WSET Level 3 🍷 Grape Growing in New Zealand

Hello everybody and a very warm welcome to the Wine with Jimmy channel. Delighted to have you on board. This is a wine channel dedicated to those of you that are studying the very challenging but rewarding world of wine. We are here looking at New Zealand and we have put New Zealand into a multi-part series. Parts 1, 2 and 3 are all available as free content on the world of YouTube but parts 4 through to 8 are only available on my e-learning portal. You see that at the bottom that's winewithjimmy.com. Lots of very useful stuff there to help you with your studies, to give you the understanding and the confidence to really do well in your examinations. So yes parts 4 through to 8 including the last one which part 8 is all important. It's like a little mini exam that I'll walk you through in terms of questions that you may get in your examinations. If you have any comments, questions or concerns of course please do get in touch. You can do so by commenting on this video below. You can also get in touch via all of the social media you see at the bottom of every slide. Okay so let's start talking about the wonderful country of New Zealand going through its climate, grape growing and wine laws as according to the WSET level 3 syllabus. So first of all a little bit of an introduction to this very important country. New Zealand is one of these countries for wine which is very well known for very aromatic fresh and vibrant Sauvignon Blanc. Of course no doubt you have tasted New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. It's one of the most easily recognisable international styles of wine that you can find. This style which really was born in the 1980s has gone on to be internationally recognised and has inspired winemakers around the world to craft similar styles to these New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs. But it doesn't just stop there. New Zealand also has a very strong reputation for premium quality Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Syrah and Bordeaux style blends. So there's more to New Zealand than just one singular grape variety though it is very very dominating and very important being Sauvignon Blanc of course. In this series of course we will talk through all of the key areas as for the level 3 syllabus including those key grape varieties as well. Okay so a little bit about its location and then we'll talk a little bit about also its climate going through its key climatic conditions. As you can see from the map New Zealand is a country which is very isolated meaning quite far away from anything else. It sits very much in the Pacific Ocean and it's about 1,900 kilometres away from Australia. So this distance here means it's a long long way from the next nearest big land mass. So this means that we are firmly an island and we know that New Zealand is split into mainly the North Island and the South Island in terms of its geography. And this means it's kind of like Britain where in terms of being an island it is governed by the seas and the oceans. It's moderated so therefore we would classify it as a climate which is impacted by sea and ocean. Of course that's what we call a maritime climate as we've got quite firmly there in the box as we can see. So a maritime climate is what we find in New Zealand. Now its location. We have got some really useful combination of factors which enable New Zealand to really craft premium quality wine. It's a combination of things like long sunshine hours along nights that are cooled by sea breezes and an overall long ripening period. This means that in grapes we can get high enough sugar levels for of course decent ripeness and alcohol and also we can retain acidities with the things like the proximity to the oceans for example. Now the map I've got here is a close up of New Zealand. It's a geographical map but the key thing here is that we have clearly identified the latitude on the map so you'll see the grids that go across this which are kind of at a diagonal. It's because we've moved New Zealand to this kind of format but you'll see that there this line going across here is the 35 south latitudinal and then down here which kind of goes through central Otago is 45 south so each of these lines is basically five degree difference so 35 40 and 45. So most of New Zealand sits between 35 and let's say 47 south so actually quite a stretch of a country spanning over 10 latitudinal degree which is quite quite amazing and this means that a lot of New Zealand therefore due to the earth's tilt gets a lot of sunshine hours during summer months. So in the height of summer just like Great Britain would get Northern Europe, Northern America, Canada you will find that there are long sunshine hours. You can easily experience 16 hour days of sunlight during the summer months here which is quite amazing. Places like Auckland, places like Hawke's Bay and Wellington all in the North Island get somewhere between 2000 to 2300 hours of annual sunlight. Marlborough actually is one of the sunniest gets about 2500 and central Otago which is right in the southern section is actually just below 2000 hours of sunlight but still a lot of sunlight and that's quite important of course in terms of what we can ripen here and the longer ripening season that we find in this area. So here's another map identifying the key areas in terms of wine production and splitting it of course into the North Island and the South Island. So I'm just going to draw a line now through this we'll do this let's say we'll do it in red just so give you a clear indication but if we just draw a line here so of course here is the North Island above this red line and below it is the South Island. The South Island because of its geographical latitudinal position which remember is going all the way down to 47 degrees south towards Dunedin for example we are looking at a colder climate because of course we're closer to Antarctica down here closer to the poles so this is a cooler island. The North Island of course conversely is a little bit warmer so you'll actually find temperatures here central