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Anne Megget & Wayne Kennedy with 27 bags of wine bottle screwcaps for Kidney Kids
The following appeared in the Independent Herald for the last week of April.
Members of a local wine club have been collecting screw caps off wine bottles for the last year and have amassed 27 bags full.
As each bag holds approximately 1300 caps – this is a lot of wine! (Remember 2020 was not a normal year), and that is a lot of metal not going into the landfill.
Vice President Anne Megget collects the caps from members, friends and neighbours, and when her cellar is overflowing with bags Treasurer Wayne Kennedy comes around with his trailer and takes them to Wellington Scrap Metal for recycling and this year they raised $215.40.
The Cellar Club is a Wellington-based social group that focuses on learning about and appreciating wine. It has been in existence for 40 years and provides wine education and experience through monthly presentations at the Community Centre Hall in Johnsonville.
Contact can be made through the website or to Anne.
Postscript
Wayne recently provided a plastic bread bag fill with wine tops and neck labels. The latter is also aluminium and equally collectable. Being retired he decided to check out just how many bottles had been consumed. The bag weighed 556 grams and contained 167 tops and 107 neck labels. The problem was Lynne was nearby and not being a wine drinker, she asked ‘what was the likely value of the wine consumed?’, to which he replied, ‘Using an $18 average bottle cost, about $3000! But it was more than a year’s worth!’ he pleaded. Lynne just smiled and, as she walked away, said there was a lot more wool coming.
But having done this weighing, and looking at the money raised above, he thinks the club collected close to 50,000 tops and even if we were to use a cost of $15 per bottle consumed, that’s $750,000 of wine drunk by the club, friends and neighbours.
One final point
Those neck labels on wine bottles will aluminium tops are 1.3 times heavier than the tops, so are well worth collecting. Just be very careful and work away from yourself as you attempt to remove one from the bottle.
This event is a Martinborough school fundraiser event and was held on Saturday 20th March, with participants able to choose their distance, either 10 or 21kms, as well as whether they wished to walk or run.
This was a well-organised event and was followed by live entertainment and prize-giving in Martinborough Square.
This event not only provided a lot of fun and an opportunity to see a little more of Martinborough’s landscape, but it also had the added novelty of the entry fee encompassing wines for you to taste at the many ‘water stops’ along the way.
If you want to know more or want to plan for the next event, I would recommend you go to and keep a watchful eye for the date of the next event.
Here are some photos of this year’s event to whet your appetite.
Nautilus harvest 2021. Photo Credit: Richard Briggs
Grape yields across the country have taken a hit from poor flowering, but growers and winemakers are welcoming beautiful fruit and a kind ripening season.
Nautilus Estate Winemaker and General Manager Clive Jones said on 18 March that vintage ’21 in Marlborough was progressing well. “The fruit is pristine in quality but down across the board in quantity – particularly for Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris,” he said.
“At the halfway stage through the Sauvignon harvest, crops are moderate but flavours are fantastic.
Clive said the weather had been close to perfect, “with barely a glance required at the weather forecast”, and Nautilus was on track to have completed picking before the end of March, “our earliest finish ever”.
Jules Taylor, Gourmet Traveller Wine’s 2021 New Zealand Winemaker of the Year says all varieties are lower than the long-term average and agrees Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris are particularly light, “which is a shame”, but is also the reality of horticulture.
The silver lining is that the fruit is beautiful and clean, thanks to a great summer.
“The weather is playing the game and the mood is so different to last year, with Covid,” she says. “It’s back to the old days, with all the banter in the field.”
Jules says the 2020 harvest was a case of keeping the panic at bay and getting the fruit off as fast as possible, “in case Covid decided to rear its ugly head”.
The contrast with 2021 is extreme. “This year we can pick exactly when we want to, in terms of capturing the essence of Marlborough at its best – it’s a delight.”
In Central Otago, Viticulturist James Dicey says yields are variable, with some subregions doing “really well”, while others are “exceptionally” low, with expectations of as little as two tonnes to the hectare predicted for some blocks.
