The WISE (Wine Industry Sales Education) Academy is a Napa organisation that specialises in wine industry direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales training. The academy will be launched in New Zealand on 25 November in the Central Otago wine region with an inaugural 3 day Cellar Door Professional course, followed by a DTC Metric Intensive course the following week, both in Cromwell. WISE is led and chaired by Lesley Berglund, the preeminent DTC expert in the US wine industry.

Ultraviolet radiation often gets a bad press, but it seems it might be responsible for putting the “zing” into New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc. Lincoln University expert Professor Brian Jordan, says UV rays are harmful to humans because they can cause cancer, but they also enhance the quality of many crops, including grapes. He has been experimenting with grapes by exposing them to more and less light to analyse the response.

Australian wine is impressing at the 2015 Hong Kong International Wine & Spirit Competition (HKIWSC) with Hunter Valley Winery Tempus Two and Eden Valley’s McGuigan Wines both picking up awards. Tempus Two has taken away two top honours at the event, winning the trophy for Best Australian Wine and Best Semillon Trophy for the 2003 Tempus Two Copper Zenith Semillon marking the third year in a row the winery has been at the top of the competition.

When Melissa Brown and husband Mike converted their family’s McLaren Vale vineyard to biodynamic practices in 2008, the patriarch said they’d “lost their marbles”. Being certified organic is yet to prove profitable – yet it’s set off a chain of events that’s turning Gemtree into a global contender in the wine business. “Melissa’s a viticulturist and our ‘resident greenie’, so we were eating all this organic food at home but then coming to work and nuking the vineyards with fertilisers, herbicides and pesticide.”

An ambitious plan to move an entire vineyard from South Australia’s Barossa Valley to the Adelaide Hills has proven successful. A hectare of dormant Shiraz vines was moved from Williamstown to Kersbrook about two months ago. The brains behind the ambitious move was Kersbrook Hill Wines owner Paul Clark, who said the risk paid off. “It’s worked really well and the ones that are shooting are shooting really vigorously. “So far so good,” he said.

A feeling of optimism prevails in many California wine grape growing regions, despite a challenging year that saw a significant reduction in yields from those of the past three years. As a result of the smaller crop size, wineries find they are better able to work through large carryovers from previous years that have been sitting in their tanks for several months. Most experts say wineries have worked through the entire 2012 carryover and a part of the carryover from 2013.

The appointment of its first general manager is the next stage in the evolution of the Central Otago Winegrowers Association, its president says. ”We’ve evolved to the point where we’re moving away from being reliant on volunteers,” James Dicey said. While the dedicated volunteers had done a sterling job over the years, the association was now at the stage where it needed the help of a manager to retain and enhance the strength of the brand, he said.

A record number of yachties will be ferrying bottles of Sauvignon Blanc across the Cook Strait on Friday as part of an annual wine race. The WineWorks Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc Yacht Race, which started in 2001, pairs Marlborough wineries with yachts in a race to deliver new season Sauvignon Blanc to the capital. The race will this year will see 39 yachts take part along with 29 wineries. Last year, the race was won by Stanley Estates Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, which was carried by skipper Brent Dewhurst aboard Gucci.

For the past 10 years, The Great Australian Red competition has looked to elevate wines produced by blending Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon to the lofty heights routinely afforded blends fashioned in the manner of Bordeaux. “The Shiraz Cabernet blend is an Australian institution,” explains the mission statement published on the group’s website. “This country championed it, refined it and still does it better than anyone else on the planet.

The meticulous record books of Australia’s wine makers detail the minutiae of every vintage — and they’re beginning to show the disturbing effects of climate change. Heat spells, intense frosts and early vintages are becoming more frequent, but viticulturists are rising to the challenge of adaptation. In the wineries north east of Adelaide owned by Temple Bruer Wines, winemaker David Bruer said he noticed the change over the last decade.