MARLBOROUGH VINTAGE 2020: GREAT FRUIT FROM AN EXTRAORDINARY HARVEST
Marlborough wine companies are counting their luck, after harvesting the 2020 vintage amidst a national lockdown. But the vintage will be remembered for more than winery bubbles and Covid-19 precautions, with a benign season delivering excellent fruit.
“If you didn’t panic; if you weighed up your options and proceeded calmly, then you could make the most of an extremely good harvest – one of the best we’ve had,” says Dog Point viticulturist Nigel Sowman.
On March 23, wine operations were categorised as essential businesses by the New Zealand Government, allowing the industry to operate through Alert Levels 3 and 4, contingent on strict criteria. Countless employees were sent home, and rigorous measures were put in place in vineyards, transport, accommodation and wineries, says Wine Marlborough general manager Marcus Pickens.
“People took it incredibly seriously. They recognised the privileged position the wine industry was in, and the risk of it being shut down at any time,” he says. “The adoption of new ways was swift and extreme and, as it turns out, incredibly effective. People were kept safe, the grapes got off the vines, through the presses and into their tanks and barrels, and it sounds like the quality of fruit is incredible.”
Nigel says it was a vintage of two halves for the company, with the “very labour intensive” process of hand picking Pinot Noir and Chardonnay largely completed by a full complement of staff, before Covid-19 changed the face of Marlborough’s harvest.
When New Zealand went into lockdown, Dog Point retained six vineyard staff, plus Nigel, with everyone living on the property, either in their own houses or in luxurious accommodation at The Bell Tower. “What we ended up with was a very small, tight-knit team,” says Nigel. The winery crew, including Nigel’s wife Kathy, were also living on the property, all part of the same isolation bubble. “There were 17 of us that made this harvest go smoothly to capture the quality.”
Dog Point founder Ivan Sutherland was a steady hand at the helm throughout, and resolved that they needed to continue hand picking, staying true to the ethos of Dog Point, while showing commitment to the sustainability of contractors, says Nigel. “He made a decision that instead of panicking, to be very calm about what we did.” With fantastic weather, clean and beautiful fruit, and good protocols, there was no reason not to hand pick, he says. “And we have been able to do it extremely efficiently, keep people employed, and stay true to our same quality levels.”
He admits if the lockdown had occurred in a year like 2018, when disease and weather pressure made for incredibly complex harvest conditions, the industry would have struggled to get through. Instead, they had beautiful conditions, with a long dry season, slightly cooler towards the end, resulting in a slightly longer hang time. “When the season is fractionally later, you can develop maximum flavour in your grapes.”
Rob Agnew, from Plant & Food Research Marlborough, says this season was drier for longer than the previous year, with just 43mm of rain between December 21 and April 21, compared to 185mm in a normal year. Most of that rain was between March 26 and April 18. However, despite the very dry conditions in 2020, vines fared far better than the summer of 2019, when a similarly low amount of rain fell in January and February. In 2019, Wairau River water restrictions kicked into place on February 1 and ran through until March 8, with the exception of one day. That resulted in crippling water stress in some vineyards, and growers trucking water to parched vines.
Rob says the main reason the 2020 season did not suffer the same water stress was the big dump of rain between December 16 and 20, 2019, which ensured plants, soils and waterways were more resilient to the subsequent dry patch, long as it was. The Wairau River was only off for seven days this season, says Rob, noting that the industry ”dodged a bullet”.
Growing degree days were well above average, but lower than the previous two years, which Rob describes as having delivered “pretty brilliant, out-of-the box” summers. The 2019/2020 summer, from the second week of December through most of January, was cooler than average, he says. However, temperatures in February were well above average, ensuring a good start to ripening.
March was slightly cooler than average, but with warm days and cool nights and almost no rainfall. This was good news for grape growers, because it allowed fruit to ripen in ideal conditions without any disease pressure from botrytis bunch rot. The lower night temperatures would have helped to retain acids, with cool autumn nights part of the magic of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.
