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by LIZ LEWIS

Clean. Green. Extreme. That’s how New Zealand is often summed up by those who have visited. With it’s breathtaking scenery, adrenalin pumping activities, and easy access to both sea and mountains, New Zealand is the ideal travel destination. It is also home to a thriving wine making industry that is always on the look out for seasonal workers.

So if you’re in the mood for a working vacation in one of the world’s most scenic locations, then head for New Zealand.

New Zealand’s clean-green image is maintained by the wine industry through it’s sustainable winegrowing initiative. A framework of industry standards was developed over 10 years ago to ensure that winegrowers focus on improving and maintaining the environmental integrity and ‘clean-green’ image of their wine production. Most wineries and vineyards around New Zealand now have accredited vineyard status which allows them to display the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand emblem. A list of these accredited wineries and vineyards can be found at the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand website.

There are hundreds of vineyards and wineries in New Zealand and most are on the lookout for seasonal workers to prune the wines and help with the harvests. But remember, the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere, with harvesting occurring in between February and April and pruning from June to August. However, workers are also needed from November to March for general tidy up and vineyard maintenance.

Because New Zealand’s ten wine regions are spread from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island, it’s possible, with careful planning, to follow the ‘harvest trail’ and pick up vineyard jobs in different parts of the country. For example, chardonnay grapes are harvested in the warmer and more humid northern regions (Northland, Auckland, and Gisborne) in late February and early March whereas further south (Central Otago), these grapes are often not harvested until mid to late April.

To help decide when and where to go, your first port of call should be the Horticulture New Zealand website to look at the Seasonal Work Brochure. This brochure provides a comprehensive calendar that highlights what seasonal work is available where each month of the year. It also has a list of contacts that can help with your search for work and accommodation.

Other useful websites include Seasonal Work NZ who maintain a Harvest Trail list where you can type in the location and month to get current job openings, Wine Jobs Online a database of viticultural jobs ranging from winemaking to harvesting, Seasonal Jobs in New Zealand, and Backpackerboard.co.nz which maintains a list of seasonal jobs, as well as providing everything you need to know about transport and accommodation.

But not all resources are online. Once you are in the country, a great way of finding seasonal work is by checking out noticeboards. Target your wine region and once you’re there, head for the local New Zealand Employment Service and eyeball the noticeboard. At harvest time, there should be plenty of jobs to choose from. Noticeboards can also be found at supermarkets, shopping centers, and backpacker hostels.

Other effective ways of finding seasonal work include looking for signs on the local road, reading local newspapers, and knocking on doors. Many of the areas will also have a Seasonal Work Co-ordinator – just ask at the local tourist information center.

The Working Holiday Visa is a necessity for anyone considering seasonal work in New Zealand. No one will employ you without it. The visa is available to those between the ages 18 and 30 and lets you live and work in New Zealand for up to 12 months. The specific requirements vary, depending on your citizenship. But the New Zealand Immigration Department website has an easy to follow page dedicated to the Working Holiday Scheme outlining these requirements. Simply click on your country and all is revealed, including how to apply. It’s also important to note that you will need a New Zealand income tax number in order to be employed.

So what are you waiting for?

by JOHN K SOSNOWY from Wine Peeps

Having spent over thirty years of my adult life intimately involved in agriculture, I understand from hands-on experience that the vineyard should not be a chemical plant. Good soil should not be over-fertilized, and vines should not be bombarded with fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides. I also believe that the smaller the carbon footprint the better all the way through the process until the consumer gets the bottle of wine home to drink.

By the same token, I see a disturbing trend where the Green Movement is used primarily as a marketing tool, implying falsely, I believe, that organic or biodynamically-grown grapes are inherently capable of producing better wine. I’ve seen no evidence that is true. To clear up some of the confusion and misunderstanding, let’s define the basic terms and then talk about protecting the environment in a way that also gives the producer the best chance of success over the long term.

1. Organic Viticulture—It eliminates the use of synthetic products that create toxins in an attempt to build soil, protect the environment, and protect the health of the vineyard employees.
2. Biodynamic Viticulture—It utilizes the same basic principles as organic farming, but then incorporates religious-like practices such as the alignment of planets, phases of the moon, and special preparations such as crushed quartz crystals.
3. Sustainable Viticulture—It has the same goals as organic or biodynamic viticulture with one big difference: It incorporates the “scientific method” into the formula.

