| Distell is adopting a strategy dubbed "vineyard mothballing" to cope with South Africa's current oversupply of some red wine grapes and wine - the intention is literally to put vine production on hold, until the grape glut is over, reports www.bizcommunity.com.
Producers all over the world are leaving grapes to rot in vineyards because they've either run out of tank storage space from previous vintages or they cannot afford to vinify the grapes and add to the existing wine lake.
But Distell is following a practice conceived by the Australians to keep the vines alive and at the same time reduce maintenance costs to the minimum until the supply and demand are better balanced.
Explains Ernst le Roux, who is head of all grape and wine buying for Distell: "We plan to explore a number of routes to put vine production on hold for potential implementation ahead of the 2008 harvest. In the coming growing season, we'll test the concept to see if it is viable from an economic and viticultural point of view.
"Should it prove a proposition worth pursuing, we obviously won't apply it to all red vineyards but only in those instances where the market calls for it, as the extent of oversupply varies according to varietal and quality."
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