Wine East Features
by Linda Jones McKeeWine East Features
January 2019Wine East: Michigan Winery Wins Best Riesling in the World
Sutton’s Bay, Mich.—The wine industry is learning that the cool climate regions of the northwestern part of
Michi¬gan, and specifically the Leelanau Peninsula and Old Mission Penin-sula AVAs, are superior wine producing areas.
On Oct. 19, the team at Winery at Black Star Farms in Sutton’s Bay, Mich., found out their 2017 Arcturos Dry Riesling had won the best Riesling in the World Award at the Canberra International Riesling Challenge in Australia. The wine was also recognized as the Best Dry Riesling and the Best American Riesling. In addition, the other five Rieslings entered in the competition by the winery won medals, including an elite gold for the 2016 Arcturos Winter Harvest Riesling.
Ken Helm, owner of Helm Wines in New South Wales, Aus¬tralia, started the Canberra Inter-national Riesling Challenge (CIRC) 19 years ago. CIRC is now the largest Riesling competition in the Southern Hemisphere: 567 Rieslings were entered I n this year’s competition. Entries came from 240 wineries in Australia, and from Germany, France, New Zealand, the Czech Republic and the United States.
Making Riesling at Black Star Farms
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2019Growing Corot Noir Grapevines in Missouri
Corot Noir is one of three varieties, along with Noiret and Valvin Muscat, that were introduced in 2006 by Bruce Reisch, professor of horticulture, plant breeding and genetics in the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University.5 All three have developed a following with growers east of the Rockies, and Corot Noir, a red wine grape, is now planted in vineyards from New York and Pennsylvania to Illinois, South Dakota, Missouri and Colorado.
A mid- to late-season red wine grape, Corot Noir is the result of a cross made in 1970 between Seyve Villard 18-307 and Steuben. The vines are moderately winter-hardy and moderately resistant to fungal diseases. The wine has a deep red color, cherry and berry fruit aromas, and a soft, full tannin structure.
Choosing an appropriate cultivar for a specific site and market conditions is a critical component of successful viti¬culture and can be the difference between a vineyard or winery making a profit or loss with those grapes. Data collected in other Midwestern grape production regions indicate that Corot Noir has the potential to produce a varietal wine or be used as a component in red blends in the region and specifically in Missouri. Consequently, we set out to evaluate the performance of Corot Noir under conditions in Missouri.
Selection of an appropriate training system and pruning severity are fundamental components of a successful management strategy for any grape cultivar. The training system defines the architecture of the vine’s perennial structure and impacts canopy distribution and density, sunlight capture, and photosynthetic capacity and efficiency. Training systems can also significantly impact fruit zone microclimate, thereby influencing fruitfulness, source-sink relationships within the plant and fruit composition.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2019The Phenotyping Bottleneck
Before inexpensive DNA sequencing was available, grape breeders had to rely solely on traits observed in the field (phenotypes) to decide which new seedlings produced through crosses to keep and which to discard.
For disease resistance, this meant tossing out any plants that showed powdery mildew or downy mildew infections at the seedling stage during the first year of growth. Although they kept those that didn’t show any symptoms, this method of field phenotyping didn’t help them much in determining which and how many genes were involved and whether or not the trait would sur¬vive a subsequent round of breeding intact. DNA mark¬ers and more extensive use of mapping populations have changed all that.
Since about 2000, genetics researchers have been busy linking DNA sequences (called markers) to specific locations on grape chromosomes (loci) that are associated with ob¬served traits of grapevines in the field (phenotypes). To date, they have identified markers for at least 13 loci for powdery mildew resistance and 27 for downy mildew re¬sistance (Figure 1).
Now that they have these markers, grape breeders can test seedlings for the presence of specific genes or loci and know what and how many loci for disease resistance they have in their new seedlings (see “Grape breeders no longer flying blind,” Wines & Vines, March 2018,).
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2018Pinot Gris in the Finger Lakes
This article is a companion to the report in the September 2018 issue of Wine East in Wines & Vines on growing Pinot Gris in New York’s Finger Lakes wine region. It will present winemaking techniques used by two winemakers, Phil Arras of Damiani Wine Cellars in Burdett and Peter Becraft of Anthony Road Wine Co., just across Seneca Lake in Penn Yan. Combined, the two wineries produce about 1,600 cases of Pinot Gris annually.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2018Pinot Gris in the Finger Lakes
Pinot Gris is a mysterious cultivar with many faces. A mutation of Pinot Noir, its grapes can exhibit skin color ranging from a light grayish blue to a brownish pink along with almost black or pale green, with the variations even evident on the same canes.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
August 2018Chronicler of Eastern Wine History Dies
In May 1981, Hudson Cattell and I published the first issue of Wine East magazine. Our goal was to cover news of grapes and wine in Eastern North America, which was then a very minor player on the national and international wine scene. Twenty-seven years later, we sold the magazine to Wines & Vines, and we were co-editors of the Wine East section in that publication until he retired in 2013. On June 25, Cattell passed away at his home in Lancaster, Pa., at the age of 87.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2018Viticultural Mapping by UAVs, Part 2
Attempts have been made, with limited success, to identify unique zones using remote sensing and to associate regions with variables such as vine water status, soil moisture, vine vigor, yield and berry composition.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2018Viticultural Mapping by UAVs, Part 1
Wine composition and quality are related to several vineyard variables that can be observed and managed in the field. However, vineyards are variable with respect to soil texture, moisture and depth and other variables such as organic matter, cation-exchange capacity and major and minor elements. As a result, vineyards also vary in vigor, yield, and fruit composition. Such variability within and among vineyards has been recognized for centuries and can be ascribed to a combination of soil, local climate, vine vigor, and other factors that ultimately affect wine quality. This is referred to as the terroir effect.34
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2018High-value Bordeaux-Style Blends
The Eastern U.S. wine industry has evolved dramatically in the last 30 years and that evolution was on full display at a sold-out session focused on high-end red Bordeaux-style wines during the Eastern Winery Exposition March 6-8 in Lancaster, Pa. The conference drew more than 1,100 people for sessions on viticulture, enology, sales and marketing as well as a wine industry trade show.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2018Midwest Vintners Evaluate New Varieties
In a nascent industry, the focus is constantly on what's new and improved. So not surprisingly, seminars on new grapes including Itasca and Crimson Pearl and the latest research on yeast and soil were among the best attended and most buzzed-about presentations at the recent Cold Climate Grape Conference.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2018Cold Hardiness of Grapevines
In his book on viticulture, Pierre Galet noted that the grape botanical family (Vitaceae) exists in the fossil record in the Early Cretaceous Epoch (66-145 million years ago), with examples of the genus Vitis found in the Early Eocene era 34-56 million years ago.2 Geologists tell us that this was a time of the super-continent Pangaea, whereby plate tectonics subsequently drifted into a broader array of climatic regions, which placed further selection pressures on the offspring of those species.
Nature
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2018Grape Breeders No Longer Flying Blind
Imagine you are a wheat breeder. Your overarching goal is to produce varieties that increase yield by incorporating superior genetic traits such as large heads with more seeds, short stems and disease resistance.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2018Grapevine Phenology Revisited
Reprinted from Viticulture Volume 1: Resources, 2nd Edition (2004), with permission from Winetitles Media.Grapegrowers have long recognized that bud burst does not occur on the same calendar date each year. Documentation of bud burst dates for each vineyard block should be a routine part of every grower’s annual management practices.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2018Traminette Goes Commercial
The Traminette cultivar, a cross of Joannes Seyve 23.146 and Gewürztraminer, may have been named in 1996, but its commercial roots date back more than 10 years earlier. Two commercial winemakers made an early commitment to the variety, resulting in the first commercial production of Traminette in 1995, the year before it was officially named by the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Cornell University. Today, both winemakers continue to count Traminette among their wine offerings.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2017Cool Summer Weather Slows Finger Lakes Grape Harvest
Geneva, N.Y.—What a difference a year makes. Last year Hans Walter-Peterson, viticulture specialist at Cornell Cooperative Extension, reported that the Finger Lakes region of New York had received 40% of its normal rainfall between April 1 and early September. This year, after a winter with milder temperatures than in the previous several years, grapevines had better bud survival and less trunk damage. And in April, the weather turned wet.
