Sustainable Winegrowing

At Ager Sectus we are passionate about producing the highest quality New Zealand wine while protecting our environment. By carefully balancing all elements we create healthy vines, flourishing fruit and ultimately fine wine. We are proud to be an accredited member of Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand and all our vineyards are operated in accordance with this scheme's guidelines.

We actively promote the sustainable management of our natural and physical resources and are committed to preserving the life-supporting capacity of the air, water, soil and ecosystems within our vineyards.

We are committed to helping safeguard the future of New Zealand's clean green land. We do this in many ways, starting with encouraging healthy soil by stimulating natural beneficial biological activity. We maintain an active organic ground cover in the inter-row to reduce possible erosion and to increase soil organic matter.

By monitoring and regulating soil water in the vine's rhizosphere we effectively utilise the natural water resource, while managing vine vigour to optimise grape quality. We also regularly monitor soil and vine nutrition levels to optimise the use of any nutrients that may be required.

Overall, we aim to have a good biodiversity of the vineyards and the surrounding environment to stimulate the natural ecosystem and to provide sites for natural predators. This in turn eliminates our reliance on artificial controls. In addition, where possible, we aim to use multi-function vineyard machinery to minimise the number of vehicle passes required. This reduces fuel usage and soil compaction.

Our pest disease and disorder management approach also helps safeguard our environment. We use a minimalist spray programme that adheres to NZ Winegrowers Export Winegrape Spray Schedule requirements. All our spray operators are "Growsafe" qualified.

We aim to have nil residues in our wines, avoid any insecticides by encouraging the establishment and maintenance of natural insect predator populations and ensure all new vines are planted with virus tested, high health material on phylloxera resistant rootstock to eliminate the need for some vine diseases and phylloxera control.

Ultimately our goal is to manage the vines in such a way as to reduce the need for artificial inputs and controls. A well balanced, vine with a good level of fruit exposure is naturally more resistant to pest and diseases.

The end result? Healthy vines, flourishing fruit, fine wine.