Omicron Vintage

Planning, preparation, segregation and PPE

SOPHIE PREECE

“THE TIMING couldn’t be worse,” says Wither Hills head winemaker Matt Large as Omicron’s spread threatens the upcoming vintage.

A month earlier and it could have peaked before harvest; a month later, the vintage would be at its tail end, says Matt, three days after New Zealand went into the red traffic light setting. “I think that’s why all wineries are spending a lot of time and effort on contingency plans and ‘what when?’ rather than ‘what if?’”

Wither Hills’ business continuity plan – based partly on learnings from parent company Lion in Australia – factors in the potential for 30% of their staff not being at work at any one time this vintage. That’s a massive hit given the labour shortage already being felt by wine companies, and the lack of experience in cellars this season, due to border closures.

Matt says they’re conscious of the risk of staff or contractors catching Covid-19, including the Omicron variant, but the cost of close contacts having to isolate is potentially the bigger issue. The rules at the time of writing stipulate that in phase one of the Omicron response, cases isolate for 14 days and contacts for 10 days. The isolation period reduces in phases two, as infection spreads.

“The last thing you want to happen is have someone on-site catch it and you find out that the whole shift becomes a close contact because of the way we operated. And that whole shift has to go home,” says Matt. “So we

have a whole lots of plans with PPE (personal protective equipment) masks, segregation, physical distancing, different bathrooms, different break rooms. All those things are being looked into to try and work out the best way to do it.”

Meanwhile, the winery and vineyard team are going through “every single role” to assess who has competencies in each, if the primary employee can’t be there. “What is involved? Who can do it? Who can’t?” If there are not one or two backups for a job, then they drill into “what training is ready to go or what training we can do now”, Matt says.

They are training more harvester drivers than they need, so skills are on hand if people have to stay home, and vineyard managers are being given refresher training so they can jump in the seat too. In the winery, the same thing is happening, with managers gearing up to hit the coalface if required. “Realistically, no-one is above doing another role below them or beside them,” says Matt. “If I have got to clean the drains because that’s the priority of the day, then that’s what I will do.” That mentality has filtered through the whole business, from permanents to casuals, including many kept on from last harvest. “They are all very much, ‘what can I do to help?’”

The contingency plan includes enhanced integration between viticulture and winemaking over harvest, while maintaining their Covid protocols. That will include assessing which tasks have greater priority. Vineyard machinery operators with past vintage experience are part of the strategy, “and if racking a tank and running a press becomes more important than driving a harvester or a gondola, then we will move them into the winery to get that done,” he says. “I guess our concern is that the winery can’t operate if the vineyard can’t pick the fruit, and the vineyard can’t pick the fruit if the winery can’t take it. For us it’s about moving our workforce if needed, between the priority areas.” That will slow the intake, “but stop us coming to a grinding halt”.

Their plans take into account contractors as well as staff, because the risk is not only in losing the people in the vineyard or winery, but in losing the person who would come and fix the press if it breaks, for example. “If they’re at home with Covid, that’s an issue as well,” says Matt.

The company’s sparkling wines, under the Daniel Le Brun brand, along with its ever-growing lower alcohol portfolio, allow for an earlier start to harvest, which is particularly welcome this vintage, he says. “The key this year, we think, is being able to spread it all out.”

Like everyone else, they are also dealing with a workforce with very little experience. Pre-Covid, 75% of cellar staff had overseas or domestic experience, and could be trained in the winery’s operations within two or three

Pared back labour force

Marlborough wine companies are edging closer to their vintage labour needs, according to the January Wine Marlborough vintage recruitment survey.

The final in a series of previntage labour tallies reveals that there are 126 vintage winery roles still to fill, well up from the 466 vacancies revealed in the November survey, says Wine Marlborough advocacy manager Nicci Armour. “The January survey demonstrates a marked improvement from December, with vacancies representing less than 10% of the

total workforce, compared to 20% in December.”

Almost all of the vacancies are for seasonal cellar hand roles, and finding experienced staff remains a significant challenge, she says. “It looks much better than it was, but we are still working with quite a light crew anyway, so those roles might have quite an impact if they don’t get filled.”

Nicci explains that wineries across the province have already reduced their labour requirement, by forging efficiencies where they can, and it’s vital the positions they have left are filled. “The wineries have pared back as much as they can to make it work.”

A lack of seasoned cellar hands is exacerbating the low numbers with “a huge disparity in terms of experience compared to previous vintages”, says Nicci. Many wineries tested their systems with short labour supply last year, but low yields meant there was less pressure than a typical harvest. This year changes in induction, training and support will be “across the board”, with a return to more typical crop levels alongside an increasingly tight labour market.

