Hawke’s Bay vintage in spotlight post-cyclone

Hawke’s Bay Wine says that a clearer picture is emerging of the effects Cyclone Gabrielle has had on the region’s vineyards as efforts begin to harvest salvageable fruit in the coming weeks.

The impact of flood damage on the vineyards and wineries of Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne had been difficult to ascertain since last week’s weather event as the rescue and recovery operation on the North Island’s East Coast continues.

Brent Linn of Hawke’s Bay Wine told RNZ National’s Morning Report that while there has been significant damage to some vineyards, it is highly localised and others have escaped relatively unscathed.

“That doesn’t diminish the impact on those individual businesses, but talking from a regional perspective we have approximately 15% of the vineyard estates seriously compromised in that harvestable fruit is not going to be a feature for this season,” said Linn.

However, he says the flipside of that is that there is still a significant amount of fruit to get into tanks. “Our pressing focus now is to ensure that the road blocks to that fruit making it into vintage ’23 are removed quickly. Our harvest has started and the next 60 days are the critical period.”

Brent Linn says the well-known areas of the Gimblett Gravels and Bridge Pa have been largely unaffected. “The damage has been concentrated around the river terraces adjoining our major rivers where either protection works have failed or the rivers are over-topped and silt deposition has been the consequence.”

He says it appears that there is sufficient resource in terms of staffing and harvesting equipment, but the challenge will be getting access to the vineyard blocks.

Large tracts of land are covered in silt, slip damage is making access difficult and power and internet connectivity is still being restored to many places.

Cabinet this week approved $50 million to provide immediate support to businesses and the primary sector affected by the weather events. This is in addition to the initial $4 million made available to the primary sector through MPI.

Hawkes Bay Wine says that NZ Winegrowers is contacting members, seeking to understand the extent of damage sustained so it can pass the information on to government agencies.

New Zealand Winegrowers has a flood response page for members and the MPI has also issued flood response guidance for the primary sector .