BACK FROM PNG

Sandra and I had a ball on our cruise around Paupa New Guinea for the last two weeks. That is her on the right in the photo with one of the local women who greeted us on one of the small islands we visited who is all dressed up in her "Sunday finest outfit" it seems. No travel problems--unless you count all my sweating gallons each day from the oppressive humidity. (95-95 they all said for both temps and humidity) Hopefully we won't get delayed malaria as we sure did see clouds of mozzies flying around us. I stayed lathered in repellant--hope that stuiff worked!!!!
PNG calls itself "the land time forgot" and man is that true. We were on a small Au. boat with 40 Ozzies who were all seasoned third world travelers. We went to small islands that had not had white skinned visitors in over a year. The little tottlers would all scream and hide when they saw us as the thought we were aliens I guess. Anyway, I could talk about PNG for many blogs but this site is supposed to be about Hawks Nest and our wine. SOOOOOOOO--

While away from Matakana spring has sprung and our grapes vines have shot up to form early leafy canopy that show a field of green now. We will get little buds of grapes soon and so far all is good with the early growth. We will be returning to Tennessee on Nov 24th adn thus will miss the next two months of the growing season here. If you live in Nashvegas, look out for coming wine events soon for new 06 Hawks Nest Orchard Block Red- The wine has arrived and cleared US customs in Nashville. (yes, stuff from overseas can go through US customs there locally). It needs to settle in the Lipman Brothers warehouse for a couple of weeks and then it will be on retail shelves. Start asking for it now at your local store and buy up some of the last bit of the remaining 05 wine as we will be out soon.

OUr 07 wine is tasting good in the barrel as well so this new year looks to be fine as well. But, that story if for the future. The data on the NZ 07 harves is finished and just over 200,000 tons of grapes were picked. That is not much wine in the great scheme of big wine growers. NZ sells under 1% or world wine sales. Attached below is a nice summary of NZ wine this year by or grower's group president--Robin Ransom. Check it out.

LOCAL MATTERS CONTRIBUTION – JULY 2007

Wine and the New Zealand Economy

The nationwide grape harvest in 2007 was an all time record 205,000 tonnes, 11% higher than the previous biggest vintage, 2006, and almost four times the size of ten years earlier, 1997. This indicates both that the New Zealand industry is very young, and that it has been very successful in its short life. It is difficult to think of another industry in recent times which has gone from very modest beginnings to such burgeoning success so quickly.

The phenomenal growth has however had its problems and anxieties. At the millennium the Wine Institute of NZ was concerned about how all of this wine was going to be sold. They were anxious to convey the message that new vineyard plantings should slow down. There was no way New Zealanders could drink it all, and they could see no possibility of an export industry developing in such a short time to soak up the ever-increasing surplus.

How wrong they were! In 2000 New Zealand exported around 19 million litres of wine, for $169m, but by 2006 this had grown to 58 million litres and $512m. A more than three-fold increase in just six years, and we have been able to maintain premium prices with it. Back in 2000 New Zealand wine fetched a higher average price per bottle in the UK than wine from any other country, and that remains the case today. The demand for our wine is such that even with the record 2007 harvest, there are likely to be some supply difficulties in the short term.

To put the importance of wine to the New Zealand economy into context, wine sales are now second only in value to sheepmeats among NZ’s primary product exports to the UK, and that country takes less than one third of all our wine exports.

Robin Ransom

President, Matakana Winegrowers Inc.

robin@ransomwines.co.nz

More soon

DR JIm