‘Sometimes organic does more harm than good’, says NZ winemaker
It’s been 30 years since New Zealand launched its sustainable winegrowing certification programme, now one of the most effective in the world with a 98% uptake. But is the secret to its success the flexibility built into its blueprint? Sarah Neish investigates.
Speaking to the drinks business during the Pinot Noir 2025 conference held earlier this year in Christchurch, New Zealand, Wild Irishman owner Alan Brady mentioned an exchange programme that takes place between viticulture students from Burgundy and Central Otago each year.
According to Brady, this collision of wine cultures always brings about a mutual astonishment. The New Zealanders are “in awe” of the centuries of expertise found in this east-central corner of France, while the Burgundians are “blown away” by the freedom afforded to kiwi winemakers, and the lack of rules and regulations ringfencing their winemaking community.
The latter’s freedom, or perhaps its flexibility, is the calling card of New Zealand wine, and is especially noticeable in its approach to sustainability.
This year marks 30 years since the creation of the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) certification programme, and according to its 2025 report, 98% of all vineyards in New Zealand are now certified under the system. It’s telling that despite this sky-high figure, only 16% of New Zealand wineries carry official organic certification. That observation is not meant as a criticism. Being truly ‘sustainable’ is about doing what’s best for a specific site, which does not mean blindly driving down the road of organics, merrily ignoring hazards as you go.
Crystal clear
Central Otago producer Te Kano is a crystal clear example of this. “Both our Bannockburn vineyards are farmed organically,” explains winemaker Dave Sutton. “But we took our Jerome vineyard in Bannockburn out of the organic programme in 2023 as the fruit was becoming unfit.” According to Sutton, there was simply not enough organic matter in the soil to hold nutrition.
“The biggest issue we faced was that we couldn’t get cover crops to take, there was nothing to build on,” he says. “The vines went into decline with very patchy, intermittent growth and short shoots, and a lot of sunburn on the fruit, which gave cooked and bitter tannins to the wines. We thought ‘we might end up killing this vineyard if we continue down the organic route’.”
Because of the above, Te Kano made the decision to halt the organic certification process in this particular vineyard. “It’s about doing the right thing for the land and for the grapes, which might not fall into any one philosophy,” says Sutton. “It’s not a case of one size fits all.”
“Incredibly marginal”
Few in the region can afford to get it wrong. Te Kano’s four vineyards are nestled “in a bowl” within the Southern Alps mountain range in Central Otago, a corner of New Zealand’s South Island known for its fine Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Accounting for just 5% of the New Zealand wine industry’s total plantings, Central Otago is “still incredibly marginal,” says Sutton. “This will never be a big commercial area.” He adds that it’s “not uncommon to have entire vineyards wiped out by frost”.
Risks therefore must be calculated, and equally as important as having the courage to try something new is knowing when to stop.
“You’re never going to outperform your site,” Sutton says, adding that “it would have been more destructive to carry on [with organics].” And the land in Central Otago had already been through enough.
Spiritual home
When Te Kano first acquired its 102ha Northburn vineyard in 2015 “we found our spiritual home”, co-owner Rhonda Lloyd tells db. “But it had lost its way. The land had been gold-mined, then sheep-farmed and people had taken, taken, taken from it. We wanted to give back to the land, not take more.”
The gold rush hit Central Otago in the late 1800s leading to at least 10 years of mining during the ‘boom time’, and Lloyd explains that the mining here was carried out hydraulically, using water to “wash away the hillsides” rather than digging. “They would sluice out one section at a time, then lay down channels of enormous sluice stones the size of armchairs in a herringbone pattern to build dams up into the hills.”
From soil maps and archaeological surveys, Lloyd was able to ascertain that “we’ve got a couple of blocks that were heavily mined.”
After the gold boom came prolific sheep farming in the 1900s when “wool was king”. According to Lloyd, this too had a “very destructive input on the land”. One sheep farm in Northburn is thought to have stretched to an enormous 10,000ha.
All this inevitably took a toll on the soil.
“Now there is life”
Since making the call to pause organics in its Jerome vineyard, Te Kano’s plants have recovered almost beyond recognition.
“Instead of mowing now, we crimp. We allow cover crop to grow then fold it over and snap the stem,” says Sutton. “Every successive year of crimping adds an extra layer of nutrients to the soil. The vineyard looked like the surface of the moon when we started, now there’s life.”
Continuing he says: “we feel like we’ve proved our commitment to sustainability and to organics. But that burden of certification wasn’t for us. Central Otago is such a diverse bit of landscape that where some might benefit from it, others won’t.”
