruakura Research Centre near Hamilton. Table grapes were one of his crops, which meant working with Government Viticulturist Richard Smart and his viticulture team at Te Kauwhata.

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

When he was awarded a scholarship at Oregon State University, DJ kept an open mind as to what his PhD research project would be. Oregon had a new and burgeoning wine industry, with excitement around Pinot Noir, as well as Chardonnay and Riesling.

It had many synergies with New Zealand’s wine industry, including a cool climate and shades of David and Goliath, and was the most dynamic realm of the horticulture department. DJ settled on a research project with a focus on wine grapes, “and really got a taste for the wonders of the wine industry”.

There was good support for research in Oregon, but when DJ returned to Ruakura, he found the Te Kauwhata Reseach Station on its last legs, with the previous staff of more than 40 – split between the vineyard and winery trials – relentlessly whittled down. Within a week of his return, Richard announced he was returning to Australia and DJ took over his role. “I was effectively the scientist responsible for the closure of that research center.”

In 1994 he relocated to Blenheim and found an industry hitting its straps. It was still quite immature, with a lot of new players and a heavy dependence on Kiwis who had trained in Australia, or Australians bringing their technical knowledge to the region. “It was a very dynamic time, but the research funding was in a bit of a dire state at that time,” he says. “The writing was on the wall that to sustain a research project was really hard yards.”

By the end of that year, he had moved away from research and into his consultancy business, one of just two full-time technical consultants in those days. “Our industry was developing seat of the pants, copying each other over the fence,” he says.

Working on NZW industry projects like SWNZ and Lighter Wines along the way has been part of the joy, and he says the technical

THE FELLOWS

focus and broader networks he had established over the years were key to the success and achievements of both initiatives.

The SWNZ programme, launched in 1995, was based on a Swiss model DJ appreciated for a format that encouraged growers to progressively improve their environmental footprint. “We developed that from the vineyard up,” he says, reflecting on three years of meeting with growers and evolving the programme to ensure those on the ground could see its practical application, and have input in refining it. “I think it enhanced the likelihood of success.” When something is forced on people the initial response is always to push back, he adds, using the Freshwater Farms Plans as an example. “There may be logical sense to it but to be forced on growers is never the way to get adoption.”

The Lighter Wines Programme – which wound up in 2020 with several New Zealand wine companies using its momentum to grow their lighter alcohol and no alcohol labels – was similarly collaborative, with a flexible rather than prescriptive approach. “If a research direction was not fulfilling expectations, we changed it, taking advice from our growers

and production colleagues.”

Being open-minded to input from the coalface, which contains “huge talent” and capability, is also a hallmark of DJ’s consultancy. Some clients advise him to be more “forceful and prescriptive” in his interactions, but he considers that a “risky approach”. There are some things he will disagree with, “with great energy”, but admits that’s quite rare. “For most things there are 10 ways of doing something in the vineyard, as an example. Two of which I think are worthy, a couple of which that will get there in the end and a couple that are not wise. You can coach and encourage people to come to an end point, and I think you get better outcomes than being autocratic.”

Looking forward, DJ reflects on the fact that every 10 years there’s a “pivotal moment” that helps the industry progress.

There was phylloxera and replanting, SWNZ, the transformational transition to screwcaps, and Lighter Wines, which has put New Zealand’s wine industry a decade ahead of Australia’s lower alcohol research, he says.

Now the greatest challenges are diminished financial viability for small and medium producers – especially outside

BAYLEYS MARLBOROUGH SALESPERSON 2019-2023

Marlborough – and a new generation of drinkers less interested in wine, he says. “We are not doing a good job of fostering a new generation of wine drinkers and bringing then into the fold.” Lighter Wines played a major role in that, and companies like Giesen, with its highly successful 0% brand, are considering the growing segment of people who eschew alcohol, DJ says. “To not acknowledge those people exist is putting your head in the sand.”

New Zealand wine needs a vibrant and diverse industry that keeps it in the spotlight with new initiatives, “or there’s the risk you get superseded by the new sliced bread,” he adds. “We need to continue to evolve new initiatives that give our industry a spark and bring international attention to what we’re doing.”

The industry here is one of the most technically advanced in the world, thanks to growth that’s ensured a flow of new wineries with the latest technology, and new or replanted vineyards guided by the latest knowledge. But it’s a global advantage that is at risk. “Marlborough will be full in a few heart beats,” DJ says. “Where is the next wine product offering diversity that will underpin our future growth?”

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THE FELLOWS

Peter Holley: Man on a Mission SOPHIE PREECE Nearly 30 years after he joined Mission Estate, Peter Holley says every single day has been exciting. “It’s all been wet concrete, vibrancy, developing offshore markets, and working alongside the most extraordinary people,” says the Chief Executive of New Zealand’s oldest wine company, established in Hawke’s Bay in 1851 by French missionaries.

“You can never walk away from the past and there’s a huge story here that still needs to be told. But going forward, you need that balance of being current, progressive and environmentally conscious.”

Peter Holley Since 1996 he’s become well versed in district plans, urban development, commercial property, orchards, silviculture, and viticulture, not to mention hospitality and events, with a busy restaurant and the annual Mission Concert, which has been running for more than 30 years. There’s also been plenty of governance, with Peter recently announced as a New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) Fellow for his services to industry organisations. “If ever you think about a job that would offer diversity, this would be it,” he says.

When Peter and his family moved to New Zealand from South Africa in 1996, Mission was a very different company to today’s successful wine brand, with orchard and forestry interests, along with a lot of unproductive land and non-strategic assets.

Peter’s brief was to sell the assets and get the ship in shape.

He’d come from South Africa with an abundance of business acumen, thanks to an honours degree from Rhodes University, gained after three and a half years in the military, followed by Master of Business Leadership from the University of South Africa. He was then chosen to

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Peter Holley

do a management development program at Richardson-Vicks, a wholly owned subsidiary of Procter & Gamble. “That was the start of my business learning”, Peter says.

He went on to work for pharmaceutical multinationals for eight years, during which time he established his own business in the field.

He also came to New Zealand with a love of wine, and saw “huge potential” in the wine arm of the Mission business, thanks to a highly undervalued reputation and decades of diligent work being done by the winemakers. “They had a suite of very, very good products that just hadn’t really seen the light of day,” says Peter. “There was a lot of potential here that just needed to be unlocked.

It “needed a spark” and strategic direction, which started with jettisoning “some very average vineyards”, while continuing relationships with “very good growers”, many of whom they’re still working with. High vigour sites were shifted to other opportunities, while Mission developed vineyards on the Gimblett Gravels, then expanded into Marlborough’s Awatere Valley in 2012, with the acquisition of a 100-hectare vineyard, “aligning our production and capability with

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

our markets”, Peter says. For the past nine years viticulturist Steve Wheeler has been ensuring Mission’s fruit quality continues to meet targets, he adds. Meanwhile they’ve developed a winery with “great capacity”, a lot of technology, and a consistent focus on energy efficiency. “And all the devices you can think of to produce quality wine.”

At the helm of that is winemaker Paul Mooney, who’s been at Mission for nearly 45 years, having joined the Marist brother winemakers in 1979. There are good reasons why people stick around at the company for so long. “I think there are some really good fundamental values around mutual respect and recognition,” Peter says. “A lot of purpose around growing better fruit; around making better wines; around finding different ways of doing things; around alignment; around getting wines around the world, and across New Zealand for that matter – domestic is still the number four market as a country. So many people are aligned so closely with what we are trying to do with quality and delivery.”

As well as his work at Mission Estate, Peter has also been deeply involved in governance, including working on local tourism with the Hawke’s Bay Chamber of Commerce for more than five years, and

THE FELLOWS

with Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers in the early 2000s, at which time they launched the Gimblett Gravels. Mission was a founding member of the Gimblett Gravels Winegrowers Association, and Peter was Chair of that group for two years. Then in 2012 he was voted onto the New Zealand Winegrowers board, which was “absolutely invigorating”, he says.

The board work offered him levels of insight regarding the resources available, and the “remarkable” value generated by the NZW staff and board for members.

“Again there was a great sense of alignment.” It gave him a macro perspective of the industry and deeper understanding of changing legislative and regulatory frameworks, which he would not have had in his management role. “Stepping out of that shadow into a different space was invigorating.”

Peter was a director of Bragato Research Institute in its foundation years, which was “challenging but very special to be part of ”. And he is excited by its future.

“I think it’s marvellous what’s happening down there. It’s a real feather in the cap of Winegrowers.”

More recently, he has taken on the role

of Chair for the Bragato Trust, filling a void left after Kevin Moore passed away, although he says the experienced and committed trust members make his role as chair “relatively straight forward”.

Meanwhile there’s more to do at Mission, including tree planting for emission offsets. That’s the latest in a long line of environmental initiatives that began when he arrived, Peter says, recalling an alarming number of people in Hazmat suits, and spray signs on small vineyard blocks being worked by busy people. Peter warned that the behaviours were not sustainable and began to search for a system to bring rigour, resulting in Mission being one of the first wineries in New Zealand to adopt the ISO 14001 environmental management system in 1997. Mission subsequently joined Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand, “which is a brilliant programme” Peter says, but kept the ISO 14001 “because it’s a bit more confronting around objectives and what are your goals going forward?”

The standard has allowed for a lot of business improvements, including the winery’s energy efficiency. Now there are plans to plant 16ha of hillside in native

trees next year, beautifying Mission’s eastern ridgeline, while protecting it from future development, Peter says. “It’s also around seeing if we can take that road to zero, or even become environmentally positive.”

NZW has been a driving force around increased sustainability and carbon zero targets, he adds, increasingly certain that such moves are “absolutely essential” in terms of market access. On a recent trip to Europe, the change in environmental consciousness was tenfold, he says. “The more we can do, the more we will align with our offshore customers. That’s an imperative really.”

For a business steeped in tradition, the future still needs to be the focus, he says.

“You can never walk away from the past and there’s a huge story here that still needs to be told. But going forward, you need that balance of being current, progressive and environmentally conscious.”

More than quarter of a century after he arrived in New Zealand and took on the mission of Mission, “unlocking” its potential has proved a constantly interesting experience, Peter says. “It’s fun, to be honest.”

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THE FELLOWS

Mal McLennan: Aiming high in the Maimai Mal McLennan grew up in an industry steeped in generational succession, where politics was governed by an old guard. “In the ‘70s and ‘80s you heard of the Wool Board and Meat Board, but I never knew anyone on the committee.”

So it was a “great big” culture change when he planted Sauvignon Blanc in Hawke’s Bay in 1994, and within the month had met the Chair of New Zealand Grapegrowers and rubbed shoulders with the board. “You talked to the people, you pruned grapes with them, and went to conferences with them, and field days with them,” he says three decades on, having been recognised as a New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) Fellow for his services to industry organisations.

“From the time we started to the time we had finished, we had gone from a cottage industry of like-minded people sitting around a table talking about how to prune grapes better, to really serious business people and intelligent academics discussing international trade and access to markets.”

Mal McLennan Where sheep and beef farming was “very traditional”, with some families in their sixth generation, and on the same land since the mid-19th Century, wine was relatively new, with the exception of West Auckland families like the Corbans, he says. “Almost everyone was first generation, and people like me morphed in from other industries.”

Mal and his wife Bronwyn had their own sheep and beef farm in Dannevirke, and had worked with their two kids through tough economic times to build a successful operation. But conversations with his siblings about the potential of grapes on their childhood farm piqued Mal’s interest.

His three brothers and one sister were all

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Mal McLennan

working in other careers, including one brother with a wine distribution company in Hong Kong. So when the wine option was put on the table, Mal put up his hand to manage it.

“To a certain extent there wasn’t a lot of difference,” he says of moving from stock to vines. “You’re growing living organisms and they behave differently, but at the end of the day you have to nurture them when they’re young to give you the production you want when they’re grown. That’s true of cattle and sheep and grape vines.” Whether it’s farming, horticulture or growing pine trees, there’s a “very similar ethos to it if you want to be successful”, Mal continues. “Keep your stock healthy and feed them well, with plenty of good clean water and the right nutrients at the right time. In that respect there wasn’t a lot of difference.”

They started with a 15-hectare development on the 120ha block, and named

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the vineyard Maimai Creek, after the duck shooting shelter they’d built in a creek at the back of the farm as children. And while the advice was to plant a diversity of varieties, and some in Hawke’s Bay were still planting Müller Thurgau, Mal planted it all in Sauvignon Blanc, meeting a growing market for the variety. The vineyard expanded as time went by, always in Sauvignon Blanc, with Mal reasoning that plenty of successful businesses had all their eggs in one basket.

But in 2002 – following a hard-hitting one-off frost – they decided to spread their risk by buying land in the Bridge Pa Triangle, with Merlot and Syrah dominating, alongside Chardonnay and Pinot Gris.

While moving from stock to vines was an easy shift, there was “a great big difference” when it came to the culture of wine. As a first-generation grape grower in his late 30s, Mal found himself in a young and welcoming industry, where he was soon

THE FELLOWS

asked to take a seat at the table of the Hawke’s Bay Grape Growers Association (HBGG). “Because the industry was quite small you could rub shoulders with the people in it.” And the board conversations back then were largely about research, he says, calling winegrowing a “cottage industry” in the early 1990s. “I was just in the right place at the right time, I guess.

Some of the guys who had been around in the 1970s were looking to retire and … younger growers in their mid-30s and early-40s had enough runs on the board to get involved.”

He became Deputy Chair then Chair of HBGG, just in time for the devastating 2001 frost, which had some growers “running around and not knowing what to do”. His own attitude, carried from the vagaries of pastoral farming, was to “go out and prune some vines”, hoping for a better season the next year. “I had an attitude that we were farmers and nature was part of the deal.”

The board’s discussions in 2002 were dominated by the amalgamation of the Wine Institute and New Zealand Grape Growers Council into NZW, which Mal considered “a no brainer”. The industry had gone through “the teething stages of

childhood and adolescence and we were getting into that later teenager stage of starting to be mature and make decisions and partnering up,” he says. New Zealand’s industry was “growing exponentially”, he recalls. “It had grown up and we could see the bigger picture of New Zealand being an exporter and sending wine to the UK.” After 12 years on HBGG, Mal went on to spend six years on the NZW board, stepping up immediately to Chair the committee for Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ). Maimai had been one of the first vineyards involved in the programme back in 1995, with viticulturist Jim Hamilton, who Mal considered a mentor, urging the industry to take better care of its soils. “He said the soils we were using in Hawke’s Bay were very fragile and we needed to protect them.” There was never any argument about whether SWNZ would happen or not, “just how we would do it”. The emergence of SWNZ involved great collaboration, with people bringing ideas together, Mal recalls. When he became Chair he continued the focus on involving as many people as possible in the constant development of the programme, to ensure it was effective and meaningful.

Many wine regions overseas were launching programmes that smacked of marketing, not authenticity – “talking the talk before they could walk the walk”, he says. “When you scratched the surface, they were found to be very shallow.”

For Mal, being in governance was about playing his part in the wine industry. “I am not a political beast naturally, but I do want to stand up to do the right things.” And in his time, he saw a huge change in the influence wrought by the boards he served.

“From the time we started to the time we had finished, we had gone from a cottage industry of like-minded people sitting around a table talking about how to prune grapes better, to really serious business people and intelligent academics discussing international trade and access to markets.

So it’s been a really big 25-year climb.”

Having sold Maimai Creek in 2017, he’s been trying to wind down, but admits he’s “not doing a great job of it”.

Retirement golf has been sidelined by the destruction Cyclone Gabrielle wrought on the green, and the “bits and pieces” work he took up on retirement has spiralled. “Now my part time works takes up 50 hours a week.”

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The Science 31 I

BRIght Ideas Sauvignon Blanc genome

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Carbon Positive Grape Days Marlborough

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Cyclone Recovery Grape Days Hawke’s Bay

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Freshwater Plans Grape Days Central Otago

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The Z-Files Zoomers and wine

THE SCIENCE

BRIght Ideas

Deciphering Sauvignon Blanc’s “catalogue of life” SOPHIE PREECE The first genome assembly Dr Annabel Whibley worked on was for a butterfly, tracking 21 chromosomes fragmented into nearly 4,000 pieces, at the Museum Nationale d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

A little more than a decade later, the Bragato Research Institute (BRI) bioinformatician has obtained a complete reference genome of the Mass Select clone that underpins New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc plantings. That’s a pivotal step in the work of the Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine Improvement Programme (SB Programme) Annabel is part of. “The reference genome is the launch pad for the main thrust of

the SB Programme, which is to generate and characterise a new diversity collection for Sauvignon Blanc,” Annabel says. “By comprehensively and accurately capturing the genome of our progenitor Sauvignon Blanc clone, we are in a great position to efficiently and precisely identify changes that have occurred in our new plants.”

“The pace of technological change is astonishing and it’s wonderful to be working with such cutting-edge dataset and approaches and to be able to reach the endpoint of a gapless genome assembly.”

Dr Annabel Whibley A lot has changed between a butterfly in 2012 and a grapevine in 2023, with the development of new sequencing technologies and improved computational algorithms, says Annabel. “These have led to massive step changes in the quality of an

assembly that can be produced and in the affordability of generating an assembly.”

The Oxford Nanopore Technologies PromethION sequencing platform used by the SB Programme team is a valuable resource in New Zealand, where there’s not a lot of money for research infrastructure, Annabel says. “Their platform provides scalability and has relatively low instrument costs. Oxford Nanopore is really democratising genomic sequencing, and was, for example, the platform used by ESR for all their Covid genome sequencing.”

Her own introduction to the Oxford Nanopore sequencing was a project at the University of Auckland working on the threatened native hihi, or stitchbird. Because it is considered taonga, the sequencing had to be done in New Zealand, so they used a handheld version of the PromethION sequencer, called a MinION, for the work. “The pace of technological change is astonishing and it’s wonderful to be working with such cutting-edge dataset and approaches and to be able to reach the endpoint of a gapless genome assembly,” Annabel says.

Photo on left, Dr Annabel Whibley. Charlotte E. Johnson

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THE SCIENCE

A genome is “essentially a catalogue of life” packed full of biological information, she explains. “Every gene is there, along with the elements that regulate it and other functional components of the genome.

“From this we can start to understand what differentiates Sauvignon Blanc from other grapevine varieties and to gain deeper insights into important biological processes that may have an impact on its viticultural or oenological properties.”

Dr Annabel Whibley There are still gaps in our understanding of how all of these elements work and interact, but we can interpret sequences well enough to make some inferences about their function. From this we can start to understand what differentiates Sauvignon Blanc from other grapevine varieties and to gain deeper insights into important biological processes that may have an impact on its viticultural or oenological properties.”

The next step is lots of data, “the scale of which is a challenge in itself ”. The SB Programme team will undertake a deeper dive into properties of the Sauvignon Blanc genome, while taking advantage of genomics resources for other grapevine varieties and wild accessions “to understand what makes Sauvignon Blanc special and to gain insights into where there is scope for improvement”.

They will also begin screening existing and new clones of Sauvignon Blanc, both at the level of the genome – to identify differences from the reference – and in ways that allow them to assess how these genomics changes are influencing plant traits.

Annabel says she’s been fortunate to work on a diverse range of animals, plants – and more – during her career, but the grapevine is the first where she’s also been able to consume her study organism. “And I would say that yes, knowing more about grapevine genomics as well as learning more about the industry as a whole, is definitely increasing my enjoyment of a glass of wine.”

To read more about the New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc reference genome, go to page 93.