As I visit wineries all over the world, tour their vineyards, and talk to winemakers, I have come to several conclusions. First of all, I believe that organic farming is the ideal in the mind of most serious winemakers. However, there are years when circumstances might make that impractical. For example, if a fungus that does not respond to an organic treatment threatens your vineyard, what do you do? Or what if prudent pest management necessitates a one-time rifle shot approach that would not qualify the operation as certified organic? Second, if you are really trying to do the best job, there are times when you might need to honestly analyze the tradeoffs. For example, if you mulch-under your vines instead of using herbicides, how much more diesel fuel do you use? And third, touting yourself as certified organic or biodynamic can tie your hands when the unusual occurs and may end up costing a winemaker more than he has gained, in dollars, reputation, and possibly even the loss of a healthy vineyard.

Therefore, I have concluded that an honest use of sustainable viticultural practices is probably the best of the three, utilizing the least amount of intervention possible while managing in a way that sustains the long-term health of the vineyards as well as the economic viability of the operation. Combined with softer winemaking practices, sustainable viticulture gives us the best shot at producing great wine over the long haul.

What do you think?

(originally posted at Wine Peeps – reposted with permission of author)

by PHILIP WHITE from drinkster

Bacchus only knows just how far The Wine Supply Chain Council  is willing to go to ensure wine drinkers make less of a mess of the global environment, but they’re having another talkfest in Melbourne next week.

The shocking condition of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin, with the cruel extant fact of the death of its estuary, is partly the work of Australian wine drinkers determinedly demanding cheap squirt; partly the work of the thirsty who buy from the humungous booze mongers of Britain and the USA.

It is certainly partly the work of some of the winemakers of Clare and the Barossa, who built their own private pipelines to import salt water from the Murray to guarantee sufficient irrigation supplies to maintain their manufactory of industrial quality wine for export.

Such water inevitably increases the salinity of the ground to which it is applied.

The WSCC was devised to address such issues, but tends to approach the problem from the “must have” point of view, as in “these markets exist, they must have our wine; ergo we must work out how to get it there”.

The meeting follows one held in South Africa last year and will set the cooperative research agenda for the next 3-5 years to benefit wine producers.

“Experts from around the world will talk about how to ensure consumers receive the best wines possible” the WSCC says.

“The meeting on January 13-16 includes 25 industry leaders, academics and researchers. Australian representatives at the workshop include researchers from CSIRO and Monash University and senior managers from some of Australia’s wine companies including Yalumba and Orlando Wines.”

(Orlando is part of Pernod-Ricard. It is not Australian.)

CSIRO mathematical and information sciences research leader, Dr Simon Dunstall, said one of the major issues for discussion will be how to reduce the environmental impacts of the wine and grape juice industry’s transport task.

“Transport is a significant consideration in Australia, particularly the carbon footprint involved in moving wine over long distances,” he said.

Consumers are quickly becoming directly concerned with such issues, and some wineries are already taking advantage of this.

I have, for example the first bottles from Zilzie’s Bulloak Carbon Neutral wine brand on my tasting bench now. From irrigated Murray Basin vineyards, these retail at $10 in Adelaide, a full day’s drive from Zilzie.

London is a lot further.

Surely the best way of easing the carbon footprint is to grow grapes closer to the markets which want the wine. If Texas can produce wines as fine as Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin and perhaps Coonawarra (see articles below), then why shouldn’t Texas be producing such fruit for the US market?

A hint of the future lies in Fosters new three-year contract with the Indian wine company, Indage Vinters, (formerly Champagne Indage), to package Fosters’ wine in Britain.

This wine will be shipped from Australia, South America and South Africa in tank, and packaged in the marketplace which drinks it. This reduces the footprint of such ridiculous mechanisms as taking bottles from Italy to Australia, filling them up, then taking them to Britain for sale.

While the UK drinks over 110 million cases a year, and drinking more and more of it at home, the feverish pressure there to supply ever-cheaper booze is forcing such Australia producers to chop costs.

Similar pressure in India will see more of that country’s booze made there.

Since Stephen Hickinbotham worked a consultant to the Indian government in the early ’eighties, it has been apparent that India can easily produce sufficient wine to supply its fledgeling market.

Given the water supplies, the same thing can be said of China.

One wonders just how the WSCC committee can flex its direction to suit such massive collisions of the booze world’s tectonic plates.

Topics the Council has discussed include: tracking temperature changes of wine as it is shipped around the world; improving order management processes; and, exploring the finding that 99% of wine currently made in the United States came from states that voted Democrat(!).

Dunstall’s team uses a branch of mathematics called ‘operations research’ to simulate and optimise supply chains in a range of industries. It recently developed a “grape maturity forecasting system” which is being used in Australia and New Zealand to estimate when grapes are ready to harvest.

This was not much use in the harvest of 2008: we shall soon see how well it works this vintage, which is upon us.

(originally posted on drinkster – reposted with permission)