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The first grapes of the 2012 New Zealand grape harvest have been picked in northern regions amid high hopes for this vintage, which has started later than recent years.
"Like much of New Zealand, many of our grape growing regions have the experienced a slightly cooler summer this year. This means a longer, slower ripening period for vintage 2012, but it should mean good flavours in the grapes" says New Zealand Winegrowers chief executive officer Philip Gregan.
"The weather has also impacted the flowering and fruit set in some regions, reducing the size of the crop as a result. At this stage, based on our recent Pre-Vintage Survey of wineries, our current estimate is for a harvest of around 300,000 tonnes of grapes, down from the record 328,000 tonnes in 2011."
Gregan says pre-vintage estimates of crop size are not an exact science.
"With the variable crops that wineries have reported, this makes crop estimation more difficult than normal. Accordingly, the harvest could be up to 20,000 tonnes smaller or larger than our current estimate."
Gregan said growers and wineries were hoping for a typical New Zealand autumn to deliver the final quality flourish to the vintage. "The next six to eight weeks will be all important in determining a high quality outcome for the vintage. In recent years our wine regions have benefited from some superb 'Indian summers' and we are very hopeful this will repeated in 2012.
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