Editorial: Major Challenges Facing the Wine Industry

OPINION: New Zealand’s wine industry is facing “significant challenges”, writes New Zealand Winegrowers Board Chair Fabian Yukich this month, reflecting on rising costs and eroding profitability, while sluggish domestic and export sales are holding up the movement of wine.

Mastering Wine: Emma Jenkins' MW Musings

OPINION: There will be many who have noted with sadness the recent death of Peter Taylor, who established Scenic Cellars, the legendary lakefront wineshop in Taupō, in 1981; a vinous treasure trove where customers were as likely to discover a vertical of Cook’s or Mazuran’s as that of DRC or Lafite.

2025 - making it positive

OPINION: The New Year is well underway, and in January the first grapes of the new vintage were harvested in Northland. So, another year begins.

Dog Point Vineyard.

OPINION: A common refrain last year was 'survive 'til 25', including from those in New Zealand's wine industry facing rising costs, surplus wine and sluggish export sales.

Escarpment

Dr Amber Parker was guest speaker at the 2024 Southern Pinot Noir Workshop in Hanmer, sharing insights on potential impacts of climate change on viticulture, along with adaptation opportunities, particularly with regard to Pinot Noir. Amber, who is Lincoln University's Director of the Centre for Viticulture and Oenology, shares some of her learnings.

Philip Gregan

Did you know that nearly 90% of total New Zealand wine sales occur offshore? That simple number means our wine businesses are the most export oriented of all the global wine industries. It also makes our sector especially sensitive to any changes in the trade rules that govern the access of our wines into international markets.

Editorial: Keeping ahead of the curve

"Te toto o te tangata he kai, te oranga o te tangata, he whenua, he oneone." While food provides the blood in our veins, our health is drawn from the lands and soils.

Philip Gregan

In late 2022 the New Zealand Winegrowers Board appointed a Governance Review Working Group to conduct a review of NZW governance, representation, and the design of the commodity levies that fund NZW.

OPINION: The plan for this editorial was to applaud the collaborative spirit of New Zealand wine, which was in full force at Altogether Unique 2024.

OPINION: “Have a look at this” said a good friend as he passed me a cutout from The Times with the heading “The wine gadget sommeliers say can make your £10 bottle taste better”.

Pernod Ricard Winemakers Environmental & Sustainability Director Alex Kahl asks whether winegrowers have considered the impact of traditional viticulture on a vineyard’s soil health and long-term sustainability.

OPINION: Comparative Tastings are an expensive but potentially effective strategy for a wine producer to raise the image of their wine or wines.

OPINION: I have a 50% share in a vineyard and for the first time ever, snails are threatening to decimate my crop.

OPINION: Each week I receive a newsletter called Areopagus, with ‘seven short lessons’ on various historical figures, classical music, paintings, architecture, rhetoric and writing, finishing with a philosophical question. It’s fascinating.

OPINION: The news could not have been more concerning – an industry member deliberately and illegally imported grapevines into New Zealand, and then grew those vines in one of our major winegrowing regions, thereby threatening the livelihoods of friends, neighbours, and colleagues in the industry, and potentially the wider primary sector.

OPINION: In this edition we check out vintage perspectives from around New Zealand, with many reporting lighter than typical yields in a delightfully disease-free harvest.

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