Visit to New Zealand Wineries

Between March 2 and 9, 2008 Linda and Marvin Seppanen owners of Garvin Heights Vineyards visited numerous wineries on the North Island of New Zealand. We had hoped to see some harvesting going on but we were a few weeks early. We did get to taste some freshly pressed Sauvignon Blanc juice at Coopers Creek winery just north of Auckland on March 9th.

Our most enlightening experience was viewing first hand the bird control procedures required to have any viable grape crop in New Zealand. Three principle netting techniques were observed:

1. Side curtain method where only the exposed grapes are covered. This method did not appear to be fully effective as the birds could roast on the netting and feast on the grapes. In this method plastic clips (like those used on vegetable bags) were used to seal the lower side of the netting.

2. Full row netting similar to the popular method here in Minnesota. The major difference was the amount of netting used. The netting was typically draped completely to the ground on all sides of the trellis. This method seems to be more effective than the first but requires considerably more netting. The netting is simply lifted for picking and then removed after the harvest season rush. If birds get in to the netting, they can be chased to the end of row and released.

3. The final method observed was full vineyard netting. In this method a single piece of netting covered about 6 rows of grapes (2 meter row spacing). The adjacent pieces of netting were effectively sewn or looped together. This method permitted the vineyard to be sprayed after the netting had been installed using a low profile tractor. Grapes were hand picked while the full vineyard netting was still in place. However, birds that get under the netting were difficult to remove.

Noise systems like those applied in Minnesota were also employed but were not sufficient to protect entire vineyards. We saw not viable vineyards without some form of netting.

We mainly visited small “family type” wineries. Some of these wineries shared winemakers from the Northern hemisphere. This permits year around production and the introduction of German and Italian grapes and wine styles into New Zealand production. The term “cellar door” is used for winery on sale operation and tasting area.

Most small wineries did not do their own wine bottling. Rather each major wine producing region seemed to have a centralized bottling plant. The bottling plants stored both the supply of new bottles and the finished wines for distribution. The plant used a milk type transport to pick up the bulk wine from the winery when ready to be bottled. This greatly reduced the physical plant investment and space requirement for the small family wineries. It also made a modern high tech bottling line to be cost effective for a small winery. This model may have application in the upper Midwest. It is not certain how the TTB would handle the “bottled by” labeling requirement for the USA market. Perhaps co-operative ownership of the bottling plant would be a viable and legal option.

Most wineries and wine stores offer shipping to almost any worldwide location. The cost for shipping a 12-bottle case via air to the USA is $280 NZ or about $225 US. Obviously, not an option for wines carried by your local dealer. This cost included all taxes and duties and apparently was available to all 50 states. The cost to most other places in Europe and Asia were less than the cost to the USA. A side note, the exchange rate was over $0.80 US to $1.00 NZ. This is historically the highest rate of exchange (our dollar is losing value worldwide). Now is time to by New Zealand wines before their costs escalate or they start exporting lower quality product to the USA.

It was a great trip! A lot of beautiful vineyards and well run wineries. Also we saw a lot of sheep and dairy cows on year around pasture. Driving on the left was little problem; most roads and intersections (roundabouts) were very well marked. The shock of paying more than $100 NZ for a tank of gas took some adjustment. Diesel was priced at about $1.25 NZ per liter verses $1.75 NZ for gasoline.