© Kushnirov Avraham / stockadobe.com
Vines at Lake Wanaka, Otago
A
s a wise man once said, you can
only have a shortage of something
people want or need. And, as many
Wine Merchant readers will have noticed
perhaps more than ever over the past year, an awful lot of people want New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc.
As we reported back in September, a
combination of factors has meant it has been something of a challenge to keep
servicing British wine drinkers’ apparently insatiable thirst for the inimitable
gooseberry bush bungee-jump flavours (to
paraphrase the New Zealand journalist Bob Campbell MW’s memorable pen portrait of the style’s appeal).
The main contributing factor is the
shortness of the 2021 harvest – down 19% on the previous year, largely because of what New Zealand Winegrowers called “inclement” late spring weather. But
long-term labour shortages, which were
exacerbated by New Zealand’s strict Covid
travel restrictions preventing the arrival
New Zealand is also far from alone in
of temporary workers during harvest, also
experiencing another of the issues that
to keep up with growing global demand
network. As reported in September, delays
played their part.
With many producers already struggling
in previous, bumper years, the 2021
shortfall has meant a period of careful
stock management and tight allocation,
with some importers stretching out their 2020 stocks a little longer. At the same
time supermarkets and other small-margin operators have had difficulty sourcing the
kind of bargain-basement prices that most brands and wineries in any case believe
are damaging to New Zealand’s premium image.
has impacted on stock availability in the UK: problems with the global shipping
of several weeks and months have been experienced by UK importers on wines
from the southern hemisphere thanks to a
chickens-coming-home-to-roost moment in which Covid restrictions, long-term global shortages in shipping containers and HGV drivers, and post-Brexit paperwork have all combined to give headaches to UK importers.
2022 and beyond
New Zealand is not the only country
As the country’s winemakers look ahead
down, with some producers in that other
harvest, steps are already being taken to
dealing with a smaller crop in 2021.
Production across Europe was massively leading Sauvignon zone, the Loire Valley,
confronting losses as high as 80% thanks to a mix of late frost, hail and mildew.
THE WINE MERCHANT february 2022 38
to what they hope (and, at the time of
writing, believe) will be a bigger 2022
address the significant challenge of labour shortages.
The problem is rooted in the New