Gillian Trimber, viticulture community educator at the Cornell Cooperative Extension in the Finger Lakes, noted in the Sept. 8 edition of Véraison to Harvest (published by the Cornell University Cooperative Extension) that rainfall had been above the monthly average in Geneva, N.Y., every month since April. Precipitation in July was more than 4 inches above the average, and by mid-August the rainfall total for the season reached the mean rainfall amount normally seen in an entire year.
Dr. Tim Martinson, senior extension associate at Cornell University’s Department of Horticulture, told Wines & Vines that because of cooler weather in August, “we may be close to a week behind” and that he anticipates a “normal to late harvest, that possibly may go on and on.”
Trimber reported that temperatures were average for the spring and summer, and that growing degree-days tracked near to the long-term mean.
In 2016, the drought resulted in small grape berries with soluble solids that were 0.5° to 1° Brix above average and acids that were 1 to 3 grams per liter lower. This season, the frequent rains have led to a later start for véraison, larger berries and to larger crops. Some growers have told Martinson that this year’s crop is the best they have had in the past three years.
Berry composition is different this year, which according to Martinson reflects the weather conditions. As of early September, total soluble solids were about 1°-2° Brix lower than last year’s Sept. 6 sample. Titratable acidity is higher by 2 to 9 grams per liter in comparison with a year ago.
Both scientists were concerned that if the rains continued, growers would be fighting botrytis and various fruit rots. “While it’s too early to predict how the rest of September and October will come out, to me it looks like harvest season will be ‘cool and extended’ rather than ‘hot and compressed,’” Martinson said.
Trimber added: “A long, dry fall would be great, but for many growers this year, the strategy of getting the fruit off the vine sooner rather than later may be the way to go, as dry weather around here is never guaranteed.”
Finger Lakes grape prices for 2017
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2017Identifying Pestalotiopsis in the Vineyard and the Lab
Species of the fungal genus Pestalotiopsis are present on grapevines in vineyards east of the Rockies, but growers didn’t realize it was the culprit behind some of their problems with foliage blight, berry rot, stem necrosis and trunk disease.
It was not until 2012 that J.R. Urbez-Torres, a plant pathologist from Agri-Food Canada, and his associates reported the pathogen’s association with vascular symptoms of trunk diseases and isolated it from symptomatic grapevines that exhibited characteristic dieback patterns. Their article, “Characterization of Fungal Pathogens Associated with Grapevine Trunk Diseases in Arkansas and Missouri,” identified Pestalotiopsis as the second-most-prevalent fungus in vineyards in those two states.
During the past several years, Dr. Dean S. Volenberg, viticulture and winery operations extension specialist at the Grape and Wine Institute of the University of Missouri, and Lucie Morton, a well-known viticultural consultant based in Charlottesville, Va., each found inexplicable symptoms on grapevines, leaves and fruit.
Volenberg identified the fungus Pestalotiopsis in Norton berry clusters and also in a canker on a Norton vine (which caused trunk die-back) and began writing about his findings in his weekly newsletter Vinews (Viticulture Information News) in 2015. Morton first found Pestalotiopsis on Maryland grapevines in 2009, and when she intensified her investigation of the fungus in 2016, she found Volenberg’s newsletters online.
The two researchers began to work together as they realized that Pestalotiopsis was causing problems from Missouri to states on the East Coast. They displayed two posters summarizing their evidence about the identity and prevalence of Pestalotiopsis at the American Society for Enology and Viticulture-Eastern Section meeting in Charlottesville, Va., this July.
Symptoms of Pestalotiopsis
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2017Coping with High-pH Wines
Processing wine from high-pH fruit can create potential difficulties for winemakers. Not only can stability issues such as color, sulfur-dioxide management and microbial content be problematic, but high-pH wines resulting from high potassium (K or K+) concentrations add additional challenges for winemakers.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2017The Goal: Better Wine, Future Winemakers
Virginia Mitchell and I first met on a snowy evening in 2012 at a brew pub in State College, Pa. Her harvest internship employer, Mario Mazza, enologist at Mazza Wines in North East, Pa., introduced me to Mitchell in the hope that I could help develop her wine education. She was a college senior with a dream of working in the wine industry, and I was new to extension and trying to rebuild an educational wine program for Pennsylvania.
Flash forward five years: Today Mitchell is winemaker for Galer Estate Winery in Kennett Square, Pa. After graduating from Penn State University with a degree in food science, she left the United States for a harvest-hop experience at Two Hands Winery in Australia during the 2013 harvest season.
Mitchell was the first of a successful group of undergraduate students who caught the wine bug and turned their attention toward building careers in the wine industry. What started out as an extension program to teach winemakers a multitude of ways to understand common wine faults such as volatile acidity (VA) and Brettanomyces-induced aromas has turned into a catalyst for launching wine careers.
The Wine Quality Improvement (WQI) short course is offered through Penn State Extension every January. The program has evolved during the past several years and benefitted from the assistance of student volunteers. The program often stimulates those students’ interest in wine and lays the foundation for future study. They develop an awareness of the local wine industry, learn about practical and applicable professional development opportunities for students and also get a basic introduction to wine quality.
Various faculty members within Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences have supplemented these students’ education with viticultural and winemaking projects and research. In addition, each year several students compete for co-op opportunities within Pennsylvania and other wine regions across the country, sometimes opting for international harvest-hop experiences. Those harvest internships continue to educate students about new production skills.
Allie Miller, a 2015 Penn State graduate in food science, is currently working as a vintage cellar hand and laboratory assistant for Watershed Premium Wines in Margaret River, Australia. According to Miller, “The harvest-hop experience has been incredible in showing me a broad range of winemaking philosophies and techniques.”
She continues, “Harvest-hopping has given me immense networking opportunities, as I now know people from all over the world in the industry. The wine world is small! This is a global industry, and I encourage any aspiring winemaker to pursue international opportunities because they are so fulfilling in both career and life experiences.”
WQI short course, explained
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2017Long-Distance Learning
The Ontario wine industry produces approximately 80,000 tons of grapes each harvest, primarily from cultivars such as Riesling, Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc, with lesser quantities of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir. Soils are variable as a result of widespread glacial activity more than 10,000 years ago, and many vineyards are situated on several soil series that can differ widely in terms of texture, depth of solum (upper layers of the soil profile) and water-holding capacity.1 This variability in soil characteristics can impact vine vigor, yield and perhaps water status.
Significant growth in the number of small artisanal wineries has permitted production of wines that are unique to individual vineyard sites and, in some cases, unique to specific vineyard blocks. In the past 10 to 15 years, this interest has expanded to include identification of unique portions of vineyard blocks (some less than 2 or 3 acres) that might be capable of producing extremely high-value wines based on yield, vine size or water status-based quality levels. Large vineyards are variable with respect to soil texture, moisture and depth as well as organic matter, cation exchange capacity and major and minor elements. Consequently, vineyards vary spatially in vigor, yield and fruit composition.
Since 1998, research in Ontario has produced spatial maps that have quantified spatial variability in numerous vineyards with respect to soil composition, vine elemental composition, vigor, vine water status, vine winter hardiness, yield and berry composition.2-5 Moreover, these variables have been analyzed to determine relevant spatial correlations among them. Maps showing clear vine size, yield and vine water status zones have allowed production of wines from these unique zones that are both chemically and sensorially different.