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Dr Annabel Whibley. Photo Charlotte E. Johnson

Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine Improvement Programme update

Successfully generating a reference genome for Sauvignon Blanc is just one step towards improving New Zealand’s most important grapevine variety, albeit a big one. Over the past year, the Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine Improvement Programme has made significant progress in building capability to identify and select new grapevine clones, including six new science staff, a research laboratory, and a high-throughput PromethION sequencer.

After the success of completing the production of the project’s first 6,000 new vines ahead of schedule, Bragato Research Institute was notified that the programme’s subcontractor Plant & Food Research had mistakenly produced and delivered vines that were of the wrong grapevine variety. This will delay the programme, which was set to finish in 2029, by 12-18 months. Plant & Food Research has taken responsibility for fixing its mistake and has scaled its production capacity to ensure the plants can be replaced in the coming season, with the first replacements due this month.

Fortunately, the other work within the programme, such as the genetics work to identify and select vines described in the article above, is unaffected.

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TECHNIQUE

THE SCIENCE

Mt Impey Conservation Estate

Climate Positive Grape Days Marlborough SOPHIE PREECE When Dr Robert Holdaway was a kid, he wanted a bach and a boat in the Marlborough Sounds, not a block of marginal land up the Wairau Valley.

But three decades after his father planted 350 hectares of pines at Birch Hill, the Holdaway family’s commitment to climate positive winegrowing is rooted in the trees they grow as a carbon sink, and the pests they eradicate to protect them. “Yes, do emissions reductions,” Robert told audiences at the Marlborough Grape Days event. “But what we really need, if we are talking about tackling the climate crisis, is to invest in carbon sinks.”

Robert, who has a PhD in forest ecology from Cambridge University and spent eight years as an ecosystem ecologist at Manaaki

Whenua Landcare Research, returned to the family vineyards in 2017 “as a slightly overqualified tractor driver”, joining his brother Richard at Lowlands Wines. The family wants to leave a positive legacy for future generations, he said at Grape Days.

“And we are always looking for practical things that we can do to improve our business.”

In 2020, Robert did a “ballpark” emissions profile for Lowlands, using standard lifecycle assessment methods. He found annual vineyard emissions of 991.34 kg CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per hectare, and lifecycle emissions of Lowlands Wines per year of 0.828kg CO2e/bottle. The relatively low emissions are partly down to the Lower Wairau location, with high yields from 3

metre rows, as well as the likes of lightweight bottles and efficient logistics.

But any big carbon reductions in the future will require technological advances, including electric tractors, Robert said. That will be “especially promising” if they can be lightweight to reduce soil compaction, and automated, to help tackle labour shortages.

“There’s a chance to merge those problems together and come up with a really good future solution.” Before that happens, New Zealand requires a massive increase in its renewable energy supply, he explained. “That is a big investment that needs to happen.”

Until the technology and infrastructure arrive, diesel use is inevitable for Lowlands, so they use trees to provide “breathing space”. Trees are “the ultimate carbon storing

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THE SCIENCE

technology”, Robert told the audience at Grape Days. “This is something designed to be self-replicating and solar powered.

The most amazing tech out there.”

They’ve committed heavily to that ‘tech’, by replanting the original pine block after harvest. In 2020 they bought a 2,381ha hill country farm in the upper Wairau Valley and planted another 340ha of pine and 6ha of hardwood eucalyptus. The remaining 2,000ha became the Mt Impey Conservation Estate, with naturally regenerating native bush and mature remnant forest, all of which is vigilantly protected against grazing and predator pests.

The unregimented native block is much less effective as a sink than plantation, but has plenty of other positive benefits, Robert told attendees, noting that carbon cannot be the only lens with which to view environment and ecology. “We would be doing this conservation work regardless of whether we were rewarded for carbon credits or not.” His family has been busy tackling wilding pines and cutting back pest numbers, including the feral cats that pose a major threat to birds that would otherwise help in the regeneration, by moving seed.

About 400 traps have dealt to thousands of

INDUSTRY NEWS PROFILES

destructive possums, while 500 pigs and 800 goats have been killed during the past three years, said Robert, noting that 100 head of goats are responsible for 21 tonnes of C02 emissions in a year.

When it comes to offsetting emissions, Lowlands Wines is now “quite a bit climate positive”, Robert said, in the understatement of the event. The combined sinks of their natural and plantation trees accounted for 122,000 tonnes of C02 by 2023, set to grow to 280,000 tonnes by 2040. That means Lowlands, while creating 0.7% of Marlborough wine, will produce enough credits to offset 13% of the region’s wine

industry emissions every year for the next 17 years.

Robert urged others to “implement easy-wins now” and invest in carbon sinks, either on their own land or in partnership with farmers who supply sheep for winter grazing. The region has “vast” areas of land “itching to go back into natives” and able to provide offsets until there’s technology to better reduce emissions. “Don’t sit around waiting for legislation to come in and force you to take action, or to reward you do the right thing – do it because it is the right thing to do, and it will make Marlborough a better place for future generations.”

Red herring for sequestration While trees are perfectly designed for carbon sequestration, growing soil carbon is a bit of a “red herring” when it comes to offsetting emissions, says Dr Robert Holdaway. “It is a very, very, very good thing. But for us it’s not a solution to carbon sequestration.” Much of Lowlands Wines’ management is aimed at putting carbon back into the soil, with Robert calling the operation “conventional-plus”, maximising photosynthesis and using cover crops, roller crimping, compost, rotational sheep grazing, biological controls and soil bio-stimulants to grow soil health. But most of this added carbon gets used as food by the soil biology and released as CO2, he says. “So, in fully functioning soil the vast majority of the carbon put in on an annual basis gets respired back out again by soil life.”

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THE SCIENCE

Weathering the storm Grape Days Hawke’s Bay OLIVER STYLES Conversations on the morning of the Hawke’s Bay edition of Grape Days 2023 were about the heavy rain watch in place for Auckland and its potential threat to the Football Ferns’ opening game against Norway.

This weather watch resonated with many attendees, just five months on from the devastation of Cyclone Gabrielle in Te Tai Rāwhiti / Gisborne and Te Matau-a-Māui / Hawke’s Bay: distant enough to fill an entire session on cyclone recovery but close enough for weather warnings to trigger a twitch of anxiety.

“In a period of climate change, we know that cyclones will happen, as will droughts.”

Emma Taylor Anyone who watched Bruce Nimon choke up at the beginning of his talk will know that recovering from the destruction is still a daily fight, despite much of the region returning to relative normalcy. Bruce’s segment covered Kokako Farms’ ongoing efforts after completely losing 15 hectares of vineyard and having 30 out of 100ha under two metres of water. “I’m gonna lose my shit … I’m finding this quite hard,” Bruce began.

His talk aptly illustrated the two sides of the disaster: the pragmatic (Kokako burned the bearings out on their net winder after just one row of silt-sodden vineyard) and the personal (“this has knocked me pretty hard”).

The same duality was apparent in his lessons learned, with the first being “take more holidays”. Other observations included sub-surface irrigation being a “saviour”; that local streams could be just as damaging as big rivers; and “recovery beats replant”.

Insurance was the biggest lesson of all, because the data requirements to support

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Photo from Kokako Farms

claims were “massive”.

Indeed, there was ample scope to learn from Cyclone Gabrielle in a way that perhaps had not been done for the previously most destructive (and similar) weather event, Cyclone Bola. This was the background to consultant viticulturist Emma Taylor’s opening cyclone recovery talk. “I was surprised by how much we didn’t have written down from Bola,” she said. “Since Cyclone Gabrielle, all I do is talk about the weather,” she admitted. “In a period of climate change, we know that cyclones will happen, as will droughts.”

Numerous were the lessons: every vineyard was different; information needed to be disseminated fast; grapevines are hardier than we think; silt is someone’s topsoil; phylloxera dies in floods; plant vine rows parallel to rivers; silt naturally breaks open to the air through drying and worm activity.

Silt was the major factor for Indevin’s Paul Robinson, speaking of the Twin Rivers site at Pākōwhai – one of the hardest-hit areas in Hawke’s Bay. Parts of the vineyard were under water for a week, with access only properly returning after six to eight weeks.

“We pretty much locked the gates … it was

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

pretty tough to walk away from over 500 tonnes.”

Fortunately, he admitted things were not as bad as initially suspected. Dealing with the silt proved to be key, and the majority of the focus at the site has been to break it up and, effectively, turn it into topsoil.

While dealing with the damage remains a current and ongoing concern for many, it was clear that the community had played a huge role in helping to weather the effects of the cyclone. Furthermore, as many pointed out, that community spirit went beyond Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne to people both nationally and internationally volunteering help in myriad ways.

The final talk of the session was by local psychologist Wanda Douglas, who was engaged by both Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers and Hawke’s Bay Fruitgrowers’ Associations to provide psychological support to affected members and their families. Although pointing out that humans were “hard-wired to cope in adversity”, Wanda emphasised that resilience was an attribute that needed focus. “Highly resilient people have good networks,” she said. And looking out for others was important. “If you are worried about someone else, start a conversation.”

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THE SCIENCE

Water Watch Grape Days Central Otago RACHEL PETRIE Grapegrowers should learn about Freshwater Farm Plans before the regulations are rolled out next year. That was one of the messages shared at the Central Otago Grape Days event in July, alongside talks about measuring carbon emissions, using artificial intelligence, improving efficiencies, practicing precision irrigation, and ensuring location-specific frost fighting.

“We are a lower-risk industry to freshwater takes, so hopefully this will impact what we need to do and the costs.”

Dr Edwin Massey New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) General Manager Sustainability Edwin Massey told attendees that the looming regulations for Freshwater Farm Management Plans (FMP) would affect all vineyard properties of 5 hectares or larger.

Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) aims to be able to assist growers with developing plans and potentially auditing them, but at this stage will not be involved with FMP certification, he said. However, NZW is engaged with the Crown to amend current legislation so that SWNZ has the potential to play a more comprehensive role in assisting members to develop plans and certify and audit them.

“We are New Zealand’s most sustainable sector for land use,” Edwin said at the event.

“We are a lower-risk industry to freshwater takes, so hopefully this will impact what we need to do and the costs.” The new regulations went live in Southland in August and were likely to begin in 2024 in Central Otago, at which point growers would have 18 months to develop and lodge their plans.

The Grape Days audience also heard from Plant & Food Research Principal

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Misha’s vineyard

Scientist Brett Clothier, who discussed his latest work with the Vineyard Ecosystems programme. Brett explained findings from the use of drainage flux meters or “giant rain gauges buried in the soil”, which mimicked how water behaved as it entered the soil, including capillary action, leaching, and drainage. His work offered insights into how much water “quits” the soil as grey water or drainage water. Viticulture returned more water to the environment than it took for plant use, Brent said. He reiterated that investing in soil capital resulted in enhanced support services from the soil, ensuring more efficient irrigation use.

John Bright, from Aqualink in Canterbury, discussed the use of the online tool MyCatchment (mycatchment.info) to help with the process of irrigation planning, consenting and design. “Put the very best, most favourable irrigation system in that you can afford”, he said. “Use an independent certified irrigation designer, and then take it to a range of installers for quotes.” Good planning and design from day one created the potential for long-term

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

effective and efficient irrigation, John told attendees, emphasising the need to be future-focussed. Irrigation demand would increase over time, while water availability and security would very likely reduce, he said, also noting that storage would become increasingly important as extreme weather events brought droughts, while availability of alpine-fed water sources decreased.

Central Otago Grape Days drew a range of talent, including Marilyn Duxson, Tom Bullen, Mike Winter, Nick Gill and the local Young Viticulturist of the Year winner Nina Downer. Take home points from a great day included being prepared for changes to management, such as irrigation use, storage, and design, putting freshwater at the forefront of production plans, and considering location when making frost-fighting decisions, including an understanding of inversion and the behaviour of downward flows of cold, dense (katabatic) air.

Rachel Petrie is senior lecturer and vineyard manager at Otago Polytechnic’s Central Otago Campus.

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THE SCIENCE

Jack Muir

PhD Précis Jack Muir has adapted a mathematical model designed for the dairy industry to help him model the precipitation of calcium tartrate crystals in wine. Jack, who’s in the second year of his PhD at the University of Canterbury, gives us a simplified view of a complicated business.

What drew you to chemical and process engineering?

I’ve always enjoyed chemistry and mathematics, and chemical and process engineering gave me the opportunity to learn more about these topics with a focus on applying them to solve real-world problems. The degree covers a wide range of topics, so I was able to discover subjects I enjoyed but hadn’t tried before, such as programming. I’ve also always had an interest in biology and completing a minor in bioprocess engineering allowed me to incorporate this interest.

Please explain your research My research is focused on modelling the precipitation of calcium tartrate crystals in wine. This can be very tricky for winemakers to predict and treat, as common tests used for potassium bitartrate are not suitable for calcium tartrate. Factors such as calcium and tartrate levels as well as the pH can give some indication but do not satisfactorily predict if a wine will crystalise.

The crystals also take a very long time to

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form and can occur months after the wine has been bottled and sent out for sale. This is why being able to predict if crystals will form would be useful, as then winemakers could treat the wines beforehand.

How have you developed the model?

I’ve adapted a mathematical model for precipitation in dairy that was created by a previous PhD student to better fit a wine system. Wines have many compounds that all interact and affect the likelihood of calcium tartrate precipitation, so models with only a few chemicals typically aren’t accurate. My model accounts for a large number of key chemicals that will impact the wine environment and the formation of calcium tartrate. The results of this model will then be compared to the results seen in actual wine samples, which will be used to form recommendations for winemakers.

What’s most challenging about this research?

Wines are very complex solutions; they have so many different chemicals that interact. These depend on the type of grape, growing conditions, processing techniques, and additives. They can also react and change over time and can start to oxidise when exposed to air. The ethanol content of wine also makes it trickier to model, as

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

much of the data available for the modelling equations is for aqueous (water-based) systems. Figuring out how to adapt this for mixtures of ethanol and water has been a challenge. For the experimental side of my research, I need to measure the chemical composition of wine. Figuring out the best methods to use can be difficult as most methods have pros and cons. Some of the chemicals I’m interested in aren’t regularly tested for by the wine industry so there aren’t many established methods. Tests that might work fine for simple solutions can be inadequate if the other chemicals in wine interfere.

And most satisfying?

Well, it’s always incredibly satisfying when I run the model and it matches experimental results on the first try! I also like that I’m working on research with practical applications that could solve actual problems for the wine industry.

Who has helped you with this PhD? I’ve had a lot of help from my supervisor Ken Morison, and the research is funded

by Bragato Research Institute. We also have some great lab managers and technicians in our department that help with some of the day-to-day practical aspects of research.

To read more about Jack’s research, check out page 95 of this edition.

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THE SCIENCE

Hemp Study Vineyard cover crop works well CATHIE BELL A study of hemp growing between the rows in New Zealand vineyards shows “exciting” results that the hemp beneficially affects soils and wines. The research, carried out over three years in Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc vineyards by grape grower Kirsty Harkness and viticulture researcher Dr Mark Krasnow, shows hemp is a viable cover crop for New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc vineyards.

“That hemp did not compete with vines, but beneficially affected soils and wines, is very exciting.”

Kirsty Harkness Industrial hemp seeds were sown in the midrow of three Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc vineyards to assess the effects of hemp as a cover crop/intercrop on the vines and the vineyard soil. The hemp became established without supplemental irrigation, even in an exceptionally dry season when other cover crops failed to thrive. This allowed hemp to continue to grow and sequester carbon longer into the season.

Hemp plants grew large tap roots to at least 30cm, and were able to grow in compacted tractor wheel tracks in the row, where the root system can alleviate compaction caused by vineyard operations.

Soils from the hemp area were higher in organic matter and total carbon, which are beneficial for the long-term health and fertility of the soils. Differences were especially pronounced at 40-80cm, suggesting hemp allows sequestration of more carbon deeper into the soil profile than other cover crops or resident vegetation.

Juice from grapes adjacent to hemp had greater populations of native yeasts, and produced a wine of higher quality than juice from vines sited far from the hemp.

“That hemp did not compete with vines, but beneficially affected soils and wines,

42

Kirsty Harkness

is very exciting. The differences in native yeast populations brought about by a hemp cover crop is an aspect sparking much interest,” Kirsty says. “The suggestion that hemp could improve wine quality is an interesting further study topic, but not a path I’m currently going down. As a grape grower, my focus is on producing the highest quality fruit, and improving soil health in vineyards.”

“Mowing doesn’t add to wine quality. It may look lovely and more tidy as people drive past, but it’s not that great for the soil.”

Dr Mark Krasnow Mark says the result showing a lack of competition with the grapes is “a little surprising, considering how large some of the plants grew”. While not directly assessed in this study, he sees hemp in mixture with other cover crops – such as clover

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

for nitrogen and buckwheat for beneficial insects – as offering huge potential for vineyards, not just to produce better grapes with fewer inputs, and sequester carbon, but also to alleviate soil compaction in the tractor wheel tracks – a major issue in vineyard soils.

His vision is a vineyard where there is no grass sown, and thus no mowing needed. A mixed cover crop sward, including hemp, is sown instead, which is then crimp-rolled as mulch when vineyard crews need to walk down rows. This new paradigm would improve grape quality, conserve water, be bee friendly, use less diesel, and ultimately cost less money, he says. “Mowing doesn’t add to wine quality. It may look lovely and more tidy as people drive past, but it’s not that great for the soil.”

This study shows the promise of hemp as a cover crop in vineyards, Mark says.

“Its ability to survive with little water, its robust root system which adds carbon to the soil, and its ability to grow in and improve compacted soils, makes it a useful tool for vineyard management.”

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THE SCIENCE

Casey Mackintosh

The Z-Files

Zeroing in on Zoomers SOPHIE PREECE Generation Z are less inclined to drink wine than other generational cohorts, with beer and ready-to-drink beverages grabbing more of the market share. That’s one of the findings of new research by Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) student Casey Mackintosh, undertaken in partnership with Villa Maria.

Casey’s study – Wine Consumption and Behaviour of Gen Z in New Zealand; How do they differ from the former wine consuming generations – analyses findings from 160 wine consumers, half of whom were so called Zoomers (1995-2009), with the other half split between Millennials (1977 to 1994) Generation X (1965-1976) and Baby Boomers (1945 to 1964).

Her findings reveal some similarities between the groups, including sustainability values, wine knowledge, and openness to exploring new wine options. “However, Generation Z exhibits a lower prevalence of wine consumption and a stronger inclination towards beer and ready-todrink (RTD) beverages,” she notes. “Taste, packaging and alcohol percentage are significant factors driving their choice of alternative beverages.”

At 27 years old, Casey is at the upper end of the Zoomer bracket, and had talked to winemakers at work who were “particularly nervous” about her generation, amidst the rise of craft beers and RTDs. “They wanted 44

to see New Zealand data for this kind of study”, Casey says. “This is a huge group of upcoming consumers and they need to at least understand them to gain that long term customer loyalty and have sustainable growth in the wine area.”

The study highlights the need for the wine industry to address inclusivity and diversity and to provide increased wine education,” Casey says in her conclusion. “The findings contribute to understanding the evolving preferences of Generation Z and offer insights for the wine industry to adapt and engage with this unique consumer segment effectively.”

Supermarkets stand out as the preferred wine purchasing venues for Zoomers, due to accessibility and convenience, “with affordability being a key consideration”, Casey says in her research abstract, also noting the generation’s wine drinkers are more influenced by social media prompts, alcohol percentage, and convenience than the other generations surveyed. It was clear that Zoomers would like more fun and approachable packaging, such as wine in cans, Casey adds.

