Winegrowers body sets harvest limits

New Zealand Winegrowers has for the first time told wine producers how much fruit to harvest, in an effort to address the oversupply problem.

Growers have been told they should harvest no more than 8 tonnes a hectare in the 2010 season. This compares with about 10 tonnes a hectare in the past couple of years.

NZ Winegrowers has been putting out the message since the bumper 2008 harvest that dumping excess bulk stock on the international market risks devaluing the country's reputation as a top-quality wine producer. It managed to hold the 2009 grape harvest to the 2008 level of 285,000 tonnes, but aims to reduce that to around 265,000 tonnes.

Chairman Stuart Smith said the Champagne region had faced a similar issue and had its growers not agreed to get their harvest down, regulatory measures could have been enacted. "We don't have that here in New Zealand, nor do we want it."

Instead the New Zealand body had set its first maximum for how much it wanted growers to produce, and had urged wine companies to clearly assess what they thought they could sell profitably as branded wine.

In 2009 bulk wine exports quadrupled from about 5 per cent of total export volumes to almost 20 per cent. This gave rise to opportunistic brands with a short life that were usually owned by retailers with no stake in the New Zealand industry, Smith said.

Jason Yank, general manager of Astrolabe Wines, said the message had been received loud and clear: "If you don't have a contract for every grape on every bunch, and every bunch on every row, then don't grow it."

He told his growers the company wanted to reduce its fruit intake by 20-25 per cent, but keep the quality as high as possible. In return Astrolabe would do its best to reduce the surplus wine on the market.

Yank was approaching potential new markets two years ahead of schedule to find buyers.

That was another key message the industry needed to take on board - not to dump wine in already saturated existing markets such as Australia and Britain, but to develop new markets. However, Yank conceded it was difficult for wineries when they were holding excess stock and their banks were demanding cash flow.

Both men said common methods for reducing the harvest were pruning vines to put them to "sleep" for the season and viticulturally managing blocks to produce fewer, higher-quality grapes.