A change for the better
Every business needs to continually adapt to change, from consumer tastes to economic conditions, the world is a continually changing place and often throws up all sorts of unplanned challenges.
We all learnt this lesson when the world was impacted by a pandemic followed by a war that has had a huge effect on supply chains, we are all now feeling the economic impact in our wallets.
One business that has adapted its business is Motueka Winemakers and Growers who own the Anchorage Family Estate, Torrent Bay and Florals wine brands.
They have transitioned from a business that focused on bulk winemaking for growers to making higher quality wines under their own brands, so they could lift their margins and remain viable as a business during tough economic times.
The changes made have reaped almost immediate rewards, the Anchorage Family Estate 2022 Sauvignon Blanc was the only Nelson wine to be awarded a gold medal and be included in the New World Top 50 under $25 wines.
They have also picked three further gold medals at the NZ International Wine Show for their Sauvignon Blanc with two of those being Double Golds. Last week I caught up with Chris Drummond, the general manager, and winemaker Tony Southgate, to talk about the changes they have been made since 2019 that have led to these results.
Drummond explained that the family entered the wine industry about 20 years ago as contract winegrowers, growing grapes for other people, because the family has a long history in the horticulture sector in the region diversifying into another crop made sense for the family.
After growing grapes for a few years they built a contract winemaking facility, so they could make wine for overseas customers and New Zealand producers who needed extra wine to meet demand. But as Drummond said: ‘‘this is a very low margin business model and as costs increased across the board our small margins were being squeezed even tighter, so it made sense for us to look at the model and adapt.
‘‘That led to the decision to move to making less, but higher quality wine we could bottle rather than selling bulk wine.’’
At about the time the family were making these decisions their winemaker left, so it was an opportunity to find someone with specific skills to move them into higher quality bottled wine production.
‘‘We were lucky that experienced multi-award winning winemaker Tony Southgate was looking for a change and agreed to come and work with us,’’ said Chris.
Southgate said: ‘‘it was an opportunity for me to help a business improve what they do, to refine what they produce and to focus on quality. I had been in my last job for 16 years and I felt it would be great to be able to use my skills to help another business improve. When I met with Chris I told him we could make this work.
‘‘We had a number of team meetings where we discussed everything from the varieties of grapes they were growing, the amount of fruit they were producing and that if they wanted to make real
change then that would start with the vineyards and fruit.’’
Drummond told me they have always let their winemakers deal with all the winemaking decisions so have been reasonably hands-off in the winemaking.
‘‘We produced the fruit and delivered it to the winery for the winemaker to do his thing. My brother Gavin manages the day-to-day running of the vineyards while I manage the marketing, sales, finances and all the other background stuff, so it was a change for us having a winemaker come in and say he wanted to be involved with the vineyards as well.’’
To increase the focus on quality Motueka Winemakers and Growers have halved their vineyard area.
‘‘We used to lease a couple of vineyards and had growers who supplied us too, but, so we could focus on quality rather than volume, we exited those leases, we now only use grapes from our own vineyards,’’ Drummond said.
‘‘We now have half the vineyard land to manage but still have the same number of staff, so we can do things in the vineyards when they need to be done, rather than when we have time to do them.’’
After making the changes they can look back and see how stretched they were in managing 60ha of vineyards, ‘‘now we only have 31ha we can put more effort into vineyard management which means we grow better fruit to make wine with, and we are seeing the results in recent awards.’’
Previously the business had been making about 90% of wine as bulk wine, today it is only 40% bulk and 60% bottled wine.
‘‘We expect that to be about 70% bottled next year, and we have strong demand for our wines from our international clients, especially in the UK, Canada and USA markets.’’
The next stage in improving what they do is buying a new bottling line that will be fully
automated.
‘‘We bought our own bottling line in 2017 to increase our self-sufficiency but it didn’t need to be fully automatic because of the small volumes we were bottling, the new automated line will triple our output, and we need it now that we are producing a lot more bottled wine for international markets.’’
Drummond says one of the most satisfying things about the changes they have made is that it shows the Motueka area is a credible wine region.
‘‘It has a proven record of growing apples, kiwifruit and hops, now we can include grapes in this very versatile horticulture region, we are proving you can make great wines here.’’
Southgate said his approach as a winemaker wasn’t to make wholesale change.
‘‘We have a great winery facility that’s easy to work in, so there was no real change to the winery operation, but it’s about being across everything from the vineyard to the bottle, it’s about 1% improvement in everything we do and at the end of the year those 1% changes add up to significant improvements.’’
Southgate, Drummond says, is uncompromising on quality in everything he does.
‘‘It’s really interesting watching aspects of the winemaking change under Tony’s guidance. A lot of things are the same, we still use yeasts in the fermentation process, but now it’s different yeasts and enzymes, how we press the fruit has changed, how we manage the fresh juice has changed subtly and it’s these changes, as well as our focus on smaller volumes of higher quality fruit, that are reaping rewards.’’
With a focus on producing the very best versions of sauvignon blanc, pinot gris and chardonnay they can (with a pinot noir rose to come in 2023) the rejuvenated Motueka Winemakers and Growers and the labels they own has a very bright future.
The wines are great value, quality wines worth seeking out.
‘‘It was an opportunity for me to help a business improve what they do.’’
Tony Southgate Winemaker