Gisborne wine region: Chardonnay capital of New Zealand
Article By DON KAVANAGH
Despite the best efforts of the weather and disease, Gisborne winegrowers are looking forward to another good vintage.
The growing season was going along nicely until the weather turned nasty at Labour Weekend, with a flood hitting the area, and another deluge in November, that closed roads and had some residents preparing to evacuate their homes as river levels rose dangerously.
According to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa), the region had three times the average rainfall over October 21 and 22 and was also hit by “hailstones the size of golf balls”. Gisborne Airport soaked up 148mm of rain in 24 hours during the downpour.
Up until the first flood on Labour Weekend, the weather had been great for all horticulture in the district and there was only minimal localised damage to vineyards with that flood.
Substantial amounts of surface water covered some vineyards, in some cases up to fruiting wire height, but only three or four suffered silting and were left with areas that would not produce.
Then, on November 27, the clouds opened again with up to 300mm of rain reported in inland hill country north of Gisborne, causing extensive crop losses and damage to roads on the Tolaga and Poverty Bay plains. That flood affected some flowering blocks of vines.
“While cropping farmers were facing losses of more than 10 million, grape growers came through the two bad patches of weather without too much damage”, says Gisborne Winegrowers president John Clarke.
The weather during flowering was on the whole reasonable and started with heat and warmth from north west winds helping to speed up the process. However a period of cold southerly rain during the latter part had some impact on fruit-set in some clones of Chardonnay.
From December onwards, conditions were perfect, with warm dry conditions.
“There are some really good-looking blocks around the district and nothing to suggest there shouldn’t be some quality fruit around even if tonnages are perhaps going to be average,” Mr Clarke says.
Generally, the grape crops are set to be average or slightly below average. However, the weather hit the high-quality Mendoza and 15 chardonnay clones, meaning a crop well below the average size.
However, the size of the crop is compensated for by the quality of it.
”It’s exceptional. Winemakers are very enthusiastic about the possibilities of the finished product,” Mr Clarke says.
“The yields are 10 to 15 per cent below average, depending on variety and clone, but everyone’s happy with the quality.”
Pernod Ricard NZ’s regional winery manager, Warwick Bruce, also noted that the weather conditions in the growing season had favoured the proliferation of powdery mildew.
“That has been the pattern in most crops around the Poverty Bay Flats,” he says.
“Seasonal crops are experiencing a lot more disease pressure than normal as well, so maintaining open vine canopies for good fruit exposure will be necessary. And mealy bug has raised its ugly head again with some seriously high populations seen around the region.”
Millton Vineyard’s James Millton also had concerns over the weather.
“It is becoming more relevant that, each year as the season evolves, it expresses more extreme conditions. Gisborne is not the only region remarking these extraordinary events”, he says.
One industry drawcard in the Gisborne area has been the huge new SIPREM pneumatic continuous membrane (PCM) press being trialled by Allied Domecq at its Montana Gisborne winery.
The New Zealand importers of the Italian equipment say it is capable of running 24 hours a day for an entire vintage if required, offering the wine industry significant potential for greater efficiency.
The trial in Gisborne is going well, according to Cathy Robinson from Marlborough-based importer Vitis NZ Limited.
“It’s been absolutely brilliant and it has been performing better than our expectations,” she says.
“It is the first press of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and obviously it is more suited to bigger wineries. The one in Gisborne is the baby of the range, but it is a demanding baby. It takes a lot of continuity in the vineyard to keep it fed.”
The PCM press uses a rotating drum with a partial spiral inside pushing the marc through the process spaces. Each space has its own individual membrane for pressing the grapes and extracting the juice. As the marc passes through the drum each "fraction" has its own pressure setting and, consequently, the resultant output changes, depending on the level of skin contact and the pressure applied. The equipment and its design features are patented worldwide.
The machine in Gisborne is the PCM100 which can process continuously at a rate of 10 tonnes per hour of whole bunches or 16 tonnes per hour of crushed, de-stemmed grapes.
According to Gisborne Winegrowers president John Clarke, the industry overall is in good spirit in Gisborne, Mr Clarke said, with the region’s name as the chardonnay capital safe for a while yet, despite the proliferation of different varieties.
“We’ve had some new plantings and, while it’s nothing huge, it is a tidy increase. There is quite a lot of pinot gris being planted. That has found favour with a few of the big companies – and some smaller ones – so there is a demand in the pipeline for that.
“We’ve also had a lot of success with gewürztraminer up here and other varieties have been shown to be grown successfully here, so we’re not just a chardonnay area. Having said that, there is a characteristic in our chardonnays that isn’t in Hawke’s Bay or Marlborough chardonnays. They do have a certain attraction.”