Geospatial technologies include a range of information tools (such as sensing devices capable of detecting electromagnetic radiation including visible and infrared light) that permit the acquisition, analysis, management and visualization of geospatial data. This information can help growers modify farming practices so they can move toward the concept of precision agriculture. When geospatial technologies are applied to viticulture, there is a focus on understanding the spatial and temporal variability in the production of wine grapes in order to achieve ideal optimization of vineyard functionality and to apply a precision agriculture approach to both viticultural practices and winemaking.6
As a result of increased availability, geospatial technologies are now widely utilized in wine grape production regions such as California,7 Australia,8,9 New Zealand,10 Spain,11 France12-14 and Ontario, Canada,2,3,15-17 and those technologies have proven to be a practical implementation tool for making observations about vineyard vegetative growth and grape composition.18 However, remote sensing image acquisition from satellite or airplane platforms requires complicated and time-consuming data processing (such as the manual delineation of rows),19 is restricted by weather conditions20 and requires appropriate ground-truthing.21 There are other sources of imprecision, such as inter-row soil and shadow interference,20 masking of non-vine pixels (e.g., cover crop) to assess the vine-specific normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)4,15,16 and, most importantly, information may not be available in time to implement critical management decisions.22
The role of ground-based proximal sensors is to overcome many of the restrictions associated with satellite and/or airborne remote-sensing systems.23 Generally, proximal sensing systems collect multispectral images in visible wavebands (i.e., the green and red) and in the near infrared (NIR), and then calculate vegetation indices and make inferences about crop growth.24
The most commonly used index for mapping variations in canopy density is the NDVI. As previously demonstrated with airborne spectral reflectance imagery predicting vine size,25 ground-based sensor measurements indicated a consistent association between vine size (i.e., pruning weight, an indicator of vine vigor) and NDVI over time in Merlot vineyards in northern Greece.20 Ground-based sensors predicted the spatial variation of biomass production near véraison with variable precision; nevertheless, NDVI was correlated with vine size and best described by a quadratic regression.20,23 Vine productivity in terms of yield was also predicted by active canopy reflectance sensors measuring NDVI in Greek vineyards planted with Cabernet Sauvignon and Xinomavro.26
In another study, a mobile monitoring system consisting of GreenSeeker optical sensors and ultrasonic sensors assessed the canopy health and vigor status of vines in Italian vineyards.22,24 NDVI maps clearly identified differences in vegetation, whereby low vegetation vigor (low NDVI values) correlated with high incidence of grapevine downy mildew, and NDVI measurements correlated well with vine phytosanitary status.22,24 Linear correlation to stable isotope content in leaves (13C and 15N) showed that canopy reflectance detected plant stresses as a result of water shortage and limited nitrogen fertilizer uptake.23
The implementation of geospatial technologies aims to promote vineyard management based on efficiency and quality of production and to explore vineyard variability with respect to soil and vine water status, nutrient availability, plant health and disease incidence.27 However, the usefulness of proximal sensing technology (in this case, the GreenSeeker technology) and its relationship with plant physiological measurements still has to be explored. The resulting outcomes of this research may allow a wider adoption of precision viticulture with greater focus on the best exploitation of vineyard spatial variability.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2017Determining the Best Cold Hardiness Measurement
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2016Oxygen Status at Bottling
Oxygen is an important element that can alter the chemical and sensory properties of a wine through oxidation. All wineries need to understand both the impact that oxygen can have on a wine and the critical points in the winemaking process where excess oxygen poses a serious concern or threat. This article, part one in a series, describes oxygen and its effects while looking at the sources of oxygen exposure for wine during the vinification process, bottling and, finally, at the influence of the type of closure on the dissolved oxygen in wine.
The second part of this series will look at a study done by the The Ohio State University’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center to determine the dissolved oxygen status in commercial wines at bottling from 14 Ohio wineries. A total of 12 bottles of wine from the 2014 vintage were collected from each participating winery during the middle of the bottling process. Using a NomaSense oxygen analyzer, dissolved oxygen (DO) and headspace oxygen (HSO) were measured at several storage times ending at 126 days after bottling. In addition, the free and total sulfur dioxide and pH were analyzed in triplicate and compared with the DO and total package oxygen (TPO) levels over time. As will be seen in the results of the study at the end of part two, significant improvements need to be made in reducing wine oxygen levels at the bottling tank and throughout the bottling process for the participating wineries.
Sources of DO: vinification
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2016Impacts of Under-Trellis Cover Crops
Conventional vineyard floor management is shown in a vineyard in the eastern United States.In cool-climate vineyards, labor (calculated as hours per acre) employed for canopy-management operations such as shoot positioning and thinning, cluster thinning, leaf removal and hedging, is estimated to be much higher than for floor-management practices. Excluding harvest and pruning, canopy management takes approximately 32% of total labor hours compared to 11% for floor management.1 Canopy-management practices are critical for optimizing crop load, improving microclimate conditions in the fruiting zone and reducing disease pressure on the leaves and fruit.
However, we tend to forget that floor management also has profound implications for the vineyard ecosystem, productivity and, indirectly, wine quality.2 The main goals of vineyard floor management span from weed control, soil conservation, soil nutrient and water management, to biodiversity improvement.2 Among many factors, the best floor-management strategy for a given vineyard site depends on the age of the vine, growing region, soil type and production goals of the grower.3 Environmental regulations and public perceptions may also influence growers’ choices toward a specific floor-management practice.2
The conventional floor-management practice for mature vineyards in the eastern United States and other temperate regions around the world is a cover-cropped inter-row combined with a vegetation-free area directly beneath the vines to reduce competition for soil resources (i.e., water and nutrients). The under-trellis area is kept bare using herbicides and, in some cases, by soil cultivation (see photo above).
Several studies have been conducted in the eastern United States during the past 10 years to test if and which under-trellis cover crop species could be used as an environmentally responsible means to suppress the use of herbicide and as a proactive measure to reduce excessive vine growth through competition with the grapevine root system for soil resources.
Cover crops as an herbicide alternative
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
August 2016Fermenting Wine Grapes in a Bag
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2016Vintners Become Distillers
Fireproof wrapping surrounds the 150-gallon stripping still at Six Mile Creek Vineyard to contain the heat. The condenser is on the left.New York state enacted legislation in January 2013 to ease the requirements for production of distilled spirits on a small scale, or farm distillery basis. Yet prior to this legislation, a number of New York farm wineries already were licensed to produce distilled products from their grapes as part of their operations. Three such wineries from the Finger Lakes region of New York include Swedish Hill Vineyard, Rock Stream Vineyards and Six Mile Creek Vineyard.
Swedish Hill Vineyard Romulus, N.Y.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2016New Vines Are Game Changers in Alabama
These Pierce's disease-resistant vines are healthy after six years at the Chilton Research and Extension Center near Clanton, Ala.After several years of effort, the goal of planting Pierce’s disease (PD)-resistant vinifera wine grapes at White Oak Vineyards in northeast Alabama is finally a reality. When we first opened our doors in 2004, the idea was to produce a variety of wines grown on our own estate. We started out planting muscadine grapes along with several French hybrids including Chambourcin, Chardonel, Seyval Blanc, Villard Blanc and Norton, along with several trials of T.V. Munson and Florida varieties. It quickly became apparent that the Munson and Florida varieties were PD resistant but exhibited strong herbaceous, foxy characteristics that we found unpleasant and, for the most part, missed the mark when it came to consumer preference.
All the other varieties slowly died from Pierce’s disease except for Norton and Villard Blanc, and the Villard Blanc did in fact succumb after 10 years to something resembling PD. That left us with Norton, which produced a good wine, though it still has a slight herbaceous, foxy character. It was painfully clear that winegrowers in the northern tier of the southeastern United States have limited choices, as the wines from the most PD-resistant wine grapes were almost undrinkable.
There was an upside to all of the different bunch grapes that I grew at White Oak Vineyards: I learned how to manage and control the big four fungal diseases that are present and persistent in the eastern United States: powdery mildew, downy mildew, phomophsis and botrytis bunch rot, along with others. Early on, I discovered a spray guide from Michigan State University that was well written, easy to follow and, most importantly, its advice worked. While I still refer to it today, I have developed my own spray guide based on the prevailing climatic factors, time of the growing season and different sensitivities of the grapevines. This is underpinned by what I call the three T’s: timing, target and technique. It is also nice to have the right equipment.
