This month Yealands Chief Winemaker, Natalie Christensen, featured in the Marlborough WinePress Magazine to share her thoughts on what 2025 may hold for the wine industry.

"Heading into vintage 2025, front of mind for me is quality, innovation and showcasing diversity within the region. It is hugely important as a region that we focus on making quality wines and build on the diversity of varieties and styles we produce in Marlborough. We need to continue to develop our subregional story and educate the world on the incredible wines that we make here.

Innovation is also key for the coming year. We are seen as a progressive, young and vibrant country. We’re lucky we don’t need to follow the old world wine ways. Single serve formats, bagnums, cans, bag in box seem to be on the rise. What else can we do that really speaks to our sustainability focus that also has great quality cues?

We look poised to potentially have a larger harvest which won’t be great if the region is sitting on large quantities of 2024 wine. Collectively we need to be sensible with what we, as companies and as a region, can sell. With rising operating costs, there isn’t much fat in the system but selling off wine cheaply is not in anyone’s best interests.

One major positive is that despite a global decline of wine sales/consumption, NZ wine is still in growth. Bigger red wines are driving most of the decline but people are drinking fresh, bright, white wines that we as Marlborough producers own in spades. If fresh, white crisp wine is what the consumer wants, we can definitely supply that!

Also, brand New Zealand is still very strong. When I’m offshore in market I’m amazed by the love that people have for our country – it most definitely helps sell our wine and win the hearts of the world.

On a recent trip to the UK I noted people are still drinking and there is very much a demand for Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. The UK duty easement that levied a standard charge on alcohol by volume (ABV) will end in February, to be replaced with a sliding scale of charges. With the long-term average of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc sitting around 12.5% we’re not in a bad position compared to other wine producing countries. We’ve already seen an increase in requests for slightly lower ABV wines from the UK, so it will be interesting to see how this develops.

I’m looking forward to the continuing collaboration between Marlborough producers in 2025 to make sure we stay in the game. Collectively we need to celebrate and share our region with the world and educate the globe on the diverse wines we create here and embrace the bloody good camaraderie we have within our region."

Cheers!

Natalie Christensen, Chief Winemaker