Positive points for New Zealand wines

David Williams looks at the state of play for the Kiwis, both at home and in the UK independent trade, and finds there’s quite a lot of good news – as well as some challenges

1. More wine, please

Not having enough wine to meet demand isn’t exactly the worst problem a wine country could face. Indeed, when some in the New Zealand trade talk about their country’s issues with the short 2021 harvest, it can sound like a flippant humblebrag of the kind you might hear in a work interview. “If anything, we are just too popular!”

For importers in export markets such as the UK and US, however, the shortage of, especially, Sauvignon Blanc over the past year was a very real headache, requiring careful stock management and, in some cases, creative sourcing and labelling to keep up with drinkers’ insatiable demand for all things gooseberry and nettle-scented. And exports, inevitably, plummeted – by 13% in total by volume, with domestic sales of New Zealand wine at their lowest level in nearly two decades, according to New Zealand Winegrowers.

Those problems should be largely corrected over the coming year, and not because New Zealand has, in the interim, become less popular, or because customers have been won over to the offerings of those alternative suppliers they turned to – Chilean, South African – to make up any shortfall. Production has more than rebounded: where 2021 was, at 370,000 tonnes (or 266.4m litres), the smallest Kiwi harvest since 2013, 2022 is the country’s largest ever: 532,000 tonnes, or 384m litres.

With importers very much ready and waiting to re-stock their inventories, sales and consumption look set to rise again. Indeed, according to figures released by New Zealand Winegrowers at the end of 2022, volume for the year until September 2022 was down by 4% overall, but value has never been higher. New Zealand wine exports were worth a record NZ$2.03bn for the full year, up 6% on 2020, with the month of September 2022 setting a new record of NZ$287m for a month, the first time a single month’s exports of New Zealand wine has exceeded a quarter of a billion dollars.

2. More staff, please

New Zealand’s famously strict Covid-19 protocols finally loosened over the southern hemisphere winter, with the country’s border finally reopening to all international travellers on July 31. That came too late for many New Zealand grape growers, however, who had to battle as they had in 2021 with a considerably reduced labour force as they brought in the 2022 harvest. Indeed, according to New Zealand Winegrowers, the manpower shortage was so acute that some wineries were forced to close for some periods during the vintage – an “unprecedented situation”.

But if the re-opening of borders is likely to cause a measure of relief for the upcoming 2023 vintage, there is a sense in New Zealand that Covid-19 merely exacerbated an already-existing problem. Even with a return to a full, pre-Covid level flow of migrant labour (which has yet to happen) to complement the industry’s 7,300 full-time staff, with unemployment in the country at historically low levels, there is a structural lack of skilled full-time and seasonal workers available to the country’s 744 registered wineries, and 706 registered wine grape growers.

While other problems, such as ongoing shipping delays and the spiralling cost of dry goods, remain acute, New Zealand producers can at least comfort themselves that they are not the only country having to deal with them.

The labour issue feels different, however. No wonder New Zealand Winegrowers has identified “labour supply as a key concern for growers and wineries. If not resolved, it will curtail future growth and export earnings for our sector […] it remains a major focus for the year ahead”.