Early signs of an excellent vintage

Harvesting of this year's grape vintage is going well around the country.

Although yields are slightly down on average, the total volume is expected to be a record 165,000 to 185,000 tonnes of grapes due to new planting. Last year, 142,000 tonnes were harvested and 2004 yielded 165,000 tonnes.

Picking of early varieties for champagne-style wines and pinot noir began two weeks ago. Ripening and harvesting weather has been excellent and this season's crop will be harvested two weeks early, ending in late April. The early signs are for an excellent vintage.

"Everyone is reporting really good flavours. They are very excited about the potential wines that will come out. But it's early days," said Stuart Smith of Fairhall Downs Wines in Marlborough.

The recent warm, sunny days and cool nights had been ideal. However, harvesting Marlborough's main sauvignon blanc variety had not started.

"We are very happy at this stage."

Steve Green, of Carrick winery, reported a similar story in Central Otago.

"The feature of the season will be good, clean fruit and good ripeness.

"It will certainly be our best vintage for a couple of years."

Central Otago expects its volume to triple to 5000 to 5500 tonnes due to new planting and low yields last year. Much of the new harvest will be the fashionable pinot noir variety.

Harvesting in Gisborne, which specialises in chardonnay, is well under way. Grape grower and harvesting contractor Reid Fletcher said crops were slightly lighter than average but the weather had been good.

"There's good fruit flavours and the fruit is nice and ripe." Plantings were static in Gisborne but volumes would be slightly down.

In Hawkes Bay, growers were using the stable weather to let fruit ripen longer. Only the champagne-style crops had been harvested so far.

Grower Mal McLennan said harvesting would crank up this week.

The fruit was in good condition.

"There's no rush. The weather has been stable and people are harvesting their grapes when they want to, not when they have to."

Yields for some varieties had disappointed, however.

"It's not going to be a huge crop. It will be average, to below average.

"The quality is looking very good. The fruit is very clean and disease pressure is light. The vines are in very good condition. It's looking quite promising."

Hawkes Bay is expected to harvest around 30,000 tonnes.

Allan Johnson, viticulturist at Palliser Estate Wines in Martinborough, told a similar story of good weather and fruit in good shape for harvesting due to get fully under way in a couple of weeks.

New Zealand Winegrowers chief executive Philip Gregan said New Zealand had 22,000 hectares of grapes planted, up 1000ha on last year.

Despite talk of a wine glut and lower retail prices, he said, there was still a shortage of some grape varieties, particularly sauvignon blanc.

"There may be a glut in Australia but there is not one here.

"We still think there will be continuing shortages of New Zealand wine."

New Zealand produced 102 million litres in 2005 and he expects 105 to 110 million litres in the June 2006 year.

Mr Gregan said the supermarket wine price war was good for consumers but not for vineyards.

Wineries were telling him they hadn't changed their prices, "but I'm sure some of them have".

- NZPA