Matt Patterson-Green, head winemaker at Jackson Estate, said: “Vintage in New Zealand is usually quite a sensible thing, warm to hot summer months with a couple of rain events at opportune times leading into a cooling down in March-April, with hand picking Pinot, Chardonnay, and Rose in March, followed by Sauvignon Blanc, and our Bordeaux reds in April-May.
“2022 however truly tested not only the vineyard and winery teams but also the harvesting infrastructure and our winery’s ability to process fruit with significant rain events constantly coming through.
“One of our challenges was trying to predict just how long it was going to stay dry and how long we had to harvest before the next heavy rain event, but at the same time not overload the winery when we did pick.
“Whilst we did experience a lot of rain sprinkled through the vintage, we are lucky to have vines of some age and these have always been able to handle rain that, in other younger vineyards, caused serious issues due to fruit splitting, dilution and disease.
“Our Chardonnay sites also benefited from the older vines and the experience of our vineyard team’s, pleasingly we picked more than usual due to growth in our markets.
“The components for the Rose’ are again looking really good. Following on from the previous years we used a type of yeast that uses two separate strains in it and the resulting tanks are quite amazing.
“Our Sauvignon Blanc harvest was a mixed bag with all the fruit from the Waihopai harvested with comfort in dry conditions but as we went further into vintage and moved further back down into the central valley it became a game of cat and mouse between fine and wet spells.
“In Hawkes Bay our Merlot, Cabernet, Malbec was a similar story, with fruit looking ready and in good order, but the rolling rain events meant we made the decision to pick some blocks early. This proved to be a very smart move avoiding disease, and dilution.
“Despite being challenging it has turned out to be a very solid harvest, and we look forward to seeing some beautifully elegant wines as a result,” Patterson-Green concluded.
