Industry’s growing concern

Like many leading players in the Tasmanian wine industry, Woodlea Nursery's Jerry Holder came to viticulture by an indirect means. He began his working life as a forestry ranger, and at various points along the way completed courses in outdoor education and horticultural studies.

It took until 1998 for the born-again nurseryman to experience the grip of the grape. The business started by step-father Jim Nicholson had operated from its home base near Scottsdale for almost 20 years before the opportunity to propagate vineyard planting material came along. Up until then, Woodlea had been mainly in the business of reforestation, supplying young seedlings that would become woodchip logs for a burgeoning export industry.

"Then one day, someone from Pipers Brook Vineyard rolled up and asked us whether we were interested in doing a couple hundred thousand grape cuttings," Holder recalls. 

"I said we haven't done one yet, let alone a couple hundred thousand. But we'll have a go. At that stage, hot water treatment of cuttings for eliminating pests and diseases was just coming into use, and we assumed the company would tell us what was involved. 

"They didn't have any idea. No-one did. It was leading-edge technology and no-one had tried it here before. We had quite high losses that first year. Fortunately, Pipers were very understanding about it, and we were able to continue on in subsequent years."

These days, the supply of rootlings and calloused cuttings for Tasmania's embryonic wine industry represents around 25 percent of Woodlea's core business. Its list of clients reads like a who's who of the State's leading wine producers. Orders from mainland clients like Petaluma are becoming increasingly more common as the operation's expertise and its capacity to meet tight production schedules become more widely known.

Holder says viticulture offers considerable potential for his company to expand its business. It already provides jobs for a dozen full-time employees and a casual workforce of another ten to fifteen workers.

Woodlea now boasts Australian Vine Industry Association accreditation for its grapevine production – a Tasmanian first – and has quality assurance certification under the Nursery Industry Accreditation Scheme. In 2002, it won the Webster Tasmanian Growth Award for agricultural production. 

More recently, it has taken on the task of importing industry approved planting material from South Australia for the recently established Tasmanian Vine Improvement Association. The TVIA is a joint venture of the Vineyards Association of Tasmania and the State's grower-based Tasmanian Pinot Noir Group, a research body set up in 1998 to develop specialist industry knowledge of the quirky French red grape variety.

Its immediate aim is to establish source blocks for the provision of certified material to the State's 168 individual vineyards. VAT President Stuart Bryce believes the move will have distinct advantages over long-standing practices that have allowed growers to source material from vineyards elsewhere in the State.

"That material is subject to significant genetic degradation, and there's a far greater risk of viruses and diseases," Bryce says. 

Woodlea Nursery's key role in the establishment of the source blocks will:

· Improve industry access to assured quality propagation material

· Increase the availability of superior grapevine clones

· Carefully control multiplication of planting material

· Provide clear audit trails to enable tracking of vines from source block to vineyard

· Decrease the likelihood of material being diseased, not true to type, or damaged through handling procedures, thus reducing the chances of litigation against industry suppliers.

"Ultimately, growers will be planting better material in their vineyards, thus contributing to marked improvements in the quality of Tasmanian wine," Bryce notes.

First published June 2004: Tasmanian Farmer