Plant & Food Research’s four long-term Sauvignon Blanc monitoring blocks indicate that berry size this year was a lot smaller than average, as was the case in 2019, which Rob surmises was due to the dry weather during January and February, and running into March this year. A big dump of rain in late December or early January can result in big berries, “and the opposite is also true”, he says.
Bunch numbers were also down this year, due to cool temperatures in late November 2018, when the 2020 bunches were initiated. However, warm weather in late November and early December 2019 saw excellent flowering for Sauvignon Blanc, so berry numbers were well up on average, resulting in final yields being average, or close to it.
Looking forward to next vintage, Plant & Food’s Sauvignon Blanc yield prediction model – based on temperatures from November 10 to December 10, 2019 – shows 2021 bunch numbers should be well up on 2020.
Rose Family Estate winemaker Nick Entwistle says great fruit made for happy workers in the 2020 vintage, setting the tone for positive – if unusual – winery work. “Not having disease or rain pressure made things a lot easier,” he says. “The sun was shining every day and people were turning up to work happy.”
Poor quality fruit makes for much more work in a normal vintage, but would have been far worse if layered on the pressures of a Covid-19 harvest, he says. “If there was average quality fruit it would have been hard to keep people motivated.” Instead they had sunny days, cool nights, low disease and good crop levels, with the ability to “pick and choose” throughout harvest.
Nick says the fruit had “really nice balance” this year. Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris volumes were back up to average and Sauvignon Blanc was at average yields, or above average on some blocks. The conditions enabled a longer ripening period, resulting in good fruit from blocks that had struggled in recent years.
Operations in the winery were adapted to meet Level 4 criteria, but the existing procedures – required for British Retail Consortium (BRC) certification – meant the changes were not extreme, Nick says. However, the extra care and attention required of every person had unexpected consequences in terms of work ethos, he says. “We were asking so much of them, and subconsciously some of that translated into the way people were working in the winery.” People were looking out for everyone else and working under pressure, and that meant “people were here for business”, he says. “We had a really good group of people and a great team vibe, with everyone really committed.”
Staff were given a few days off at the start of Easter, but lockdown conditions meant they were eager to get back to work, he says. “Vintage was a nice distraction for us.”
Nick, who is also a Marlborough Winegrowers board member, said the industry was lucky to have New Zealand Winegrowers (NZW) and Wine Marlborough advocating for them at Government level when the country approached Alert Level 4, reassuring the Ministry for Primary Industries that the sector could operate safely as an essential provider. The guidance subsequently given by NZW was well received by companies, Nick says. “It set the tone for what their expectation of us as members was.” And the industry responded in all the right ways, putting in place the checks and balances required, he adds.
Marlborough Mayor John Leggett praised the local wine industry for successfully handling the 2020 vintage under extreme circumstances. “Wineries had to adopt stringent health and hygiene regimes, particularly as they were managing local and overseas vintage workers, harvest crews in the field and transport operators. Some local staff have been isolated from their families for the duration of vintage,” he said, as harvest drew to a close. “Everyone has been under huge pressure to get the grapes in, aware that a Covid-19 outbreak could knock down the workforce at any moment.”
It was to the industry’s credit that harvest was completed without incident “and, by all accounts, it’s a highly successful vintage”, he said. “Wine is a very substantial contributor to the overall prosperity of Marlborough so I’m relieved that this is one Covid bullet that we’ve managed to dodge.”
2020 – NZ's cliffhanger vintage
It was the unannounced management meeting on Monday morning, and the hushed conversation that I witnessed this morning between our senior management staff and a worried-looking European harvest intern, that got me properly scared. Scared for my colleagues’ health; for the prospects of harvest and for the new wines we’re making; scared about the future of our jobs, the winery, our vineyard growers; and, of course, scared for my own family’s health, too.
The morning had been a blur between managing our harvest fruit intake with trucks rolling in, the harvest compliance documentation (never-ending) and plenty of winemaking client communication, all while walking around the winery to figure out which tanks we should fill for the fruit intake we had scheduled. So far, so normal for a mid-harvest day, except that since our morning 7 am meeting onwards, it had seemed that we were all expecting the coronavirus issue to get worse.
