I\u2019ve been asking our group for their impressions of the New Zealand wine industry and several asked me what I thought. It\u2019s a good thing that we visited a couple of boutique wineries last week on our day of arrival. Since then everything has been big, bigger, biggest. We have seen the 2,000 case production small wineries and the over two million case production wineries. Delegat\u2019s was one of the larger wineries we visited. This state of the art facility makes Oyster Bay wines, in the millions.<\/p>\n
Our group marveled at the high use of technology to control the presses, transferring juice and wine from one location to another and making the blends. Their winery building is impressive and follows the \u201cform follows function\u201d theory. During the tour, winemaker Michael Ivicivich explained that there is a reason for everything that we will see. What one doesn\u2019t see are hoses on the floor. Wine from tanks can be transferred to oher tanks via a simple process. There are a lot of buttons to push on computer screens. I asked if there was ever an audible \u201cOops\u201d and Michael explained that there are safe guards built into the program such as a message that asks, \u201cDo you really want to do this?\u201d Mistakes are hard to make.<\/p>\n
New Zealand offers a wide range of wines produced by small wineries as well as the large ones. Sauvignon Blanc remains the largest produced wine and is exported to many countries. We saw a good use of technology and state-of-the-art winemaking techniqes. However old-world winemaking is also practiced by some of the smaller producers. New Zealand is a lovely country to visit. The wineries visited were very welcoming. Consider traveling to the country and visit the wine country.<\/p>\n
Cheers,
\nTerry<\/p>\n