One of the biggest names in the New Zealand wine business ― Villa Maria Estate ― has stepped into organic grape-growing.

From a 75 hectare site in Hawke’s Bay known as the Joseph Soler Vineyard, Villa Maria has been growing vines organically that will soon begin yielding bottles of merlot and sauvignon blanc wines.

In line with the family-owned company’s policy to operate in a sustainable and environmentally responsible way, Villa Maria Estate started down the organic path by purchasing two parcels of land in 1999 and 2000, totalling 75 hectares.

It began a planting programme to make this vineyard totally organic, however after two years the ambitious project was scaled back to an area of 21 hectares which now has full BioGro certification. A total of 65 hectares has now been planted and over the next five years Villa Maria will move to complete BioGro certification of the entire Joseph Soler vineyard.

In February last year Villa Maria became the first major New Zealand winery to achieve BioGro organic certification for its winery and bottling facilities in Auckland. This means wine made from grapes grown on the Joseph Soler block in Hawke’s Bay can be bottled at the company’s main bottling facility, allowing organic certification for the wines to be traced from grapes to bottle. The finished product may also carry the BioGro logo.

Jonathan Hamlet (pictured) vineyard manager of the Joseph Soler block, says the work that has been done means Villa Maria now has a very good understanding of how to venture into organics conversion with other blocks.

“We have 30 hectares in conversion on a block in the AwatereValley in Marlborough, and that’s being done on the basis of what we have learned here in Hawke’s Bay. And there’s also a block at the Auckland winery which is in conversion.”

He says there is definitely increasing interest in wines produced organically.

“Organic Winegrowing New Zealand has recently set up a memorandum of understanding with New Zealand Winegrowers in terms of collaborating. We are all heading in the same direction to an extent.

“We have a lot of market pressure for nil-residue wine and the chemicals and products that were available several years ago for conventional growing are either not available now, or if they are they have withholding periods on them that are so great that our options are quite limited for conventional growing.”

Hamlet says there has been a significant move to look at more organic and natural products to achieve pest and disease control, an area in which organic growers obviously have a lot of experience.

“So Organic Winegrowers New Zealand has seen some huge growth within New Zealand in the past few years and the area of land under organic viticulture management has skyrocketed over the past few years. It’s all looking very positive.”

The big difference between organic and conventional viticulture, says Jonathan Hamlet, is weed management. It’s often seen as the major challenge emanating from a shift to organic management.

“Under a conventional vineyard operation, people tend to weed spray and have a weed-free strip under the vines. Under organic management here at Joseph Soler we use a mechanical weeder which lightly cultivates the soil to take the weeds out of the equation. Other organic vineyards will use under-vine mowing several times a year and leave a permanent sward. This is a good option.”

Jonathan Hamlet says probably the biggest difference with organic viticulture compared to conventional production, is the emphasis on soil health.
“You need a healthy soil to produce a healthy vine and deliver a strongly resistant crop. So we tend to spend more time trying to produce a healthy soil which pays us dividends in the shape of healthy vines with a robust fruit. Grapes tend to rot less under an organic regime compared with conventional management.”

He says this doesn’t mean a significant increase in the amount of soil testing that needs to be done.
“No more than is usual in a conventional vineyard, but we tend to make our own assessments of soil profiles more often.

“We will look for any compaction issues, or whether the root structures of the cover crops are penetrating the soil properly, and we look at earth-worm numbers.
“Soil health is definitely the building block to organics. You have to get your soil right first before you start treating the vines differently.”

In relation to costs of organic production, Jonathan says a big challenge has been to fine-tune the process to where its costs are similar to conventional vineyards.

“I’ve spent a lot of time and effort crunching my numbers and my production costs. What we find is that for the majority of tasks on the vineyard there is no difference between conventional and organic.

“When it comes to tucking the vines and leaf-plucking and that sort of work there’s no difference. The difference arises under fertilisers, pesticides and weed control. But we find our spending on pesticides is considerably less; slightly more on fertiliser since we make our own compost; and now that we have bought a new weeder, its efficiencies will almost halve our weed control costs.

“These will still be slightly more expensive that using RoundUp because it’s a slower process. But when we tally up those three variables, the cost of organic production is almost exactly the same as under a conventional regime, if not cheaper than some of our conventional blocks.

“So the old adage that organic production is more expensive can be correct, but if you do it carefully and look to fine-tune your operations, it can be cheaper than conventional management.”

He acknowledges that some people in the industry are put off attempting organic production because they think it will prove more expensive.

“But fortunately half of it is exactly the same as you are doing it now and a lot of it comes down to the cultural management of the vines. You are training the vines and leaf-plucking them to have nice open and well-aerated canopies so you don’t have disease problems.

“But you don’t have that ambulance at the bottom of the cliff − in other words a chemical control if something goes wrong. If you don’t have everything right at the start, it can come back and bite you.
“But what we are finding, and this is quite well documented, there is a lot of disease control that is actually cultural and not chemical.

“And of course a lot of conventional growers are going that way anyhow because they know it provides them with good disease control and making the next step to organics is often not as big a leap as a lot of people think.”

Hamlet says the Soler Block is about to release its first organic wines and marketing them will be a new area for the company. He believes the organic production will result in wines which will closely reflect the characteristics of the soil and climate.

“The approach I take as a manager of this block of organic vines is that to grow organically has given me an opportunity to express its terroir as much as possible.

“Whereas if I weed-sprayed and put on a lot of chemicals, that would take away some of my terroir, by robbing some of the life in the soil and the plants, and the small organisms that we tend to ignore with conventional production. To me that’s suppressing the terroir slightly.

“Growing organically is one way of knowing that you are leaving the site to be as unique as possible.”