One of the findings that surprised her was the number of Zoomers deemed high frequency consumers (drinking wine once a month or more), with 60% in that category. While lower than the 79% in other generational cohorts, “I was expecting

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

less”, she says.

Casey was in Wellington working in wine sales in 2019 when a conversation with Esk Valley Winemaker Gordon Russell saw her rapidly reroute her career. “The way he spoke about wine was just incredible.

It was unusual to hear someone speak so passionately about something.” Within a month she had moved to Hawke’s Bay and started work in the Villa Maria cellar door.

Three years on, she’s a Junior Assistant Winemaker at Villa Maria/Indevin, in her final year of studies at EIT, and sharing findings from her comprehensive research project on a new generation of potential wine drinkers.

Casey, whose 2022 Albariño won the EIT Te Púkenga Best Student Wine last year, has worked her study around vintages, and completed this research project early to free her up for the 2024 harvest. That ability to work key periods, supported by her lecturers at EIT, has helped her to climb to her new role, which is akin to a cadetship. “I get to be part of tastings and learn a lot from the winemakers. I am really enjoying it so far.”

Meanwhile, her interest in wine business research continues, and she’d love to get her teeth into a follow up study, looking at ways the wine industry could tailor strategies to better appeal to Generation Z. “And do we need to?” she asks. “Or is Gen Z just another generation that will age into wine?”

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THE SCIENCE

Wine Clips Kiwi innovation bearing fruit

A Kiwi-designed biodegradable vine clip is hitting the export market, fuelled by demand for more sustainable vineyard practices.

PolyNatural vine clips were created through a research partnership between Crown Research Institute Scion and Christchurch company EPL, to replace the traditional plastic clips that hold nets over ripening grapes to keep birds and other pests away. About 30 million plastic clips are used by New Zealand’s wine industry every year, and when nets are removed, they add to a growing pile of non-degrading plastic.

With the industry seeking more sustainable solutions, Scion began developing a faster-degrading vine clip made of grape marc and bioplastic.

Researchers Dawn Smith and Stephanie Weal led a project trialling different prototypes in the field, testing numerous formulations before arriving at the right mechanical and physical properties. The resulting vine clips are 100% biobased, using waste generated from processing wood, which is fermented using microorganisms and shaped to create a durable clip that can fully degrade in the right soil conditions.

In 2020 EPL and Scion were recognised at the Sustainable Business Awards by winning the award for Outstanding Collaboration for the work on the predecessor to the PolyNatural vine clip. Lessons learned during the commercialisation process and further market research has sparked

Gareth Innes

additional biodegradable products for the horticulture, viticulture and marine industries.

“We’ve spent several years collaborating with Scion by testing formulations, using different materials and doing a lot of field research to develop a product that we’re confident winegrowers are very satisfied with.”

Gareth Innes A number of New Zealand winemakers have successfully trialled the clips, including Cloudy Bay Vineyards in Central Otago and Marlborough. Central Otago Vineyard Manager Derek Beirnes describes them as the perfect product. “Each clip does what it

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I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

needs to do, whilst being environmentally friendly.”

As well as targeting the Adelaide wine growing region, PolyNatural is planning to export its vine clips to Canada and France, with support from New Zealand Trade & Enterprise. PolyNatural General Manager for Sales and Marketing, Gareth Innes, says the commercialisation process has been a journey of discovery. “Good things take time and we’ve spent several years collaborating with Scion by testing formulations, using different materials and doing a lot of field research to develop a product that we’re confident winegrowers are very satisfied with.”

Gareth says winegrowers around the world are hungry for sustainable products.

“Everyone knows that they can’t recycle their way out of the environmental plastic problem. We’re very proud of the mahi tahi (collaboration) that has gone into these products, which are providing solutions for New Zealand, in New Zealand, with benefits to the world. These products are the future for the industry.”

THE SCIENCE

Science Snippet

The complexities of vineyard nitrogen nutrition DR MIKE TROUGHT Di-ammonium phosphate is frequently added to grape juice at the start of fermentation to ensure yeast have adequate nitrogen to complete fermentation.

However, Di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) does not contain essential amino acids, precursors for key flavour and aromatic compounds in wine. Knowledge of the vine nitrogen status is essential for long-term management with the aim of producing good yields of high quality grapes (VrignonBrenas et al., 2019).

Nitrogen reserves (like carbohydrate) in the trunk and root system are used in the spring for shoot growth. Nitrogen deficiency can result in poor and uneven shoot growth, lower photosynthesis, reduced bud fertility and yields (Guilpart et al., 2014; Verdenal et al., 2023). Organic soil nitrogen will not necessarily be available in spring as low temperatures limits

Wither Hills

mineralisation, and herbaceous plants, in particular grasses, with a fibrous dense root system, will potentially ‘mop up’ the free nitrates in the soil.

In contrast, excessive spring nitrogen may result in a dense canopy, which, particularly in cool conditions, can result in higher botrytis infections (Mundy & Beresford, 2007) and/or inflorescence necrosis, a disorder associated with an accumulation of ammonium in the inflorescence, causing the developing bunch to abort (Gu et al., 1996).

The fertile soils of the Dillons Point area in Marlborough generally give higher grapevine yields (Bramley et al., 2023)

and Sauvignon Blanc wines with greater thiol concentrations. Applying nitrogen post-fruit set, pre véraison also enables the vine to accumulate adequate reserves and can have a direct or indirect effect on key flavour and aromatic compounds. Research on Sauvignon Blanc in Bordeaux has demonstrated that fertilisation can enhance amino acid concentrations in fruit, and in turn volatile thiol concentrations in wine (Helwi et al., 2016). In contrast nitrogen had no direct effect on methoxypyrazine concentration which increased as a result of greater shading of the fruiting zone (Helwi et al., 2015). We have found similar results in Marlborough.

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THE SCIENCE

Yeast Derivatives A promising alternative for white wine oxidation prevention

Claudia Nioi1, M. Tiziana Lisanti3, Fabrice Meunier2, Arnaud Massot4, Virginie Moine4 Abstract In the previous decade, the use of Yeast Derivatives (YD) was proposed as a new strategy to control wine oxidation (Comuzzo et al., 2015). These products are obtained from yeasts by autolytic or hydrolytic processes and then dried to obtain the commercial products.

The aim of this work was to carry out a preliminary investigation of commercial YDs with different compositions in order to (i) compare their capacity to prevent white wine oxidation in comparison with conventional treatment using SO2, and (ii) evaluate their impact on wine quality.

Introduction Oxidation processes constitute a major challenge in winemaking, because they can result in browning, varietal aroma loss and the emergence of oxidation off-odours (like brown apple, nutty and curry odours), thus reducing wine quality. Despite the mechanisms involved in wine oxidation having been extensively researched1, finding a way to protect wine against oxidative spoilage remains one of the main goals of oenology. Moreover, the oxidation of young white wines occurs faster when low levels of SO2 are used. In the context of competitive global winemaking marketing strategies, it has become crucial to reduce or even eliminate the use of SO2 and to find alternative antioxidant and/or antimicrobial agents. For this reason, the aim of this work was to carry out a preliminary investigation into the antioxidant activity of YDs in white wine. Two different YDs were added 48

This story is supplied as part of a partnership with IVES - International Viticulture and Enology Society: ives-openscience.eu / ives-technicalreviews.eu to white wine and their ability to prevent wine oxidation in oxidative conditions was compared to that of conventional SO2 addition. Analyses of oxygen consumption rates, colour, acetaldehyde and sensory analyses of the treated wine were carried out and discussed.

Experimental design Two different commercial yeast derivatives (YD, Laffort, France) were tested: one naturally rich in lipids (YDL) and the other naturally rich in reducing compounds, including glutathione (YDR). The wine for the experiments was a Chardonnay (PGI Pays D’Oc) from the 2019 vintage.

The values for the classical oenological parameters of the wine were: alcoholic degree = 12.7 vol %, pH = 3.4, total acidity = 6.11 g/L of tartaric acid, volatile acidity = 0.7 g/L of acetic acid (OenoFoss™, Foss analytical, Denmark).

Total and free SO2 were 3.2 ± 0.7 and 1.1 ± 0.2 mg/L respectively (Y15 analyser, Biosystems S.A., Barcelona). The different treatments were: wine before oxygenation at saturation (W-NoOx); wine saturated with oxygen (O2 = 8 ± 0.7 mg/L, W-Ox); Wine + YDR at 0.3 g/L and saturated with O2 ( WYDR-Ox); Wine + YDL at 0.3 g/L (W-YDL-Ox); and Wine + SO2 (WSO2-

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

Ox) with total SO2 at 35 ± 5 mg/L and free SO2 at 15 ± 3 mg/L. 320 mL of each treated wine was put into 250 mL glass bottles (in triplicate), filled to the brim and saturated with O2. The dissolved oxygen measurements were performed on-line with the luminescence sensor (Pyroscience optical O2 sensor, Bioneuf, France) at 1h intervals until total O2 consumption had been reached (after about 15 days). Using this data, the Oxygen Consumption Rate (OCR, expressed as mg/L of O2 consumed per day) was calculated. OCR represents oxygen consumption at a constant rate for 4-6 days. Subsequently, the rate of consumption decreases until it reaches a plateau, which is not considered in the OCR evaluation. Base chemical parameters (Table 1) were determined

by FT-IR spectroscopy with OenoFoss™.

Total and free SO2 were determined using a Biosystems enzymatic kit with a Y15 analyser (Biosystems S.A., Barcelona).

The chromatic characteristics of the wine samples were determined using the CIELab universal colour system.

Acetaldehyde in wines was determined by gas chromatography with flame ionisation detection (GF-FID). All experiments and analysis were carried out in triplicate.

Finally, in the sensory analysis, 19 judges

assessed the intensity of the oxidation offodour (0 = absent, 10 = very high) of each treated wine.

Oxygen consumption rate of the experimental wines Figure 1 shows the OCR of the experimental wines. For the air-saturated wines, the oxygen consumption rate was in the following order (from highest to lowest OCR): W-Ox > WYDL-Ox > WYDR-Ox > WSO2-Ox > W-NoOx. The oxygen consumption rate of W-NoOx was very low (0.1 mg/L per day), because the initial O2 concentration was < to 1 mg/L. In this case, the OCR can be considered negligible. Compared to levels in W-Ox, O2 consumption was 2.5 times lower in the wine treated with SO2, and approximately 2 times lower in the wine treated with YDR and YDL. These results show that the addition of both YDs reduced the oxygen consumption kinetics in wine to levels almost comparable to the addition of a conventional dose of SO2. The YDs may cause slower oxygen consumption in the white wine by scavenging oxidative radicals that would otherwise accelerate oxidation processes in conditions of low sulfur dioxide in wine (in our case < 5 mg/L).

Effects of treatments on base chemical parameters and wine colour Values for the classical oenological parameters of the experimental wines were determined (Table 1). As expected, in the wine treated with sulfur dioxide, free SO2 decreased after oxidation; i.e., from 15 mg/L to 5 mg/L (Table 1).

Because oxidation phenomena can cause wine browning, the chromatic characteristics of the wine were measured

by CIELab. Table 2 shows the L*, a*, b* values of treated wines compared with the control wine (W-NoOx). As expected, the presence of SO2 in the wine inhibited oxidation and thus preserved the colour.

The addition of YDR and YDL showed a good efficacy for all a*, b* and L* parameters, whose values were similar to those of the wine with added SO2 (WSO2Ox) and significantly different to W-Ox (Table 2). These results are promising in terms of the potential use of both the studied YDs as alternative treatments to

Oxygen consumption rate, mg.L-1.d-1

THE SCIENCE

2,5 a

2 1,5

b d

1 0,5

c

e

0 W-NoOx

W-Ox

WSO2-Ox

WYDL-Ox

WYDR-Ox

Figure 1. Oxygen consumption rate of the experimental wines. All data are expressed as the average of 3 replicates ± standard deviation. Different letters indicate a significant difference (p < 0.05).

Ethanol

pH

% (v/v)

Lactic

Volatile

Total

Free

Acid

Acidity

Acidity

(SO2

Total SO2

(g.L-1)

(acetic

(tartaric

mg.L-1)

(mg.L-1)

acid g.L )

acid g.L )

-1

-1

W-noOx

12.70 ± 0.02 b

3.44 ± 0.004 a

4.10 ± 0.15 a

0.76 ± 0.01 ab

6.11 ± 0.11 a

1.00 ± 0.62 b

3.40 ± 0.55 b

W-Ox

12.92 ± 0.01 a

3.41 ± 0.002 a

4.20 ± 0.16 a

0.73 ± 0.02 a

6.10 ± 0.10 a

1.00 ± 0.55 b

3.50 ± 0.45 b

WSO2-Ox

12.91 ± 0.01 a

3.41 ± 0.004 a

3.80 ± 0.15 b

0.76 ± 0.02 ab

6.12 ± 0.12 a

5.00 ± 0.68 a

34.20 ± 2.10 a

WYDR-Ox

12.95 ± 0.02 a

3.42 ± 0.003 a

4.20 ± 0.16 a

0.78 ± 0.02 b

6.13 ± 0.10 a

1.50 ± 0.50 b

3.50 ± 0.65 b

WYDL-Ox

12.90 ± 0.02 a

3.41 ± 0.004 a

4.20 ± 0.17 a

0.76 ± 0.01 ab

6.09 ± 0.12 a

1.00 ± 0.65 b

3.50 ± 0.50 b

Table 1. Base chemical parameters of the experimental wines at the end of oxygen consumption.

Data are expressed as mean of 3 replicates (for each replicate of treatment) ± standard deviation.

Different letters in a column indicate a significant difference (p < 0.05).

Treatment

CIELab L*

a*

b*

W-noOx

64.1 ± 6.0c

3.1 ± 0.1b

10.4 ± 0.1c

W-Ox

72.8 ± 6.0ab

4.1 ± 0.1a

14.3 ± 0.2a

WSO2-Ox

75.2 ± 0.1a

2.8 ± 0.2b

10.3 ± 0.3c

WYDR-Ox

74.4 ± 1.5a

3.1 ± 0.2b

11.5 ± 0.1b

WYDL-Ox

68.0 ± 1.4bc

3.0 ± 0.2b

11.5 ± 0.2b

NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023 I

49

THE SCIENCE

using SO2 for preventing white wine from browning.

Conclusions This study has shown for the first time that, the addition of YDs to white wine instead of SO2 protects the wine from browning and limits the accumulation of acetaldehyde. YDL and YDR showed interesting antioxidant properties, which could be exploited in low- or no-added sulfite winemaking. Additional studies are underway to better understand the influence of YD composition on their antioxidant activity in wine.

The translation of this article into English was offered to you by Moët Hennessy.

Go to page 80 to read Dr Damian Martin’s Point of View on open access grape and wine science.

50

9

Acetaldehyde, mg.L-1

Impact of treatments on oxidation off-odours Besides the oxidation markers, acetaldehyde is the principal compound to be derived from the chemical oxidation of wine.

Figure 2A shows that after oxygenation the acetaldehyde content is higher than in W-NoOx, indicating its formation after wine oxidation. The sulfited wine (WSO2-Ox) contained the same amount of acetaldehyde as that in the wine not exposed to oxygen (W-NoOx). Interestingly, both YDs reduced acetaldehyde accumulation in the wine after O2 exposure, and this was particularly the case for the YD rich in reducing compounds (YDR).

In order to determine the ability of YDs to prevent the occurrence of oxidation off-odour following oxygen exposure, the experimental wines were also submitted to a sensory analysis (Figure 2B). The sensory panel were asked to evaluate the intensity of oxidation off-odour; i.e., nutty, brown apple odour. The results of the sensory analysis showed the W-Ox wine to be the most oxidised from a sensory point of view. The wines containing added antioxidants (SO2 or YDs) obtained a lower score for oxidation off-odour intensity. The results of the sensory analysis are consistent with those obtained by acetaldehyde analysis, indicating that the YDs could perform as well as SO2 in preventing the occurrence of oxidation off-odours.

10 8

a

A b

7

b c

6 5 4

d

3 2 1 0 W-NoOx

WSO2-OxW

W-Ox

YDR-OxW

YDL-Ox

10 8

B

a b

6

b d

c

4 2 0

W-NoOx

W-Ox

WSO2-OxW

YDR-OxW

YDL-Ox

Figure 2.

A) Acetaldehyde concentration in the experimental wines at the end of oxygen consumption. All data are expressed as the average of 3 replicates ± standard deviation. Different letters indicate a significant difference (p < 0.05).

B) Sensory analysis (intensity of oxidation off-odour; i.e., nutty, brown apple) of the experimental wines analysed at the end of oxygen consumption. Different letters indicate a significant difference (p < 0.05).

This story is supplied as part of a partnership with IVES - International Viticulture and Enology Society: ives-openscience.eu / ives-technicalreviews.eu

References 1 Univ. Bordeaux, INRAE, Bordeaux INP, Bordeaux Sciences Agro, UMR 1366 ŒNOLOGIE, ISVV, F-33140 Villenave d’Ornon, France 2

Amarante Process, ADERA, 33600 PESSAC, France

3

Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, 83100 Avellino, Italia

4

BioLaffort, Bordeaux, France

Article from “Antioxidant activity of yeast derivatives: Evaluation of their application to enhance the oxidative stability of white wine”, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2022.114116 1 Danilewicz, J.C. 2003. Review of reaction mechanisms of oxygen and proposed intermediate reduction products in wine: Central role of iron and copper. Am. J. Enol. Vitic. 54:73-85.

2 C. Nioi, M.T. Lisanti, F. Meunier, P. Redon, A. Massot, Virginie Moine. Antioxidant activity of yeast derivatives: Evaluation of their application to enhance the oxidative stability of white wine. LWT, 171 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lwt.2022.114116.

3 Waterhouse, A.L. and Laurie, V.F. (2006) Oxidation of Wine Phenolics: A Critical Evaluation and Hypotheses.

American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 57, 306-313. DOI: 10.5344/ajev.2006.57.3.306

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The People 52 I

Pinot Pioneers Wairarapa champions

58 I

Young Viticulturist Tai Nelson

62 I

Women in Wine Cath Archer

64 I

The Profile Wilco Lam

68 I

Passion Project Michael Brajkovich

70 I

Diversity Works Growing community

THE PEOPLE

Pinot Pioneers Five ‘Pinot Pioneers’ have been recognised for their groundbreaking work in Martinborough, helping transform a rural farming community into today’s “dynamic and vibrant wine village”.

JOELLE THOMSON takes a look at the influence of soil scientist Derek Milne and winemakers Dr Neil McCallum, Larry McKenna, Clive Paton and Phyll Pattie on the region’s reputation.

Clive Paton and Phyll Pattie – Ata Rangi founders Clive Paton has lived a highly awarded life for his work in conservation and in wine.

The many accolades include a Business Conservation Award in 2007, being made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2012, winning the Minister of Conservation’s Loder Cup in 2012, and being named a Fellow of New Zealand Winegrowers in 2022, along with his partner in business and life, Phyll Pattie.

Clive puts this success down to knowing when something feels right, which is why he changed career from sharemilking to winemaking in the late 1970s. “I had heard about a fledgling wine scene in Martinborough and I liked wine so I drove there to look at a piece of land. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to buy it. The

“As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to buy it. The timing felt right.”

Clive Paton timing felt right.”

