Philip Gregan, New Zealand Winegrowers? CEO, was in Christchurch when the earthquake hit and can attest to the devastation caused. New Zealand Winegrowers? thoughts and prayers go out to everybody affected in this natural disaster.

New Zealand Winegrowers have received numerous enquiries as to how the damage has impacted the New Zealand wine industry. After contacting a number of our members in Waipara Valley (58km north of Christchurch) and the Canterbury region it appears that the productive capacity is intact and there have been no reported injuries among members to date.

Taking into account the time of year and current available information, New Zealand Winegrowers expects there will be little impact on the production and shipping of wine. New Zealand Winegrowers has written to wineries outlining how they can help the people and businesses of Canterbury through this hard time.

For those that wish to donate to the Christchurch earthquake appeal New Zealand Winegrowers recommend contributions to be...

As New Zealand winemakers prepare for a major push in China this month with their biggest-ever road show taking in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, industry association New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) admitted they were still feeling their way.

"There are a just a few things we think we know about wine consumption in China right now," NZW market manager Asia Monty James told Xinhua.

"We know consumption in the Chinese mainland has enjoyed a sustained and exciting period of growth, in line with China's growing prosperity as a nation. We know that wine has become a popular beverage of choice for celebrations, festivals and banquets. We also see a remarkable thirst for wine knowledge and a fast-growing sophistication as a result," said James.
"What we also know is the market is in a state of considerable and constant change. This feature of the market means we also must accept that we know very little, as today's market knowledge is tomorrow's history lesson."

James said in an...

The first-ever Vinexpo Asia Pacific New Zealand Wine Pavilion will feature 20 wineries pouring 120 wines from the country?s leading wine growing regions, a reflection of the strong growth of New Zealand wine exports to Hong Kong, mainland China and the greater Asia region.

Co-sponsored by the New Zealand government, the Vinexpo New Zealand Wine Pavilion also heralds a new strategic partnership between the national economic development agency, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) and the national wine industry body, New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW).

"Over the next few years, NZTE will be working with New Zealand Winegrowers and high growth wine companies to ramp up exports of premium New Zealand wines to China. Building recognition of the New Zealand Wine brand and attracting the attention of influencers in the Chinese wine industry will be a key factor in success of this project?, says NZTE?s Wine Programme Manager, Karyn Murray.

?Vinexpo Asia Pacific offers the perfect opportunity to showcase the diversity of New Zealand?s wines to the large number of media, buyers and educators that attend the show?.

Vinexpo...

"My recent trip to New Zealand in January was just amazing and 3 weeks, 36 wineries and 6 regional tastings later gave me an insight into a country that I would say is very new, very exciting, un-spoilt and completely underrated as far as I?m concerned. Modest in their approach to winemaking, most of which is organic or biodynamic and undiscovered when it comes to grape varieties.

Not only is this the most picturesque country I have ever been too, Lord of the Rings had it spot on I would say. No, this country has so much more to offer in terms of regionality, grape varieties and a style all of their own.

If you think it?s about Sauvignon Blanc, but you couldn?t be further away from the truth. This cool climate country is producing some wonderful European grape varieties that are punching way above their weight. The simplest of all is Chardonnay, a grape grown all over the world but it?s roots are in Burgundy, France, where it produces fresh Chablis and full flavoured Meursault or Puligny Montrachet and I must admit there were many times...

"Scientists have found that wild yeasts vary from region to region, and can have a unique influence if used in the wine-making process.

Climate, soil and geography have long been recognised playing an important role in shaping the character of a region's wines and whose interplay is at the heart of the French concept of terroir. However, a breakthrough by New Zealand scientists now suggests that an area's yeasts could play their part in regional differences as well, with the discovery that communities and strains of wine yeasts vary from region to region.

As well as playing their crucial role in a wine's alcoholic fermentation, yeasts were already known to be responsible for a significant portion of the compounds that can be smelled and tasted in a wine. But proving that different regions possessed significantly different yeast populations, is a world first.

Conducted by Velimir Gayevskiy and Dr Matthew Goddard of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland and funded by NZ Winegrowers and MSI, the study detected distinct differences between the so-called "wild" or "indigenous" yeasts found on...