Nicci notes that for many new vintage hands, the 2022 harvest may be a different experience to what they could have expected in the past, with staff likely to be set a single task to ensure efficiency, rather than getting a taste of a broad range of roles. Meanwhile the traditional vintage culture of long hours but energising camaraderie will be hampered by Covid restrictions and precautions. “The processes put in place will change the vintage experience for this season. We have to ensure as an industry that we don’t unconsciously make that the mark of vintage”, she says. “So people don’t leave saying, ‘that wasn’t the famed Marlborough vintage I was told about’.”

days. “This year it’s completely the other way,” Matt says. “Probably 75% are inexperienced and have come from all walks of life – from cherry picking in Central Otago or a packhouse in the Bay of Plenty.” Others are coming out of semi-retirement “to help us out”, he says, noting that they’ll have four or five campervans parked up on site this vintage, with people driving into the region for the season. Those casuals cannot be trained in a handful of days, like a seasoned cellar hand could, so the company is focussing on specialised training – rather than ‘you are a cellar hand and will learn about everything’ it is, ‘you will be operating a press’, he says. They’ve

also changed the way they recruit, seeking skills they’d never have considered before, like selecting someone who is a people person, or because they worked well on a factory line and were regularly at work. Rather than sticking with a rigid 12 hour shift, they have offered more flexible hours to capture people with the experience, attributes or skills they want. “There’s certainly been lots of out-of-the-box thinking in the past few years,” says Matt.

Those are some of the positives to come out of Covid, and so is the enhanced communication in place now, says Matt. “We have found the more we communicate the better”. Right now, that means talking to the team about the potential of what will happen in three weeks’ time if 30% of them are not there, he says. “Being really open and going ‘look mate, we are looking at shift segregation and mask use the whole time. If push comes to shove we’ll be looking at which particular variety or brand we will harvest over another’,” he says, “If it physically can’t come in we’re not going to stand back and say, ‘right let’s go home’. I have been open with my team about letting them know, so it’s not a shock.” In return they are coming to him with ideas. “That’s something I think in hindsight we should have been doing better before Covid came along.”

Matt says the past two years of Covid vintages – 2020 working hard to fulfil the Government’s requirements of an essential service, and 2021 rolling those learnings into vintage activities, and being “mindful”, although Covid-19 was less of a risk. “This year is significantly different, because I guess in theory we are all planning for it to arrive - it’s just a case of when.”

Every week or even every day of fruit coming in and being processed will be a relief, he adds. “The big unknown is the most stressful bit. The hope is that you plan for a disaster and hopefully it’s just a small little storm.”

Vintage concerns

Marlborough wineries have done “an incredible job” of recruiting staff, rolling out training and adding rigour to safety procedures, says Wine Marlborough general manager Marcus Pickens. “It feels like a winery could be the safest place to be right now, with all the precautions in place.”

But there are fears the red traffic light setting, with 10-day stand down periods for Covid contacts in phase one, will be “unworkable” in a season already so labour pressured due to closed borders, he says. “Most of the wineries have enough people to get through a normal vintage, which is surprising in itself, but there’s a risk there’s simply not enough cover if wineries lose too many staff to isolation,” says Marcus. “We would love to see some provision for horticulture and viticulture industries with time sensitive crops, as well as access to rapid antigen tests, so we get the minimum amount of people off at any one time.”

He is concerned testing rates will drop “dramatically” in Marlborough over vintage, with winery and vineyard staff reluctant to be isolated during the short but crucial vintage push. Wine companies would not support that thinking, but for individuals it could be particularly tempting when any symptoms could be attributed to long hours of intense work, he says. “That’s not achieving what we need as a community. So it all hinges on the rapid antigen tests. How many can we as an industry get allocated to Marlborough?”

Getting vintage ‘22 to market

Alongside the pressure of planning for vintage in a pandemic, Wither Hills is getting on with the business of wine.

Head winemaker Matt Large says the winery is “really empty, which is good to see – the wine we made has gone out to market”. But the empty tanks – thanks in part to last year’s 21% decline in Marlborough’s total yield

and buoyant demand throughout the Covid-19 period – means there’s pressure to get the 2022 vintage out swiftly.

“Having a vintage like we had last year certainly puts pressure on getting vintage ‘22 out the door a bit quicker,” says Matt.

That could mean turning wines around three to four weeks earlier than is typical, to ensure customers don’t run out, he says. “At this stage it looks like we won’t go out of stock, but we potentially could if we didn’t bring the bottling and release earlier.”

Shipping delays have played a complicating role for wine companies,including Wither Hills, but he notes that they have been “helped out a bit” by having a bigger percentage of domestic sales because of the strength of parent company Lion’s distribution networks.

Meanwhile, the season is looking like a return to more typical yields, thanks to desirable rain early on in the season, good flowering and heat over summer. “In general, we are certainly expecting some good quality fruit in and better volume than last year, which will certainly be appreciated by the industry.”