A French grape harvester is increasing the quality and profitability of Hawke's Bay wineries.
The Pellenc Selectiv Process harvester delivers nothing but grapes to wineries, meaning fewer hand pickers will be needed.
Myron Bird, sales engineer for the company's New Zealand agent, Hydralada, said Pellenc had gone back to the drawing board.
"They set
about a process to pick the perfect grape for the wineries" he said.
"A lot of undesirable material won't blow off with fans.
"Pellenc scratched their heads and came up with the roller-bed system that rejects the leaf stem and grape stalk."
He said as well as the increased grape quality, the savings in labour and freight were significant.
"Because the machines deliver just grapes, there is a lot less volume, meaning it becomes much cheaper when grapes are transported from vineyards to wineries."
Villa Maria have bought five of the harvesters.
Phil Holden, Villa Maria's Gimblett Gravels senior vineyards manager, said the quality of grape delivered was impressive.
"The quality of the thing is why it has taken off. The whole aim is to keep the green flavours out of the wine."
Holden said the harvester was just one of the implements they fitted to their Pellenc tractor, including a four-row sprayer
"It was important that we just couldn't park this up for a big part of the year," he said.
Sacred Hill senior winemaker Tony Bish said sophisticated destemming and destalking made a big difference to his wine.
"It takes out the green-flavoured material from the grape like petioles and rachis," he said. "You don't want that in your ferment.
"With reds, we ferment the whole berry, if there is any green in there you extract undesirable flavours."
He said some wineries in Marlborough had set up production lines without the usual destemming process because the harvester now did it in the field.
"This selective harvester offers a viable alternative to hand picking for super premium fruit - it is a pretty smart machine.
"We selected the harvester for our super premium grapes and we wouldn't use anything else."
It was no accident they had used one to do the harvesting.
"We had seen it in Marlborough and found a contractor who had one in Hawke's Bay."
Mr Holden said, ultimately, nothing could replace picking by hand.
"You get whole bunches undisturbed at the winery. But, unless you are making reserve wine, you can't justify hand picking."
And that view has made Mr Bird's job of selling the Pellenc system much easier.
"Everyone who is involved with this machine is very excited."
Pellenc is pronounced plank, not plonk.