He was a single dad at the time, raising a young daughter and working as a sharemilker, while feeling like a round peg in a square hole when it came to farming. “Dad was stationed in Italy as a soldier during the war and he returned with a bit of a thing for wine, which we grew up knowing about and sometimes having it on the dining table.”

The biggest challenges in the early days of Ata Rangi were money and weather. The El Nino vintages of 1981, 1982 and 1983 were difficult but accelerated Clive’s journey to get his vines growing, and by 1985 he had the first 100% varietal Ata Rangi Pinot Noir.

The next year he met Phyll, a young winemaker working for Montana Wines in Marlborough, and by 1987 she was making Chardonnay and Riesling in Martinborough, while Clive looked after the reds. “I made a mental note early on that I wanted to be one of the top red winemakers in New Zealand.

Maybe it was ambitious, but it seemed natural to aim for.”

One of the biggest early successes was the purchase of 3,000 cuttings of the now revered Pinot Noir Abel clone, which he bought directly from Malcolm Abel, a customs officer who had confiscated a French Pinot Noir vine cutting, allegedly from a famous vineyard in Burgundy.

Ata Rangi Pinot Noir has since won the Bouchard Finlayson Trophy for Champion Pinot Noir at the International Wine and Spirit Competition in London three times in 1995, 1996 and 2001.

Photo to left, Phyll Pattie and Clive Paton.

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THE PEOPLE

Escarpment Vineyard

Derek Milne – Martinborough Vineyards co-founder Scientists are curious by nature and Dr Derek Milne is no exception. Work as a soil scientist with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in Lower Hutt, led him to explore soil types in New Zealand’s potential wine regions, and in the 1970s he recognised that Martinborough had the temperate climate, low rainfall, and free draining gravel soils necessary for

“The continued development of the Martinborough region is a source of great pride.”

Derek Milne quality grape growing.

In 1980 Derek founded Martinborough Vineyard with his brother Duncan, along with Wyatt Creech, and Russell and Sue Schultz. They soon had Larry McKenna on board as winemaker, helping grow an award-winning international brand, living up to its slogan of Handcrafted Excellence in Wine.

Derek was bitten by the wine bug at a tasting group in the 1970s in Lower Hutt, attended by other budding winemakers, critics, judges and viticulturists, including Danny Schuster and Dr Neil McCallum.

Derek’s work in Lower Hutt was situated near to Avalon Wine and Spirits, founded by his boarding school contemporary John Buck, who later started Te Mata Estate.

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“Over several years our tasting group was exposed to a wide selection of the great wines of the world, which was invaluable for understanding international wine styles and excellence,” Derek says. The tasting group and handy wine shop ignited his growing love of wine, and in 1977 Derek was hosted on a wine tour of the Rhine Valley in Germany.

He and Neil began talking about areas in New Zealand that might be suitable for high quality winemaking, with the conversations underpinned by Derek’s research and data on climate and soil conditions necessary for producing high quality Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Riesling. “Various not well recognised regions in New Zealand showed promise, and this led to a talk to the Wine Institute of New Zealand, a chapter in Lincoln College’s Bulletin 22A (1978) on prospective regions for viticulture in the South Island, and also on land suitability consultancy work with Montana wines in Marlborough, followed by other clients.”

He also produced a soil map of Martinborough for a horticultural land use symposium, which revealed favourable viticultural potential in soils and climate.

The work provided the foundations for a vibrant wine industry. “The continued development of the Martinborough region is a source of great pride,” says Derek.

Dr Neil McCallum – Dry River Wines founder By his own admission, Dr Neil McCallum has always done things his own way.

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

Maverick and determined, the scientist blazed a trail in the arid landscape of New Zealand wine’s early days, with fleshy, dry, aromatic wines inspired by the best from Germany and Alsace. “When I was studying at Oxford University in 1966, I was given a glass of German Riesling with fresh trout,” says the co-founder of Dry River Wines, one of New Zealand’s iconic wineries and a pioneering force in Martinborough. “That wine was a Hockheimer Riesling. It blew my mind.”

Another wine that took his breath away was a Gewürztraminer shared with fellow scientist and Pinot Noir pioneer Derek Milne, at a tasting group at a rented house in Lower Hutt.

“Danny Schuster was a member of that group and he dug a standing height wine cellar underneath the house where our tasting group met. In those days, good and great wine was really cheap and we accessed first growths and the great wines of the world.”

He and Derek talked about different areas to start a vineyard, and in 1979 Neil and his wife Dawn bought land on one of Martinborough’s golden miles, Puruatanga Road. Their first wines, in 1983, were made from a little Gewürztraminer and 400 kilograms of Sauvignon Blanc, which was just coming into its own in New Zealand. The same varieties made up the first commercial vintage for Dry River in 1984, with Riesling, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir to follow.

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THE PEOPLE

past four decades Dry River has been a leading light in New Zealand wine. In the mid-2000s the winery was named on Jancis Robinson MW’s list of the 10 best emerging wineries in the world.

“That wine was a Hockheimer Riesling.

It blew my mind.”

Dr Neil McCallum Competitions have never been close to Neil’s mind or heart, but he did submit two wines to the International Wine & Spirit Competition in 1993, with the 1991 Dry River Pinot Noir awarded a gold medal and a Dry River Pinot Gris winning silver.

Neil also won five gold medals for the Kidnapper Cliffs wines he made as part of the Te Awa brand, which Julian Robertson purchased when he bought Dry River Wines in 2003. The 2009 Kidnapper Cliffs Cabernet Sauvignon was awarded a Double Gold and Red Wine of the Show Trophy at the Five Nations Challenge.

Larry McKenna – Escarpment Vineyard founder Larry McKenna moved to New Zealand from South Australia in 1980 and spent the next four decades forging a reputation as one of New Zealand’s top Pinot Noir producers.

Soon after he arrived (following his Kiwi girlfriend, then wife, Sue) an old school friend, winemaker John Hancock, offered him a job at Delegat. Then in 1986 Martinborough Vineyards cofounder Derek Milne and his younger brother Duncan invited Larry to become winemaker and 20% shareholder in the winery, which was just one of four in the region at the time. The village was “pretty barren” when he and Sue arrived. “No restaurants, two takeaways and overall a pretty unappealing place. But the dry climate had a similarity to what I knew from Australia in regions where low rainfall and drought were common features. These factors resonated with me.”

Very little wine was made in those days from Vitis vinifera grapes in New Zealand, so the early days of Martinborough represented a major

sea change. Martinborough Vineyards had Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürztraminer and Riesling planted, as well as Pinot Noir, which was given highest priority from the start, Larry says. His only experience working with the variety was at Delegat, where they made it for another winery, but the Milne brothers were “strongly influenced” by Danny Schuster who made Pinot Noir at St Helena in Canterbury, Larry says. “We wanted Pinot Noir to be our hero because it showed great early promise.”

In 1990 he worked a vintage in France for luminaries such as Domaine Dujac, Domaine de l’Arlot and Aubert de Villaine’s property in Bouzeron and the experience led Larry to winemaking techniques such as whole bunch fermentation, extended fermentations and pre-ferment maceration.

Wild yeast fermentations, whole bunch ferments and time in tank were the key attributes of Martinborough Vineyards Pinot Noir in the early days.

Pinot remained his focus when he left the company in 1999 and founded The Escarpment Vineyard with Sue and an Australian-based couple, planting grapes

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nine kilometres west of the village in the cooler, windswept Te Muna valley.

Twenty years later, having inspired monikers including the Godfather of Pinot Noir, Larry sold Escarpment to South Australian winery, Torbreck.

“We wanted Pinot Noir to be our hero because it showed early promise.”

Larry McKenna He stayed on as General Manager until last year, and is now enjoying a vine-infused retirement that includes working harvests with winemaking friends and taking care of a vineyard in Martinborough.

To read more about Phyll Pattie and Clive Paton, check out the October/ November 2022 edition of Winegrower Magazine. For a profile on Larry McKenna, check out the June 2022 edition.

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THE PEOPLE

Young Viticulturist Title taken by Tai Nelson SOPHIE PREECE Tai Nelson was 17 years old when his girlfriend Amber Soljan suggested he get a part-time job at her family wine company in West Auckland. Seven years on, he’s Vineyard Manager at Soljans Estate and New Zealand’s 2023 Young Viticulturist of the Year.

That’s a great result for one of the country’s smallest and oldest wine regions, where boutique wine companies have had plenty of challenges in recent years, from wet and wild weather to relentless urban sprawl. It’s also a proud moment for the family-owned business that’s helped Tai grow his skills from scratch, since the day he started packing wine in the warehouse as a teenager.

The win is also evidence of the opportunities the Young Viticulturist event gives up-and-coming players, says Tai, who tackled his first regional competition two years ago, three days after stepping into his Vineyard Manager role. He “had no idea” of what to expect, and used the competition as a guide for the knowledge and skills he had to build. “I went away and I learned those things, and then I took out the win last year, proving that they’re a really, really good learning experience.” He won the regional

Tai Nelson. Photo by Amber Soljan

final again this year, then had a tough fight at the national title in Hawke’s Bay, with

that province’s Nick Putt from Craggy Range coming in a very close second.

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THE PEOPLE

The first Soljans vineyard was founded in 1932 by Bartul Soljan, and has remained in the family ever since, with Bartul’s grandson Tony the Managing Director today. Tony’s granddaughter Amber, who brought Tai into the fold while they were at school together in Albany, made her own first wine at the age of 7, while her brother Tyler – now working fulltime at Soljans – had his first ferment at 5. Tai says he was essentially “adopted into the family” and went on to learn plenty about the industry on his weekends and school holidays, including through time in the vineyards, where he relished the chance to work hard outside.

His stint serving in the Soljans restaurant, along with his enjoyment of a bar job, inspired him to study hospitality on leaving school, “but I figured out quite quickly that it wasn’t for me”.

So, he returned to Soljans and got “stuck in” to fill the void when the previous vineyard manager had to take time off during a harvest. When the manager eventually retired in 2021, “there wasn’t really a plan for anybody else to take over”, Tai says. “I liked working in

the vineyard, so I put up my hand and said, “I’ll give it a go’.” With no formal viticulture education, he says the three regional Young Viticulturist competitions he’s done since, along with two national finals, have been a huge factor in helping

“They’re a really, really good learning experience.”

Tai Nelson him ascend a steep learning curve, as has the support of the Soljans crew. Being part of a boutique company gives him “a very inclusive view” of the wine industry, from marketing to finances, and vines to wines, with a winemaker who “likes to involve everybody”, Tai says.

The broad knowledge came in handy in a competition that saw contestants tested on trellising, irrigation, machinery, pest and disease management, wine knowledge, and a challenging interview segment.

Prior to the competition they all submitted their report on their recommendations for establishing and managing a sustainable vineyard which would thrive long into

the future.

That’s on Tai’s mind in the wake of a series of challenging wet seasons in the Auckland region, and he plans to work to increase Soljans Estate’s resilience.

“I’m hoping that moving forward we can implement a few more strategies to deal with that – to make it worth it to grow wine out here. It’s definitely something that we have to start thinking about a lot more.” He’s also enjoying a resurgence of traditional practices married with new technology. “We’re seeing a return to stuff that’s already been done but have trackable and quantifiable results from it.”

Another major challenge is urbanisation, as housing sprouts up around West Auckland’s wine country, resulting in the departure of some wine operations. Soljans is well placed amid farmland, but urban sprawl is definitely on the radar, Tai says.

The Auckland wine industry is certainly worth protecting, he adds. “We’ve got some really good examples of great wine out here. Kumeu makes great Chardonnay and Waiheke makes really good reds. I think settling into the boutique small, family run wineries, is a good place for us to be.”

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THE PEOPLE

Young Viticulturist of the Year National Final The New Zealand Young Viticulturist of the Year National Final was held under beautiful blue skies at Paritua Vineyards in Hawke’s Bay and the winners announced at the Awards Dinner in Hastings.

Nina Downer from Felton Road in Central Otago placed third

Tai Nelson from Soljans Estate in Auckland took the title

Zac Howell from Indevin in Marlborough impressed judges with his skills and knowledge

Nick Putt from Craggy Range in Hawke’s Bay came in a very close second

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THE PEOPLE

Tristan van Schalkwyk

North Canterbury Young Viticulturist SOPHIE PREECE Tristan van Schalkwyk was already studying viticulture when Ford vs Ferrari hit cinemas in 2019. But watching it convinced him he’d chosen the right field, having considered a wide array of careers and courses on leaving school. “There’s a particular scene where Ford is arguing they are better than Ferrari because they produce more cars in a day than Ferrari does in a year,” says The Bone Line Vineyard Manager and North Canterbury Young Viticulturist of the Year. “The reply was that Ferrari will be remembered as the greatest car manufacturer ever, because they focussed on creating something beautiful, something the public wants to have a piece of. And that’s what inspires and excites me about wine and being a viticulturist. We have the opportunity to create a product so beautiful that people just need to have a piece of it.”

Tristan studied at Lincoln University, and contacted a bunch of North Canterbury wine companies for summer work. He subsequently joined The Bone Line in 2019 and has been there since, learning well in a role where no two hours are the same.

“You might be on the tractor in the morning, then on the phone finding out about different diseases or fertilisers, then in front of an Excel spreadsheet, then fixing wires or irrigation leaks, then flick the tractor lights on and finish the spraying,” he says. “One of my favourite parts about viticulture is watching some incredible sunsets and sunrises from the tractor cab.”

The boutique company and small wine region are the perfect fit for him. “We are all on the same mission. To be the best… I don’t want to be part of an organisation that is worried about being the biggest vineyard, or getting the highest tonnage, or more focussed on talking up a story than focusing on what is being produced,” says Tristan. “I want to work for an organisation and be part of a wine community that is focussed on producing the best quality wine that this country has seen. And where I am working at the moment, and the North Canterbury region represent those ambitions for me.”

Tristan was unwell the day of the National Final for the Young Viticulturist of the Year and was unable to compete. But he is already thinking about the 2024 competition.

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THE PEOPLE

Women in Wine The power of positivity JOELLE THOMSON For young wine professionals who have been mentored by Cath Archer, it is her wine industry knowledge, leadership expertise and branding experience that impresses them the most. But it was food that led her to a career in wine.

“I found it really satisfying with young women coming into the industry and showing them how to have a global perspective and a business perspective.”

Cath Archer A trip to Italy when she was 19 led her to the city of Bologna, foodie capital of the Emilia-Romagna region, where her then boyfriend played semi-professional rugby.

“The food there was insane,” Cath says. She quickly realised that food and wine were always served together in Italy, which was unusual for a New Zealander in the late 1980s. Italian red wines have remained her go-to, but she forged her own career in wine in New Zealand when she moved to the Wairarapa with her young family in 2000. Since then, she has been immersed in wine, until she was offered the role of Chief Executive of Trinity Schools in the Wairarapa, six months ago.

It is an exciting new role for her to bring both her management skills and her study of psychology together to promote a positive and healthy environment in secondary schools. Cath is currently studying towards her Masters of Psychotherapy and Counselling through Massey University, furthering her desire to bring positive psychology into the education sector. That’s important to a woman who aims to bring positive energy to all of her professional life.

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Cath Archer

Cath entered the wine industry shortly after moving from Wellington to the Wairarapa, when she became General Manager of Toast Martinborough, then head of Wines of Martinborough as well. During this time, she secured $2 million from New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE) in Major Regional Initiative funding, after two pitches to get across the line.

“I first pitched for wine strategy for Martinborough, which was met by NZTE telling me to go away and get a wider regional strategy, so that led me to create a wine and food strategy.” The funding it brought to the region led her to develop other strong roles and contacts within Martinborough, and she worked as Chief Executive of Alana Estate for two years, followed by one of the most challenging and rewarding career roles she has had – Institute Director of Le Cordon Bleu (LCB) in Wellington.

“I set LCB up from scratch and it meant managing the entire project from the ground upwards, literally. The building that houses LCB had to be gutted and refurbished. It was an L-shape that used to go through to Manners Street and it was dilapidated so needed a total overhaul. LCB took three floors and Weltec School of Hospitality took another two.”

Her role also included getting all of the

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

French LCB qualifications established in New Zealand so that today three diploma courses and one Bachelor Degree are all aligned to NZQA. She also engaged with the process to set up a post graduate diploma which is now part of the offering.

“I started as one person, backed by partners UCOL and WelTec, with a gutted building, and had an international partner based in France. It was one of the more challenging dynamics I had to work with, but I loved it because it combined all of my loves: wine, food, education, starting from scratch and marketing, internationally and domestically.”

She also had two young children to raise and she recalls huge stress in that era in her life. “I believe there is always something bigger and I have learnt not to get dragged down into the trenches because as soon as you fall down into that quagmire, it’s really hard to get that perspective of the future and to seek innovation.”

But good things can come from life’s curve balls she says. “When something’s not working, that’s where innovation comes from. That’s where I think marketing comes in and communication comes in, because when things are not working, it forces us to think about how we can find a way to make things work.”

One way she has done that is by

THE PEOPLE

mentoring others through the Women in Wine Mentoring Programme run by New Zealand Winegrowers. “I found it really satisfying with young women coming into the industry and showing them how to have a global perspective and a business perspective. I think the industry misses out on that a bit. Some people are lucky and don’t need to worry about selling their wine globally but most people are not going to sell everything on the local market that means having a wider perspective. People aren’t going to find you if you sit in your garage.”

Her guidance to young people coming into the wine industry is to think about who they want to buy their wine. “Think about the demographic. Is it everybody? If you’re going to sell your wine at $85 a bottle, you probably don’t need to market it to Gen Z, but there is a whole space there that is full of people to market to. Strategise the target market before deciding on how to do the marketing,” she says.

“What I love is that my daughter and son are now discovering wine. My daughter is in Melbourne, where she is discovering wine regions and sends pictures to us, saying ‘this is a really nice wine’. My son is also discovering wines he likes. It’s very

Cath and Chris Archer

rewarding to see that.”

Does she miss her frontline involvement in wine? “Yes, but I have always wanted to further my degree in psychology and get back to the education sector. I feel now that this work can help to have a huge impact on young people. I think that’s where our future is. I see a lot of troubled youth and have seen through my own children that their own peers had struggles and

that’s where part of my desire came from to improve the psychosocial culture in schools.”

Her own decompression outside of work hours comes from solitude and time to reflect. “I like to go for walks in the bush.

I run, cycle and do yoga. Time on my own is what I need to decompress. It’s hard to keep that balance but I’ve got better at it.”

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THE PEOPLE

The Profile Wilco Lam JOELLE THOMSON Wilco Lam is sitting in the sun dappled courtyard at the Porters Pinot winery on the main road into Martinborough as we talk about his life in wine, travel, and walking, and how a connection between all three led him to New Zealand.

The evocative double storey red shed is now used to make On Giant’s Shoulders, the wine brand that lured Wilco away from iconic Dry River Wines after 14 years, 10 of them at the helm. The departure heralds a liberating new lease of life, not only for Wilco but also for the two key team members who left Dry River at the same time as he did – winemaker Sam Rouse and general manager Sarah Bartlett. This cohesive team joined On Giant’s Shoulders,

“I can still remember what I liked about the Vega Sicilia was its rustic aromas and I knew there was no turning back.”

Wilco Lam which has new owners and a new name, yet to be announced. The brand had no fixed abode, aside from the vineyard, so Porters Pinot winery is now home. “It’s really refreshing here,” Wilco says. “Sam and I totally love being able to make the best wine possible and to make it our wine by figuring out for ourselves what the different vineyards we are using can bring. I deliberately came to Martinborough to make Pinot Noir rather than make it in other regions. I believe in this region and the identity it gives to wine.