That’s due to a cold initiation period that resulted in smaller bunches, and unsettled weather during flowering, causing some hen and chicken and poorly set bunches.
He says the weather averages for the season look typical but have resulted from big blocks of extreme conditions. “We have been seeing quite big swings in weather variability, which has stressed the grapevines and stressed out the viticulturists.
However, he has been pleased by a “really nice” and consistent ripening period and “coolish” nights and says the positive of the small yields is the “really high-quality fruit” and lack of disease pressure.
That gives growers “the luxury of time with picking decisions”, and the option of leaving fruit out for longer, if required. And that could be key to getting fruit in this harvest, with labour at “dire” levels due to border closures, he says.
James has spent more time and money than ever before advertising harvest roles, including to viticulture and oenology students, in backpacker lodges and on all bulletin boards, and directed to the remaining hospitality staff in the area.
The main pressure is on staff for hand picking, with little of the area suitable for machine harvesting.
James says some blocks that have never been machine picked before now have that option as a backup plan, but in many cases, a handpick is the only option, because of a steep aspect or small size. Two of the blocks he works with, for example, are 0.3 hectares, “so it’s not economical to have a machine turn up”.
James says staff are “trickling” in, “but if we don’t get what we want or quite what we need, then the harvest will be delayed or protracted… we are encouraging wineries to pick early and pick hard”.
In Hawke’s Bay, Esk Valley Winemaker Gordon Russell says they have experienced lower yields, with a general drop of around 20 per cent, due largely to poor flowering.
He says Sauvignon Blanc yields have done better than Chardonnay and the reds, which have small berries and loose bunches. The low yields and lack of rain means there has been no disease pressure, and cooling conditions are creating an enviable ripening period, allowing acids to drop without sugars climbing too high. “There seems no hurry at the moment.”
Esk Valley picked white varieties up to 19 March, and Gordon says the harvest to date has delivered grapes of excellent quality.
He expects wine to be “bright, fresh and pure”.
The labour situation has been manageable in Hawke’s Bay, with viticulture sharing picking gangs with other horticulture industries, he says. “We seem to have been able to get in what we wanted when we wanted it, so it hasn’t been an issue.”
However, that’s also down to a strategic approach, which has seen handpicking tonnages drop slightly, allowing selective machine harvesting to ease some labour pressure.”
At Matawhero, Owner Kristen Searle says tonnages are about average for a Gisborne season “and with great ripening weather it will be a great vintage for Gisborne wines”.
Kirsten says apart from some frost damage at budburst in some vineyards, the season generally has been good and has produced “some exceptional fruit”.
Matawhero began picking on 22 February, which is their earliest start ever.
“The season saw higher growing degree days and heat summation during the season which would have ensured the early pick. We also experienced low disease pressure and good brix, acid and Ph balance at harvest.”
In the interests of everyone having a great time on this trip and no surprises on the day, the following is to help with your wine tasting and purchasing decisions, free of the hazy glow of alcohol!
Tasting fees
At Grava/Alana, and at Tiwaiwaka, it’s $10 per tasting, which you’ll need to pay directly to the applicable winery. This charge is per glass so if two people share a tasting from the same glass it’ll only cost $10 total. While there is no charge to us for tasting at Nga Waka, there is a cost to the winery so please think seriously about supporting them by buying some wine. Some of the wineries are considering sending us an order form in advance so that all members have the opportunity of buying their wines and we’ll circulate those when received. The tasting at Coney’s is included in the cost of lunch.
Redeeming tasting fees on wine purchases
The tasting fee at Grava will be waived on bottle purchases on a per person basis, ie if two people buy one bottle of wine between them, they’ll also have to pay one $10 tasting fee.
