It was a very sunny, very warm and very dry day when winemaker Tim Bourne said that vintage 2025 is looking strong – but was quick to add that “we are never safe until the fruit is in the winery.”
The Escarpment Vineyard winemaker remains circumspect after the past five years. These years have been a roller coaster of vintage variation from the exceptional 2020 and the small but concentrated vintage of 2021 followed by the rainy 2022 and 2023 years (the latter blighted by Cyclone Gabrielle) and the very good 2024.
Bourne is one of many hoping for a great vintage but he is careful about making early predictions, even on the eve of harvest on a balmy summer’s day in late February.
He is not alone in hoping for a great quality vintage with cautious optimism.
“We were off to a fast start with a very warm spring, which meant we had rapid initial growth in the vineyard and excellent fruit set. We had a late frost that was particularly devastating but localised to small pockets down Te Muna Road,” said Bourne, who sources the vast majority of his grapes from Te Muna Valley, nine kilometres east of Martinborough village.
“It was certainly one of the bleakest Christmas periods we have had in a long time, with lots of rain and unseasonally cool temperatures and a lot of nervous vignerons. Fortunately, this finally broke at the end of January and the sun returned, with nice warm days and dry weather. This has been the case for the last month or so, which has left us sitting in a strong position.”
Palliser Estate winemaker Guy McMaster has a similar tale.
“Everything was a bit tenuous over Christmas and early January. With rain and cooler weather, we wondered whether summer would ever arrive. However, this wonderful spell of weather through February has got everything back on track and fingers crossed it continues so we can back up the cracking 2024 harvest with another in 2025,” saids McMaster.
The harvest is likely to begin in late March at Luna Estate, which is relatively typical for picking dates, says Luna Estate head winemaker Joel Watson.
“After a cool beginning, summer showed up in late January and through February with a remarkable warm, dry, five week stretch,” says Watson, who predicts “A very good sized, high quality crop is on the cards.”
The chairperson of the Wairarapa Wine Region, Wilco Lam, is more optimistic: the “harvest is looking amazing.”
“Despite the cooler weather and much needed rain during Christmas and New Year, we are aiming for an early March start of harvest,” says Lam, who is the chief winemaker and a partner at Oraterra Wines.
“Both quality and quantity are exciting, I think the 2025 vintage wines will be fresh and complex”
