Facility adds sparkle to Hawke's Bay wines

Bubbles have been brought to Bay wines with a new charmat facility at the Wineworks' bottling plant in Hastings.
The charmat style of sparkling wine production, favoured by Italian, Spanish and German winemakers, was where the bubble-producing secondary fermentation happened in pressurised vessels, as opposed to the traditional French champagne method where it happened in the bottle.
Six new 25,000-litre pressure tanks, refrigeration and a new bottling plant have been installed, increasing Wineworks' capacity to 240,000 bottles a day.
Hawke's Bay Winegrowers Association chairman Nicholas Buck said it was "a great development" for Hawke's Bay wineries.
"It's another exciting development and will broaden the base of the industry," he said.
Wineworks owner, Tim Nowell-Usticke said it was a "pretty big bet" to build the new facility, the first one to be built of this size in 10 years, but he was confident wineries would take advantage of the opportunity the new plant presented.
"Charmat brings a high-quality product within reach of smaller wineries," he said.
"The New Zealand wine industry has had two or three booms. First came the sauvignon blanc boom, which has been the making of the New Zealand industry as a whole. The next big thing was reputed to be pinot noir which was very successful in parts.
"We at Wineworks put our minds to what is next for the New Zealand wine industry.
"I believe New Zealand's premium position in the wine world, of being able to sell the attributes of selling brand New Zealand, fit in really well with high-quality luxury products like sparkling wine."