"Considering the viticultural stats of New Zealand – there were merely 238 wineries and 6610 hectares of vineyard in 1996, now there are 698 wineries and 33,600 hectares – and their constantly growing trend, David Cox, European Director of New Zealand Wines does not think that this will continue. "We've had our big vintage years in 2008 and 2009 and we are back in balance now, pretty much. I don't think we are going to see very many plantings, not for the next couple of years," Cox said at yesterday's Annual Trade Tasting at Lord's Cricket Ground in London.

The afternoon scrum around many tasting tables attested to the sheer and continuing popularity of Kiwi wines; not only do they sell better year by year, they do so at an enviable above £6 average retail price, a feat no other country has mastered in the UK. Cox is confident: "We have this premium stance, but we tend to back it up with the quality that's in the glass which does help. The mantra in New Zealand is we must keep the quality high...

A front row with perfect balance, good body and grassy tones might well sound like a coach?s description of his rugby team but these are in fact terms that sum up a new range of New Zealand wines released especially for the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

Melton Estate, a boutique winery 20 minutes from the South Island city of Christchurch, has produced the range known as ?Front Row Wines? in a pro-active bid to market Canterbury wine and the winery as a destination, leading up to and during the World Cup in New Zealand.
The range includes Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling.

Melton Estate says the wines are "handcrafted for forward thinkers" and are made from grapes from established vineyards. Melton Estate is set on 12 acres and has some of Canterbury?s oldest vines.

Philip Caunter, owner of Melton Estate Wines, says the idea was to produce a Canterbury Wine range that could be used for events around the city and the region leading up to, and during, the World Cup.

http://www.meltonestate.co.nz/

"Is it always this bumpy?"
The man across the aisle from me asked a very pregnant flight attendant.
The flight attendant was sitting facing our front row seats as we began our descent.
"Pretty much," she responded smiling, "but this is nothing, this is about a 4.5 out of 10 for turbulence."
Just then, as the plane curved downward into a deeper descent toward Wellington the small aircraft began to toss in earnest.
"Okay, maybe a 6.5 out of 10," she laughed....

By this point I had been in windy New Zealand for two weeks. I had been in smaller planes and experienced bumpier flights so I was now somewhat used to it, and the capabilities of Air NZ pilots.

Wellington is located on the southern tip of the North Island of New Zealand – directly across the Cook Strait from Marlborough on the South Island. It's so close you can see it from the Marlborough coast. With...

From 13-15 July the Marlborough Convention will host an impressive array of significant international and local wine industry speakers as the biannual Forum gets underway. It is a one-stop-shop for expert market advice and a rare opportunity to access commercial insight on trends in the challenging and changing global wine market.

The 2011 Exporters' Forum has a comprehensive programme which will cover a range of themes including; growing business in profitable markets, increasing profitability in established markets, consumer data, and sustainability. A series of engaging workshops will also be available and following the main sessions there will be a wealth of networking opportunities.

The line-up of speakers and topical themes has attracted record registrations and, for the first time ever, the Forum has sold out!

Speakers include:
Angela Clifford, Greystone Wines, NZ
Angie Bradbury, Managing Director of Melbourne-based Dig Marketing Group, Australia
Chuck Hayward, New Zealand & Australian wine buyer – JJ Buckley, US
Daniel Parrott, Senior Wine Buyer – Laithwaites Wine Group, Australia...

"At Seresin Estate, a winery owned by New Zealand cinematographer Michael Seresin, known for such films as Midnight Express and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the past blurs with the present, like a movie flashback. Where tractors once roamed, noisy motors are yielding to the pastoral clip-clop of horse and buggy. Two burly Clydesdales pull a makeshift trailer that sprays organic compost from a sprinkler driven by a bicycle-chain gizmo linked to its axle. A mix of weed cuttings, worm-farm deposits and manure supplied by Olga the vineyard cow serve as a biological shield to curb pests while adding vigour to the vines.

