Introducing Greystone Wines and Holdaway vineyard

Greystone Wines is a large family-owned and operated vineyard in Marlborough producing high quality Sauvignon blanc. The Holdaway vineyard a smaller vertically integrated vineyard in the Waipara hills producing a diversity of organic wines.

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More on Greystone Wines and the Holdaway vineyard

Greystone Wines: Integrating farm, vineyard and winery

Greystone Wines is a vertically integrated farm, vineyard and winery in Waipara, North Canterbury. The vineyard was established in 2004 and has grown over time. Their organic transition began in 2015 and created some production and erosion challenges. This helped sparked interest in how regenerative principles and practices could support the growing system.

Quick Facts:

• Area: 185ha (50ha under vines)

• Soils: Limestone hills and clay flats

• Grapes: Savingnon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Riesling, Gewurtztraminer, Syrah, Pinotage

• Row spacing: 2.0m, 2.5m & 3.0m

• Irrigation: 100% (recently planted blocks are subsurface irrigated)

• Staff: 4 FTE in vineyard plus casuals/contractors (25 FTE across whole business)

• Marketing: 100% processed, bottled and sold under Greystone and Muddy Water labels.

Holdaway vineyard: Sap testing and foliar nutrition

The Holdaway family are now fifth generation farmers in the Lower Wairau valley in Marlborough (5 mins from Blenheim township). The land, farmed by the Holdaways since 1864, has been through a succession of sheep & beef, arable, dairy and orchard land uses. The first vines were planted in 1980 and the land is now 100% viticulture. A long term focus on sustainable production has ramped up in the last five years as the family have rapidly adapted regenerative principles and practices into their growing system.

Quick Facts:

• Area: 182ha

• Soils: Silt loam (with water table 2-3m below ground)

• Grapes: Sauvignon Blanc (97%), Pinot Noir (3%)

• Row spacing: 3m rows with 1.8-2.4m between vines

• Irrigation: 25% (mainly for managing salinity)

• Staff: 7 FTE plus contract labour

• Marketing: 20% sold under own lables Holdaway Estate, Lowlands, Pretty Paddock and Mt Impey labels. 60% sold as bulk wine, 20% sold as grapes.

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Production data

Benchmarking can be a useful way to identify opportunities and we hope this gives other growers some hard numbers to compare and contrast. There was little regional benchmarking data available for Waipara (Greystone) so we have included mostly national averages, which may not be valuable considering the huge variation of growing climates and varieties across the country.

*Note: The Greystone (sheep) scenario is a projection of tractor passes, diesel usage and emissions once they achieve year-round sheep integration.

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