Transporting your wine purchases The club will provide stickers so you can identify any wines you’ve bought. Tranzit policies mean that we can’t take any wine at all on the bus and any wine purchases will need to be stored in the separate luggage compartment. Please note that any wine stored in the luggage compartment will be at your own risk. Grava, Nga Waka and Coney (Tiwaiwaka TBC) will pack our wine purchases in boxes – smaller orders will be combined to fill up the boxes. If there’s a large enough number of orders, they’ll ship them to one address.
If we end up transporting any boxes back home, to make it easier at the Featherston or Wellington ends, we recommend writing the owners’ names on the boxes and combining your smaller orders with those of people you can easily distribute to. And no sneaking wine inside the bus! The club will be liable for the clean-up costs for any messes, which will be passed on if they relate to spilt wine. When we return to Featherston Station there’ll be time, if necessary, for everyone to reunite with/sort out their purchases in preparation for taking them onto the train. Bear in mind there’ll probably be limited storage space, especially for boxes, so you may prefer to bring your own wine carry bags for this part.
Keeping ourselves safe
It’ll be a long time between leaving home and having lunch so please think about bringing your own water and snacks (we’re allowed cold snacks on the train). While there’ll be lots of wine on offer during the day, we encourage everyone to drink responsibly and to feel free to skip a tasting as you see fit.
The Cellar Club 40TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL – TRIP TO MARTINBOROUGH 13 FEBRUARY 2021 Timetable
Meeting place – Wellington Railway station
9.45 am, Saturday, 13 February, Wellington Railway Station – meet the rest of the group on the departure platform (see the departures board at the station). The train departs Wellington Station at 9.55 am so please be on the platform by 9.45 am so that we can form into a group and hopefully commandeer our own carriage! Tickets (one way or return) can be purchased at the station ticket office or on the train. The cost is $30 same-day return or $15 one way. Tickets bought on the train require payment in cash only. Gold Cardholders can use those.
10.55 am, the train arrives at Featherston station where we meet the bus.
On arrival in Martinborough the bus will drop us off for wine tastings at Grava/Alana, Tiwaiwaka and Nga Waka wineries from 11.15 am. Grava/Alana will provide tastings of five wines and a sticky for $10, refundable with a purchase. Tiwaiwaka has a flat fee of $10 to taste seven wines. As Nga Waka has no on-licence, they are unable to charge for a tasting. The time available before going to Coney’s means each group will go to two wineries. Group A will go to Grava then Tiwaiwaka, Group B to Tiwaiwaka then Nga Waka, and Group C to Nga Waka then Grava.
12.50 pm – the bus will start pick-ups at Nga Waka, with Tiwaiwaka and Grava pick-ups shortly afterwards. Please be ready!
It’ll then take us to Coney’s for a leisurely lunch from 1.15 pm. We will start with a wine tasting (charge included with lunch cost) which will be accompanied by small taste plates. This will be followed by a lunch that includes two mains plus sides together with petit fours for dessert. A limited amount of wine will be provided with the meal. Please note that if you order any wine over and above that supplied, or tea or coffee this will be at your own expense.
The bus will leave Coneys in time to connect with the train at Featherston where it is due to depart at 5.25 pm.
6.25 pm – scheduled arrival time at Wellington Station.
Some additional points to note:
To ensure we keep on schedule and as a courtesy to others please make sure you are ready for the bus on time. It does take a few minutes to get everyone on board and settled before it can move on.
Please also see the “Important things to know” sheet for further details.
Less than a fortnight to go now and it was evident at the club barbecue that our members are really looking forward to this fun day out.
We ask all who are intending to come to double-check that your name is on the attached list. If you’re not intending to come, there’s no need to read any further.
There are three sections to this newsletter – please read all of them so that you’re up with the play.
Wairarapa Wine Tasting Groups – For privacy, please see read your newsletter.
We’ve allocated the groups along the lines of the seating at our dinners. If you’d particularly like to be in another group, you’re welcome to arrange your own swap.
However, please ensure overall group numbers remain the same and let Wayne know about the change.
If anyone has any special dietary requirements for our meal at Coney’s, please email Wayne asap.
