Making high quality but affordable Pinot noir (PN) wine is challenging in most terroirs and New Zealand (NZ)’s situation is no exception. To increase the probability of making highly typical PN wines, producers choose to grow grapes in cool climates on lower fertility soils while adopting labour intensive practices. Stringent yield targets and higher input costs necessarily mean that PN wine cost is high, and profitability lower, in affordable varietal wine ranges.To understand if higher-yielding vines produce wines of lower quality we have undertaken an extensive study of PN in NZ. Since 2018, we established a network of twelve trial sites in three NZ regions to find individual vines that produced acceptable commercial yields (above 2.0 kg per metre of row) and wines of composition comparable to “Icon” labels. Approximately 20 % of 660 grape lots (N = 135) were selected within a narrow juice Total Soluble Solids (TSS) range of 22.0 ± 1.0 °Brix and made into single-vine wines under controlled conditions.Multiple Factor Analysis of the vine, berry, juice and wine parameters from three vintages found grape Berry Weight to be the most effective clustering variable. As the Berry Weight category decreased, there was a systematic increase in the probability of higher berry red colour and total phenolics with a parallel increase in wine phenolics and decreased juice amino acids. The influence of berry weight on wine composition would appear stronger than the individual effects of Vintage, Region, Vineyard or vine Yield. Our observations support the hypothesis that it is possible to produce PN wines that fall within an “Icon” benchmark composition range at yields above 2.5 kg per vine, provided that the Leaf Area:Fruit Weight ratio is above 11 cm2 per g, mean berry weight is below 1.2 g and juice TSS is above 22 °Brix.

Despite the important roles of lipids in winemaking, changes in lipids during grape ripening are largely unknown for New Zealand (NZ) varieties. Therefore, we aimed to determine the fatty acid profiles and total lipid content in two of NZ’s major grape varieties. Using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, absolute quantification of 45 fatty acids was determined in Sauvignon blanc (SB) and Pinot noir (PN) grapes harvested at two different stages of ripeness. Lipid concentrations were as high as 0.4 g/g in seeds of both varieties, while pulp contained the least amount. Many unsaturated fatty acids were present, particularly in grape seeds, while skin contained relatively higher amounts of saturated fatty acids that increased throughout ripening. For both varieties, a significant increase in lipid concentration was observed in grapes harvested at the later stage of ripeness, indicating an association between lipids and grape maturity, and providing a novel insight about the use of total lipids as another parameter of grape ripeness. A variety-specific trend in the development and extraction of grape lipids was found from the analysis of the must and ethanolic extracts. Lipid extraction increased linearly with the ethanol concentration and with the extended pomace contact time. More lipids were extracted from the SB pomace to the must than PN within 144 h, suggesting a must matrix effect on lipid extraction. The knowledge generated here is relevant to both industry and academia and can be used to develop lipid diversification strategies to produce different wine styles.