Most grapes grown in Alabama are muscadines or hybrids that are resistant to Pierce's disease (PD) but do not have the flavor profile of wines made from vinifera grapes. New PD-resistant vinifera vines developed at the University of California, Davis, give Alabama growers new choices. Two Alabama vineyards signed up to be test sites for the PD-resistant vines from UC Davis. Both wineries planted PD-resistant vines in 2014 and again in 2016. Grapevines resistant to PD also were planted at Auburn University's Chilton Research and Extension Center (CREC) near Clanton, Ala., in 2010. Six years later, all the vines are free of PD and producing quality fruit.
Pierce’s disease influence in Alabama’s past
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2016Benefits and Costs of Early Leaf Removal
Cluster architecture plays a major role in bunch rot susceptibility. The small, overcrowded Vignoles cluster (left) is extremely susceptible, whereas the open, loose architecture of Chambourcin (right) generally renders it free of bunch rot in most years.The development of bunch rot disease is very dependent on climate, especially when there is frequent rainfall and high humidity during the ripening period—a common scenario in Pennsylvania and other parts of the eastern United States. In addition, ripening generally coincides with the onset of hurricane season, which can often deliver abundant rainfall and cloud cover throughout the eastern seaboard region at that time. Unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about the weather, but there are ways to improve rot control in spite of that.
Fungicides are an important part of bunch rot control programs. The ubiquitous fungus Botrytis cinerea is often the predominant cause of late-season bunch rots, and fruit rot control programs rely heavily on Botrytis spp.-specific fungicide applications made at bloom, pre-bunch closure, véraison and pre-harvest (Wilcox 2012). However, pesticides are not always enough to maintain commercial levels of control, and Botrytis spp.-specific fungicides generally carry a high risk of the development of resistance, making heavy reliance on them unsustainable.
Furthermore, other organisms besides Botrytis are involved in the bunch rot complex (such as sour rot bacteria and other fungi) that are not well controlled by any pesticide options. Finally, growers are increasingly conscientious about public interest in reducing chemical inputs in agriculture. Therefore, bunch rot control strategy in the eastern United States must integrate non-chemical methods to be most consistently effective.
Conditions leading to bunch rot and possible solutions
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
April 2016Spontaneous Fermentations
The authors sampled this New York Riesling for microflora.The complex microbial reactions that transform grape juice into wine involve a sequential evolution of different yeast species. Since the first (likely accidental) fermentation of grape juice, winemakers have relied on whatever yeast happened along to do the work of sugar-to-alcohol conversion. Though Dr. Hermann Müller-Thurgau first used a pure yeast culture as an inoculate in the 1890s, it wasn’t until the 1970s that commercial cultures were widely available. Winemakers turned to these products to increase predictability in fermentation speed and wine quality, especially in regions with a limited history of wine production.
More recently, the notion that wine should be terroir-driven, and that commercial yeast somehow obscures terroir effects, has prompted a resurgence of spontaneous (or “wild”) fermentations in New World wine regions. This trend seems to be driven by the perception that uninoculated fermentations produce wines of higher quality, or at least more sensory complexity. Growing consumer interest also has prompted new research into spontaneous fermentation; consequently, advances in microbial and sensory methods are shedding new light on an age-old processing method.
Microbial ecology
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2016Cold Hardiness and Dormancy
Snow drifts cover the graft union of these dormant vines during the 2014-15 winter in the Finger Lakes, N.Y.After two bitterly cold winters, almost everyone on the East Coast was pleased to have warm, almost spring-like temperatures for the 2015 holiday season and even the first few days of 2016. However, after several days of temperatures rising into the 60ºs and even 70ºs (F) in late December, grapegrowers began to get concerned. When temperatures dropped into the single digits for several nights in early January, that concern turned into anxiety.
Some growers with long memories were reminded of the “Christmas Massacre” of 1980. That year was characterized by a warm November in New York state, with more normal highs and lows in December. On Christmas Eve, the temperature rose into the mid-30ºs and then plummeted to approximately -20° F in the Finger Lakes and -24° F in the Hudson River Valley. The drop of more than 50º, through the freezing zone to such extremely cold levels in less than 24 hours, was seen as a major calamity for the grape and wine industry. As it turned out, the Christmas Massacre did cause damage, worse at some sites and for some varieties than others, but it did not completely decimate the entire grape industry in New York.
The temperature change from December to early January this year was even greater than the drop in 1980, but the major difference was that the warm temperatures were higher during the daytime, and the low temperatures were not below zero. For example, the high in Richmond, Va., on Christmas Day 2015 was 75° F; on Jan. 5 the low in Winchester, Va., was 7.5° F, a change of almost 70° F. In Ithaca, N.Y., the weather was a balmy 64° F on Christmas Eve, with a low of 35° F; by Jan. 4, the high temperature was 10° F with a low of 7° F.
Now the major question is: Had grapevines from Virginia to New York acclimated to cold temperatures?
Cold hardiness and dormancy
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2016The Two Faces of Ice Wine Production
The Sheldrake Point harvest crew picks grapes for ice wine.The Finger Lakes is New York’s largest winemaking region, and it is best known for its high-quality Rieslings—from bone-dry to lusciously sweet. Among the latter are a small (but growing) selection of ice wines made from grapes frozen on their vines, often sold at eye-opening prices.
Ice wine was originally known as Eiswein, a German wine produced early in the 19th century, and 150 years later was popularized in Canada, currently the world’s largest producer of such wine. The first commercially produced Canadian ice wines were made in 1983 by Pelee Island and Hillebrand wineries, in Ontario. Two years earlier, however, a Finger Lakes winery, Great Western Vineyards, released an ice wine made from the hybrid grape Vidal Blanc. Vidal Blanc is still a popular choice for ice wine in eastern North America, along with vinifera cultivars Riesling and Cabernet Franc.
Currently, there are two different ways to produce these intense dessert wines—the natural method of harvesting frozen grapes off the vines, and the manipulated method of cryoextraction, where grapes are picked at their normal harvest times and then frozen for use in what is more specifically known as “iced wines.” Although the production techniques are similar regardless of the cultivar and origin of the freeze, the resulting wines can be dramatically different. Both the taste and the price of the wines are determined by the freezing technique used on the grapes. All are bottled in 375ml bottles, and their prices range from $20 to $100 per bottle.
In order to sort out the particulars of making these wines, I spoke with three experienced Finger Lakes winemakers: Steve DiFrancesco, who makes wine at both Glenora Wine Cellars on Seneca Lake and Knapp Winery on Cayuga Lake; Sayre Fulkerson, owner of Fulkerson Winery (Seneca Lake); and Dave Breeden of Sheldrake Point Winery (Cayuga Lake). All three have made ice wines when weather conditions allowed, and they also have made iced wines on a more regular basis. Production of such wines are profiled here, both frozen on the vine and in the freezer.
Fulkerson Winery
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2016Impact of Crop Level and Harvest Date
More than 800 volatile compounds have been identified in wine.1 Some of these compounds can be associated with varietal characteristics or are generated during fermentation, while others are considered undesirable when they occur.2 Volatile compounds become part of the wine mix by different sources. In grape sugars, for example, fermentation releases primary metabolites ethanol and CO2, secondary metabolites esters, acids and higher alcohols, non-volatile grape-derived precursors such as monoterpenes, norisoprenoids and some thiols that are released by enzymatic action by bacteria and yeasts, and esters and diacetyl3 from the action of malolactic bacteria.