While we encourage you to only drink as much wine as you can comfortably handle, please be aware that Nga Waka, Tiwaiwaka and Grava have small cellar doors and our groups will fill their tasting rooms. If there are significant numbers of people who are skipping a tasting at any one time, we’d ask that you make way for any members of the public who want to have a tasting.
And please also give these wineries your support – particularly Nga Waka seeing it’s unable to charge for tastings. There’s been quite a lot of discussion in various media about the difficulties faced by wineries who don’t have an on-licence, which is a pre-requisite to charge for tastings. for background, see the Stuff.nz article Wineries unable to profit from tasting tourism call for law change.
We look forward to seeing you soon and wrapping up the club’s 40th birthday celebrations in style!
44 people are booked to go to on this trip, which includes a tasting and then lunch at Coney Wines.
If you are one of that 44 and can no longer go, it is imperative that you text or ring Gayl on 021 040 6244 and let her know before this weekend as Coneys are seeking urgent confirmation of our numbers.
Once we do that, any subsequent cancellation is unlikely to result in a refund. Sadly, Palliser Estate is no longer part of our itinerary as they want to focus on the operation of their new restaurant which adjoins their tasting area, much like what we will experience at Coney Wines.
Updated details including times and the replacement winery will be emailed to everyone early next month, if not beforehand.
This is the 2020 timetable and is indicative only. Some minor changes are expected for 2021
Timetable
45 am, Saturday, 21 March, Wellington Railway Station – meet the rest of the group on the platform that the train leaves from (see the departures board at the station). Train departs Wellington Station at 9.55 am so please be on the platform by 9.45 am so that we can form into a group and hopefully commandeer our own carriage! Tickets (one way or return) can be purchased at the station ticket office or on the train. The cost is $25 same-day return or $19 one way. Tickets bought on the train require payment in cash only. Gold Cardholders can use those.
Train arrives at Featherston at 10.55 am. This is where we meet the bus.
On arrival in Martinborough, there will be wine tastings at Palliser Estate and Grava/Alana winery from 11.15 am. Palliser Estate will provide a flight of five wines at a cost of $10, refundable with a purchase. Grava/Alana will provide five wines and a sticky also for $10, refundable with a purchase. Group A will go to Palliser first and Group B to Grava and we’ll swap over halfway through.
55 pm – the bus will commence pick-ups at Palliser with Alana/Grava pick-up shortly after that time. Please be ready!
It’ll then take us to Coneys for a leisurely lunch from 1.15 pm. We will start with a wine tasting (charge included with lunch cost) which will be accompanied by small taste plates. This will be followed by a lunch that includes two mains plus sides together with petit fours for dessert. A limited amount of wine will be provided with the meal. Please note that if you order any wine over and above that supplied, or tea or coffee this will be at your own expense.
The bus will leave Coneys in time to connect with the train at Featherston where it is due to depart at 5.25 pm.
25 pm– scheduled arrival time at Wellington Station.
Some additional points to note:
To ensure we keep on schedule and as a courtesy to others please make sure you are ready for the bus on time. It does take a few minutes to get everyone on board and settled before it can move on.
Please also see the “Important things to know” sheet for further details.
But not only did the industry survive those trying times, it’s also now been revealed that it actually flourished, with the latest figures showing exports for the 12 months to October hit a record high of $2 billion.
Clive Jones, chair of New Zealand Winegrowers, says reaching the milestone this year came as a surprise for the industry.
“We made a bold prediction 10 years ago that we thought we could double sales from $1 billion to $2 billion by the year 2020,” Jones told Newshub.
“I guess we always thought we’d get there but at the beginning of the year we really didn’t think it would be this year.”
He said although sales had been gradually improving over the past year, there was a “big surge” in the last four or five months.
Rabobank’s latest Wine Quarterly report, published last month, noted an increase in export sales was related to more people drinking at home during lockdowns around the world, leading to an uptick in retail trade.
