Winning a category award in the East Coast Ballance Farm Environment Awards was a nice little pat on the back for viticulturist Steve Wheeler and his employer, Mission Estate Winery. Steve manages 33ha of vines for Mission Estate, one of New Zealand’s oldest and most well-known wine producers. Based near Napier and owned by Marist Holdings Ltd, the winery prides itself on “delivering excellent wine to consumers in a way that enables the natural environment to thrive”.

Around the globe, New Zealand wine lovers might be hoarding bottles with the news that the country’s 2015 grape harvest is 27 per cent lower than last year’s. One of the worst hit is Sauvignon Blanc from the famed southern region of Marlborough, according to the industry’s national organisation, New Zealand Wine. Wine is big business – it is New Zealand’s sixth-largest export. The shortage is prompting some wineries to advertise for tonnes of grapes to meet quotas.

Since its inception in 1996, the NSW Wine Awards has been highlighting the best local wines and helping NSW winemakers to perfect and promote their wines. To celebrate the show’s 20th consecutive year two new trophies will be presented; the best dry white wine of show and the best dry red wine of show. These two wines will join the winners of the ‘Best Sparkling Wine’ and ‘Best Sweet Wine’ trophies, to find out who will claim the ultimate title of ‘2015 NSW Wine of the Year’.

Archibald is the nickname given to Archie Fragos by his parents Michael and Marianne. Of Greek heritage, the name delighted all of the relatives as they expected Archie must have been inspired by Achilles (?????e??), the Greek hero from the Trojan War. “No,” laughs Marianne, “Archie was named after Archibald, a character from Monarch of the Glen, a daggy English TV series.” In February 2015, Michael and Marianne received the terrible news that Archie had been diagnosed with Desmoplastic Small-Round-Cell Tumor. The shock had barely sunk in when the Fragos family galvanized behind Archie and went about seeking the best treatment possible.

Big, loud, cheap and too many critters: Australian wine has an image problem. Not in Australia – we love the stuff here. The problem is in the United States, where Aussie wine has some perception issues. Australia is seen, quite unfairly, as a bit daggy: a producer of hefty, high-alcohol, lower-priced wines and not the lighter styles finding favour today. “A lot of people are quite surprised when I tell them how hard it’s been,” Andreas Clark, chief executive of industry body Wine Australia, says.

Wine Grape Growers Australia (WGGA) are urging growers to have their say on priority issues in the industry and how industry representative structures can be re-organised to represent these issues. These views will be fed into the wine industry forum at the end of August – Grape and Wine 2015. Issues to be covered include profitability, the effectiveness of industry bodies and the importance of a unified voice.

Kersbrook winery in the Adelaide Hills has come up with a creative response to recovering from the devastation of fires that swept through the Hills earlier this year. The vineyard was so badly burnt and the grapes suffered such severe smoke damage that the winery has not produced a 2015 vintage. While some winemakers would call it quits, others, like Kersbrook winery have persevered.

A New Zealand Pinot Noir producer is soon to release its first vintage from the other side of the world: Burgundy’s Gevrey-Chambertin. While it’s not uncommon for winemakers from the Côte d’Or to start Pinot Noir projects in emerging areas in the New World, it’s highly unusual for the situation to reverse. However, New Zealand’s Domaine Thomson, formerly called Surveyor Thomson, is planning to unveil its inaugural French Pinot from the 2013 harvest later this year, having made wine in Central Otago since 2003.

Cloudy Bay Vineyards has been given the go ahead from the Overseas Investment Office to buy freehold land for Sauvignon Blanc planting. The Marlborough wine company planned to purchase 11.7 hectares at Bedford Road, near Renwick, from vendors Dean and Sarah Cross, and Dene Ellwood, trustees of the Cross Trust. Cloudy Bay Vineyards will use the land to secure supply of grapes to increase production and sales of premium-quality Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough.

It’s “decision time” for Australian wineries, according to a wine industry lawyer visiting the North East. Australian wine industry law firm, Finlaysons, wine partner Will Taylor said many wine businesses around the country were on the market, either formally or informally. “Our perception at the moment is that a lot of people in the wine industry are reaching a critical time,” he said. “In some cases this reflects many years of financial stress coming home to roost.”