As vintage 2017 is upon us, and the first clues will be coming out of the vineyards, you have until Friday 24th March [yes, you’ve only got 8 days!] to enter. Go to the form below this chart.

Clues this year: Summer hasn’t been the finest this year, wind and rain in flowering caused a pretty poor fruit set in all major regions. However, a lot of it depends on what happens this month during harvest, so get your weather forecast out… Check the chart below which shows the last 10 year’s tonnage, and consider your belief in the two year cycle of big year/small year/big year/small year, or whether you believe all the planting of the last couple of years will finally hit the presses. The long-term weather forecast is looking dodgy, with cooler temperatures predicted for Marlborough, massive rain events for the SI west Coast (there goes Nelson!), and very hot in Gisborne & Hawkes Bay. So it’s anybody’s guess.

Rules of the game: For those of you that have not played the tonnage sweepstake before, the rules are simple:

• Guess a number of tons that New Zealand will harvest this vintage. Whole number of tons.
• The number must be unique (if someone else got that tonnage first, you will be asked to select another tonnage), so first in gets the best guesses.
• Must be on the WineWorks newsletter database, or one of a select few partners.
• Closest to the NZ WineGrowers published tonnage (due out round mid-June) wins.
• There will be two prizes – a $50 note for the closest above the published tonnage, and a $50 note for the closest below the published tonnage. If you get it exactly, you get both $50 notes.

We’ll notify you where you sit in the proceedings after the entries close. Let the battle for smartest grape-guesser begin!

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