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Compared to sustainability initiatives in other nations, New Zealand’s wine rules “are more pragmatic,” says Sutton. By not forcing vintners into one lane “it puts the onus on you as a producer to decide what your Rubicon is in terms of quality.”
Flexible framework
That’s not to say that SWNZ is slack on accountability. In order to be SWNZ certified, members must complete annual submissions and undergo regular on-site audits conducted by an independent company. Vineyard owners must also submit an annual spray diary, which documents all agrichemical applications made during that season.
A new development for the 2025-2026 period is that “biosecurity planning” has become mandatory.” Why? Because according to SWNZ, it’s the first line of defence. “By ensuring pests and diseases don’t make it into our vineyards, we reduce the need for chemicals in the first place,” the document reads.
The second line of defence are “cultural control methods such as pruning techniques and open canopies”.
Transparency
As ever, transparency at all times and at all levels is key. “We maintain a national database of agrichemical use for all vineyards, giving us amongst the highest level of data transparency of any wine industry in the world,” says SWNZ. This data is packaged up and sent to growers in personalised reports, “empowering them to visualise and identify improvement opportunities.”
There’s a famous phrase in the wellbeing community: “Get yourself a routine that’s baggy enough to live in”. It refers to having a daily framework that one can stick to for the majority of the time, but which allows you to bend or detour if needed. In many ways New Zealand wine’s sustainability blueprint does exactly this. By making soil health the priority, SWNZ allows producers to try aspects of regenerative, organic or biodynamic farming, and either continue or discard techniques depending on how their site responds.
You can’t argue with the numbers – it’s working. In the last 12 months, 46% of New Zealand vineyards have reduced their use of herbicides. A further 67% have applied soil nutrients, and 25% have trialled new inter-row plantings to increase diversity, according to SWNZ’s 2025 report.
The Landwalker
New Zealand wine’s open-minded approach also extends to work done in the winery, with experimentation encouraged and supported. This is perfectly encapsulated by Te Kano’s imaginative new wine series The Landwalker, which launched in June 2025. Included in the collection is a multi-vineyard “super blend” of Chardonnay and the equivalent for Pinot Noir. Using grapes taken from Te Kano’s sites across Bannockburn (“rippling, undulating sands”), Northburn (“the driest place in New Zealand” and Waitaki (one of the only spots with “pure limestone” in the soils), Lloyd says the wines “represent all of our vineyards at the highest level”.
There was also a practical reason for producing this premium estate blend.
“We are trying to develop our export market,” says Lloyd. “ It’s Dave’s job to pull the toys out of the toy box, but not all sites are possible to harvest every year because of the frost. These are already low-volume wines, about 250 cases, so it’s hard to say ‘yes I can definitely give you a wine from this or that vineyard year after year”.
The new Landwalker “superblend” makes it possible to be more consistent with availability. “It will be easier to make a Landwalker every year compared with our single-vineyard wines. And it means we’ll be able to fill holes in our distribution,” Lloyd adds.
Ambitious project
“This is a big, ambitious project and Rhonda and Dave have pumped a lot of money into it because they really believe that Central Otago is the place to be for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir,” Natalie Walsh, head of sales and marketing for Te Kano, tells db.
The Te Kano Landwalker Chardonnay 2023 comprises 25% of grapes from Bannockburn, 8% of grapes from Waitaki and 68% from Northburn.
For the Landwalker Pinot Noir 2023 it’s 42% Bannockburn, 14% Waitaki and 44% Northburn.
A number of single-vineyard wines (from Bannockburn, Waitaki and Northburn) are also available as part of the ‘Land’ rather than ‘Landwalker’ series. These wines are from the earlier 2022 vintage and are available in the UK market via Davey’s Wine Merchants.
Bright future
Parts of Central Otago may have been ravaged by different commercial industries such as gold mining over the centuries. But now, for Te Kano at least, the land is illuminated by a different kind of golden glow.
Lloyd excitedly explains that shortly after purchasing the vast Northburn vineyard, she threw herself into replanting large quantities of native flora and fauna including the kōwhai tree which blossoms into bright yellow flowers.
“It was a big undertaking but very important to us. I wanted to see ribbons of yellow in the spring,” she says.
These flashes of yellow signify that health has been restored to the soils and serve as a reminder that second chances, while not always guaranteed, are certainly possible. It’s a hopeful song that SWNZ, guardians of the New Zealand wine trade, can take with it into its next 30 years.
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