It?s part of a holistic farming approach that Colin Ross, the estate?s manager, believes benefits the wines. I?m inclined to agree, especially in the case of Seresin?s silky, nuanced sauvignon blancs. They seem to have more of a shadowy gravitas about them, like characters in Mr. Seresin?s darkly lit films ? at least compared with the sunnier, fruity-grassy style of sauvignon blanc that vaulted this country, and Marlborough in particular, onto the world wine stage.

Seresin?s...

"A direct flight from Vancouver on Air New Zealand 083 had me on the ground in Auckland an hour earlier than expected, just before the sun arose at the end of summer.
Summer in New Zealand that is.

Well rested and eager to begin my journey I was able to hop on an earlier flight to my first destination, Queenstown, despite the controlled chaos after the Christchurch earthquake just days earlier.

It was a beautiful morning flight, two hours of snow tipped mountains and Tasman Sea, before the geography began to change and the mountains became treeless hillsides. The plane swooped low between hills and followed a lake until landing in Queenstown on the South Island in Otago.

Queenstown was an unexpected delight, a small but bustling resort town on the edge of lake Wakatipu, a skinny lake that twists and turns more than 80 kilometers between Central Otago's mountains.
Like many places and many names...

"Ruud Maasdam, co-owner of Staete Landt winery in New Zealand, puts it crisply: ?New Zealand is about fruit power.? To anyone familiar with virtually any Kiwi sauvignon blanc, the country?s signature grape, there?s no need to elaborate. The wines can seem like they?d been squeezed directly from mangoes, grapefruit, gooseberries or passion fruit rather than grapes.

Fruit power is what happens when sunshine and well-drained alluvial soils combine with a cool, acid-enhancing maritime climate and a prevailing winemaking ethos that deftly resists the heavy mascara of aggressive oak-barrel aging.

Those sauvignon blancs, which quickly carved out a category all their own after making a splash on foreign markets in the mid-1980s, also usually exhibit a fresh, herbal essence that can call to mind the country?s verdant landscape (or ?lambscape,? as anyone who?s toured the islands might subconsciously pun).

Yet Maasdam, whose twin pet sheep, Molly and Mike, recently helped greet me at his country home in the windswept Marlborough region on the South Island, was not speaking about sauvignon blanc. He made the remark...

"Simple idea, take one vineyard and give 12 winemakers a chance to turn the fruits of this plot into 12 wines, see what happens.

What happened was not an intellectual exercise but rather an interested palate of flavors.

It was "the outcome of a challenge accepted by 12 New Zealand winemakers. Each wine was made with
the same grapes from one block in the Mud House vineyard, as the winemaker saw fit. The result is a great line up of Rieslings that demonstrate the winemakers approach."

Winemakers were:

Ant McKenzie, Te Awa Wines, Hawke?s Bay-Duncan Forsyth, Mount Edward, Central Otago-John Forrest, Forrest, Marlborough-Jules Taylor, Jules Taylor Wines, Marlborough-Larry McKenna, Escarpment, Martinborough-Matt Dicey, Mount Difficulty, Central Otago-Matt Donaldson, Pegasus Bay, Waipara-Mike Brown, Golden Hills Estates, Nelson-Patrick Materman, Pernod Ricard NZ, Marlborough-Paul Bourgeois, Spy Valley, Marlborough-Simon McGeorge, Waipara Hills, Waipara-Simon Waghorn, Astrolabe Wines, Marlborough

As the tasting was coming to a close, I had to rush through them more than I would have liked. Here are my 'fast and furious impressions'...

"The days of cheap Kiwi wine may soon be over.

Recent years have seen the industry beset by recession and too much wine, and that meant cut-throat prices.

But the signs are that surplus is now going down as international sales go back up, and that suggests the price of a bottle at home could go up too.
The vines are laden, the harvest will be big and for the first time in years, that's not a bad thing.
"The difference this year is that wineries have demand for their products," says winemaker Nikolai St George.

"They are not just producing something and hoping it sells. They are a lot smarter now, and we are not going to see the problems that we had in 2008."

Then grapegrowers were told to cut back – too much wine, combined with the recession, saw several vineyards close.

