And the winner of the 2009 New Zealand export championship is…Sauvignon Blanc.
Yes, a whopping eight out of 10 bottles of wine leaving Kiwi ports are Sauvignon Blanc. Not altogether surprising you might think but its dominance is pretty worrying if an ‘Anything But Chardonnay’ backlash shifts to Sauvignon.
According to the latest figures from New Zealand Winegrowers, overall exports were up 34% to 130 million litres. It’s difficult to know how much of that increase can be attributed to bulk Sauvignon shipped out in flexitanks to be bottled as an anonymous supermarket brand but there would certainly be plenty of it. Unfortunately, there’s no value figures available yet so I’ll just have to speculate that value rises will be nowhere near the 30% mark. It’ll be interesting to see the year-on-year price per litre too.
On a more positive note, it appears the Kiwis have invaded China in the past 12 months. China didn’t even feature in the 2008 top ten export destinations and it is now sitting pretty in position number 5 with more than 1.2m litres shipped. With the Far East’s penchant for reds, Hawkes Bay and Central Otago are ideally positioned to take advantage of this market.
A Gris day
The other major mover in the export charts is Pinot Gris. Anyone visiting the country’s wine regions can’t fail to notice that most producers now have a Gris in their range. A surge in plantings has been followed by a 63% rise in exports in the past year to 2.4m litres. Winemakers tell you they hate making this rather neutral, low acid, high alcohol variety but people sure do like drinking it. It’s a pretty startling rise when you consider that as late as 2006 only 400,000 litres of Gris were exported. My GCSE maths tells me that’s a sixfold increase – Carol Vorderman has nothing on my numeracy skills.
It’s sad to see that Riesling hasn’t shared in the success of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Gris. Exports have remained pretty stagnant and it’s had to watch a lesser variety (in my opinion) leapfrog over it. Booooooooo.
Anyway that’s enough numbers from me. I’m off to the much-anticipated Cabernet/Merlot forum and Syrah Symposium on Friday and Saturday. I’ll be posting blogs on the hot topics plus keeping you updated everyday at Pinot Noir 2010 in Wellington next week.