We are not a major tourist hub for anything, especially if you compare us to Central Otago, and it sounds clichéd, but if we can’t focus on competing on quantity or the tourism aspect, we have got to work hard on our wines and finding the inner beat of wine of this region.”

That inner beat is the tannin, Wilco

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Wilco Lam

says. “Pinot Noirs from this region are characterised mostly by their tannin profile.

I think the challenge of getting that out and expressing that without fear of it is where our greatness lies. I think some people fear tannin in Pinot Noir but it’s something we can easily embrace and express every year, without worrying about what surrounds that tannin. Let’s not focus on aromatics or fleshiness in Pinot Noirs from this region.

For me, the focus is on the direction and shape of the tannins.”

The fruit comes from a group of vineyard sites in Martinborough, including On Giant’s Shoulders vineyard, originally known as Pahi, one of the first sites used by Martinborough Vineyards.

When winemaker Larry McKenna left Martinborough Vineyards, he had a contract to purchase the fruit from On Giant’s Shoulders for a single vineyard wine under The Escarpment brand. The vineyard was then purchased by Braden and Gabrielle Crosby, who sold it last year to a German family.

Now Wilco is supplementing production of the new brand with grapes from Porters Pinot vineyard site and another vineyard on New York Street. Production is 75% Pinot Noir with roughly equal amounts

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

of Chardonnay and Pinot Gris, some of which has already been field grafted to Chardonnay. The plan is to retain some Pinot Gris, although it may not ultimately be destined for a varietal wine. “In my eyes, there is no better Pinot Gris than the vines at Dry River. I loved making the Dry River Pinot Gris. Cropping levels were mega low.

It was amazing to be thinking about Pinot Gris, drinking amazing Alsace Pinot Gris and getting a perspective of what sugar was in wine. I think that was beautiful, thinking about being bold and not caring about what anyone would say. But we can’t do that with these vines at On Giant’s Shoulders, so we are not chasing it.”

Instead he is chasing a regional expression in all of the wines they produce. “Climate change means we would like to explore other areas of Martinborough and the area. We have some thoughts about this but for now we focus on getting the best out of the fruit we have to use, while thinking about how to explore more in the wider region potentially in the future.”

Wilco was born and bred in a small village on the east coast of Holland and attended the Amsterdam School for Hotel Management, where he was bitten by the wine bug as a student pouring wine at tastings. The pivotal

THE PEOPLE

moment was a masterclass that he attended of Vega Sicilia library wines and old Madeiras. “I can still remember what I liked about the Vega Sicilia was its rustic aromas and I knew there was no turning back.”

So he finished his hotel studies, travelled, worked, and walked. The Inca Trail in South America led to a fortuitous meeting with a Chilean winemaker, who suggested Wilco go to Australia to study winemaking at Roseworthy. He didn’t make it in, because he didn’t have a scientific degree or come from a winemaking family, so instead, he headed to Melbourne University to study chemistry and physics, in order to come to New Zealand to study post graduate winemaking and viticulture at Lincoln University in 2003. Since then he has worked for Martinborough Vineyards, Alana Estate, and Bell Hill, and had a stint in Italy working outside Luca with a natural wine producer. “I learnt a lot there about organics and biodynamics and that helped to shape my thinking strongly. I also highly value the time at Bell Hill, which was one of the most interesting places I have worked, where attention to detail was an incredible learning journey.”

Wilco Lam and Sam Rouse

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Wine: Weingut Keller Riesling (G-Max) Meal: Burgers Podcast: Ludovico Einaudi Live @ Albert Hall, I’ll drink to that Magazine: Noble Rot Book: Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Since this is a desert Island, I assume it is hot, humid and I am going solo...)

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THE PEOPLE

Oz Clarke Q&A Oz Clarke – wine expert, author, TV presenter, thespian, theologian, singer, and cyclist – was inducted to the New Zealand Wine Hall of Fame in 2016 in recognition of his extraordinary advocacy for this country’s wine, and especially the Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc he’s waxed lyrical about for 39 years.

Answering questions during his choir’s cycling tour of the English countryside, Oz discusses his upcoming visit to New Zealand, and warns against siren songs.

Right now you’re biking and singing your way to Somerset.

Tell us about Armonica and the Encore appeal.

We sing and cycle to raise money for Dementia Care. We cycle 50-60 miles a day and sing concerts in Dementia Care Homes along the route. It’s always hilly – and decent pubs along the way always benefit. It’s harrowing and exhausting but so worthwhile.

Doctors say there is no drug as effective as music. We bring joy. We bring hope. We bring memories – and memories of music are almost always related to youth, to happiness, to times when the world was there to enjoy and anything was possible. So different from the current reality for so many of these people. People who haven’t talked for a month start singing the songs from My Fair Lady – word perfect. People who haven’t moved for two months clamber out of their chairs and start dancing with the nurses. We are raising funds to put a Memory Choir into care homes 52 weeks, 365 days a year including – maybe especially – Christmas Day. And we’re nearly there. Buttocks and thighs still aching, and thirst as strong as ever.

From choral charity to wine wisdom, you’ll be in Aotearoa soon, for the New Zealand Winegrowers Business Forum. If you could get one message across to New Zealand wine companies, what would it be?

Don’t copy. Don’t compromise. Don’t dumb down and chase a mass market

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Oz Clarke. Keith Barnes Photography

much better suited to other producing countries. Remember who you are – the coolest, greenest, purest, most marvellously distant country in this polluting, angry, confused and hurried world. Cool. Tranquil.

Refreshing. Able to match ripeness in your wines with brightness and mouthwatering zest. Others would love to be able to do what you do. Don’t listen to siren songs from other producers, and also many critics and consultants, who would like you to change toward the crowded middle way.

It’s 50 years since the beginning of Marlborough wine – what place do young wine regions play in an industry rich with honoured history and traditions?

The wine world was being stifled by tradition 50 years ago. Mediocrity was being rewarded and protected. Innovation was barely evident and was greeted with hostility.

You guys broke open an entirely New World with Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. You created something that had no connection with any wine that had ever been made. You put the wine drinker at the front rather than at the back. You made wine a ‘drink’ that people gulped down because of the pleasure that it gave. Wine never did that before.

There are lots of new wine regions today – most of them attempting to do what you started 50 years ago. And old stale wine areas have gained the courage to throw off the old and strive for the new. Tradition? You didn’t have any tradition, and look at you now.

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A decade or so after those first plantings, you tasted your first Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and became a champion for this remote neck of the woods.

What other New Zealand wines and regions have caught your attention?

Hawke’s Bay – Gimblett Gravels garners a lot of the attention, and produces a lot of wines worth the spotlight. But the greater area of Hawke’s Bay probably has as much potential for the types of wines it already makes and for numerous different types as any other area of New Zealand.

Awatere South – With global warming so evident already, Awatere has assumed a position of enormous importance in keeping the focus and excitement in Marlborough wines. I know there are water and infrastructure challenges, but there are also fabulous opportunities going down past the Ure, on to Kaikōura and even (he says optimistically) up the Clarence. The Political entity of Marlborough seems to spread pretty far south. And that white wine motherlode of limestone crops up more and more, further south of Awatere. Who’s going to take the chance?

Waiheke – Fabulous original flavours are possible for those who don’t overdo everything, and who don’t overcharge us for the privilege.

Gisborne – It’s difficult to predict whether Gisborne’s perennial weather challenges are going to get better or worse with climate

THE PEOPLE

change. But the potential for good quality commercial Chardonnay, and world quality Chardonnay (from the fringes) is too good to ignore.

Nelson – Step-by-step proving its brilliance without ever shouting.

Masterton and Wairarapa – Martinborough seems to have found a greater understanding of how to maximise its excellent conditions.

Masterton gets better every vintage.

Central Otago – The great enigma. What will Central prove to be best at in its brilliant southern extremeness? Pinot has made its reputation, so long as it now admits that its Pinot is quite different from any other Pinot in the world. So let them copy us, not the other way round. It’ll stay a star, but there’s a lot more that could shine – red and white.

You campaign for the democratisation of wine.

Are you seeing a shift?

The battle isn’t won. Every generation needs to be addressed afresh.

The most encouraging European wine markets are in the nonproducing countries – old markets are in real disarray as wine fails to attract new consumers. Stay vigilant. Listen to your consumers. Make sure that simple, direct labelling backed up by good flavours is at the heart of what you set out to do. Sauvignon Blanc is still the white wine of choice in many parts of the world because it tastes so good and is easy to understand. If you want to sophisticate it, well, some of you can, but you forget your core market (the tens of millions of people who never thought they could ever like wine until you came along) at your peril.

When it comes to wine snobbery, including around Sauvignon Blanc, which wine drinkers are the hardest to convince?

Wine critics, sommeliers, so-called wine experts. Honestly! They can’t bear the thought that there is a wonderful drink out there called Sauvignon Blanc that doesn’t need any pontificating from. OK you lot, stay away from Sauvignon if it gives you too much pain to see so much simple pleasure.

What role has your stage work played in your ability to share a passion for wine?

Massively important. So much wine communication gets mired in technicalities and incomprehensible murmurings. Stage teaches you that if you want to get through to an audience, you have to project a personality, tell stories, illuminate places, make flavours relevant to other people’s lives, not just your own, find FUN in this thing. I mean - why else do most people drink a glass?

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Wine that crackled and spat At the inaugural International Sauvignon Blanc Celebration in Marlborough in 2016, Oz Clarke talked of his first taste of Marlborough Sauvignon. It was 1984, and “my world of wine would never be the same again”, he said. “There had never before been a wine that crackled and spat its flavours at you from the glass. A wine that took the whole concept of green – and expanded it, stretched it and pummelled it and gloriously reinterpreted it in a riot of gooseberry and lime zest, green apples, green pepper sliced through with an ice-cold knife of steel, piles of green grass, the leaves from a blackcurrant bush, and, just in case this was all too much to take – a friendly dash of honey and the chaste kiss of a peach.”

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THE PEOPLE

Passion Project Chardonnay Legend at Kumeu River

EMMA JENKINS MW

“At the top end, New Zealand Chardonnay has never been better.” Few would argue with this statement on its own merits, and fewer again with the man making it – Michael Brajkovich MW. Michael’s family winery Kumeu River has been instrumental in putting New Zealand Chardonnay on the radar of wine lovers at home and abroad, and continues to be a benchmark many local winemakers look to when crafting their own wines. It’s clear that the variety is where Michael’s heart lies. “Chardonnay produces the best dry white wines in the world. Over several hundred years its versatility and sheer quality in a variety of vineyard environments has proven that beyond doubt.”

“Chardonnay produces the best dry white wines in the world.”

Michael Brajkovich Michael’s grandparents Mick and Katé emigrated from Croatia in the 1930s, part of a Dalmatian diaspora that created an enduring legacy for New Zealand’s wine industry. They purchased land at Kumeu in 1944, naming it San Marino after the itinerant 3rd Century Croatian saint, Marinus (it became Kumeu River in 1989, the year that Michael also became New Zealand’s first Master of Wine). Michael’s father Maté was joined by wife Melba in the 1950s and these days Michael and his three siblings, together with Melba, run the estate.

By the 1960s the winery had become well known for its predominantly fortified wines, but Maté was always keen on table wines.

“My father was a very forward-thinking man, and it was his dream to produce just two outstanding wines: one red and one white.” To this end, in 1982 they planted Cabernets Sauvignon and Franc, as well as Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay.

They bought another 40 hectares when Corban Wines sold their Auckland holdings,

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Michael Brajkovich. Photo Tessa Chrisp

the main attraction being an 8ha block of Merlot, at the time the biggest in New Zealand. After graduating as Dux from Roseworthy College in 1981, Michael had secured a vintage position with Château Pétrus’ proprietors Moueix, and spent the 1983 harvest soaking up knowledge at St Émilion’s Château Magdelaine (now known as Ch. Bélair-Monange). “We had very high hopes for Merlot in Kumeu,” he says.

“However, as the years passed it became very clear that our cool conditions do not allow for consistency in ripening the Cabernets, or indeed Merlot. Sauvignon Blanc also struggled with botrytis most years, but Chardonnay performed admirably in every season. Under our cloudy, cool weather conditions it quickly became obvious that the early-season Chardonnay always had the best chance of producing ripe grapes and outstanding wine. Several decades of experience has proven that initial observation to be very correct.” Indeed.

Michael’s winemaking combines intellect and judicious technical skill with thoughtful innovation. “When I joined the team in 1982 our main production was ‘Sherry’ and ‘Port’ style wines made principally from Palomino. White table wine was starting to become a major item, in particular MüllerThurgau from Gisborne. During the ‘80s, sweeping change was happening to wine in New Zealand; by 1986 we had ceased selling fortifieds, and Chardonnay had already become our main focus.”

While Maté had grown Mendoza Chardonnay since the 1960s, leaf roll virus

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was rife. Their 1982 plantings gave them access to newer clones and rootstocks, and Michael’s time in Burgundy “taking copious notes” showed him a different approach.

“Standard procedure was to ferment the juice cool in a stainless-steel tank using one of the newest selected yeast cultures; oak ageing to add wood seasoning was increasingly common. This produced vibrant fruity wines in their youth with a healthy dose of oak, but which invariably aged quickly and often oxidised their way to an early decline.” Encouraged by Maté, who said, “you’ve got the knowledge and techniques, let’s try something different here”, Michael introduced numerous changes. He says most of these “were considered quite radical” and they didn’t talk about indigenous yeast for ferments as “people would have thought we were mad”.

The techniques that are the norm now – hand harvesting, whole-bunch pressing, cold settling, warmer fermentation temperatures, barrel fermentation, French oak, malolactic fermentation, and lees ageing in barrel – were initially not well received. “Early Kumeu River Chardonnays were panned in local wine competitions for being so radically different, and this made us very wary of entering wine shows. Gradually the message got through, particularly following such kudos as being in the Wine Spectator’s Top 100 on six occasions.” There’s no shortage of fans these days, and Kumeu River has famously upset top Burgundies when head-to-head in overseas blind tastings. Michael says recognition from

THE PEOPLE

Jancis Robinson and James Suckling in particular means they now need to allocate their wines globally.

Kumeu River produces six Chardonnays, four of which are Single Vineyard expressions, including one from their Hawke’s Bay vineyard, Ray’s Road, purchased in 2017. Urban sprawl severely constrained their ability to expand in Kumeu and Michael enjoys what the Hawke’s Bay fruit contributes to the estate blend, “a lifted peach-fruit character and palate richness to balance the mineral, earthy austerity of our Kumeu fruit”. The inland vineyard is planted mainly in Clone 95 on limestone slopes at 180-200m altitude.

“Chardonnay is at its zesty, limey, mineral best on this soil … one certainly is reminded of the wines of Chablis.” Grapes are handharvested and transported to Kumeu for processing.

Kumeu River and Michael have undoubtedly helped change the way New Zealand produces Chardonnay, evidenced by the industry’s gradual adoption of most of the techniques mentioned above.

“The popularity of ‘reductive’ styles of Chardonnay has also been a direct result of this,” Michael wryly observes. “Unfortunately some results come straight from the ‘if a little bit is good, then a whole lot must be great’ school of winemaking, which also used to afflict the use of oak.” He adds that there “still exists a very boring rump of ordinary wines that are either over-cropped, over-oaked or just very dull indeed.” Overall though, he’s encouraged by New Zealand’s Chardonnay progression. “Whereas in the past many Chardonnays were very similar and based on the model of Côte de Beaune, we are now seeing more diversity of style, with less oak, more zest, and greater drinkability when young. There is nowhere in New Zealand that has a truly hot, or even warm, climate. We are all dealing in cool climate viticulture with a variety that is well suited to it, and better suited than just about any other for making quality dry white wine.”

With Michael repeatedly on record waxing lyrical about Sherry and other fortified wines, perhaps we may yet see the return of a Kumeu River version ... what’s more certain is that he will continue to deliver many more world class Chardonnays for our enjoyment.

Let us conduct your winery trials from grape to glass Harvest is the busiest time of year,

Chardonnay Symposium EMMA JENKINS MW As this issue of New Zealand Winegrower drops into letterboxes, the Aotearoa New Zealand Chardonnay Symposium is underway in Hawke’s Bay. This is a joint event with the New Zealand Society of Viticulture and Oenology, which is holding a technical workshop on day one, focusing on Australasian Chardonnay through the lens of viticulturists and winemakers.

On day two, Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers (HBW) widens the discussion to Chardonnay in an international context – considering where we are at now, and where we are going. HBW are planning two further annual events to continue building this conversation.

I will join an exciting array of speakers, including renowned Yarra Valley winemaker Steve Flamsteed, United States writer Christina Pickard and United Kingdom buyer Elizabeth Kelly MW. More than 50 wines will be tasted across the two days, many of which are currently unavailable in New Zealand.

With New Zealand Chardonnay going from strength to strength in the glass, and gaining increasing traction in our global markets, we are looking forward to bringing you a roundup of this topical and timely event in the December issue Winegrower.

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THE PEOPLE

Celebrating Diversity Growing an inclusive culture at Constellation SOPHIE PREECE A focus on company culture is helping grow diversity, gender and inclusion at Constellation Brands New Zealand, building an environment “where women can thrive”.

“Our ability to show up for each other at Constellation Brands is integral to ensuring we’re able to be our best selves and to be united.”

Delilah Wright The company received a Medium to Large Organisation Highly Commended recognition at the Diversity Awards NZ in late August, for its innovative approach to recruiting and developing women in the business, and ensuring gender equity.

Julie Bassett, Vice President of International HR and Business Enablement, says in an awards case study that the company’s initiatives are aimed at increasing representation of females at all levels, ensuring pay equality and high levels of inclusion across all teams and locations, “whether in rural vineyards or at head office

Constellation’s Xenia McIlroy-Stuart

in Auckland. We are thinking creatively to address these challenges for the long term.”

Gender representation within the company is strong at a company-wide level, with 45% of female employees. But women are less represented within operations, particularly in vineyards. The company also wanted to increase the number of women advancing into leadership positions.

Initiatives include a new performance programme, reshaping the viticulture

organisation, building robust career development frameworks, and an operations pay matrix. Transparent career pathways became a focus within operations, with career development frameworks designed for viticulture and wineries.

“As the largest function in our business, yet the lowest represented from a female perspective, viticulture was not structured in a way that supported career development or autonomy,” says Julie in the case study.

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One Pass!

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THE PEOPLE

“The new Career Development Framework enables people to progress to new roles and across vineyard blocks to develop skills and take on additional responsibility incrementally. This has paved the way for several females to succeed.”

From the outset there was “ultimate buyin from the top and this has not wavered,” she says. “The tools reinforce a constructive team culture, a culture which we believe helps our women, particularly, to thrive.”

Constellation was also a finalist in the Inclusive and Diverse Workplace Award at the 2023 Primary Industries Good Employer Awards. Speaking at the awards evening in August, Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said the competitive advantage of New Zealand’s food and fibre sector is its people. “The Primary Industries Good Employer Awards celebrate and shine a light on employers who put their teams at the heart of their businesses.”

Barry Bacon, Constellation Brands Vice President Operations New Zealand and Australia, says culture is the key to success at the company, with diversity and inclusion a big part of that. “It keeps us out of ‘group think’ by encouraging our teammates

to innovate, challenge and contribute to our business success.” They are focussed on continuing to instil a great work culture, “embracing diversity, and better understanding how team roles support our customers’ needs”. The case study notes that about 80% of decisions about which wine to buy are made by women. “It’s important our workforce reflects the diversity of our communities, customers, and consumers,” says Barry.