Now international sales have picked up again, those who survived are selling off their oversupply.

"We have reduced stock holding in the industry by about 40 million bottles of wine," says Philip Gregan, Winegrowers NZ. "That...

"We had a very successful Waitangi Day Dinner in San Francisco last evening. The private dining room at E & O Trading Co was sold out with 50 fortunate attendees. Chef Arnold Eric Wong and his staff served one outstanding dish after another. The line-up of accompanying wines was brilliant. The evening was led by Leslie Sbrocco and Chuck Hayward. It is great when we are able to partner with such well informed and enthusiastic professionals. The idea for the dinner came from the very successful seminar that we did together last August at the SF Chefs, Food, Wine event. We are talking about ways in which we can bring this group together once again.

We also had some very distinguished members of the media present. Gerald Asher, wine editor at Gourmet magazine for over 30 years attended. He will be publishing a collection of his wine essays in September of this year. Also present was Dan Berger, formerly wine editor for the Los Angeles Times and currently a syndicated columnist for newspapers and the voice behind...

Ernie Whalley has written an amusing and positive review on his forkncork blog:
http://forkncork.com/new-zealand-wine-fair-dublin-jan-2011/

Four of the most powerful female retailers in Ireland contributed to a blog on the ?WOW girls? website (Women in Wine) written by Julie Cullen:
http://wowireland.blogspot.com/search/label/New%20Zealand

Ely Wine Bar has posted a review of the Matt Thompson & Kevin Judd tasting:
http://elywinebar.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/great-new-zealand-wines-and-delicious-irish-food-in-ely-restaurant-dublin/

Last (but by no means least!) check out the blog from one of Ireland?s leading wine shop chains -O?Briens: http://blog.obrienswine.ie/2011/01/new-zealand-wine-fair/

-End-

"Last week?s New Zealand Wine?s annual trade tasting in London [despite the rugby ball it was held at Lord's Cricket Ground] provided confirmation of the rude health of the Kiwi wine industry. The figures are fascinating. 80% of New Zealand?s wine is exported, its wines have the highest average retail price on the UK shelves and in terms of Sauvignon Blanc it has a whopping 45% of the market. That?s simply incredible when you consider that twenty five years ago New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, or for that matter the entire wine industry, was hardly on the map. Despite the ubiquity of the grape in the Loire, Bordeaux and universally as a vin de pays varietal, France by comparison has a dismal 5.1% of the Sauvignon market.

The key here is the purity and sheer zip and zing of its wines. The whites, and not just Sauvignon Blanc, but Chardonnay, Riesling and Pinot Gris too, define the term refreshing. But you don?t me to tell you this, the statistics speak for themselves. The accessibility of...

A few years ago, I found myself perched atop Coronet Peak mountain, majestically poised in the heart of the Southern Alps of New Zealand?s Central Otago region. The brisk wind swayed me as I admired the wonderful view down the Kawarau Valley to Lake Wakatipu from 1649 metres up. I had just qualified as a fully-fledged snowboard instructor and was enjoying my last few days in Queenstown.

My girlfriend (now wife) and I had arranged to do the ?done? thing and hired a camper-van to explore the rest of the country. We collected our van the following morning and began our quest for the sights and sounds of New Zealand. Little did I know that this journey would be the catalyst for a newfound passion that would become my career.

We planned a route that would take in most of the classic sights, Milford Sound, Fox Glacier, Rotorua and so on. All well and good, but what I...

At about 3am on Saturday morning here in New York, my wife and I awoke to find our living room flooding due to a boiler problem in the basement. Just as we began cleaning up, text messages started to appear on my phone, sent by happy, three-sheets-to-the-wind winemakers at the Air New Zealand Wine Awards banquet in Auckland. Once I saw which wine had taken the championship trophy for the entire show, I couldn't help but wonder if my boiler had been sabotaged by the maker of Pinot Noir number 1. Allow me to explain.