Jones said that was good news for New Zealand wine producers, although he acknowledged wine businesses that sell predominantly through on-premise and tourism have been harder hit.
According to the Rabobank report, sauvignon blanc makes up the lion’s share of Kiwi wine exports, with year-on-year sales to August up 131 per cent. But Jones says there is an increasing appetite for pinot noir, the second most popular export, as well as rosé and pinot gris.
The US, the UK and Australia continue to be our largest markets, and Jones says he believes New Zealand’s reputation as being largely virus-free has helped push our brand.
“I think it is a COVID response in that people are looking for something that’s reliable that they can bank on. They’re not taking risks – and they see New Zealand wine as something that delivers that,” he said
“I’m also sure that New Zealand has internationally been seen in a pretty good light in recent times, so there’s a positive feeling about New Zealand.
“Perhaps when people pick a bottle of New Zealand wine off the shelf and they take it home to drink they’re thinking ‘I wish I was there’.”
Jones said the industry was “preparing for the worse” when the level 4 lockdown was announced but said the sector had really rallied together to face the challenges thrown at it.
“Everyone responded positively and took the issue seriously and the safety of our people and communities was paramount,” he said.
“We were determined as an industry not to be the source of a community outbreak so thankfully we got through that ok.”
The sector is not out of the woods yet, however, with the country’s closed borders meaning there remains a labour shortage for the upcoming harvest.
Border exemptions announced on Friday allowing 2000 recognised seasonal employers (RSE) workers from Pacific countries to come to New Zealand early next year will go some way to relieving that pressure, says Jones, but it won’t be a magic fix.
He said although workers were needed for the harvest – which, depending on where in the country a vineyard is, usually takes place around March and April and lasts for six weeks – a more critical time was winter when vines need to be pruned.
The other concern is the weather.
“There’s a bit of risk of ex-tropical cyclones, which is something we want to avoid, so hopefully that doesn’t happen – we don’t want rain during harvest.”
For now, Jones and winemakers across the country will be hoping their good luck continues, and that conditions this year are similar to those of the season just passed, which many have said produced the best vintage in decades.
“It was a very kind harvest in terms of weather,” Jones said.
“It was one of the best seasons we’ve had so that was the one thing we didn’t have to worry about.”
Tim Coney of Coney Wines in Martinborough. Photo: Loren Dougan/Fairfax media.
As mentioned in September, the trip we had to postpone earlier this year is back on for Saturday, 13 February next year and it promises to be a great day.
To enable us to finalise the arrangements and ensure we have a big enough bus, we now need all members to read the following and then email Wayne to confirm your status for the new date.
The club is holding the payments of most of those members who’d committed to going this year (ie, those who didn’t request a refund) and of course, we welcome other members who are now in a position to join the trip.
So please email Wayne by Friday, 11 December, and advise him of one of the following options, along with all applicable names.
I/we booked and paid for the March trip and will also be coming in February 2021.
I/we booked and paid for the March trip but are unable to come in February 2021 so would ask you to arrange a refund.
I/we were not on the list for the March trip but would now like to be added.
I/we were not on the list for the March trip and will not be attending in February 2021.
Please note that if you are C, you will also need to deposit $75 into the club’s bank account 06 0541 0056031 00 before 24 December.
We plan to follow the same timetable as we’d planned for last March to save you searching your inboxes. This document is just to refresh your memory – we’ll update it closer to the date when the train times for that period are confirmed. It’s also likely that we’ll be visiting a different winery to Palliser, as they are now focusing on their new restaurant, rather than tastings. Details to follow.
Palliser Estate
Grave Wines
alana wines
Come along for a fun day and help wrap up the club’s 40th birthday celebrations in style!
New Zealand’s wine industry built its name on sav, but we’ve been putting all our eggs in one basket for too long, writes Jules van Costello.