For New Zealand, we were at Alert Level 2, which meant – in real terms – carry on as normal but with some isolating practices in place. At a large contract winery, in the middle of harvest, with a large winemaking, laboratory, cellar and management team, and the myriad shared surfaces that we all use – fittings, hoses, equipment, pump, press and forklift controls, multiple door handles in a winery occupying a couple of square kilometres – trying to put isolation practices in place had already been difficult. Even so, there was just a creeping sense that everything was going to deteriorate.
Then an emergency health and safety meeting was called mid morning. The decision was made that we had to prepare for an emergency shut down – the New Zealand wine industry was not classed as an essential business. We made a list of what we thought we could achieve if we had to shut down, and then carried on. And then...
My winemaker colleague who shares an office with me and the winery engineer (a decidedly non-social distancing workspace affectionately known as The Goldfish Bowl) flicked onto the Stuff homepage (New Zealand’s news website). The country was now at Alert Level 3 and moving to Alert Level 4 in 48 hours – meaning that the winery, as a non-essential business, would have to close at midnight on Thursday. The plan we had discussed to shut down swung into action.
That sounds calm. It was – kind of. Trying to operate a winery of this size mid harvest is a challenge for any winemaking and cellar team. We’re a very experienced crew here – I’m the least experienced of the winemaking team – but as a team we can probably count more than a double-century of harvests between us. All that said, how can we walk away from fermentations in tanks where from ground level you can barely see their tops? How can we make sure all our staff are safe – and what happens to their employment? How do we control barrel ferments that are spitting out bungs in absentia? How do the staff of the laboratory – one of New Zealand’s busiest wine labs – walk away from monitoring 400-odd batches of fermenting juice and wine? And what exactly are we going to do with the fruit that keeps rolling in on trucks? What about the CO2 risk if we walk away from the buildings? We can hardly start a ferment if no one can look after it. Yet we can’t ignore winemaking clients’ precious cargoes of fruit either.
We had a list of which reds and skin-contact whites could be pressed off immediately and got to it. Plans were made for sulphuring down barrels and wines that had reached a stage where we could stabilise them. Lists of barrels that needed topping before shutdown were started on. Checks on lids, gas blanketing, tank seals were scheduled ... and the calls for harvest work kept coming.
Corny as it sounds to talk about a grapevine, everyone in the country had heard the news so, right on cue, the phone reception got worse (all of New Zealand was on the phone) as clients called for immediate requests to complete work on their wines, or immediate requests to bring in fruit before we closed down. I was caught in the middle of this, as I schedule the harvest for the winery.
On the one hand, making wine for clients is how we make money as a winemaking business; on the other hand, we can’t process fruit if we don’t have an operational winery. Most of us were of the opinion that we should concentrate on the wines and juice already here – don’t add to the problem. Others were of the opinion that we need a full winery when we inevitably re-open to help generate revenue – we charge our winemaking costs by the litre, so we need to have litres of wine in the winery. There’s no right or wrong answer, but what we needed was certainty – were we going to shut down or not?
The problem was taken out of our hands by an announcement by New Zealand Wine Growers, who were lobbying the New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) to reclassify the wine production industry as an essential business. They were meeting with MPI at 5.30 pm. And so we went into limbo. Should we carry on with shutdown work? Should we carry on with receiving more fruit? Who knew? We needed to know the answer from MPI.
Of course, the afternoon saw some of our most unexpected extra tonnes of fruit arrive too: one hectare of Merlot, estimated at 14 tonnes/hectare, somehow produced 25.08 tonnes. We’ve known it’s been a heavy Merlot crop in Hawke’s Bay this year, but that’s a Godzilla-size yield: 190.99 hl/ha for the European MW students out there. This fruit is going to make rosé; even with that ginormous yield it produced perfect numbers for making rosé. The sadness of the coronavirus situation is that it may negatively impact what has been looking like a very exciting harvest for Hawke’s Bay.
