Marlborough Vineyards

Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, the Delegat family established a strong viticultural presence in the Marlborough wine region of New Zealand's South Island. Our investment in and establishment of prime vineyard sites in Marlborough continues today. Marlborough regularly gets more sunshine hours than any other region in New Zealand. It has a long, slow ripening season that extends into April, with cooler nights helping to preserve acidity. Our Oyster Bay Marlborough vineyards are planted in the prime central Wairau Valley on shallow stony soils over deep layers of free draining river shingle - ideal for reducing vine vigour and encouraging concentrated fruit flavours.

Malborough is New Zealand's largest and most renowned wine region. It has a long growing season, spanning from October through to harvest in April. Over a growing season, Marlborough gets about the same amount of heat as Burgundy and less than Bordeaux. But the average daily temperature is lower than either as the sunny ripening period extends into April.

A key feature of Marlborough is its cool nights, temperatures between day and night (diurnal range) typically vary by 10 degrees. This combination of a long growing season and cool nights helps preserve the natural acidity in the grapes and accumulates and aroma and flavour constituents in the berries. The result is intense, often aromatic wines with trade mark unpinning acidity.

Marlborough is regularly described as being in the 'Roaring Forties', a reference to its latitudinal position and also the strong westerly winds that buffer this latitude in spring and early summer. These sometimes warm and dry winds can help boost grape ripening and can also decrease the vigour of the vine, resulting in smaller leaves in the bunch zone and more concentrated fruit.

Human intervention in the vineyards is essential during a growing season. Marlborough is one of the driest wine regions in New Zealand, with March being the driest month. With an annual rainfall of just 740mm spread evenly throughout the year, controlled irrigation and monitoring systems are essential. Due to the free draining nature and low water holding capacity of the soils, irrigation is scheduled little and often.

The soils of Marlborough are diverse and predominate as the main influence over grape quality other than climate. Marlborough's soils come from the continual process of mountain building and erosion. Geologically New Zealand is very young and very active. The Southern Alps are pushed up at 1m every 100 years and are eroded at the same rate. The Wairau Valley carries the rocks and sediments from these mountains and soils have been deposited by glaciation, floods and wind. Where the soils are based on old river beds and channels they vary within an individual vineyard block.