Vine extraction subsidy ‘opportune’

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 5

Vine extraction subsidy ‘opportune’

For one Canterbury winemaker the Government’s offer to pay grape growers to pull out their grape vines has come at an opportune time. At the St Helena Wine Estate, near Christchurch, the Mundy family is still planting quality grape vines such as the Chardonnay, rhine riesling and pinot noir. The Government’s offer to pay grape growers $6175 for each hectare of grape vines extracted now means that they can pull up about four hectares of “temperamental” gewurtztraminer grape vines and replant with other varieties with Government assistance. The St Helena estate had its first vintage in 1981, and is the oldest commercial winemaker in Christchurch. Now with 28 hectare; of grape vines, it produces ‘barely enough wine jp meet

the demands of its domestic market.

Mrs Jane Mundy described the move by the Government to finance the pulling out of grape vines as unintentionally “advantageous” to the estate. The replacement of the inconsistent cropping grape, the gewurtztraminer, with the classical and more sought after Chardonnay, rhine riesling, or pinot noir varieties would mean a better wine for the domestic, and potential export, market. St Helena’s four hectares are a fraction of the grape vines expected to be registered for extraction under the Government’s recently announced assistance package. The package provides for a payment of $6175 for each hectare of vines pulled up provided a minimum 1200 is extracted nationally?

The industry has until Friday to register the areas to be covered by the package or else lose the assistance altogether. If finalised the grape vines will be extracted from February 7. St Helena’s is the only one of Canterbury’s four commercial winemakers to take advantage of the package. For all of them the effect of the over-supply crisis has been minimal. The emphasis of the winemakers — St Helena’s, the Giesen Wine Estate, the Amberley Estate Vineyard and Larcombe Estate — is on specialised quality wines and not the bulk “soft packaged” wines affected by the crisis. The winemaker at Giesen’s, Mr Marcel Giesen, said that rather than extracting grape vines, more had been planted this year to cater for the demand.

The winemaker at the Amberley Estate Vineyard, Mr Jeremy Prater, said that the main effect of the wine glut was that people inevitably compared the prices of his four wines with those sold at “desperately cut prices” in bottle stores. Mr Prater, who is also the chairman of the Canterbury Grape Growers and Wine Makers’ Association, said that Canterbury winemakers were producing wines of high quality and specialised style, which were not comparable and could not compete with the prices of bulk wines being sold at reduced rates. In spite of the comparative cost, sales of the estate’s wines had been steady and Mr Prater said he was planning to increase his four-hectare vineyard. The Government had not accessed the problem of

over-supply by offering payments for pulling out grape vines, said Mr Prater. It had withdrawn subsidies to farmers and not really bailed out those fanners who needed it, yet the first sign of panic in the wine industry and the Government was throwing in millions of dollars to help it The Government had advocated a free market but had not allowed the relatively young wine industry time to sort itself out and prices and levels of production to settle down. Without Government interference the industry would have eventually settled down leaving those serious about winemaking and grape growing in the business and those in it for a quick and easy dollar out of it A spokesman in the wine industry said thatjf there were about 70 winemakers

of comparable size to St Helena’s and Giesen wines in the country. The oversupply of grapes, wine and the call to remove grape vines had little effect on most of these winemakers because their product catered for a specialised market. They did not face the same pressures as the bulk wine market, he said. For some winemakers the Government’s assistance package was a good opportunity to replant with better grape varieties which would produce a better quality and higher priced wine eventually. It was the hundreds of grape growers who supplied the larger wine-makers, particularly those in Gisborne, Napier, Auckland and Marlborough that were most affected, he said.