Editor's Letter

 

The Biggest and Best Stories and Lots of Vineyard Coverage

December 2017
 
by Jim Gordon
 
 

The job of our editorial team is primarily to sift through all that’s said, done and learned in the North American wine industry each year. We use our best judgment and experience as journalists to decide what news, trends and research might be most important to all of you, and to publish them in the magazine accurately and in a timely way. That’s each month in the print edition and each business day on winesandvines.com.

An extra challenge comes once per year, when we’re preparing the December issue. Then we distill down all the news stories, industry metrics reporting and research results we’ve published during the previous 11 months to a list of 16 items packaged together here as the “Biggest and Best” of the year. You’ll see the results of that distillation in terms of wine sales, industry trends and most-read stories of the year.

The devastating Northern California firestorm was a no-brainer as “biggest” story of the year, but the “best” story of 2017 was Cabernet Sauvignon. The king of red wine grapes went from strength to strength this year and showed no signs of slowing down.

It wasn’t a difficult choice to focus the cover on Cabernet Sauvignon, and the photo shot by Bob McClenahan for Napa Valley Vintners worked out perfectly to reflect not only the “Biggest and Best of 2017” report but also to represent a wealth of other grapegrowing articles in the issue.

In the first of four pieces about vineyards, regular columnist Andy Starr reports from Pendleton, Ore., on the Future Farm Expo, where new technology from vineyard robots to remote digital harvesting equipment to the latest aerial drone models were on display. Vineyard drones are also the subject of a practical and witty article by Jim Meyers, a New York state extension viticulturist from Cornell University. He gives great examples of what a drone can do to make a grower’s life easier.

Another contributor from Cornell is Tim Martinson, who writes a persuasive Viewpoint piece about grapevine genetics. Specifically, he addresses how grapevine genetics for the world’s most popular wine types were frozen in place hundreds of years ago in Europe, so the vines have not developed inherent defenses against the many grapevine pests and diseases that have emerged in modern times,

Martinson argues that for a number of reasons including climate change, “The narrow genetic base of our current cultivars needs to be broadened.” As fascinating as his analysis is, the chart that accompanies it is a story in itself, showing how incestuous the family of Vitis vinifera really is.

In the final vineyard-oriented article, R. Paul Schreiner from the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in Corvallis, Ore., details his team’s findings on the subject of “Probing Nutrient Needs of Pinot Noir Vines.” The article shows the results of their research, including advice on when to apply the nutrients based on the time of year that the vines take them up.

That wraps up the highlights of this issue and marks the end of another year of growth and prosperity in the wine industry. From all of us at Wines & Vines, we hope you had plenty of “biggest and best” moments in 2017, and we will be back to serve you in 2018.

 
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