Otago which is down here been identified so that's our most southerly wine region will have an annual temperature of around 11 degrees celsius and that is that's fairly low. Then if you go up to Auckland which is the largest city sitting towards the north so it's the largest city in the northern area this is about four or five degrees warmer on average than central Otago and that's that big difference there so that gives you an indication that the southern island is cooler and the northern island is warmer and then basically as you move your way through here the more north you go your annual temperature gets increased it gets higher. Now we've talked about the climate we've talked about the warmth but of course we've got rainfall here to talk about as well. The vineyards of both islands so both the North Island and the South Island predominantly are found on the eastern side okay so I can identify this all this area here as we can see predominantly most of this is on this eastern side. Of course there are some that sit sort of straddling the areas so Nelson for example, the Bay of Plenty and Auckland but for the most part our vineyards sit on the eastern side and they are protected from the might of the Tasman Sea which is the westerly wind that brings a fair bit of weather so that's all coming this way okay so that's why our vineyards sit on the other side they are therefore protected. The South Island has the Southern Alps which gives you a good rain shadow there are small mountain ranges in the North Island but it's really the fact that it's geographically located on the eastern side that protects it but despite this protection many of the vineyard areas still experience plentiful rainfall which can of course be problematic. They have been subject here to flooding for example which is excessive amounts of rainfall but really it's the ripening phase and excessive rainfall at the ripening phase for a number of reasons of course we can look at towards the end of the season with things like protritus and rot we can look at mildew of course being an issue but we can look at excessive growth of the vines which causes a detraction away from the ripening of the berries which can be a huge problem as well and there's also things like dilution and so on okay so there you are the rainfall numbers here are quite interesting as we know Auckland up here doesn't have a huge amount of protection against the Tasman Sea and the rainfall here is typically something like 1200 millimetres per year. Wellington also down here doesn't have a huge amount of protection there's no natural geography to protect it and it's about 1200 millimetres per year but then Hawke's Bay which is here on the eastern side of this island is around 800. Central Otago and Marlborough about the same just under 800 so you'll find that's the typicity the typicity of these eastern areas would be somewhere around 800 millimetres of rainfall per year whereas the non-protected areas go into the thousands and that's of course going to cause a huge amount of problems in those specific areas. The geology though comes to the rescue fortunately the soils for the most part tend to be very well draining very free draining and that means that even with the quite high rainfalls across most regions we won't experience water logging but those vineyards that are found on flat and fertile plains will of course experience very vigorous growth and that means a lot of excessive shoot and leaf growth which really needs to be managed importantly in this area and that's an important point to make due to their problems here in New Zealand surrounding the rainfall and the amount of water available which is high the New Zealand grape growers the viticulturalists have of course put in a huge amount of research and time and energy into understanding their vineyards and they have become of course experts in trellisy and canopy management techniques to help mitigate the problems around their major threat of rainfall. Other things to mention here is on sustainability the New Zealand wine industry is strongly committed to reducing the environmental impact of their vineyard management and winery practices you'll have this quite famous emblem this is the sustainable wine growing New Zealand it's an initiative that sets winery standards to help growers achieve specific aims and they're quite proud of this some critique says it's a bit easy to gain these these certain accreditations but at least they are of course moving in the right direction and they're just a little bit on the wine laws here a relatively new scheme which is really something that quite similar mirrors the Australian templates of GIs which are geographical indications so the New Zealand GI this is a scheme which was established in 2017 now for a wine to be labelled with a GI the minimum of 85 percent of the grapes must come from that region to obtain the GI status which is something quite based on the European model for example New Zealand, North Ireland and South Ireland those three terminologies New Zealand North Ireland South Ireland are also all registered GIs and GIs also include but are not limited to each of the major regions discussed as we'll go through this wine series fantastic well that brings this first video for New Zealand to a close please join me for the next video which looks at Marlborough and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc so that's going to be quite an important area then part three will be Central Otago and Pinot Noir possibly the most two important videos of this series just because of their recognition and in terms of your examination likelihood of being asked questions but then we'll go through all of the other key areas and then of course aiming towards the short written answer question at the end as always please do get in touch if you have any comments or any questions pop them in the comments section below make sure you click like and you click subscribe thank you very much for your time if you find yourself in the United Kingdom please come and see me for a glass a class or a bottle I've been Jimmy Smith ciao for now goodbye