Marlborough wine industry approaches major milestone

OPINION: I started with Montana in 1989, so missed out on the very early years of grape growing and winemaking in Marlborough, 50 years ago next year.

We’ve been able to determine that the date that the first vines went into the ground (on what is now Brancott Estate) was sometime between July 30 and August 3, 1973.

One comment that was made to me was that with Marlborough winning the Ranfurly Shield from Canterbury on Saturday, July 28, 1973, there was unlikely to be much work done – even if people showed up – on the following Monday, July 30. The glory days of Marlborough Rugby!

Another little nugget of information that came to light was price paid for the land – $500 per acre or $1235 per hectare, about twice the going rate for farmland in the central Wairau Plain at the time.

So what’s the price of land done in the intervening 50 years? The asking price for bare land in the same locality will be approaching $200,000 per hectare nowadays, a cool 11% compounding annual growth rate over almost half a century.

To put that into perspective, using the Reserve Bank’s consumer price index (housing) calculator for the same period, investing that same $1235 into housing anywhere in the country would have the same value as $87,500 today.

In the early 1970s, Marlborough was experiencing a severe drought and the young vines planted in August 1973 were without irrigation. With moisture depleted soils from the dry 1973 year, many didn’t survive the summer of 1974.

A year after the first vines went in, the first vineyard re-plantings were happening with Mu¨ller- Thurgau, Riesling, Gewu¨ rztraminer, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinotage being the mainstays of Marlborough’s new industry. Oh, and there was around 20ha of Sauvignon Blanc included in the early Brancott plantings as well. It was very much small beginnings.

These vines would have been replaced with grafted, phylloxera tolerant rootstocks in the early 1990s. The move to resistant rootstock also saw the disappearance of Mu¨ ller-Thurgau from Marlborough over this time.

Looking around the region today, the third major wave of vineyard redevelopment is starting to occur, driven by both an increasing incidence of trunk disease and a seemingly insatiable global appetite for Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. Long may it continue.

❚ Viticulturist Mike Insley owns Grape Sense in Marlborough, offering planning, production and problem-solving on vineyards. He also provides vineyard real estate services through Harcourts Marlborough. Anyone with insights into the region’s wine history can contact him at mike@grapesense.co.nz or 021 229 8157.

This article first appeared in the Winepress magazine and is republished with permission.

Father Sloane blesses the first official vine held for him by Mate Yukich, assisted by Terry Dunleavy, then advertising manager for Montana.