Needless to say we were all checking phones and websites as it moved past 5.30 pm. My wife beat us all to it and texted through a message she’d received from a winemaking friend in Marlborough who was also hanging on his phone – MPI had classified the wine industry as a primary industry. We collectively breathed a sigh of relief, tinged with trepidation at what comes next. We know that as an essential business we can stay open, but we’re waiting to hear about the regulations from MPI that we really need to adhere to in order to remain open.
All of this may sound pretty similar to the challenges that other businesses around the world are facing, and we certainly know how truly fortunate we still are to have daily jobs to go to. This added pressure during harvest, however, has lent a unique flavour to this year’s fun and games.
A demanding routine
Let me describe what a normal harvest here is like for me personally. I start at about 6.45 am in the morning. I may finish by ... who knows? This year, I beat my personal record by starting at 6.30 am and finishing at 1.30 am the following morning. I may get four hours of sleep a night; we all eat whatever we can; we all run out of laundry or wear yesterday’s clothes again; I survive off cups of tea, when or if I can make them; I can walk, climb, or run well over ten miles a day during harvest; we lift enormously heavy equipment; or carry enormous quantities of equipment; our boots are wet; our hands get cut up by stainless steel; when or if we get time off, the sleep deprivation makes you feel as if you have the severest jetlag; and it just keeps coming.
As a contract winery, we work to the behest of our clients. In reality, we have little control over the amount or quality or timing of fruit they decide to harvest. It’s our job to make the best wine we can from whatever we receive at whichever time of day or night (of course we work 24 hours a day during harvest) and there is no forgiveness if we make mistakes. That’s understandable, as clients are trusting us to provide a service, but that lends an added pressure to winemaking here. I’ve often heard contract wineries or custom-crush wineries being dismissed on quality standards by other wine industry contacts. That notion is so wrong, it’s laughable. Contract wineries are the sharp end of winemaking, plain and simple.
So, imagine that background within the new landscape of coronavirus – pressure, added on pressure, added on pressure. We are simply fearful of what the future holds, yet unable to look beyond the everyday harvest operations here. Harvest has a life of its own and it stops for nothing, not even a deadly virus. On the face of it, aside from the isolating and sterilisation regimes we have in place, we’re all carrying as normal. Forklifts are buzzing around, more trucks of fruit are rolling through the gates, presses are being filled with fruit, juice is being floated and lees are being filtered. We’re laughing and smiling and working as a team as we always do.
We desperately want the harvest this year to succeed. We’ve had a really challenging drought this year, leading to some vineyards having some pretty stressed vines and fruit, with low sugars and plummeting acids. Above is a Pinot Noir vineyard in the Maraekakaho subregion. We had hail in October that wiped out some of the early-budding varieties in the Bridge Pa subregion particularly. Yields haven’t been uniformly high across Hawke’s Bay because of the patchwork of soil types and water availability here. And we’re all doing our usual thing of checking several weather forecasts per day to see what the weather gods have stored up for us – there’s no such thing as a truly dry harvest in New Zealand, but none of us want to cope with compromised fruit riddled with rain-induced botrytis.
Luckily, we seem to be on track for a settled harvest so far, with gremlins having been confined to some spotty yields, some drought-affected fruit, and the EU pitching in with some challenging last-minute changes to permitted winemaking practices. We’re just starting to get to the red fruit arriving for serious red wines and we could be on course for having a cracker of a season. If we’re allowed to finish it.
So, we carry on. Every day has its moments now. After the rollercoaster of yesterday and not knowing if we were shutting or closing, it seems like a normal day on the surface – except that our lab is closed to visitors and one of our cellar hands has brought in many different tubs of gelato from the gelato shop that his wife runs on the Napier seafront (very sadly, they have had to shut as a non-essential business, but the gelato was already made). We’re all eating gelato for breakfast and waiting for some more trucks of Sauvignon Blanc to arrive – the new normal. For the time being.
by: https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/2020-nzs-cliffhanger-vintage