The effects of crop level reduction on berry composition are normally an increase in sugar level (Brix) and a corresponding increase of ethanol. Crop reduction may increase free and bound terpenes,4 individual monoterpenes and norisoprenoids,5 anthocyanins and phenols,6 as well as increasing volatile acids.7 Delay of harvest also is linked to an increase in Brix by a reduction in berry weight due to dehydration processes.8 In addition to Brix, phenolics9 and aroma compounds10 are either concentrated or new ones are produced. The drying of fruit also generates shrinkage, which modifies the shape and dimension of the transported products.11
This change or reduction of volatiles and polyphenols is not only due to concentration but to changes in metabolism.12 Dehydration by controlled processes can reduce ethyl acetate and acetic acid,13 and increase ethanol and acetaldehyde, among other compounds.14 Wines made from dehydrated grapes normally contain more terpenes and norisoprenoids.8,13 Grapes that undergo dehydration are susceptible to microbial spoilage, leading to Botrytis cinerea-derived increases in higher alcohols, and production of high amounts of other alcohols such as glycerol, arabitol and mannitol.15 Sour rot can reduce terpenes; for example, free geraniol, nerol and linalool concentrations declined and trans-furan linalool oxide, benzyl alcohol, 2-phenylethanol increased in one study of Riesling.16
We chose to experiment with different harvest dates to determine whether keeping a full crop with an extended harvest date might have a greater positive impact on wine volatile composition than to reduce the crop level. In many situations, our growers already have a balanced vine (i.e., <10 Ravaz Index) and don’t need to drop crop for the sake of balancing the vine. The overall objective for this project was to determine the impact of harvest date and crop control on the wine volatile composition of four grape cultivars—two whites (Riesling and Pinot Gris), and two reds (Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc)—commonly produced in the Niagara Peninsula region of Ontario, Canada.
Description of methods
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
December 2015Growing Grapes in Georgia
Lenoir is shown growing on the Watson training system in the Southern Piedmont region of Georgia.Georgia is currently home to approximately 500 acres of bunch grapes, most of which are planted in the northernmost part of the state. (Bunch grapes include vinifera, native labrusca varieties and hybrids but not Muscadine.) The Southern Blue Ridge area—located north and east of Dahlonega, Ga., and bordering on Tennessee and North Carolina—is home to the majority of Georgia’s 47 wineries. This region is predominantly planted with French vinifera varieties including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Petit Manseng, Chardonnay and Pinot Gris, as well as common French-American hybrids such as Chambourcin, Vidal Blanc and Seyval Blanc.
However, new vineyards and wineries are now being established in another region of Georgia. This area, the Southern Piedmont, includes counties west and south of Atlanta and extends from Alabama up to Virginia.
Characteristics of the Southern Piedmont region
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
December 2015New York Wine's 'Overnight' Success
Lake Erie AVA.The wine industry in New York state is recognized today as a major player in the world of wine. While the Finger Lakes American Viticultural Area (AVA) often gets much of the attention, especially for its Riesling wines, there are four other AVAs in New York: the Hudson River region, Long Island, the Niagara Escarpment and the Lake Erie region. Also known as the Chautauqua region, the Lake Erie AVA is the largest grapegrowing region east of the Rockies with more than 18,500 acres of vineyard. There are now more than 400 wineries, and the grape and wine industry—with its value-added multiplier effect—generates some $5 billion annually in economic benefits for New York state, including 25,000 full-time equivalent jobs, $1.14 billion in wages, $553 million in winery sales, $52 million in grape sales and $71.6 million in grape juice sales.
A major factor in the growth of the New York wine industry has been the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, a private, non-profit trade association that was created by legislation signed into law by then-Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in 1985. This year, consequently, is the foundation’s 30th anniversary. Funded by a combination of New York state funds and private-sector partners and contributors, the overall goal of the foundation, according to Jim Trezise, the group’s president since its inception, has been “to have the New York grape and wine industry recognized as a world leader in quality, productivity and social responsibility.” And the result of 30 years of hard work on the part of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation and many grapegrowers, winery owners, winemakers and researchers is the creation of a state-wide wine industry poised to achieve even greater success in the future.
As Phyllis Feder, owner of Clinton Vineyards in Clinton Corners, N.Y., and former chair of the board of directors of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, explained, “The New York wine industry went through some dark days, but now has emerged into the bright sunlight. The impetus for the growth of the industry is due to the foundation; they’ve been an effective presence in (the state capitol of) Albany, and made us visible as an industry. The effectiveness of the foundation is reflected in the overall interest in, and excitement about, the state’s wineries. The industry has grown tremendously, in part because of the hard work of the foundation.”
In contrast with today, the future did not look at all bright for the grape and wine industry in New York in the spring of 1985, when the bill establishing the New York Wine and Grape Foundation was passed. The previous December, one of New York’s largest wineries, the Taylor Wine Co., then owned by Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, announced that it was canceling all grape contracts for both Taylor and Gold Seal Vineyards (also owned by Seagram’s), and that grapes would be purchased on the open market the following year. Prices for all grape varieties in New York fell to $105 per ton.
These events came at the end of a decade of winery closings, vineyard abandonments, declining tourism and major corporate transitions among the large wineries in the state. In addition, cheap subsidized wines from abroad, a surge in imported wines, changing consumer tastes in wine and the reluctance of many New York grapegrowers and wineries to change what grapes they grew or wines they made also contributed to the negative climate.
The challenges facing the grape and wine industry, however, had not gone unnoticed in the early 1980s. In the May 26, 2015, edition of The Wine Press, the foundation’s weekly newsletter, Trezise stated, “Gov. Mario Cuomo had read a front-page article in The New York Times (in October of 1983) about our industry going down the tubes. He called then-commissioner of agriculture and markets Joe Gerace and said he wanted a solution on his desk by noon on Monday. Commissioner Gerace called me and said he needed a solution in Chautauqua by noon on Sunday.” Gov. Cuomo wanted to come up with legislative assistance for the struggling wine and grape industry, and that plan would ultimately lead to the creation of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation.
At that time of Gerace’s request, Trezise was president of the New York Wine Council, a small organization of grapegrowers and winery owners with a tiny office in Penn Yan, N.Y. In less than 48 hours, he wrote a white paper for an integrated solution that included:
1. New York wine in grocery stores (as well as liquor stores) as a way to immediately expand the demand for grapes;
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2015Winter Damage
Insulation of vinifera vines with soil (or mulch) by hilling up above the graft union has provided the best protection from cold damage (especially to the graft union area and those viable scion buds above the union).The sight of a normally beautiful and bountiful vineyard in any spring following a winter’s devastation is depressing, with vine after vine and row upon row showing outright death or loss of aboveground vine structures right down to the soil or snowline. Beyond the eye’s immediate aesthetic judgment, industry insiders and those with the knowledge may quickly leap to imagine numbers of dead buds, percent of cane mortality or losses in the season’s projected production volume.
That was certainly the case in spring 2014 in the upper Midwest, where frigid arctic air masses ravaged the region’s sensitive vinifera vines. As field reports trickled in, it became clear that the year’s yield would be much reduced—perhaps lost entirely. The resulting high vine mortality highlighted the necessity of either: 1) replanting and enduring the requisite three-year wait to return to full production, or 2) retraining vines with sucker shoots from the base of the trunk (from scion, above rootstock), with potentially only a single year’s crop loss.
This has happened before, and the region’s growers and winemakers have learned how to adjust and move on, absorbing the losses and the lessons while remaining generally optimistic. However, what was most unexpected and tragic this time was the repetition of that devastating experience the very next year, in spring 2015, an unprecedented event that has rightfully resulted in thoughtful evaluation of the future of fine wine production from regionally grown grapevines—a question of serious consequence.
Grapevines in nature
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2015Grรผner Veltliner Finds a Home
The first planting of Gruner Veltliner vines east of the Rockies happened in 2003 at Galen Glen Winery of Andreas, Pa.Long considered Austria’s best grape, Grüner Veltliner is settling into new territory among the vineyards of the eastern United States. Planted acreage is still small, but eastern growers—as well as a slowly increasing number of growers in the cooler regions of the West Coast—have found this cultivar to their liking. Vineyard site selection is very important, as Grüner grows best in cool climates where it can be allowed to ripen later than many other white wine cultivars. Consumers and restaurants looking for something both good and different like its fresh style and adaptability to many foods.
Galen Glen Winery in Andreas, Pa., and Dr. Konstantin Frank’s Vinifera Wine Cellars, of Hammondsport, N.Y., are among the eastern wineries that have made a commitment to this grape.
