Harvest Hawke’s Bay wine festival

One-stop location for Harvest Hawke’s Bay wine festival

Hawke’s Bay’s iconic annual Harvest Hawke’s Bay Wine Festival, now into its 15th year, is to benefit from a format makeover to ensure it continues to appeal to locals and is better positioned to attract wine lovers from other regions.

For 2010, the event will be centralised to one location, yet to be named, and the date will change from the traditional Waitangi Weekend timing to the last weekend in January, making next year’s festival on Saturday 30 January.

Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers Inc., the regional organisation that hosts the event, has conducted a comprehensive review of the event, surveyed participating wineries, and met with sponsors for feedback. “Research shows the festival has reached a plateau in its current format and needs refreshing,” says Lyn Bevin, HBWG Executive Officer.

“With 36 wineries participating in 2009, the event is continually growing. Feedback shows the majority of those wineries that participate would now prefer the event to be centralised, and others have said they’d support the event regardless of the format,” Ms Bevin said. “Our strategic review of the festival indicates that centralisation is the best future direction for Harvest Hawke’s Bay as a long-term and key regional event.

“Wineries will still stage their own individual activities on the Sunday of the weekend so there will still be the huge variety of entertainment available that weekend,” Ms Bevin said. “It’s a ‘best of both worlds’ solution.”

Another benefit cited by Ms Bevin is that a number of wineries that do not have cellar door facilities will now be able to participate in the event making the event more inclusive for wineries and more expansive for wine lovers.

The change of date has been prompted by the past clashes with the Wellington Rugby Sevens and potential future clashes with the Mission Concert. It also coincides with Auckland’s Anniversary weekend, and wine festival organisers will be promoting to both Wellington and Auckland audiences for 2010.

The change in date and format has the support of Eastern Institute of Technology, the event’s naming rights sponsor of six years, with Brenda Chapman, EIT marketing manager commenting that the shape of Harvest Hawke’s Bay belonged to the winemakers. “We support their collective decisions,” she said.

“The change from a decentralised Harvest Hawke’s Bay to a centralised event, will mean that difficulties we have had moving people around the wineries will disappear. This provides one large event, with the wineries able to continue with their self-drive winery-based events on Sunday,” Ms Chapman said.

Harvest Hawke’s Bay organisers are currently working on venue considerations, costs and a promotional strategy and aim to present these details to Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers members and sponsors by the end of July.

ENDS

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