Cutting corners

Our international reputation is at risk when wineries bend the rules.

‘ If anyone is looking to cut corners, we’ll be on to it,” says Gary Orr, compliance investigations manager for the Ministry for Primary Industries.

Orr views the recent Yealands

Estate scandal as “an aberration” and believes New Zealand has an effective regulatory system in place for winemaking. But had a former employee not blown the whistle to the ministry, the offending at Yealands would never have been discovered.

The Yealands wine brand was known for its innovative and environmentally friendly, even amusing, viticultural practices, overseen by genial entrepreneur Peter Yealands. However, in the Blenheim District Court in December, Judge

Bill Hastings imposed a $400,000 fine on Yealands Estate Wines. Tamra Kelly, formerly the company’s chief winemaker, and Jeff Fyfe, its former general manager, winery operations, were each fined $35,000, and Yealands himself was fined $30,000.

The widely reported December court case threatened not only the reputations of the individuals concerned, but the international standing of New Zealand wine.

Yealands, Kelly, Fyfe and the company were convicted of 39 breaches of the Wine Act 2003 between 2013 and 2015, for altering the winemaking records of more than 6.5 million litres and for making false export certification statements for 3.7 million litres.

It is “common knowledge in the wine industry that you can’t add sugar post-fermentation to wine designed for the EU market”, says Orr. “One of New Zealand’s leading wine companies engaged in deliberate deception through the use of falsified records that were designed to deceive routine audit.”

Kelly and Fyfe told the court they felt under pressure to keep production up after the vineyard suffered damage and wine was lost during a 2013 earthquake. Yealands, who says he has “never been one to get to grips with authority”, admitted that when the whistleblower drew his attention to the offending, he did nothing to stop it.

Yealands Estate is now owned by Marlborough Lines, an electricity supply company. “Breaches of this kind will not happen again,” says Yealands’ chief executive, Adrian Garforth.