Savvy represents 63% of New Zealand’s area under vine, 74% of our wine production and a whopping 88% of our exports by volume, meaning for every dozen bottles of wine we export, over 10 of those are sauvignon blanc. Photo: Getty Images
I like to think of sauvignon blanc as the IPA of wine. It’s brash, bombastic and a little bit basic (in a good way). Like IPA, its tropical aromas of guava, passionfruit, lemongrass and a little bit of sweat jump forth from the glass. In the words of wine educator Oz Clark: “There had never before been a wine that crackled and spat its flavours at you from the glass”. It should not be surprising that some of the flavours in savvies and IPAs are the same – New Zealand’s most acclaimed hop variety, Nelson Sauvin, is named for its olfactory similarity to Marlborough sauvignon blanc.
Savvy is easy to understand and even easier to like. In the world of wine, which has a tendency to disempower consumers by letting so-called “experts” hoard knowledge, this is unequivocally a good thing.
Sauvignon blanc put New Zealand on the map. It is the foundation on which the entire export side of our wine industry has been built. But sadly, there can be too much of a good thing. While writing my new book, Beyond the Vines: The Changing Landscape of New Zealand Wine, I’ve had to wrestle with the fact that while sauvignon blanc is amazing, the New Zealand wine industry has too many eggs in one basket. It represents 63% of New Zealand’s area under vine, 74% of our wine production and a whopping 88% of our exports by volume, meaning for every dozen bottles of wine we export, over 10 of those are sauvignon blanc.
In August 2020, New Zealand Winegrowers released their annual report which stated that, despite six months of Covid-19 affecting sales, we’d actually exported more wine than ever before. Big grocery brands have done incredibly well but many smaller producers are feeling the pinch. The smaller the producer, the more likely they are to be selling wine in restaurants, which is hard when restaurants are shut or diners are too scared to go out. Secondary lockdowns in Melbourne, London and even in Auckland, as well as the huge mishandling of Covid in our biggest markets – the USA and UK – have had profoundly negative effects for many Kiwi producers.
New Zealand, the forward-thinking upstart that it is, committed to free trade in the mid-1980s. We are an export economy and from my position, this has generally helped us do business. However, one of the consequences of this is that no industry is too big to fail. Our producers, unlike those in Europe, for instance, cannot rely on government intervention to keep them afloat if the arse drops out of the market.
Ripening white grapes at a vineyard in Marlborough Region, country’s largest winegrowing region with distinctive soils and climatic conditions, South Island of New Zealand. Photo: Getty Images
Sauvignon blanc is popular now across the globe, but what happens when the bubble bursts? We could face a quick trend shift à la Sideways that saw merlot’s demise, or even a sudden global event change how the wine world works overnight. Most of the players who are making big bucks on industrial sauvignon blanc will not care. They will move onto something else. The growers and the wineries will be hurting. The wine world is a slow-moving beast, but it is also a fickle one. At this stage, New Zealand does not have an exit strategy.
Savvy is important – we can make relatively high-quality juice relatively cheaply. This is what got us into this problem in the first place. But we can also make world-class wine all over New Zealand. We need to champion more serious styles of sauvignon blanc, which we excel at.
We also need to diversify, and quickly. Despite having over 55 commercial varieties being grown, land devoted to most varieties has been dwindling (all but sauvignon blanc, of course, pinot noir, pinot gris and syrah).
I myself am heavily invested in the natural and lo-fi wine game with my businesses Cult Wine and Te Aro Wine but, strangely enough, I do not think this is the saviour of the industry, nor is making more and more serious wine. We need to find something we can make relatively cheaply, well, and for which there is an international demand.
I believe light red wines are part of the answer to the problem of the sav bubble – Montepulciano from Italy, St Lauren from Austria and Gamay are all contenders. In Australia, these light reds have taken off domestically and are making waves internationally. Like sav, we can make affordable pinot relatively well so there is no reason why we cannot apply these skills to grape varieties that are a little easier to grow. I happen to like drinking light reds but this is one solution that should also suit consumers in Australia, USA and the growing Chinese market.
We also need to experiment, throw grapes at the wall to see what sticks. The bubble will pop. We need to be ready.
