Vineyards reverting from organic back to conventional practices
Andy Brew: https://www.thepress.co.nz/nz-news/360890595/vineyards-reverting-organic-back-conventional-practices
décembre 4, 2025
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Two of Marlborough’s biggest wineries have converted huge swathes of vineyards from organic to back to conventional farming.
Indevin has reverted about 100 hectares of its 130ha of organic vineyards back to non-organic, while Vinarchy, which owns Brancott Estate, has converted about 80ha of its 150ha back to conventional farming ‒ a practice that employs external resources such as synthetic pesticides, fertilisers and pumping in extra water.
Bart Arnst, a Marlborough winemaker and founding member of Organic Winegrowers New Zealand, said Indevin, which bought Villa Maria Estate in 2021, and Vinarchy, which bought Pernod Ricard in April 2025, had inherited the organic vineyards, but growing grapes organically didn’t fit the companies’ economic blueprint.
“It very much depends on your business model,” he said.
“If your business model, like some of these bigger companies, is based around high-volume and quantity then organics is not for you.
“If your business model is about supplying a cheaper product offshore then you might have some tonnage-per-hectare expectations which are just not achievable with organics, and that’s particularly so with Marlborough sauvignon blanc.”
Arnst said that by switching back to conventional farming practices, wineries were able to get higher crop yields while reducing operational costs in tough economic times.
High-cropping referred to vines producing a high number of grape bunches or high yields of grapes per unit area, increasing the quantity of grapes harvested but potentially negatively affecting wine quality.
“It’s generally accepted in most situations that organics are more expensive to grow than conventional,” Arnst said.
“Organic practitioners are focused on quality rather than quantity, so you’re not trying to stimulate growth with synthetic fertilisers etc, and your property is giving you growth that it’s capable of doing naturally.
“If their business model is basically providing cheap Marlborough sauvignon blanc to the supermarkets of England, then organics just won’t fit.”
Structural constraints, higher certification costs, and uncertain recognition in export markets were also contributing to the drop in organics.
In 2024, New Zealand’s wine exports dropped both by value (12.2%) and volume (13%), with Marlborough affected more than most regions, as the region produced about 75% of New Zealand’s wine exports.
Braden Crosby, the Bragato Research Institute’s knowledge transfer and engagement lead, said there would always be vineyards “that come in and out of organic production” depending on their business models and global markets.
“Under the current scenarios, if you take an existing vineyard and put it into the organic system, there will be a decrease in yields.
“If your business model is for that [higher-cropping], then it would make sense to take that out of that [organic] system.”
But organic growing offered plenty of benefits to winegrowers, as well as the wider environment. Faster ripening produced lower sugar and higher quality wines, and the plants were more resistant to pests and diseases, Crosby said.
Organic grapegrowers used natural products such as sulphur or seaweed-based sprays to combat disease. With conventional methods, the vines could build up resistance to synthetic fungicides.
Arnst said high-crop farming had also caused a glut of Marlborough sauvignon blanc on the market, and combined with a global drop in demand, meant the practice was unsustainable, both economically and environmentally.
“There’s a bit of an oversupply issue at the moment and a lot of these companies have now gone to these growers and said ‘we don’t want the volume we’ve had in the past’, to try to reduce the intake into the wineries,” he said.
“Everywhere I go there are vineyards that are obviously not going to get harvested this year. There’s a lot of people putting their vineyards to sleep for a couple of years or they’re deciding it’s time to pull it out and re-evaluate.
“I’ve never seen it like this, and I’ve been here since the mid-90s ‒ there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to have no homes for their grapes essentially.”