Galen Glen Winery: Grüner Veltliner pioneers
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
August 2015When Plant Species Matter
Cornell University graduate student Lauren Thomas separates polyphenolic fractions in preparation for HPLC analysis of tannins and anthrocyanins.I’ve worked closely with grape breeders for almost 15 years, so I know the thoughtful pause and faraway, dreamy look they get in their eyes when they pronounce their highest praise for a promising grape selection. “This one,” they say with a nod and a faint smile, “this one is really good. It’s so…vinifera-like!”
Of course, they really mean that the potential hybrid has growth habit and fruit chemistry similar to Vitis vinifera, but that all the desired hybrid traits—disease, pest and temperature resistance—are intact. This is the way we’ve thought about grape breeding for years: as a sequential culling designed to combine the positive production and sensory characteristics from V. vinifera ancestors with the hardiness of other, non-wine-worthy species. If the vines grow like vinifera, and the grapes hit the same levels of sugar, acid and phenolic compounds as their illustrious ancestors, all the winemakers would have to do is apply the same production methods to a hardy red hybrid that they would to a Cabernet Sauvignon, and we’d be making world-famous wines in new and previously unknown regions, right? Basically, we think that if it looks like vinifera and smells/tastes like vinifera, it must act like a vinifera in the winery.
The problem is this: It doesn’t. Hybrid grapes usually don’t shine when processed like their European cousins, and issues of tannin and color are a case in point.
The hit-or-miss of hybrid winemaking
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2015Grape Variety Trials on Long Island
Merlot and Chardonnay grow side by side in a Long Island Vineyard.The Long Island grape variety trial has been in existence for more than half of this new industry’s 40-year history. Established in 1993, the trial at Cornell’s Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center in Riverhead, N.Y., has evaluated more than 50 Chardonnay, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon clonal selections as well as 46 novel grape varieties for their vineyard performance and wine quality under the unique local climatic and soil conditions of Eastern Long Island. Managed in close collaboration with an industry advisory group, the trial has identified superior Chardonnay and Merlot clones and eight novel varieties that are now grown commercially on Long Island. The grape industry has grown from a single planting in 1973 to 2,000 acres of premium wine grapes.
Since the first premium vinifera wine grapes were planted in the 1970s, finding the right varieties and clones for Long Island’s unique environment has been an industry priority. In a 1991 survey, Long Island winegrowers indicated that locally generated information about varieties and clones was their top research priority. As a fine wine industry, growers have long recognized the importance of producing ripe, high-quality fruit from varieties suited to Long Island terroir. In response to this need, the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County grape research program started a clone and variety trial at the Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center in Riverhead in 1993. To date, 49 varieties have been evaluated for their adaptation to the island’s unique microclimate and terroir.
The Long Island industry
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2015Growing Wine Quality: Thiols
Leaf removal (as seen here at Glen Manor Vineyards in Front Royal, Va.) has been shown to increase thiol concentrations in Sauvignon Blanc.The varietal aromas of wines made from grapes such as Sauvignon Blanc, Petit Manseng, Riesling, Semillon, Gewürztraminer and Cayuga White are all dependent, to varying degrees, upon the tropical fruit aromas that arise from volatile thiols. This class of aromatic compounds is especially important in Sauvignon Blanc wines, within which volatile thiols are found in significantly high concentrations. This article describes methods by which the vintner can manipulate thiol concentrations in the resulting wine through vineyard practices. A subsequent article will address methods within the winery that may impact thiol concentrations.
Why should we care?
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2015Cultivating Marquette Like Vinifera
Ethan Joseph, winemaker at Shelburne Vineyard, focuses on growing the hybrid grape Marquette.Shelburne Vineyard is one of just two wineries in Vermont to grow vinifera grapes. Instead, winemaker Ethan Joseph focuses largely on Marquette, a hybrid grape less than a decade old. Developed at the University of Minnesota and released in 2006, Marquette is a complex hybrid of V. riparia, V. vinifera and French hybrid cultivar Ravat 262. One of its grandparents was Pinot Noir.
In many ways, Joseph treats Marquette like a vinifera grape, and the resulting wines have garnered critical praise including four Best of Show awards at the International Cold Climate Wine Competition.
Joseph spoke Feb. 6 at the Cold Climate Grape Conference in Minneapolis, Minn., where he shared his winery’s approach to growing and vinifying Marquette.
Joseph says Marquette “is a premium variety, and we need to treat it as such. From a wine-quality perspective, it’s very important to our industry.”
Training Marquette
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2015Finger Lakes Cabernet Franc: In the Cellar
Fox Run Vineyards winemaker Peter Bell believes alcohol-derived tannins provide deeper color to Cabernet Franc.In the April 2015 issue of Wines & Vines, the article “Growing Cabernet Franc in the Finger Lakes” examined practical techniques for managing Cabernet Franc vines in the cool climate of New York’s Finger Lakes region. This month, Wines & Vines looks at three different winemakers’ methods for producing wine from these grapes. Like any comparison, there are similarities and differences, yet these individual efforts are part of a whole: the emergence and recognition of Cabernet Franc as the region’s most representative quality red wine.
Fox Run Vineyards, Dundee, N.Y.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
April 2015Growing Cabernet Franc in the Finger Lakes
After more than 30 years of effort, the Finger Lakes region of New York is now known for its many fine Riesling wines. Instead of another white wine, the next wine to gain acclaim in the Finger Lakes could be the red variety Cabernet Franc.
Cabernet Franc is the third most widely planted variety in the Finger Lakes, where vineyard managers are learning how to minimize methoxypyrazines by reducine vine vigor.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2015Palissage: An Alternative to Mechanical Hedging
These Pinot Gris vines have been palissaged, leaving the clusters exposed.Hedging is a canopy-management technique commonly used by grapegrowers to control excessive shoot growth. Vines with vertically shoot positioned (VSP) canopies can have shoots that grow beyond the top set of catch wires and lean downward, shading the fruiting zone. In non-VSP canopies, long shoots can extend into alleyways, impeding movement through the vineyard.
Although hedging is a widely used practice, it is considered a Band-Aid solution to excessive vine vigor in that it does not address the long-term problem of vine size. There are additional problems with the vines’ response to hedging, particularly that lateral growth is stimulated on the shoot once the tip is cut off. It is then easy for growers to get caught in a vicious cycle of hedging and leaf removal to address the vines’ vegetative growth response.
A potential new canopy-management tool was brought to our attention at the 2008 meeting of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture-Eastern Section. Olivier Humbrecht from Domaine Zind-Humbrecht in Alsace, France, discussed a technique of canopy management that he referred to as “palissage,” where long shoot tips that would normally be hedged are tucked horizontally along the top of the canopy. Humbrecht reported benefits of palissage on Gewürztraminer and Pinot Gris to include earlier cessation of shoot growth during the growing season and reduced/eliminated need for leaf removal in the fruiting zone due to fewer laterals.
Real-life application
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2015A Few Truths About Phenolics
Corot Noir lees (above) were collected after the completion of malolactic fermentation. The lees were freeze dried and analyzed for condensed tannin.Rich. Full-bodied. Intense, even dark and brooding. All are wine descriptions to make a red wine producer swoon. Unfortunately, winemakers struggling with tough growing years or hybrid grapes are more likely to hear descriptors like thin, light and weak palate—hardly traits to make consumers sit up and take notice. The problem? The quality and concentration of phenolic compounds (the pigments and polymers that impact the color, texture and structure of red wines). Whether caused by cultivar or climate, the challenges of low color, poor color stability and inadequate tannins are top concerns for the production of high-quality red wines.
Color
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
December 2014High-YAN Fermentations
Adding hydration nutrients during yeast inoculation is one way to achieve desired YAN. Photo by Denise GardnerIn order for proper fermentation to occur, yeast must have adequate nutrients available. One essential nutrient required for yeast health during the fermentation process is nitrogen: It contributes to the development of essential yeast molecules, which allow for healthy yeast growth and metabolism. The yeast assimilable (or available) nitrogen (YAN) content can be measured at harvest (in grape juice or must) and indicates the level of nitrogen (N) available at the start of fermentation. The YAN value for a given lot of grape must or juice directs winemakers to determine what nutrient additions need to be made to ensure a complete fermentation and minimize the potential for hydrogen sulfide (H2S) production.
