Winepress - April 2024

Wine Story

Rob Agnew knows a lot about Marlborough’s weather and its role in winegrowing, with some 36 years of his own weather statistics to call upon. As he hangs up his phenology hat, we look back at some of Rob’s groundbreaking work.

ROB AGNEW has been connected to the land and weather since beginning work with a degree in agricultural science from Lincoln University. His future seemed obvious: dairy science and farm management, probably becoming a farm advisor. Dargaville was offered.

Without offending those who hold Dargaville dear, he and new wife Lynne decided it was not for them, and headed overseas for three years. Once back home in Blenheim, he joined the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Research Division, based at the Marlborough Research Centre (MRC), on a temporary three-month contract that went on being renewed for three years. “My boss was eventually told to get rid of me. He didn’t, I stayed, and the rest is history.”

Rob says he’s not a traditional academic scientist. “I’m not a big picture person, and I’ve been blessed with being able to get my teeth into three or four big projects over my career. That’s my nature. And I stick at things. I love taking information from my research colleagues and communicating it to the industry so that they can use it. That’s what really spins my wheels.”

Rob admits he has to see an applied use for research, and a job at Plant & Food Research would provide just that, along with groundbreaking use of data that would change the way growers managed their vines. In the mid-1990s, Dr Rengasamy Balasubramaniam (Bala) was looking at spray regimes. “Marlborough growers were using calendar-based spray programmes taken from Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay, where heavier spraying was needed. We had one grower using 25 sprays in one season, and we enabled the number of sprays to be cut in half. This work also told us when growers should spray. And that was the start of VineFacts.”

VineFacts began as a subscription service for Marlborough growers in January 1997. Every week, Rob processed the data from weather stations and monitored vineyards around Marlborough, then wrote it up in terms everyone could understand. Now growers had relevant local information to hand, from how many days of rain through to comparisons with previous months, disease management, and likely harvest dates.

In 2014, the MRC gifted VineFacts to New Zealand Winegrowers, and coverage expanded to Gisborne, Hawke’s Bay, North Canterbury and Central Otago, with the help of the Sustainable Farming Fund. Nelson was added to the mix in 2019-20, and in the past 10 years, monitoring and VineFacts have grown to include the weather in Martinborough.

Monitoring, evaluating and reporting – this is the science of phenology, which Oxford Languages defines as “the study of cyclical and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life”. When combined with long-term data, growers have a powerful tool to help maximise their harvests. France, for example, has more than 100 years of phenology to call upon.

Rob was involved in a mid-2000s Sauvignon Blanc research project involving Plant & Food Research, the University of Auckland and Lincoln University. “We wanted to get to the bottom of the different flavour profiles of Marlborough Sauvignon Blancs. However, as part of this programme we began monitoring vine phenology on five sub-regional Sauvignon Blanc vineyards. The phenological monitoring gave us another string to the VineFacts bow, which has continued for 20 years so far.”

“Phenology records are incredibly valuable. We can compare seasons across factors from early or late budburst, flowering, véraison and harvest, to temperature, rainfall and yield components. And we can look at how the climate is changing. For example, the last five years have been quite warm and early, and we’re already seeing a trend to early flowering and maturity. This gives growers an idea of what might be coming down the track,” Rob says. His contribution to the industry was recognised with the 2022 Marlborough MRC Award, where Dr Mike Trought called Rob “the ‘go to’ person if you want to know about the weather in Marlborough and how it is likely to be affecting our agricultural and horticultural crops”.

Now it’s time for Rob to hand over the reins to Victoria Raw, who describes herself as a “bit of a weather junkie”. She joined what was HortResearch as a Research Associate in 2006, and has worked alongside Rob ever since. Please raise your glasses. Saluté, Rob. We wish you well in your retirement.

This story was supplied by Plant & Food Research

Welcome Victoria Raw – the new chapter of VineFacts

Victoria Raw fell into the growing side of wine by accident, after a one-year Erasmus Programme in France required her to pick an elective. She had to look up what oenology meant, but once in France, Victoria discovered her passion didn’t lie just with wine but also with viticulture. “I loved tasting the wine and I spent a year working in sales back in Edinburgh and as a lab assistant in Oporto, but what really appealed was the science. I knew that to take my interest in vines and wine seriously I’d have to go back to university.”

She found the right programme in Adelaide, completing a graduate diploma in viticulture in 1999. In 2000, she arrived at Corbans Wines (which later became part of Pernod Ricard), where she started in the vineyard, and then moved into research and development work as the viticultural technician. This brought her into contact with Plant & Food Research (then HortResearch) and a new job as Research Associate in 2006.

Her interests in weather and research became much more useful when she was introduced to Rob Agnew and VineFacts. Victoria has worked alongside Rob since then, collating data and writing for the Thursday publishing deadline. Now, she will continue Rob’s work, as well as looking at where else the data could be used, and how VineFacts might leverage digital technology from apps through to dynamic presentation of their data.

Victoria Raw