Growers can replant

Press, 25 January 1986, Page 3

Growers can replant

PA Wellington Grapegrowers being paid $6175 a hectare by the Government to pull vines can replant in other grape varieties if they wish, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. The Ministry’s assistant director for economics, Mr John Askwith, has confirmed that there was nothing to stop growers replanting. One Canterbury grower, St Helena Estate near Christchurch, intends to use the subsidy to rip out 4ha of “temperamental” gewurztraminer vines. The Mundy family will replant with more sought after Chardonnay, rhine

riesling and pinot noir varieties. “We were going to pull out the gewurztraminer vines anyway,” the St Helena winemaker, Mr Mark Rattray said. The $24,700 from the Government would prove useful, but would scarcely pay for posts and rails for the new vines, he said. St Helena Estate is the oldest commercial winemaker in Christchurch and had its first vintage in 1981. It has 28ha of vines, and produces barely enough wine to meet the demands of. its local market. Mr John Buck, of Te Mata vineyard in Hawkes’

Bay, the area with most subsidy applicants (37 per cent), said he had heard of several growers in Hawke’s Bay with similar intentions. The Temperance Alliance has said the wine grape glut is the wine industry’s fault and that taxpayers’ money should not have been used to bail out the growers. The alliance’s secretary, Mr Tom Quayle, said yesterday that the situation whereby growers could receive a Government subsidy for each hectare of vines ripped up and then replant in a different variety was scandalous.