As mentioned in my previous posts, I was one of four international judges at this year's awards; all the blind tastings were conducted a few weeks ago in Auckland. When it came time to choose the trophy winner for best Pinot Noir, each judge was poured about 14 glasses (if memory serves), one each of the top-scoring Pinots overall. Each judge had to rank them. My top wine was number 10 in the lineup; number 1 in the lineup was either my second or third choice.

Once...

The wine that won the champion's trophy at the Air New Zealand Wine Awards has held its price steady for a dozen years.

Peregrine Pinot Noir 2009 sells for about $39, winery co-owner and marketing director Greg Hay said yesterday. "We haven't changed that price, except perhaps by 50 cents, in 12 years," he said.

With many top pinots selling for $60 or more, that represents good value.

At the same time, Mr Hay ? who owns the Central Otago winery with Lindsay McLachlan and Murray Brennan ? has refused to discount his wines in the current industry slump.

While even some leading wineries have their products selling at bargain prices on special at supermarkets and other outlets, Peregrine finds that its policy of steady prices is working for it.

"If you have a perception among the public that you over-deliver on the wine in the bottle, they will buy on quality," Mr Hay said. "Times are tough but without a doubt it will come right. Some wineries will fall by the wayside,...

Corkd.com 17 September 2010

"New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. It?s a broken record. We?ve all heard it. We?ve all tried it. Does it have its merits? Heck yes. Has it been talked about at length? Heck yes. Then there was New Zealand Pinot Noir. People were excited. But as I learned this week at the New Zealand Complexity event, it?s not fair to just say ?NZ Pinot.? Much like you can?t say United States Pinot. Is it from Oregon, Napa, Sonoma? Where?!

There are 8 wine regions in NZ ? (from North to South) Auckland, Gisborne, Hawkes Bay, Martinborough, Nelson, Marlborough, Waipara, Central Otago. While Martinborough Pinot Noirs have a floral, strawberry element going on, they also have a mushroomy, fungal component. Marlboroughs on the other hand are a bit more herbal, hints of plum and spice, refined tannins. More of a strawberry rhubarb than a straight strawberry. On to, Central Otago, you get fruit city. We are talking bright fruits of ripe red cherries, concentrated strawberries and raspberries. As I described in a tasting note,...

That New Zealand needs to get its supply and demand in better balance is obvious. But the same could be said of pretty much every wine producing country on the planet. What?s impressive about the Kiwis is that they are actually doing something about it.

The NZ Winegrowers might not be able to set legally enforceable production levels, but over the last couple of years they have been engaged in a comprehensive educational programme designed to deliver to growers the unpalatable message that yields will have to come down.

This must have been a tough sell at a time when grape prices were at a ten-year low, but it seems to have worked. Some vineyards have been mothballed, fruit has been left on the vine and, while there are plenty of critics who feel that the country?s wines still lack some of the concentration of a few years ago, a yield of 8 tonnes per hectare is a lot better than the frankly ridiculous cropping levels of 2008.

Read More: http://www.just-drinks.com/comment/walking-the-walk_id102038.aspx

Those pesky Kiwis have done it again. They have trounced us in the Tri Nations. Not at rugby but wine.

It's becoming a regular thing in the Tri Nations Wine Challenge. They were the most successful nation last year and this year. But what really hurts is they've won the coveted shiraz trophy three years out of the past four and last year South Africa won.

This year, New Zealand won six trophies to Australia's five (and South Africa's two), along with seven double-gold medals to our six (and South Africa's four), and tied with us for gold medals – 40 each – while South Africa won 25.

Read More: http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/top-drop/why-is-kiwi-wine-a-step-ahead-20100928-15uyf.html

Wine-Searcher ? www.wine-searcher. com – lists over 3.8 million wines and 17,500 merchants and wineries on its site. It attracts over 39 million searches and about 56 million page views per annum. And, like many websites, it?s growing fast.

Since Wine-Searcher?s general manager, Adon Kumar, added a Facebook page to the business a year ago, the site now has the world?s biggest wine Facebook page ? with over 84,000 ?friends?. Perhaps the most surprising fact of all is that Wine-Searcher does not actually sell wine. It is such a profitable business, however, that it more than doubled its number of employees over the last three years from 15 to 35.

?We follow the...