e-news: December 2009

With grafting season over and summer holidays fast approaching, the time seemed ripe for an e-newsletter covering recent Riversun events and milestones. This has been a very tough year for the wine industry – nurseries included – but we’ve found more than a few causes for celebration.

Wishing you the very best for the holiday season and a brighter year in 2010.

Bell Vineyard celebrates Albariño planting

Planting the first Albariño vine in New Zealand at Doug and
Delwyn Bell’s vineyard in Gisborne:
From left to right are Geoff Thorpe, Ruby Andrew, Delwyn and Doug Bell,
and Andrew Hendry from Coopers Creek.

Albariño, the light, perfumed and refreshing white wine variety from Spain, made its inaugural appearance in a New Zealand vineyard in late November, when Doug and Delwyn Bell received delivery of the first grafted vines from Riversun Nursery.

Grown in the maritime northern regions of Spain and Portugal (where it is known as Alvarinho), the variety is a welcome addition to the “aromatic whites” portfolio of winemakers in the New World – and highly anticipated by Riversun clients on the waiting list.  

Doug and Delwyn signed up for Albariño vines way back in 2002, well before the vines arrived from Spain and went through quarantine, which meant they were at the very top of the list.

Based in Gisborne, the Bells are specialty suppliers of fruit to Coopers Creek Winery, already recognized as an adventurous producer of stylish, alternative, varietal wines. On hand to celebrate the occasion with the Bells were Andrew Hendry, owner of Coopers Creek Winery, and Wayne Morrow, viticulturist, as well as Geoff Thorpe, managing director of Riversun.

“I believe these are the first ‘true’ Albariño vines to be planted in all of Australasia, so this is a big day for us, for Coopers Creek and for Gisborne,” said Doug Bell. “When we decided to explore some of the world’s rare and exotic varieties, Albariño was the one that ticked all the boxes. And here it is – now our hard work begins.”

Once the vines have established themselves, the fruit will find its way into the Coopers Creek “SV” range of premium wines produced from selected vineyards.

Unfortunately for those of you who remain on the waiting list for this variety, only a small amount of wood was available for grafting this year – we’ll keep you posted.

(See our backgrounder on Albariño for more information about the variety.)

New imports out of quarantine

As if the Albariño planting at Bell vineyard wasn’t enough reason to celebrate, earlier this year, we quietly toasted the release of the third round of Riversun grapevine accessions from post-entry quarantine.

This group includes some hotly anticipated new varieties, as well as a few star clones of the classics. Since the vines’ release, they have undergone rapid propagation and were recently planted out at our source block.

What’s new?

Albariño/Alvarinho

• Three more clones of this intriguing new variety – in this case, three selections from Plansel, a grapevine nursery in Portugal.

Chardonnay ENTAV-INRA® clone 1066

• Completing the Corton-Charlemagne triumvirate which provides the clonal backbone to the Grand Crus of this distinctive region of Burgundy. Riversun already has ENTAV-INRA® clones 548 and 809 (a Chardonnay clone bearing a distinctive Muscat aroma).

Fiano

• A strongly flavoured Italian variety grown in Campania, where it is made into Fiano di Avellino. Another new variety that is already generating strong interest.

Malvasia Bianca

• An Italian white that makes spectacular dry wines in Friuli.

Primitivo

• Southern Italian red wine grape, grown in Apulia, used in the deeply coloured spicy wines of that region.

Vermentino

• Another fresh-flavoured Italian white that’s done very well in Australia.

Zinfandel

• The sweetheart of Californian red wine, and a new selection of this variety for New Zealand.

Tasting imports in the glass

Gisborne growers and winemakers turned out in force at Riversun’s
microvin tasting held at Bushmere Estate.

One of the most enjoyable activities on our calendar is when we visit you on your home turf. This spring, we did just that, as we made our way around the country hosting a new series of micro-vin tastings.

These tastings are designed to enable growers and winemakers to evaluate the fruit characteristics of our imported varieties and clones. They are small-batch wines, made in 20-litre lots in stainless steel tanks, with very little intervention in terms of winemaking (no oak, no blending, not much of anything really).

The 2009 micro-vins were made by Pernod-Ricard’s Gisborne winemaking team, under the supervision of Regional Winemaker Steve Voysey. The fruit was harvested from vines at our source block in Gisborne. This is not ideal for winemaking purposes: our primary goal is to grow wood for grafting (rather than grapes), and as a result vines are grown to a 3-metre-high canopy. For each of the past three years, however, the fruit has seemed too precious to waste, and the trials add another layer of data to the assessments we make for viticultural performance.

This year’s micro-vins focused on white varieties, and, if you weren’t able to attend, you can still read a summary of the offerings and evaluations in the current issue of New Zealand Winegrower.

© Riversun Nursery Ltd 2009