The South Australian Pruning Championships will return to the Clare Valley on July 29, after a move to the Barossa in 2015. This will be the fifth year the event has run since it was revived by the Clare Region Winegrape Growers Association (CRWGA), following a break of nearly 30 years. This year, the competition will be followed by a viticultural workshop. The keynote speaker is Californian viticulturist Glenn McGourty, who is passionate about organic and biodynamic viticulture as “regenerative agricultural” approaches.

RIVERLAND irrigator ¬Anthony Fulwood will not be pulling up stumps yet. The Waikerie citrus and wine grape grower said although the 36 per cent water allocation announced last week was low, the percentage irrigators received at the end of the year was more important. “It’s going to be business as usual for me and I’ll sit tight and see what happens,” Fulwood said.

The Australian Wine Industry Technical Conference (AWITC) & Trade Exhibition (AWITE), is returning to Adelaide this July, six years since it was last held in the city. Gary Fitz-Roy, Fair Events managing director, said the conference is building an impressive portfolio this year with the industry’s best set to showcase the latest wine technology, equipment and services.

Australian Vintage, maker of wines such as McGuigan, Tempus Two and Nepenthe, is the latest corporate victim of Britain’s decision to exit the European Union, after it issued a profit warning this afternoon blaming ‘Brexit’ for a $1 million foreign exchange loss for the company. Australian Vintage — whose McGuigan Black Label is Australia’s No 1-selling bottled red wine and the fourth-biggest wine brand by volume and value in Britain — said before the Brexit vote took place that the company was on track to record net profit growth of 10 to 15 per cent for fiscal 2016.

Wine lovers will be paying more for Chablis in the next couple of years, after bad weather has already cut the 2016 harvest by as much as 50%, according to one expert. There will be a major Chablis shortfall following what will be one of the Chardonnay-producing region’s most reduced harvests in living memory, according to Louis Moreau, owner of the highly regarded eponymous domaine and vice president of the Chablis Commission at the Burgundy wine bureau (BIVB).

CHAMP Private Equity’s Accolade Wines has met with potential Asian buyers, as the company progresses plans to test market appetite for the business. Street Talk can reveal Accolade’s management team met with a handful of parties that had previously expressed interest, as part of a trip to Asia for the annual wine industry talkfest VinExpo in late May.

A Far North boutique vineyard is toasting an impressive medal haul at an international wine competition. Okahu Estate was awarded gold and silver medals at the competition in San Francisco – one of the most influential wine competitions in the world. Okahu 2014 estate grown Syrah was awarded a gold medal and Okahu 2014 estate grown Chambourcin was awarded silver. Okahu Estate was established in 1984 on a seven acre block near Kaitaia on the road to Ahipara – 90 Mile Beach.

Giesen Wines is expanding its head office, with the appointment of new chief financial officer Peter Dobbs. Peter was previously managing director at Optica Lfe Accessories Ltd. He was also a partner in national jewellery retailer Silvermoon from 2010-2014. His earlier roles include finance and property general manager at HW Richardson Group and 10 years as an executive director at Otago Trust Group, owned by the late Howard Paterson.

Treasury Wine Estates has taken another step towards meeting its promise to investors of hitting pre-tax margins in the high teens by 2020, by unshackling itself from more non-core, cheap commercial wine in the US. The world’s largest publicly listed winemaker, which owns brands such as Penfolds, Wolf Blass, Lindemans and Beringer, also moved to calm any shareholder fears its British arm could be disrupted by the vote to leave the European Union, saying it did not expect any material change to its fiscal 2017 forecasts.

A new $3 million project to reduce the impact of controlled burns and wildfires near wine regions was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. The three-and-a-half-year project Mitigation of Climate Change Impacts on the National Wine Industry by Reduction in Losses from Controlled Burns and Wildfires and Improvement in Public Land Management is a collaborative project between Wine Australia and the Australian Wine Research Institute, Agriculture Victoria and LaTrobe University.