'Dream harvest' expected

ALASTAIR PAULIN/Nelson Mail

THE BIG SQUEEZE: The team at Anchorage Wines in Brooklyn, who are preparing for the 2010 vintage. From left, office administrator Jo Drummond, winemaker Ron Wichman, head winemaker Justin Papesch, winemaker Susan van der Pol and winemaker Emmanuelle Bucourt.

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Nelson winemakers are keeping an anxious eye on the weather as they prepare to bring in the 2010 vintage.

The current cool nights and hot days favoured aromatic varieties and, if the weather held, "it should be a dream harvest", said Daniel Schwarzenbach of Blackenbrook Vineyard in Tasman.

"The flavours are there. We had a six-degree low last night and about a 26C high today, and that's ideal for flavour production."

He expected to begin the harvest in less than two weeks, he said.

Because his vineyards were in Tasman, the harvest tended to be about a week earlier than those on the Waimea Plains, he said.

At Anchorage Wines in Brooklyn, the main harvest was about 10 days away, said head winemaker Justin Papesch, but the first grapes were accepted last weekend, which he suspected made it the first local winery to kick off the vintage.

Assistant winemaker Susan van der Pol brought some pinot noir grapes she grows in the Motueka Valley to the winery to make a sparkling methode traditionelle – which, because it goes through a second fermentation in the bottle, requires lower sugar levels and higher acidity than still wines.

This is the second vintage for the van der Pol methode traditionelle, with the first yet to be released.

Mr Papesch said that despite the publicity about Marlborough's oversupply of grapes, Nelson growers had always managed to keep their cropping levels under control.

Wind and rain during flower set in late October and early November had been nature's way of controlling bunch weights. Yields were down, but fruit quality was up across the region, he said.

Anchorage – which produces wine for its own labels from about 450 tonnes of its own fruit, as well as producing wines for other growers – was operating at full capacity, he said.

"We're full up this year. We couldn't put in another grape."

Mr Papesch said that, generally, the oversupply problems faced by Marlborough wineries had affected those with a lack of tank space and infrastructure to deal with the increasing crops.

The lower crop level of this year's harvest should eventually translate into rising prices for wine, he said.

Domestic sales were not holding up, and exports were keeping wineries afloat, but the current lower prices were unsustainable in the long run.

"It is a buyers' market out there at the moment," he said, and local wine drinkers should enjoy the lower prices while they lasted.

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