Delilah Wright, Innovation Manager International Brands, says unity is key.

“Our ability to show up for each other at Constellation Brands is integral to ensuring we’re able to be our best selves and to be united. Employee-led initiatives, educational programmes and activities reaffirms our culture of understanding and aligns with our core values. These are all critical to ensuring positive outcomes in all aspects of the work we do.”

Pernod Ricard Winemakers won the Inclusive & Diverse Workplace Award at the 2023 Australian Drinks Awards. Among a record number of entries for this year’s award, the judging panel unanimously favoured the Pernod Ricard Winemakers’ (PRW) comprehensive campaign aimed at enhancing the adoption of flexible working arrangements and parental leave among males within its organisation.

In its submission, the company said that it was clear that encouraging men to take parental leave and use flexible working arrangements helped remove the stigma of men being active fathers and the barriers to career progression faced by women. The implementation of PRW’s targeted awareness campaign and policy improvements resulted in an impressive 25% increase in males taking parental leave over a two-year period.

Christian Campanella says the work has tried to break down barriers and challenge biases that may have been traditionally associated with men adopting the flexible working arrangements or parental leave options available to them. “Our aim is to give parents, whatever their gender, the opportunity and flexibility to embrace parenthood.”

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THE PEOPLE

Changemaker

Andréa McBride John is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of McBride Sisters Wine Company. She is based in the United States, but has strong links to New Zealand, where she grew up and frequently visits, with New Zealand wines a key part of the McBride portfolio. In this Q+A, Andréa talks about the challenges of building a strong community, and how innovation is driven by diversity of thought.

Wine has historically been a male domain. Are there still barriers to women gaining leadership positions?

The statistics in Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States tell us the answer to this question is a resounding (and “all caps”) YES, THERE ARE STILL BARRIERS FOR WOMEN IN THE WINE INDUSTRY! This is true across the entire industry, from grape growing and winemaking, to sales, distribution, marketing, executive leadership and management positions. In the United States, at the University of California Davis, there are more women graduates in viticulture and oenology than men. It has been this way for over 20 years, yet you do not see this translating into leadership positions in those fields. The reason the barriers still exist today is simply that there are not enough key stakeholders who care enough to lead with action and help towards the transition. And those key stakeholders’ belief systems suggest that they don’t see the value in dedicating the time and resources to drive the change. There are allies, clearly, but we need many more. At the end of the day, you are what you do, and the statistics and facts have spoken! I’m an optimist, and believe we can still take small steps to change this for the better. As I am typing this, I’m inspired, and it’s great to see that for the first time in 55 years the New Zealand ‘Young Farmer of the Year’ is a woman! BIG shout out to Emma Poole for making “Herstory”.

How do you address those barriers, both in your own business and your social enterprises?

We challenge ourselves to ask hard questions and create a safe space for truthful answers,

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Robin McBride and Andréa McBride John. Courtesy of McBride Sisters Wine Company.

active listening, and empathy when it comes to tackling biases and barriers that exist due to race and gender. We think of it as an always-on work in progress because we are definitely not perfect, and everyone has biases. Building a strong community is hard and continuous work and everyone’s voice counts. You have to commit, make time and space to integrate it into your company culture.

How important is it to have women, and women of colour, as role models in owning a wine company?

Representation is consequential, as it plants the seed in the mind of possibility when you see someone that feels familiar, or similar to you and your experiences in the world.

In the United States, you have the historical context of 300 years of agriculture-based slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow segregation laws, and 45 years of institutional racist “redlining” property ownership laws prohibiting black people from purchasing land in certain areas. In Aotearoa New Zealand the historical context is the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and then the illegal land acquisition from the tangata whenua by

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the colonial government. For other women of colour you will find similar nuanced challenges and life experiences depending on ethnicity. Overall, the throughline for women of colour is the monumental, intergenerational, social and economic barriers that prevent entry to the wine industry. It is critical that when women of colour enter the wine industry, they are supported and seen, because what it took to start and even begin was not and is not a level playing field compared to all others.

What does diversity bring to grape growing and winemaking?

Innovation is driven by diversity of thought.

Not everyone will approach solving a problem in the same way. Often, your life experiences lend to how you approach and see the world. This diversity of thought is critical for the future macro sustainability of the global wine industry. I also believe intuition is driven by how someone observes the context of the situation in real time, through their own lens, and then acts on it.

With increasing environmental, social and economic challenges we face as a collective wine industry – with the former in mind – the same people, same experiences, and

THE PEOPLE

“Representation is consequential, as it plants the seed in the mind of possibility when you see someone that feels familiar, or similar to you and your experiences in the world.”

Andréa McBride John same mindset will not work in terms of innovation and industry economic and environmental sustainability.

What are you most proud of when it comes to your life in wine?

This is a hard question to answer because it’s not something I’ve thought about. I would say that it is being able to share all the knowledge (my sister) Robin and I have gained over the years, and how we are helping to set up for success the next generation of exceptional women that have amazing things to contribute to the industry.

Photo by Michelle Magdalena

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BOB CAMPBELL

Bob’s blog Old Vines Registry Which country has, according to the Old Vine Registry, the world’s oldest grapevine?

My guess would have been Hill of Grace Grandfathers in Australia’s Eden Valley. But at 163 years of age it is a relative youngster compared to the Gelber Orleans (grape variety) in the Nahe region of Germany, estimated to be over 600 years old. It was, according to its entry in the Old Vine Registry, found on an old abandoned terrace.

The grapes taste “terrible, like cucumber”, it says. The registry records 128 vines that are over 125 years old planted in 18 countries.

At a glance Australia and the United States seem to be home to the most geriatric vineyard sites.

What is the Old Vine Registry? It is a

grassroots, volunteer effort inspired and begun by wine critic Jancis Robinson and several of her colleagues, who had a growing sense that these old vineyards “were important elements of cultural and scientific heritage as well as the source of some particularly beautiful wine”. The entry level to feature in the register is 35 years. The same entry level applies to Yalumba’s Old Vine Charter, created in 2009, which has since evolved into an industry-recognised Charter with the help of the Barossa Grape and Wine Association.

There are as yet no New Zealand vines listed on the Old Vine Registry and there are certainly vines that were planted 35+ years ago. I have a Wine Review magazine dated

‘winter 1975’ which features a large grapevine on the cover. The trunk measured nearly one meter in circumference. The Isabella vine yielded a tonne of grapes each vintage.

According to a previous owner the vine was well established when they brought the land with vine 80 years ago. The ‘one vine’ vineyard was planted in the Kauaeranga Valley near Thames. I would start my hunt for elderly vines in Hawke’s Bay, perhaps at Mission Vineyards, Te Mata or possibly Black Barn.

Lincoln Road in Henderson, once the main road of the New Zealand wine industry, might also yield some fairly ancient specimens.

Let the hunt begin. oldvines.org yalumba.com/old-vine-charter

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BOB CAMPBELL

Korean-Kiwi wins prestigious wine award BOB CAMPBELL MW Auckland-based wine professional Ina Yoon has been awarded one of the world’s most prestigious wine scholarships. Ina is one of 10 winners of the 2023 Golden Vines Wine Scholar Guild Scholarships and believes that she is the first person from New Zealand to win the award. Open to entrants from throughout the world, the scholarship is judged by five wine professionals who are looking for “outstanding applicants who the judges wish to recognise, encourage and aid on their educational path”. The winners can undertake their choice of the Wine Scholar Guild’s advanced French, Spanish or Italian Wine Scholar Certification Programs, to deepen their expertise in some of the world’s most interesting wine regions as they continue their career progression.

Ina first became interested in wine at the age of 12. “I was flicking through my mother’s magazine and read a four-page article about wine. It was a short article, describing the colours of wine and what foods to match with those wines. I found it fascinating.

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At that time my parents didn’t drink wine, and I was still too young to legally consume alcohol! We lived in a small town in South Korea that didn’t have a wine shop. I could only train myself by reading wine books and developing tasting skills with non-alcoholic beverages like milk.”

“I could only train myself by reading wine books and developing tasting skills with non-alcoholic beverages like milk.”

Ina Yoon “Once I became an adult, I could start formal and informal wine training in New Zealand, where my family moved when I was 13. She has also studied in France, at L’ecole du vin - Bordeaux Management School, and at Auckland University of Technology, for a Bachelor of International

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Ina Yoon

Hospitality Management and Bachelor of Business - International Business. Ina also completed the international WSET Level 3 advanced certificate, and WSET Diploma.

She has worked at Wine-Searcher.com, Pernod Ricard, Glengarry Wines, and Flowerzone International. Ina now runs an online wine store called New Zealand Wine Boutique (nzwineboutique.com), offering premium wines from New Zealand to customers worldwide, including New Zealand, South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.

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The Places 77 I

Indevin Twenty years on

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Whenua John Saker’s outlook

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Point of View Open source science

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Wine Weather James Morrison

THE PEOPLE

20-year shift Change of guard at Indevin Group SOPHIE PREECE Twenty years after he built a winery on an old freezing works site in Marlborough, Duncan McFarlane is handing over the reins to New Zealand’s largest wine company.

Indevin Group has appointed Silver Fern Farms’ Simon Limmer to replace Duncan as Chief Executive early next year, with Chairman Greg Tomlinson welcoming Simon’s “clear affinity” with New Zealand primary industries and delivering premium New Zealand brands internationally, “both of which are critical to the next chapter of Villa Maria and Indevin Group’s growth strategy”.

“When I went about setting up Indevin Group, I didn’t realise I was signing up to be the CEO of the largest wine company in the country.”

Duncan McFarlane “You have to do it eventually,” Duncan says of his retirement. “Twenty years is a long time, and I am thrilled that we have someone of Simon’s calibre leading Indevin Group into the future. He will add a lot of value to this organisation and the New Zealand wine industry in general.”

Duncan was 18 when he got a job driving a forklift in a Marlborough mussel processing factory, earning money for flying lessons, with plans to be a pilot. By the time he was 21 he’d bought into the aquaculture business, and within a decade he was watching the region’s wine industry expansion with eager entrepreneurial interest.

Vineyard growth was huge, but winery capacity was limited, and Duncan saw opportunity on the horizon. “When I went about setting up Indevin I didn’t realise I was signing up to be the CEO of the largest wine company in the country,” he says, 20

Marlborough Bankhouse Vineyard

years after he gathered friends and family as investors and built a winery at Riverlands.

It’s been a “relentless” two decades of growth since, moving from a contract winemaker processing 3,000 tonnes in 2003 to a major wine company, with 100,000 tonnes last year. That came with acquisitions, expanding wineries, developing vineyards, building markets, hiring talent, and establishing relationships with customers, Duncan says. “It’s been relentless in a good way, and I have enjoyed it. I wouldn’t change anything, but it’s essentially been my life for the past 20 years.”

In 2021, Indevin Group purchased Villa Maria, making it New Zealand’s largest wine exporter, and also the largest grower, with more than 4,000 hectares of vineyards across Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne, and access to approximately 20% of the country’s total grape supply. Add to that the 1,000ha of undeveloped land at Bankhouse Estate in Marlborough, and Indevin’s growth trajectory doesn’t look to be easing any time soon.

Amongst the planned changes there have been plenty of unexpected challenges, from the Kaikōura earthquake to Covid-19, and the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle on Indevin

Group’s North Island operations earlier this year. Duncan says one of the things he’s been able to do over the past 20 years is to align people with a plan or a target. “Getting them excited about it and getting them to deliver an objective as a team.” That comes in handy during crisis mode, “whether earthquake or Covid”, he says. “They’re not situations you actively seek in your career, but when I reflect on it, that’s what I was able to contribute to those situations.”

More recently, Indevin has become one of the first companies to partner with New Zealand Ethical Employers, to improve ethical employment standards. Duncan says creating change requires momentum, and being at the helm of a large company has allowed him to influence shifts that would otherwise be a lot more difficult.

Indevin’s Founder will remain on the board and work on “specific parts of the strategy”, which he calls the best of both worlds. “I get to focus on the areas where my passion probably lies the most and continue to contribute, but not have the same level of commitment you have to when you are the Chief Executive.”

On facing page Duncan McFarlane at Bankhouse Photo by Jim Tannock

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Te Whenua

Writer JOHN SAKER discuss his new wine newsletter, with its focus on New Zealand Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

This month I will be launching Te Whenua, a self-published monthly wine newsletter.

The first issue will be free to all. From the second issue onwards, Te Whenua will be available by subscription only.

For some time now, I’ve felt the wine industry has not been covered adequately in the media; that there is no-one on the ‘wine beat’. Yes, there are a few columns, but most of them are consumer-oriented, often of the ‘do I have a good buy for you, matey’ variety.

Stories dealing with industry stuff – news and issues – in an open, independent way are rare. And they’re getting even rarer, given the faltering traditional media model.

“I won’t be scoring the wines I taste. I’m over it.”

John Saker Te Whenua aims to counter that shortfall.

It will be about the industry, for the industry, including distributors, somms, retailers and so forth – I would hope that wine insiders of all stripes will find something of interest.

It will cover a broad spectrum of subject matter, with everything from interesting new practices to historical discoveries to climate issues to new investment in the industry.

The results of my own tastings of Kiwi Pinot Noir and Chardonnay will also be published in each issue. Why Pinot and Chardonnay? Because they’re here, and wouldn’t it be a lesser world if they weren’t?

I’ve long felt the enquiring, thirst-forknowledge winegrowing culture that has accompanied the growing of Pinot (and more recently of Chardonnay) in this

John Saker

country, is crucial to Kiwi wine generally.

It gives us “cred”. It’s where the terroir discussion is centred. And the wines are so damned good. Their class and refinement and capacity to astonish (in a good way) place them in the top tier of New Zealand’s agricultural achievement. Other reasons for this specialisation include my not wanting to taste 500 or so Sauvignon Blancs every year (my dentist said he’d fire me if I did). I also simply do not have the time to cover the entire national output.

I won’t be scoring the wines I taste. I’m over it. I’ve come to believe the only number that should be attached to a bottle of wine is the price. Yes, I was part of the wine show scene for many years, when I assessed wines in that way. My view has changed. Now I’m fine with saying what I like and why – as I would a piece of music or a book – but how disrespectful is it to give a wine a grade, like a teacher marking a piece of homework?

When wines started receiving 100 points from critics, I knew it was time for me to get off that particular reservation. I feel liberated to have done so.

I will be tasting current release Pinots and Chardonnays blind, at tastings in the regions where they were grown. There will be no cost to enter wines into these tastings, only the provision of the bottle itself. I will taste (and do so in an unrushed way, giving each wine its due), assess, and write full notes on the wines I truly love and admire. These will then become card-carrying members of a category known as ‘John Saker’s List’.

Producers (or distributors or retail outlets) are welcome to use the notes for promotional purposes, but they must be subscribers to Te Whenua.

The newsletter is named for the Te Reo word for land, which is freighted with so much more than its English equivalent.

Reverence, power, dependence, mystery and yes, love, are all tied up in that word. That it is also the Māori word for placenta, the original provider to each of us, I think is also apt.

To receive the first issue of Te Whenua, or to send me a piece of news, email me at sakerjohn@gmail.com. Subscribe at johnsaker.com.

NOW READ IT ONLINE GENERAL NEWS PEOPLE PROFILES AND MUCH MORE...

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I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

Reading the magazine online has never been easier.

THE PLACES

Following Feraud

Wine with a history at Monte Christo RACHEL PETRIE A family dedicated to history, hospitality and wine is bringing the past to life at the 150-year-old Monte Christo winery in Clyde.

Dr Stanley Paris, along with his sons Alan and Nicholas, a Master of Wine, will open the restored heritage site to the public in mid-November, pouring wine more than 150 years after Jean Desire Féraud first opened his winery.

The French viticulturist established Monte Christo 2km from Clyde in 1864, then built another from schist in 1872, after the original wooden structure was destroyed by a storm. He was the first to produce a wine for the commercial market in the South Island, at a time when the gold rush lured tens of thousands of prospectors to Central Otago.

In 2012, after a family gathering at Stanley’s Queenstown home, the Paris family decided to take on the restoration of the heritage site, creating a living history with a Monte Christo wine label and winery. They started with the purchase and development of three vineyards – one on the Young Lane site of the winery, one in Cromwell’s Pisa region, and the third in Alexandra, with plantings of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, and Riesling under their label. They now also have 11 hectares in Bannockburn “making us a true Central Otago brand with vines in many of the sub regions”, Alan says.

The renovation is described as “an adaptive re-use of a building” by Alan, whose background is in hospitality. Many intricate adjustments have been made to ensure its

Alan, Stanley and Nicholas Paris

preservation, while adhering to guidelines to keep the restoration as authentic as possible.

Heritage New Zealand closely monitored details such as stone choice and the colour of the pointing or mortar used to restore the 150-year-old blockwork.

Landscaping comes next, linking new to old. When the on-site lodging is finished, it will be surrounded by an orchard of heritage fruit varieties, many of which were once grown in Féraud’s enormous gardens.

With the influx of bikers to the area, fuelled by the opening of the Cromwell Gorge cycle trail, electric bike charging stations will be installed. A children’s play area will sit underneath a 100-year-old walnut tree beside the pétanque court, while a grassed area can hold a marquee for events. At the hub of the wine-tasting area, which is based in the restored winery, there will be a food cart named ‘Fritzy’, after a tractor owned by the former owner of the land, Sir William

Bodkin, in the 1950s.

Stanley, a physiotherapy educator who established and expanded the University of St. Augustine in Florida, is passionate about history. Meanwhile, the family wine expert Nicholas is active in wine education, and says teaching guests about the history of Féraud and Monte Christo is a priority of the project, including in the winery’s museum area. “We’re putting up a brief history of Monte Christo winery, from the planting of the grapes in 1864 to the construction of the winery, and some other historical dates to help tell the story.”

The second stage entails the construction of a production winery on the property. The aim is to share the entire wine experience with visitors, including walkways above the working winery that create safe locations where guests can view the winemaking process and learn about more than just what they taste in a glass.

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THE PLACES

Point of View Open access grape and wine science DR DAMIAN MARTIN Why should New Zealand support openaccess publication of grape and wine science?

A large amount of grape and wine research is undertaken throughout the world. Researchers are working hard to improve grape cultivation techniques, enhance wine quality, understand the health benefits of wine consumption, reduce environmental impact, and mitigate climate change. The Julius Kühn Institute Vitis database (vitis-vea.de/) counts 3,310 grape/ wine publication entries for the 2022 year.

Only about 10% of those publications were in journals that are regularly available to wine professionals. Most of the published research is behind pay-wall access services provided by large private companies that benefit from a highly profitable business model (Buranyi 2017).

In the profit generating publication system, scientists undertake research funded by taxpayers or industry and essentially gift it to the publishing corporations that own thousands of journals. Essential to a journal’s quality, the scientific peer-review process is carried out by expert scientists on a pro-bono basis. The publishers then sell access to the articles back to science institutes and the science community.

While these major publishers are slowly moving more towards open access (OA)

Mahi

for readership they still require authors to pay expensive publication fees, often many thousands of US dollars per article. These costs either reduce the research budget for a project or increase its cost to the funder.

“A larger pool of collaborators working jointly on programming and validation of models can progress more quickly.”

