my, how we've grown!

Posted by Robin Ransom on 1 July 2011 | 0 Comments

I can recall quite vividly my first experience of “serious” New Zealand wine. A sophisticated friend brought a bottle of Montana Pinotage to share with us over dinner way back in 1969. It was probably 1968 vintage. I was an inexperienced imbiber at the time but remember being surprised at how enjoyable this wine was, and how wonderfully it complemented the meal. That was a seminal wine experience for me – the moment the light went on for the first time.

That was five years before any grapes had been planted in Marlborough. At that time Auckland was the largest grape growing region in the country. In the early 1970s Gisborne overtook Auckland, followed by Hawkes Bay dominance for some years, then by 1990 Marlborough had become the number one region in acreage of grapes planted. In the 2011 vintage Marlborough produced 75% of the total tonnage of wine grapes grown in NZ.

In 1970 NZ produced 4 million litres of wine, and by 2011 this had increased to 235 million litres – almost 60 times the volume produced 40 years earlier. This represents massive growth over a relatively short time span, but throughout, the industry has managed to develop and retain very high quality in the wines produced. This is evidenced by the fact that in most of the countries to which NZ wine is exported, it fetches a higher overall average price than wines from all other countries.

The wine export story has also been dominated by vast growth in volume. In 2001 NZ exported 19 million litres of wine. By 2010 wine exports had grown to 142 million litres, more than seven times the volume of ten years earlier. In 2010 we exceeded one billion dollars in wine export earnings for the first time, (not including revenue from wine tourism) and it doesn’t look like slowing down any time soon.

Winegrowing today is one of our elite primary industries in the sense that it has become a successful endeavour within NZ, with its products cherished by a large proportion of the population. It also carries brand New Zealand very prominently to the world. Right now the industry is experiencing some problems, due to a combination of the global economic downturn and excessive volumes of wine available both in NZ and around the world. But as long as we continue to produce high quality wine, it seems likely that the NZ wine industry will continue to tread the successful path it has followed for the past 40 years.

Robin Ransom

(published in Mahurangi Matters, July 2011)