YAN is composed of inorganic (ammonium ion) and organic (amino acid) nitrogen components. Amino acids are brought into the yeast cell through transport across the cell membrane. The presence of alcohol and ammonium ions (i.e., diammonium phosphate or DAP) inhibits amino acids from being brought into the cell. This is why winemakers are advised not to add DAP at inoculation or at the beginning of fermentation, as yeast can actively absorb organic nitrogen in the juice (aqueous) environment.
Once alcohol concentrations begin to increase as a result of primary fermentation progression, transport of amino acids from the wine into the yeast cell will be inhibited. Therefore, the primary source of nitrogen will then come from inorganic sources such as DAP.
High YAN levels can be a fermentation nightmare
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2014Grapevine Mysteries Revealed
Amigo Oil application caused bud break to be delayed 14 to 24 days in Edelweiss vines.Editor’s Note: This column contains a collection of edited article abstracts published by viticultural authors east of the Rockies during the past year. Several of these were papers presented at the national conference of the American Society for Enology & Viticulture in Austin, Texas, in June 2014, unless indicated otherwise.
Measuring hardiness in vinifera
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2014Vinifying Grapes From Difficult Climates
The grape variety Norton can have both high pH and high acid levels. These can be remedied by a carbonate deacidification followed by a tartaric acid addition.When grapegrowers and winemakers hear the words “challenging environment,” most think of regions that have extreme temperatures or precipitation. Those conditions lead to further consequences once grapes travel from the vineyard to the winery. Winemaking for Challenging Environments, a symposium held this summer during the national conference of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture in Austin, Texas, addressed both the viticultural impact of difficult growing conditions as well as the winemaking problems that can result. For a review of the vineyard management tactics for stressed locations, see “Surviving Challenging Environments” in the August 2014 issue of Wines & Vines.
Grapes harvested from vineyards that have experienced less than optimal growing conditions can present a range of problems for the winemaker, including grapes with green, herbaceous flavors; high pH; high acidity; and color and phenolic issues.
In the winery
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2014Retrofitting Winery Floor Drains
Digging the channel for a slot drain required the greatest amount of time for this project.Water is one of the most ubiquitous materials in a winery. Show me a winery that has moved into a barn, warehouse or some other industrial space, and you will usually find places where you think you are “walking on water”—and not in a good way. We all know that floor drainage is a problem even in wineries that that have a pretty good layout. Our winery is no exception. Even though we at Tamanend Winery took over a building that had the remnants of floor drains, we had certain locations where the drainage was not good. After years of wet floor areas, we decided to add additional drainage to take care of the problem.
What drain to put in? The answer to that question is partly philosophy as well as some science and a lot of engineering. As a general rule, I am not a fan of box drains in all but the dirtiest locations in a winery, because box drains are open trenches that are terrible to keep clean enough in the indoor parts of the winery. (See “Installing box drains in a retrofit” on page 75.) For new floor installations, I prefer circular drains where each drain covers about a 20-square-foot area. In these cases you can minimize the drain’s exposure to the winery environment, and P-traps can minimize odors in the winery. Unfortunately for retrofit areas, this is the most costly to install and, unless you are a skilled mason, it is the most difficult for winery personnel to finish the floor correctly. In addition, the more the circular drain must deal with heavy solids, the less advantageous the circular drain is.
Some drains can be installed competently by winery staff during a retrofit situation. The purpose of such drains will be to remove liquids (cleaning water with its chemicals or small amounts of spilled wine), yeast, seeds and small amounts of skins.
Modular slot drains
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2014A New Muscat for Cool Climates
Lakewood Vineyards planted 10 experimental vines of Valvin Muscat in 1992.The Muscat family of grapes is believed to be among the world’s oldest cultivated varieties. Long known for making sweet and fruity wines, Muscat’s popularity has increased dramatically in recent years. According to data from Nielsen, Moscato sales were up a whopping 73% in 2011. In 2012, Muscat varieties as a whole were up 33% and edged out Sauvignon Blanc as the third most popular white wine in the United States. Even with growth slowing to a tamer 13% in 2013, Muscat sales are still on an upward trend.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2014Controlling PD in Texas and Missouri
These scorched Merlot clusters are presenting symptoms of Pierce’s disease.The southeastern region of the United States is a challenging place to grow wine grapes. The Deep South is prone to spring frosts, stays hot and humid in the summer and is home to many types of mildews and other diseases. In places like Texas the climate may be drier, but it’s still very hot in the summer. Rick Naber, owner of Flat Creek Estate Winery, noted that wine grapes in Texas experience an early bud break (often by March 1) and have a threat of frost until late March or early April, after which they suffer high temperatures in the summer and are subject to every disease a grapevine can get. Native grapes are adapted to this climate but make a very different style of wine.
One disease that has been killing wine grapes such as vinifera since settlers first brought those grapes to the southeast region is Pierce’s disease (PD). Dr. Newton B. Pierce first identified PD in Mission grapes in Southern California in the late 19th century, when the disease damaged thousands of acres around Anaheim, and was then called Anaheim disease.
PD is caused by a bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, which is native to the Gulf Coast region. Vines native to the Gulf Coast appear to be tolerant of this bacteria, and other indigenous plants serve as hosts to the bacteria while not exhibiting any symptoms of disease themselves.
In order for a grapevine to be infected by PD, it must be a susceptible variety and there must be an insect vector present to transmit the bacteria from a host plant to the susceptible vine when the insect feeds on the vine’s tissue. Once introduced into a vine, the bacteria colonize the xylem (the tissue that conducts water throughout the plant). When the bacteria occlude the xylem, and water cannot move through the plant, the vine may exhibit symptoms often seen under heat or drought stress. After being infected, vines with Pierce’s disease usually die within approximately two years.
In the 1970s it was thought that PD was confined to regions with mild winter temperatures. However, with the changing climate, the potential range for PD has expanded, and symptoms of PD have been seen in (formerly) colder western areas in Texas, on vines in Virginia and even as far north as Maryland.
Potential PD problem in Missouri?
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2014Ontario Hones Appassimento Wine
Jamie Slingerland, director of viticulture at Pillitteri Estates Winery, harvests grapes for appassimento-style wines in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.Vineland, Ontario—Ontario researchers are exploring a variety of methods for enhancing local wineries’ production of appassimento-style wines.
Ontario’s climate is more humid than that of northern Italy, where appassimento wines have enjoyed popularity since ancient times. The wines are defined by the fact grapes are dried post-harvest, which reduces the water content and results in wines of intense flavor and body.
The allure of the wines captivated Len Crispino during a three-year stint in Milan as Ontario’s chief trade representative to Italy. With his wife Marisa, he purchased 40 acres in 2000 with a view to launching Foreign Affair Winery, which opened in 2008. The venture was a way to continue enjoying a wine they had grown to love in Italy, but with a local interpretation that would offer something unique to the marketplace.
“We loved our experience in Italy and we wanted to see if this could be done in Canada,” Crispino said. “We don’t have the same varieties—we don’t use Corvina, Rondinella, Molinara. We have very different climatic conditions, so this is about innovation. It’s about asking ourselves the questions, ‘Can we do this style of wine, utilizing some of the principles, by utilizing our own vinifera varietals that we grow here in Ontario, given the different climatic conditions?’”
So far the answer has been a resounding yes.
Progress
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
August 2014Surviving Challenging Environments
Basal leaf removal can increase cluster light exposure in cooler climates with insufficient heat. Photo: Ed HellmanBe it too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry, many locations are not ideal for growing grapes and making wine. Yet people are growing grapes and making wine in all 50 states, whether they face difficult environments or not. Of course, even the best places to grow grapes have years that are challenging. On June 27, the final symposium at the 65th national conference of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture in Austin, Texas, examined different aspects of growing grapes and making wine in challenging environments.
Sara Spayd, professor in the Department of Horticultural Science at North Carolina State University, introduced the symposium by saying, “We are not talking about challenging environments within the winery, so the program’s focus will be on some of the viticultural and enological issues arising from environmental challenges.”