Damian Martin Aside from reducing research overhead cost, another key reason for supporting OA publication is that it facilitates the more rapid dissemination of science. As no one researcher or research group can stay up to date with all the latest research, computer models, often referred to as ‘Digital Twins’,

are becoming necessary tools to collate, organise and re-use scientific knowledge.

OA publication facilitates co-development of Digital Twins by uniting researchers from many organisations around the world and integrating many years of data collection.

A larger pool of collaborators working jointly on programming and validation of models can progress more quickly.

These collaborations can also generate greater engagement amongst researchers and promote higher work performance standards.

The International Viticulture and Enology Society (IVES) is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the dissemination of scientific research in grape and wine science. IVES was founded in 2017 by a group of 12 academic institutions that decided to unite with one principal objective. IVES believes that scientific publications should be made freely available to the international research community.

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I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

THE PLACES

Three core values underpin IVES and its partners’ aims: • No fees for authors and readers • Rigorous peer review to ensure highquality science is published • Strong governance and strict editorial policy to safeguard IVES independence from private partner organisations.

Under the stewardship of IVES, the global wine industry and research community benefit from three free online publications: 1. OENO One ives-openscience.eu/oenoone/ is the wine industry’s leading specialist peer-reviewed research journal.

2. International Technical Reviews ivestechnicalreviews.eu/ publishes shortform technical articles that are peer reviewed by both scientists and industry.

Articles are translated into six languages (French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and English) to make them more accessible to winegrowers.

3. Conference Series ives-openscience. eu/ives-conference-series/ collates proceedings from major international grape and wine conferences into a single searchable database of abstracts.

OA can attract criticism about science quality as the journals are often newer, less well-known, or have lower impact factors than the established publications.

The network of leading universities and research institutes that make up IVES ensures that world experts in their fields are stakeholders in the OA partnership.

This makes it easier for editors of IVES journals to secure the services of engaged high-calibre reviewers and science quality is therefore assured.

IVES provides readers with immediate free access to all published content.

Authors retain copyright and grant the

Daian Martin. Photo Plant & Food Research

journal right of first publication while allowing others to share the work. With an appropriate acknowledgement, authors are free to post their accepted papers on personal or institutional web sites, or to disseminate them in any other way. Users are free to read, download, copy and print submissions, search content and link to published articles and disseminate full text with the appropriate referencing.

While IVES is run on a lean budget employing only five staff and operating with a minimal overhead structure, ongoing revenue from partnerships is essential. To date, IVES has been very successful in attracting membership, which

has grown from the founding 12 academic partners to nearly 80 member, institutional and private partners. New Zealand and Australia have an opportunity to be at the table. Any New Zealand institute or company that sees value in supporting the IVES OA publication philosophy can contact Julien Dumercq jdumercq@ivesopenscience.eu.

Damian Martin is Science Group Leader – Viticulture & Oenology at Plant & Food Research, and Editeur-en-Chef International Viticulture and Enology Society Technical Reviews. Winegrower Magazine has reprinted an IVES piece on page 48 of this edition.

Further reading • Baranya S 2017. Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? The Guardian. Retrieved 21 August 2023 from: theguardian.com/ science/2017/jun/27/profitable-business-scientific-publishing-bad-for-science • Smith R 2006. The highly profitable but unethical business of publishing medical research. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 2006;99(9):452-456. doi:10.1177/014107680609900916

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THE PLACES

“There are many factors that are considered when predicting frost. Synoptic situation, cloud cover, dew point, humidity at the ground and upper atmosphere, wetness of the ground, and wind speed and direction.”

James Morrison mid-September. This extra ‘night-time’ increases the amount of diurnal cooling that can occur under clear skies. Therefore temperatures are more likely to cool for a longer period and the risk of frost increases.

Outlook for October and November: Gisborne/Hawke’s Bay Westerly winds are likely to continue to increase in frequency and strength through the second half of spring. Warm daytime temperatures are expected for the remainder of the year and there are likely

to be a higher number of days reaching the high 20s by late November. There will still be cool southwest changes from time to time and this increases the risk of frost through October and into early November.

Rainfall totals are expected to start running below average.

Wairarapa West to northwest winds will become stronger and more frequent. The lower North Island can suffer gales during El Niño and the chance of gale force winds increases this year. It may be that these winds could feel pretty relentless at times, but there will be colder southwest changes and – like the remainder of the east coast – there is a risk of frost on the back of these changes through into November. Rainfall totals are likely to be below average but some rain is possible as spill over from the ranges under strong northwest flows.

Nelson Mild with more frequent northwesterlies.

There is a risk of some strong winds at times and below average rainfall. Nelson may see occasional rain events as fronts move onshore from the west. The risk of

frost will increase under cooler southwest changes.

Marlborough/North Canterbury Mild and stronger than average winds.

More frequent northwesterlies. There is an increased chance of hot days along the east coast of the South Island through spring and into early summer. Marlborough may see some rain under strong north to northwest flows but overall rainfall is likely to be below average. Colder southwest change will create drier conditions and also the potential for frost for the remainder of spring.

Central Otago Conditions are likely to be milder than average throughout spring and with periods of strong west to northwest winds. Rainfall totals are likely to be mixed, with some rain spilling over into western areas and this could keep rainfall totals in the west closer to average. Cooler southwest changes are likely to bring occasional cold mornings for the remainder of spring so the risk of frost remains elevated until early December.

James Morrison runs Weatherstation Frost Forecasting: weatherstation.net.nz

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THE PLACES

Biosecurity Update Biosecurity: fundamental to industry sustainability SOPHIE BADLAND Good biosecurity practice is an important element of helping to ensure the New Zealand wine industry is prepared and resilient in the event of an incursion of a new pest or disease and is crucial to the ongoing sustainability of the industry.

In recognition of the risks posed by offshore biosecurity threats, the New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) Board agreed at their August meeting to include a new requirement for all Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) vineyard members to have a biosecurity plan for their site by 30 June 2026.

What is changing?

Instead of just being recommended as best practice, from the 2025-26 season onwards, every SWNZ-certified vineyard will need to have a biosecurity plan in place. This plan will be checked as part of the regular audit cycle in order for vineyards to retain SWNZ certification. NZW has had biosecurity as a key focus area since 2016, and biosecurity plans have been recommended by SWNZ since 2020. Given approximately 65% of SWNZ vineyard members already selfreport that their vineyard has a biosecurity plan in place, for many this change is likely to have little impact.

Why is biosecurity planning important for the industry?

Globally, biological invasions are increasing in frequency. Furthermore, damage costs as a result of biological invasions are increasing and are now of a similar magnitude to those of natural disasters.

Recent incursions of unwanted pests into New Zealand such as Psa (kiwifruit), Mycoplasma bovis (cattle), varroa mite (bees), fall armyworm (corn and vegetable crops), and Queensland fruit fly (horticulture) have all been costly for

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government and industry sectors to respond to, and have often been devastating for the farmers or growers whose properties have been affected. New Zealand’s unique natural environment and native biodiversity are also at risk from unwanted pests and diseases, with the kauri dieback and myrtle rust incursions being high-profile examples.

To date, the New Zealand wine industry has been relatively unimpacted by new pests and diseases arriving on our shores.

However, with a large percentage of viticulture plantings based in one region (Marlborough) and a high dependence on one variety (Sauvignon Blanc), there is much reason to be proactive. Threats such as the brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) loom large – several live BMSB are found at the border every year (and occasionally post-border), despite intensive offshore treatment requirements for risk goods and an ongoing awareness campaign for international travellers. Xylella fastidiosa, the bacterium responsible for Pierce’s disease of grapevine, is another highrisk organism that could have a hugely detrimental impact on the New Zealand wine industry.

Biosecurity is about protecting New Zealand from the risks posed by unwanted pests and diseases. Biosecurity threats could affect vineyard profitability, jobs and community, so the more that growers can do to ensure their own sites are as well protected as possible, the better off the industry will be should an unwanted pest or disease arrive. Having a biosecurity plan will ensure growers have thought through and understand the biosecurity risks to their sites and have put appropriate mitigation measures in place to reduce those risks.

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

What will growers need to do?

All SWNZ vineyard members will need to ensure their site has a biosecurity plan by the time the 2025/2026 SWNZ questionnaire is due (30 June 2026) and be able to show evidence at their next audit that their plan is being implemented. As the Board has only recently approved this change, the details will be worked through and communicated to SWNZ members in due course, allowing plenty of time for biosecurity plans to be developed and implemented. At this stage, NZW envisages the biosecurity plan being able to be completed online and submitted alongside the SWNZ questionnaire.

What’s in a biosecurity plan?

NZW recommends a vineyard biosecurity plan considers the following risk areas: - Awareness and management of staff, contractors, and visitors - Surveillance for pest and disease - Vehicle and machinery management - Managing biological materials and supplies - Managing stock - Wash-down and tool/equipment hygiene - Precautions for harvest Many of the biosecurity risks associated with the above areas will likely be mitigated already via other vineyard operating procedures or policies, or current pest and disease control measures; creating a biosecurity plan will be less onerous for those who already have good practice in place.

Support with biosecurity planning The NZW biosecurity team is always happy to help members develop a biosecurity plan

THE PLACES

IT WOULD BE STINK IF THESE GOT INTO NEW ZEALAND The brown marmorated stink bug is a pest that infests homes, ruins gardens, stinks when crushed, and is almost impossible to get rid of. It could also destroy our fruit and vegetable industries.

It’s not in New Zealand yet, and we want to keep it that way. So if you see one, don’t kill it. Catch it, take a photo, and call us on 0800 80 99 66.

Look for black & white banding on the antennae

For more information (including how to identify the bug) visit biosecurity.govt.nz/stinkbug

Look for black & white banding on the sides of the abdomen

Palliser Estate

for their vineyards. A basic template is available at nzwine.com, and a free hard copy biosecurity pack can also be sent which includes the Biosecurity Best Practice Guidelines, a Vineyard Pest and Disease Identification Guide, educational material about the ‘Most Unwanted’ pests and diseases to keep an eye out for, and biosecurity clauses that can be included in labour and machinery contracts, and more. There is also a video explaining how to complete the current biosecurity plan template.

As the details of exactly what mandatory components will be required for a biosecurity plan are confirmed, NZW will also ensure members have the opportunity to attend workshops and sessions to discuss and get assistance with biosecurity planning. In the meantime, if you have any questions or would like assistance with developing a biosecurity plan, please send an email to biosecurity@ nzwine.com, or call Sophie Badland, NZW Biosecurity & Emergency Response Manager, on 027 700 4142.

Stink Bugs not shown actual size. (Actual size approx. 1.7cm long)

MPB0160

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XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX On your behalf

Advocacy on matters of vital importance to the industry

James Kane

Do you have a recall plan for when things go wrong?

New requirements for the wine industry We all spend time in our lives planning for when things go wrong. We’ve been part of fire drills and we know when to ‘drop, cover and hold’. The reason we participate, is so we know how to respond effectively in a crisis.

While wine may be a low risk product, we are not immune to a crisis. If you’re involved in wine production, ask yourself what would I do if something inadvertently happened to a product I make? Do I understand the process if I discovered a chemical leak, or was informed a known (but unlabelled) allergen made it into a batch of wine destined for market, or received a social media complaint claiming ‘glass’ was found in one of my bottles?

“Participants will be provided a mock consumer recall scenario to undertake their own recall.”

James Kane New regulatory requirements for WSMP holders Acknowledging the importance of having a robust recall process, the Wine Regulations 2021 now require require all Wine Standards Management Plan (WSMP) holders and wine businesses involved in export to carry out an annual simulated recall exercise. A simulated recall must be carried out at least once every 12 months from 1 July 2023, but it can be met if you have had a genuine recall (provided that the recall demonstrated your traceability and recall procedures were effective).

Why simulated recalls are important for wine Having a simulated recall process in place can make a world of difference in answering these questions. A simulated recall is an exercise conducted to test and

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evaluate your ability to effectively recall a product from the market in the event of a real safety or quality issue. Recalls are proactive measures taken to ensure you’re prepared for potential real life situations, by demonstrating the effectiveness of your traceability and business systems, not just as a precaution, but as a necessary step towards delivering safer wine to consumers.

The benefits of simulated recalls are clear: • Food Safety: they allow a swift and efficient response strategy to protect consumers and your business from potential food safety risks. This includes identifying the source of contamination, recalling affected products, and preventing further distribution of a wine.

• Brand reputation: effective recalls protect your business, brand and maintain consumer trust. Whether it’s a defective product, contamination, labelling errors, or other issues, these can irreparably harm your business and industry reputation.

• Role definition: help identify the roles and responsibilities within your own supply chain. Whether you are a winemaker, bottler or contractor, clarity on ‘who does what’ is vital for success and peace of mind.

I NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023

National Simulated Recall Exercise 13 November 2023 – save the date!

New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) acknowledges the importance of this new requirement and are offering all WSMP holders the opportunity to participate in a National Simulated Recall Exercise.

We have agreed that the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) will host a virtual recall on 13 November 2023.

Participation is completely voluntary for WSMP holders, and satisfactory participation will meet the requirements of your WSMP. Participants will be provided a mock consumer recall scenario to undertake their own recall, and the opportunity to submit mock documents to a dedicated MPI hotline for assessment and feedback.

Evidence of participation and meeting annual WSMP recall requirement for audit purposes may also serve to meet other recall certification requirements for your business.

So whether you’re a small winemaker, large producer, want to test your existing procedure or trial new recalls. Please join us. Registrations for this exercise are now open and close 31 October. If you would like further information please contact advocacy@nzwine.com.

James Kane is a Legal and Policy Advisor at NZW

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For statistics queries contact Maddison at maddison.wyllie-papalii@nzwine.com

JUN JULY 2023 2020

Key Performance Indicators

Keep an eye on how New Zealand wine is performing both domestically and internationally.

Total Value of Exports

Growth Markets

$2.37

fob value

$853.2m 22%

21%

Billion

USA

$525.8m 22% UK

$443.1m 22%

Packaged Wine Export

Unpackaged Wine Export

Volume

Volume

167.7 mL

140.8 mL

Packaged Price

Unpackaged white wine price

3%

15%

10%

28%

AUSTRALIA

$142.7m 1% CANADA

$71.5m 93%

$9.63/L

$5.09/L

GERMANY

$39.3m 14% CHINA

$25.4m 5%

Domestic Sales, Volume

40.0 mL 6%

NETHERL ANDS

$14.9m 0.39 HONG KONG

All figures are for the 12 months to the date specified, figures are in $NZD unless otherwise specified NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023 I

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Nuts and bolts Mark Daniel’s updates on machinery and technology

Future Post factory in Marlborough More than half a million wooden vineyard posts are estimated to be broken every year in Marlborough. But copper chromium arsenic (CCA) treatment rules out burning or burying the waste. That means there are piles on every vineyard and growers scratching their heads.

So it’s no surprise that the late July opening of Future Post’s second soft plastics recycling facility in Blenheim would be welcomed by an industry committed to improving sustainability.

The Future Post story is one of genuine Kiwi ingenuity. Founder and Chief Executive Jerome Wenzlick worked as a farmer and fencing contractor for 15 years, and saw timber post quality slipping, wastage increasing because of breakages, and struggles with continuity of supply.

Jerome had a ‘eureka moment’ when working on a fencing job next to an old rubbish dump, where he had problems with post breaking on the plastics hidden below the surface. “Surely, if plastics are this tough, we should be making fence posts from them?” he thought. A chance meeting with farmer and recycling guru Bindi Ground led to a business partnership being formed with a commitment to producing premium fencing products.

Travel to the United States to research plastics recycling was followed with a period of research and development, the build of a production plant with the help of South Waikato Precision Engineering in Tokoroa, and the eventual set up of a factory at Waiuku, south of Auckland in 2018 south of Auckland. Along the way the company also picked up the 2019 Fieldays Innovation New Launch Award.

Today, that factory takes in bales of recycled HDPE plastics, including Fonterra ‘soft’ milk bottles and a range of soft plastics sourced from supermarkets and regional collection hubs. Broken down into ‘chips’, the plastics are blended to a

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secret recipe, then pushed through an extrusion plant, emerging as a largely solid black post. The items are then ‘cured’ by passing through a water-bath to become the finished product.

Hassan Wong, Future Post General Manager, says the Waiuku-based company has processed 1,800 tonnes of recycled plastic in the past 12 months to make their products, but that figure was likely to jump to over 4,000 tonnes per year with the addition of the new factory. Unlike a wooden post, the plastic version was almost guaranteed not to break, which could cut down the region’s annual vineyard waste, he says. As the country’s largest wine producing region, Marlborough uses a lot of posts, which Hassan says makes Blenheim the perfect place to make them.

Future Post National Sales Manager Diana Jamieson notes that a single 125mm by 1.8m post contained the equivalent of about 320 milk bottles and 1,200 bread bags’ worth of recycled plastic, but also went on to explain that the new Marlborough facility would mean that customers would benefit from lower freight costs, with the relatively heavy posts available on their doorstep rather than needing to be shipped from South Auckland.

The arrival of Future Post in Marlborough has also helped to re-

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establish the Soft Plastic Recycling Scheme (SPRS) in the top of the South, as collected bags and wrappers now have a local end destination. “We had been working on restarting collections in the region for some time, so the opening of Future Post’s new plant has helped this happen,” says Rob Langford, Chief Executive of The Packaging Forum, operator of SPRS. In the past, growth of the scheme was limited by our onshore processing capacity as we only collect what we can process and recycle; however, Future Post expanding into the South Island has meant an increase in its production capabilities, and therefore we have been able to add more collection points,” he said.

Future Posts are impenetrable to moisture, frosts, insects or fungi, while also free from splitting, cracking or rotting.

Said to be as strong as timber, they can be worked with the same tools, being sawn easily, drilled, using standard staples in the normal manner and suitable for driving with mechanical post-hitters - and on a practical point, don’t expose fencers to any splinters.

Making use of recycled plastics of type 2,4,5,6 and 7 the product is CCA-free, with no leaching into the ground. The product is BioGro NZ certified and currently available through many rural supply stores at a slight premium over its wooden equivalent.

NUTS AND BOLTS

No-Lo production continues to climb Vintech Pacific, New Zealand’s leader in the production of low and no-alcohol wines, ciders and other beverages, has announced the commissioning of their new Spinning Cone Column facility, located in Blenheim, for the production of no and low alcohol wines. The new development will complement the company’s existing facility in Hawke’s Bay. Spinning Cone Column distillation occurs under vacuum so the temperatures reached are much lower and for far shorter periods than with other more traditional distillation technologies, so the gentle action of the process makes spinning cone the ideal solution for many wine and beverage making applications.

The successful and safe production of these beverages is a technically challenging process, but along with their technology partner BevZero, Vintech Pacific has become a world leader in the development of the specialised IP and production processes required for this new category of products.

Offering a single-pass process, with low energy consumption and minimal water use, besides the dealcoholisation process, the system can also be used to remove sulphur from grape juice and to produce aromatic and flavour extracts for product development. The Marlborough facility is available for full production runs and trial runs, for volumes as low as 1000 litres.

According to Forbes, sales of no and low alcohol (NoLo) beverages grew by more than 7% in volume across 10 key global markets in 2022, surpassing $NZ18.5 billion in market value. Much of the demand is driven because alcohol reduction has a significant impact on reducing excise duties, particularly in the UK, but also by a generational shift that sees consumers reducing their alcohol intake for many reasons.

®

THE ECO TRELLIS ADVANTAGE ®

ECO TRELLIS® posts have been thoroughly tested in vineyards for more than 14 years and are very strong and durable.

