The Country 28/05/25: Blair McLean talks to Jamie Mackay

Our viticulture correspondent says this season’s grape harvest is outstripping last year’s, which is good news for New Zealand’s seventh largest export, although the higher yield may bring some challenges.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here is our longstanding viticulture slash wine correspondent, Blair Blizzard MacLean.
It's a true honor to have him on the show
today because he's been a wole recently. I'm in the
wrong business. He's just spent two weeks lying on a
beach in Vietnam. If that's not enough, He's off to
Washington State in the US later this week for a

(00:20):
cherry symposium. Blizzard Blair MacLean, you're living.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
The life afternoon, Jamie. All in research, Jamie, It was
all in research that in Vietnam, certainly researching the food
and weave it of Actually not wine. Really, Wine's quite
expensive Vietnam, so cheap beer. And yeah, just having a
bit of a holiday and break for that trip.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Well you should have been You should have been a patriot, Blair.
Instead of spending your money in Vietnam, you should have
stayed here in New Zealand and got suzzled each night
on wine and do your bit to reduce the grape
glut that we have currently in this country off a
huge harvest this year.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, good point. Well, I'll make sure I'll do that
in the two days that I'm back. But we'll be
certainly samplings in marlbur savon blanc in Washington State when
we're over there. Yeah, no, we do have a bit
of extra wine around. We just come off, like say,
the biggest vintage we've had in history, really big numbers,
and we just it was perfect scenario for a great harvest.

(01:25):
We had a great winter chill, we had an awesome flowering,
and the biggest fruit set in the Mountain berry set
was sort of never seen before. We had some savvyon
blanc bunches weighing in four hundred grand mark. Normally they
are like one fifty one eighty grams. The fruit and
the season and the harvest vintage went reasonably well. We

(01:46):
had good weather, so the quality of the of the
wine should be good. But yeah, there's just too much
of it. Jamie and a lot of wineries are looking
at how they do things and maybe, you know, focusing
on quality savvy on blanc.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
So let's have a look at the twenty twenty five harvest.
Forty seven and a half thousand tons, up thirty nine
percent on the low yielding twenty twenty four. But to
put it into perspective, it's only up five percent from
twenty twenty three, which was another high harvest year. But
literally there is not homes, There is not a home

(02:20):
for all these grapes, so some of these growers going
to be hung out to dry.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah. Well, there are some wine companies that have obviously
lots of contract growers and if their contractors due for renewal,
you know that's three or four or five year contracts,
then they are reviewing that. And we already have fruitfuge
splies for clients of ours that have no longer have
a contract with a wine company because it's they don't

(02:44):
need the grapes. So you know, there's certainly a bit
of hurt in the industry. We're looking at different spray
programs and nutritional programs for our growers that can save
a few dollars, but the biggest cost, you know, forty
seven percent of the outgoings from a grape grower as labor,
So you know that's the biggest cost and it's pretty

(03:06):
hard to try and bring that back when we're all
hand pruning at the moment, I mean, that's been growing
and growing and growing. Of course, you know in Marlborough here,
for example, we're normally close to a thousand hectares planted
each year. We're up to that thirty one thousand hectares
of savm blanc here. COVID's got a bit to do
with it. Maybe worldwide changing. I know the world wide

(03:28):
wine consumption is down nine percent worldwide, it's down about
six or seven percent nationally here in New Zealand. That's
your fault, Jamie, for having AfD days. But yeah, there's
and you know, just a trend. There's a lot of
no alcohol or low alcohol wine selling really well. So
the world is interested in health and looking after themselves.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
So what happens to those growers who lose their contracts
to a winery they've got no home at all for
their grapes. Does that mean they go bust?

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Well, there is that. I know there's lots of banks
looking at things as well. But I mean some most
graves will have contracts with several different wine companies, so
they won't just be one hundred percent. They might have
three wine companies for their one hundred hectares, so they'll
be asking those wine companies if they can take that
fruit or we mothball the vineyard for a year or

(04:21):
two until hopefully the industry comes back.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Lean McLean, wrapping the country