In contrast CCA treated wooden vineyards posts leach contaminants into ground water and are very hard to dispose of. They’re heavy to handle, damage easily and often bend and break under pressure in the vineyard.

A recent new style of vineyard post is untested, made from alternative product sources and may not be resilient to local conditions. These posts could be performing poorly in vineyards.

ECO TRELLIS

Zero to hero

Giesen 0% Pinot Gris won the 2023 International Wine and Spirit Competition’s (IWSC) Best Low-Alcohol Trophy (<1.2% alcohol/volume), while the company’s Ara Zero Sauvignon Blanc won the Best Alcohol-Free Wine in the 2023 World Alcohol-free Awards (UK). Giesen Group has also been shortlisted for the IWSC LONO Producer of the Year award with the winner to be announced in October. Chief Winemaker Duncan Shouler says they’re “incredibly proud” of the range.” If you told me 20 years ago that alcohol-free wine would be so popular, I’d have laughed but it really is. The wine drinking consumer is changing, and moderation is becoming more important to them.”

WOODEN NEW STYLE POSTS POSTS

Strong and durable

Yes

Partially

Unknown

Environmentally friendly

Yes

No

Unknown

Proven in the vineyard

Yes

Yes

Unknown

History of research and testing in-field

Yes

Yes

Unknown

Lightweight and easy to install

Yes

Heavy

Very heavy

Fully recyclable

Yes

No

Unknown

Compatible with KLIMA pruning machine

Yes

No

No

Warranty provided

Yes

No

Unknown

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

ecotrellis.com FREEPHONE 0508 TUBE EMAIL sales@ecotrellis.com

NEW ZEALAND WINEGROWER I OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2023 I

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Research Supplement A regular feature to inform and update the wine industry on research projects being undertaken for their benefit. Newly approved projects when available are briefly summarised. Ongoing projects have longer articles that describe progress and what has been achieved so far. When completed, each project report will be shared in full detail in the Research Library on nzwine.com.

BRI Research Winery

Current research projects Bragato Research Institute conducts research in-house or collaborates with research organisations throughout New Zealand.

The main research providers for each project are listed. Updates are provided on the highlighted projects in this supplement.

Vineyard Innovation Improving remedial surgery practices to increase vineyard longevity Linnaeus, SARDI Long spur pruning as an alternative to cane pruning for Sauvignon Blanc Bragato Research Institute Evaluating water use efficiency and drought tolerance of various rootstocks grafted to Sauvignon Blanc Bragato Research Institute Potential applications of nanotechnology for wine growing in New Zealand University of Auckland Weevils in New Zealand vineyards Bragato Research Institute

Genetics for winegrowing Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine Improvement Programme Bragato Research Institute, Plant & Food Research, Lincoln University

National Vine Collection Virus Eradication Bragato Research Institute Tuned Vines Bragato Research Institute

Winemaking Innovation Exploring reductive aromas in Pinot Noir University of Auckland Precipitation of calcium tartrate and other compounds in wine University of Canterbury Lab on a Chip: Developing diagnostic devices for the wine industry University of Canterbury Prevention of quercetin instability in bottled wine Indevin The importance of green: Understanding ‘green’ and ‘herbaceous’ characters in Pinot noir wine and their role in driving judgements of perceived quality Lincoln University

Sustainable Winegrowing Microbial community and vine responses to increasing temperatures in the New Zealand context University of Auckland Shared Vision for Land Use in Marlborough Bragato Research Institute, Meihana Consulting, AgResearch, Tipuake systems, Market Economics Development of an anaerobic chain-elongation bioprocess for grape marc valorisation University of Auckland Evaluating ecologically sustainable ways to disrupt the wētā-vine association Plant & Food Research

RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT

Promethion

New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc reference genome complete Dr Annabel Whibley, Bragato Research Institute

The Sauvignon Blanc 2.0 programme is one step closer to achieving its goal of increasing the resilience of the New Zealand wine industry, with the completion of a reference genome.

Multiple audits of the wine sector have identified our reliance on Sauvignon Blanc and a lack of genetic diversity as one of the biggest risks facing our industry. The Sauvignon Blanc 2.0 project was launched in 2021 with the goal of producing a large population of new Sauvignon Blanc plants, some of which we expect to have beneficial characteristics for the New Zealand

market. Importantly for our premium variety, this is to be achieved using methods that do not fall foul of varietal or genetic modification restrictions and which do not rely on the prohibitively expensive import of new plant material to the country.

Bragato Research Institute’s (BRI’s) Grapevine Improvement team has been building capability in cutting-edge genomic sequencing technologies and analytical methods. This month, BRI has reached a key milestone in the project: obtaining a complete and highly accurate reference genome of the Mass Select (UCD1) clone that underpins much of the Sauvignon

Blanc planting in New Zealand and which is the genetic background for their work to generate novel diversity.

What is a reference genome?

A reference genome is a foundational resource for genomics analysis and recent years have seen a boom in the availability and quality of reference genome assemblies across the tree of life. A reference genome serves as a catalogue of all the genetic information contained within the genome and from that we can begin to comprehensively describe and understand the genes and other functional elements that

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make up an individual. Having a complete and accurate reference also allows scientists to faithfully and comprehensively assess and interpret the significance of genomic differences between individuals and species. Genetic differences between individuals can contribute to differences in agronomically important traits, for example by influencing developmental processes such as the timing of budburst or ripening, or by affecting responses to environmental cues such as specific pathogens or pests or climate conditions.

Long read sequencing developments Although the Human Genome Project officially concluded in 2003, the draft remained obstinately incomplete.

The final barriers to completion were overcome in 2022 by technological developments in the field, the most important of which was the arrival of so-called long-read sequencing methods. By increasing the length of contiguous bases that could be read in one go from just a few hundred to tens of thousands (sometimes even more), complex tangles of repetitive patterns could finally be resolved: the missing 8% of the human genome was accounted for, a few thousand new genes were identified, and hundreds of errors and gaps were corrected and filled. Genomes are organised into units called chromosomes within the cell and these could now be recovered fully in their linear end-to-end sequence and with this the field of genomics entered the so-called telomere-totelomere (T2T) age (although it was another year before the small but especially challenging human Y chromosome was also resolved in this way).

Sequencing Sauvignon Blanc At BRI we are using the same approaches as the Human T2T consortium to generate a highquality reference for Sauvignon Blanc. Whilst the human genome contains 3.1 billion nucleotides split across 23 chromosomes,

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the grapevine genome is a more modest 500 million nucleotides across 19 chromosomes. Although the compactness of the genome is helpful, plant genomes have other challenging features – notably an increased amount of repetitive sequences and higher levels of what is termed ‘heterozygosity’, which describes how the two copies of the genome contained with the plant cells differ from each other. To date, just a handful of plant genomes have achieved telomere-to-telomere status.

This valuable genomic resource will now allow the BRI team to comprehensively describe differences between ‘Mass Select’ and other commercially-grown Sauvignon Blanc clones, as well as to characterise budsports identified in vineyards and the large diversity panel that will be generated in the Sauvignon Blanc 2.0 project.

The genomics research at BRI is underpinned by the powerful Oxford Nanopore Technologies PromethION sequencing platform and highperformance computing resources provided by the New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI). Two of BRI’s scientists, Dr Bhanupratap Vanga and Dr Amy Hill, have optimised the extraction of DNA from leaf tissue, recovering stretches of DNA thousands to hundreds of thousands of base pairs in length

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from the sequencer. These long and highly accurate sequences are the raw material for complex assembly algorithms to resolve millions of segments of DNA sequence (in total comprising over 50 billion of nucleotide bases) into linear chromosome sequences. As BRI’s Bioinformatician, I have been able to obtain a reference genome that comprises T2T sequences of both copies of each chromosome.

Where to from here: How we will use the reference genome?

This valuable genomic resource will now allow the BRI team to comprehensively describe differences between ‘Mass Select’ and other commercially-grown Sauvignon Blanc clones, as well as to characterise bud-sports identified in vineyards and the large diversity panel that will be generated in the Sauvignon Blanc 2.0 project.

Identifying differences is just part of the process, though, and big data is also central to our ability to interpret the significance of the differences we discover. In June I was able to participate in the European COST Action Grapedia Training School at the Fondazione Edmund Mach in San Michele all’Adige, Italy. This consortium of scientists is generating openly-available resources in grapevine in order to construct an information hub that aims to simplify the journey from the identification of genomic differences to actionable biological insights for the wine industry.

About the programme: The Sauvignon Blanc Grapevine Improvement Programme is a seven year research programme funded by the Ministry for Primary Industries’ Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund, New Zealand Winegrowers via the industry levy, and individual industry participants.

RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT

Prediction of Calcium Tartrate Crystals in Wine Jack Muir and Ken Morison, University of Canterbury Throughout the winemaking process, it is possible for crystals to start growing in wine. While these solids are harmless and don’t typically impact the wine’s taste, they are considered undesirable and can cause a wine to be perceived as low quality.

This research aims to understand and predict the precipitation of calcium tartrate in wine and form guidelines to help prevent precipitation. To do this, a model of ion equilibria and precipitation in dairy has been adapted to wine.

“This research aims to understand and predict the precipitation of calcium tartrate in wine.”

One of the most common crystals that can form is potassium bitartrate, which wineries often try to stabilise by cooling the wine to a low temperature for a few days. This encourages crystals to form, which can then be filtered out to prevent the wine from crystallising in the future.

Small-scale versions of this process, called cold stability tests, are usually used to predict if this treatment is required. Some commonly known methods in New Zealand are the refrigeration method, freeze/thaw test and conductivity test.

A less common crystal that can form is calcium tartrate, but unlike potassium bitartrate, cooling the wine to low temperatures has little effect on the crystallisation.

One major problem with calcium tartrate is the length of time the crystals take to form; it can occur months after the wine has been bottled and sent out for sale. This makes predicting its formation very important, as winemakers need to

Photo credit: Australian Wine Research Institute

know when treatment is required. One way to stabilise a wine for calcium tartrate is by seeding it with small calcium tartrate crystals to induce crystallisation and filtering to remove the solids formed.

An obvious risk factor for calcium tartrate crystallisation is a high level of calcium, which is determined by the original content in the grapes and can be affected by additives such as calcium carbonate for deacidification.

The pH and tartaric acid level are also factors that influence calcium tartrate crystallisation and add to the complexity. However, these alone do not reliably predict calcium tartrate precipitation. The purpose of this research is to create a model which can be used to gain insight into some of the other factors influencing calcium tartrate formation.

Modelling A previous PhD project at the University of Canterbury used thermodynamics and programming

to model and predict the formation of precipitates such as calcium phosphate in milk. While wine and milk share differences such as the higher protein levels in milk and the ethanol and phenolic content of wine, some of the key components are similar.

Examples are the major minerals from organic matter (potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sodium), acids (citrate in milk and tartrate, malate, and many more in wine), sugars (milk has lactose whereas wine mainly has glucose and fructose), and other chemicals like phosphate, sulphate, and chloride. This made the model suitable after some adaptations as the same basic principles can be applied.

However, one of the major changes made to the model was to account for ethanol, which included adjustments to the density calculations and the constants that quantify how much a compound will dissociate in solution (association/acidity constants).

In any solution, chemicals such as

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tartaric acid can exist in multiple forms depending on factors such as pH (a measure of acidity) and temperature. Tartaric acid will dissociate into ions and can exist as tartaric acid, the bitartrate ion, or the tartrate ion, with bitartrate being the dominant form in wine.

These different forms are very important when understanding crystal formation; potassium bitartrate requires the bitartrate ion and calcium tartrate requires the tartrate ion.

Calculations to estimate the amounts of each form are often simplified because all the different compounds in wine will interact and affect the amount that is present.

present in the wine, including how much calcium tartrate would exist in a solution (not the solid crystal form).

Once this is known, the saturation level can be estimated, which is a measure of how much calcium tartrate can be contained in the liquid before it will start to precipitate in its solid crystal form. If the amount of calcium tartrate is greater than the saturation level then crystallisation can occur and the formation over time can be predicted using rate equations.

Even if precipitation is occurring, this can take a very long time before the growth is at noticeable levels to human eyes. These steps are summarised in Figure 1.

The model uses numerical methods to solve a large number of equations simultaneously, taking into account the way all the chemicals influence each other. This helps to investigate the various forms of chemicals

The model can be used to show how changing the concentration of chemicals such as tartrate can impact the formation of calcium tartrate (Figure 2). It can also be used similarly for chemicals with a less

Figure 1: Flowchart showing the major steps in the model

obvious impact such as potassium.

Practical work and further research Tests of the model on simple systems have been done to check if it matches experimental work. For a sodium citrate buffer, the model was able to correctly predict how the pH changed (which depends on what forms the citrate is in) when different amounts of ethanol were added, showing that the changes made to account for this worked. The change in pH during calcium phosphate precipitation was modelled over time, and the results matched the real data.

The model needs to be tested to see how well it can predict crystal growth in real wines as simple solutions do not capture the complex chemistry involved. This requires testing the total amounts of the important compounds in wine to use in the model and comparing the predictions to the experimental results. Highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC) can be used to separate the different acids and ions and measure how much there is of each. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectroscopy (ICP-MS) can find the amount of minerals like potassium and calcium.

These results will be used to improve the model which will then be used to identify steps during the winemaking process that might affect the likelihood of crystallisation.

About the project

Figure 2. Change in relative saturation of calcium tartrate for a model wine when the pH is altered by adjusting the tartrate concentration.

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This is a three-year project funded by Bragato Research Institute and led by the University of Canterbury investigating the precipitation of calcium tartrate and other compounds in wine with an aim to provide an effective modelling tool to predict precipitates which will enable winemakers to exercise knowledgeable prevention and intervention and ensure a quality product.

RESEARCH SUPPLEMENT

Shared vision for land use in Wairau Marlborough Bragato Research Institute, Meihana Consulting, AgResearch, AERU, Market Economics and Tipu Ake Systems Forestry, viticulture, beef and lamb.

Scan your eyes across the landscape in Marlborough and that’s what you’ll see most. New Zealand’s primary industries have experienced exemplary economic success worldwide. This is largely due to a focus on specialisation and prioritising export market demands. However, this focus comes at the expense of biodiversity. The wine industry is dominated by one variety in particular – 74% of vineyards in New Zealand produce Sauvignon Blanc. The story is no different in Marlborough. Lack of biodiversity makes these specialised systems increasingly vulnerable.

Diversification is becoming more important to winegrowers because factors like changing consumer preferences and climate change can have a significant impact on the industry. Interest in cover cropping and planting natives within vineyards is growing across the Marlborough region. It is with this in mind that a recent research project, led by Bragato Research Institute, investigated visions for land use in Marlborough. Having

a better understanding of the community’s vision for land use puts winegrowers in a position to refine their diversification efforts to better meet the expectations and needs of the community.

Across Marlborough there is an increased risk of nutrient loss from soil to water, increased soil compaction and loss of soil organic matter. Water availability and quality is also changing. There are concerns about declining levels in the recharge aquifer in the Wairau Valley, as well as increasing concentrations of nitrate in groundwater in several areas across the region. Drought risk in the region is also projected to increase, further compounding these issues. Many of these challenges cannot be solved at the farm level alone, and would benefit from a landscape approach that includes the entire community in planning, designing, and coordinating solutions.

The research project aimed to understand the visions various communities in Marlborough have for land use, and how to develop

pathways to transition to a diversified shared landscape. It also sought to identify key connections and relationships that need to be established to achieve a shared vision and facilitate collaborative regional change.

Summary of method Researchers conducted two sets of interviews - Te Ao Māori and community interviews. These explored interviewees’ connection to place and their vision for its future, perceived regional challenges, the role of diversification and the types of partnerships that need to be created to develop a pathway for the development of a shared vision.

Te Ao Māori interviewees held roles in commercial businesses within the primary sector, land, sea and environmental management, and in Iwi management and governance.

The community interviewees were individuals who worked directly in the dominant primary industries in the region, regional government officials, employees working in environmental management, and residents involved

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in environmental interest and advocacy groups.

Findings Vision for land use The visions that people had for land use were driven by their connection to Marlborough and what was important to them about the place.

For both Te Ao Māori and Community interviewees the Wairau Marlborough region was home, but the articulation of what this meant to both sets of interviewees was different. Te Ao Māori interviewees emphasised the spiritual and practical connection to place through Whakapapa highlighting their obligation and responsibility to protect Iwi, whanau, land, and water in the region, regardless of whether they live there or not. This connection is different to Community interviewees’ description of home, which was articulated through a sense of responsibility to, and appreciation of the place, but not necessarily a connection transcendent of generations or location.

The Te Ao Māori participants vision for land use focused on acknowledging and protecting indigenous knowledge, conserving and increasing diversity, and limiting the negative effects of current agricultural practices.

The broader community vision emphasised diversification of agricultural production systems, regeneration and conservation of natural habitat, and better planning of housing in the region. Maintaining or increasing access to nature and wilderness areas was important to both groups. Integrating native biodiversity and habitat provision into current production systems was also important to both groups.

Barriers to a Shared Vision Differences in worldview and shortterm versus long-term perspectives pose significant barriers to partnership. On an individual level, lack of understanding or apathy about issues, lack of time, prejudice and ego were all seen as obstacles to partnership. Short election cycles were also seen to influence prioritisation and action around

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these issues, including a lack of future planning. Often described as ‘lore versus law’ traditional knowledge does not fit easily within existing planning structures or legal frameworks and so was also seen as a barrier to successful partnership. Lack of capability and capacity within organisations can prevent them partnering well on issues. Trustworthiness, integrity, and competition for funding were also seen to impact an organisation’s ability to partner.

There was no single vision for land use and diversification in Marlborough but there was a strong shared desire to increase native and agricultural diversity, and restore and conserve the landscape for future generations.

Towards a Shared Vision Partnership needs to be enabled through the development of shared values, effective communication, and recognition of organisations’ and iwi capacity and capabilities.

Future thinking around collaborative solutions, representation and inclusion of Iwi Māori at all levels were seen as central to enabling partnership.

Interviewees also valued real and early engagement, and deep understanding of the principles of Tiriti o Waitangi.

Te Ao Māori participants stressed the need to build relationships based on balance, equity, trust and collaboration. Enhancing mana and acceptance of each other’s cultures were identified by both groups as critical to building strong partnerships.

The Te Hoiere Pelorus Catchment Restoration Project was seen as an

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example of land use change and diversification that has successfully been enabled by working in true partnership. This project brings together Marlborough District Council, Ngāti Kuia, the Department of Conservation and the wider community to look after the whole catchment from the mountains to the sea.

Conclusion There was no single vision for land use and diversification in Marlborough but there was a strong shared desire to increase native and agricultural diversity, and to restore and conserve the landscape for future generations.

There were differences in connection to place between groups, but all share a concern over how the place has changed due to agricultural intensification, specialisation, and housing development.

To achieve a shared vision, regional efforts towards land use diversification need to be facilitated in a way that addresses current barriers to partnership. The principles and processes adopted in the Te Hoiere Pelorus Catchment Restoration Project are overcoming these barriers, and have led to successful land use change and diversification. Learning from successful projects like this can guide future attempts to create land use change and diversification, especially where Iwi and multiple partners need to be brought together to create change.

About the project The project was funded through the Our Land and Water National Science Challenge as part of the Pathways to Transition research. It was led

by Bragato Research Institute, in collaboration with Meihana Consulting, AgResearch, Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit (AERU), Market Economics and Tipu Ake Systems.

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