In the vineyard
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2014Virginia's 'Silent Spring'
Hilling up: Art Hunt uses mulch to protect his vines against winter injury at Hunt Country Vineyards in New York's Finger Lakes.Silent spring. That was what some grapegrowers experienced this May, when buds should have been bursting with rapid shoot growth. Instead many eastern farmers saw more widespread evidence of winter cold injury than they expected based on estimates made earlier this year. Typical bud injury was evident, but so was injury to trunks and cordons, which spanned a surprising range of varieties.
The 2013-14 winter will be remembered as a cold, changeable and persistent season. On the whole, the low temperatures experienced throughout Virginia were not that low. Many locations reported lows in the 0° to -3° F range, while a few dipped as low as -7° F.
Reports of injury started rolling in following the early January dip in temperature, when a low of -2° F was recorded at the Agricultural Research and Extension Center (AREC) vineyard in Winchester, Va. The vines at the AREC appeared to come through that event unscathed. Reports of damage to cold-tender vines including Tannat and Merlot arrived soon after. Critical temperatures appeared to be at or below about -4° F.
There were at least five oscillations in air temperature between early January and early March, with the event on March 4 following a three-day stretch of highs close to 60° F.
One grower said that the injury at his vineyard during this most recent winter was reminiscent of what he observed a decade earlier, following the 2003-04 winter season. I went back and read what I had observed following the 2003-04 winter in “Viticulture Notes,” a newsletter I write for the Virginia Cooperative Extension, and was struck by some of the similarities in injury following the two winters.
When did the injury or winter kill occur during the 2013-14 winter? I’m certain that some of the injury occurred as early as the freeze events of Jan. 5-6, 2014, because we were seeing bud kill in tender varieties soon after that. Some of the injury may have occurred as late as March 4, however, when temperatures at the AREC in Winchester dipped as low as 3° F. We noted some trunk splitting in a nearby vineyard in late April. Split trunks appeared to be more common on older, larger trunks than on younger trunks with smaller diameters; multiple-trunked vines often have a mix of live and dead trunks (an argument for multiple-trunk training systems).
As with my 2003-04 report, some of this splitting appeared to be due to the drying of trunks and canes of vines injured sometime much earlier (possibly during summer 2013) as the wood was bone dry and completely discolored. We considered that some injury might have occurred as early as Nov. 24-25, 2013, when we had our first real blast of cold air (see temperature chart on page 77). In this case the vines’ health was compromised going into the winter, and those in poorly drained sections of otherwise well-situated vineyards may have had some increased “dieback” of shoots and potentially greater winter injury incidence.
In addition to the more tender varieties mentioned above, we’ve also seen injury in Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon as well as more hardy varieties including Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Injury to early budding varieties such as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc is perhaps consistent with the notion that these vines might have deacclimated some by early March, in time to be damaged by the cold temperatures March 4.
Options for dealing with injured vines
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2014Establishing an Identity for the Outer Coastal Plain
The Outer Coastal Plain AVA covers 2.25 million acres and includes more than 40 vineyards and 25 wineries.When most American Viticultural Areas are established, the only noticeable change is that wineries in the designated area add the AVA’s name to their wine labels. The members of the Outer Coastal Plain AVA, officially established in 2007 in southeastern New Jersey, decided they wanted to do more to raise the awareness of the region’s longstanding winemaking tradition and the high-quality wines being made there.
Launching a signature wine
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2014Cluster Thinning in Late-Harvest Riesling: Does it Pay?
Leaves were pulled in order to photograph cluster thinning to one cluster per shoot (left) and two-plus clusters per shoot (right). No leaf pulling occurred on the actual vines studied.The production of late-harvest wines provides an avenue for wineries to reach a segment of consumers who may prefer medium-dry or sweet wines. In cool-climate regions, late-harvest wines are typically made from aromatic white Vitis vinifera cultivars such as Riesling or Gewürztraminer that are harvested later in the growing season, when soluble solids accumulation or infection by Botrytis cinerea allow an end product containing natural residual sugar and lower alcohol by volume. The widespread popular belief that low-yielding grapevines produce higher quality wines is entrenched in the late-harvest wine segment because late-harvest wine can be marketed to consumers using scarcity as one of its quality signals. But does this ideology translate to the vineyard?
There are two primary costs associated with cluster thinning: skilled human labor and lower revenue from reduced yield. Commercial growers generally cluster thin assuming it will result in quality improvements desired by the buyer so that lost revenues may be recouped through higher prices. To assess whether cluster thinning achieves targeted wine characteristics and business objectives, a quantitative and holistic approach to all aspects of yield management including determining whether consumers will have a greater or lesser willingness to pay for the resulting wines was necessary.
The New York City metropolitan area is the largest wine market in the United States and consumes approximately 30% of America’s total imported wines (Wine Market Council 2009), making it a highly contested market for many quality wine regions. Consumers’ wine-drinking habits in New York City are influenced heavily by a specialized niche of restaurant sommeliers, wine writers and wine shop owners who act as market gatekeepers and have specific awareness of New York wines (Preszler and Schmit 2009). Such industry professionals make desirable sensory panelists because they have a robust vocabulary, expert understanding of important wine attributes and more finely honed sensory acumen than general consumers.
To give grapegrowers the best advice regarding optimal cluster thinning and yield-management decisions, it is important to quantify the additional value relationship assumed by buyers conditional to the level of cluster thinning. If a buyer’s willingness to pay for wines is differentiated for quality and parallels a grower’s cluster-thinning practices, then the grower’s minimum price requirements for grapes can be expressed as a function of crop level. A model published by this research group (Preszler et al. 2010) was the first to position grapevine yield within a quantitative economic decision-making framework.
In this study, the model was applied to viticultural and sensory data from a field trial of varying crop levels in a mature commercial Riesling vineyard, and the resulting late-harvest wines were panel tested for sensory qualities and willingness to pay among New York City wine professionals. The goal was to elucidate the effects of cluster thinning on yield components, fruit composition, late-harvest wine quality, financial net returns and willingness to pay among New York wine professionals—and by doing so, to enhance decision-making acuity among wine grape growers using or considering cluster thinning.
Vineyard site and experimental design
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
April 2014Winter Survival of Vidal Blanc Vines for Ice Wine Production
Vidal Blanc clusters are left to hang for ice wine production and typically are picked in December, when temperature drops to 18o F.Vidal Blanc, or Vidal (Ugni Blanc x Rayon D’Or), is a white grape variety that belongs to the group of highly productive hybrids that tend to overcrop, which results in reduced growth and lower fruit and wine quality. Vidal’s propensity to overcrop has been attributed to its high bud fruitfulness and large clusters. Research has shown that the best way to manage this variety is with balanced pruning and cluster thinning—also referred to as “balanced cropping,” a term coined by Dr. Stan Howell from Michigan State University.
Vidal has been widely planted in eastern and midwestern states due to its many positive attributes: moderate cold hardiness (more cold hardy than Vitis vinifera varieties), spring frost avoidance (due to late bud break), bunch rot resistance and especially its versatile and desirable wine style and quality. In the northeastern United States and Canada, Vidal acreage has expanded since the early 1990s because of its use in ice wine production. Its high yields, thick berry skin, high acidity and fruitiness make it particularly suited for ice wine. Grapes for ice wine production are left to hang on the grapevines long past their typical commercial maturity and are not harvested until they freeze on the vine at an air temperature of 18°F or lower. Unlike in warmer regions, “hang time” in the cold regions of the northeast and Canada results in ideal conditions for ice wine production.
However, Vidal growers have always been concerned about the impact of “hang time” for ice wine production on vine health, and particularly on winter survival. A few years ago, while speaking at a conference in Ontario, many grapegrowers asked me whether leaving grapes on the vines into the winter would impact their survival. Vidal growers along the Lake Erie shores in Ohio have asked the same thing, and it is a simple question that expects a simple answer. I realized that with the exception of an early report on optimum cropping of Vidal in Michigan, there is no published information on the impact of delayed harvest on winter hardiness of Vidal intended for ice wine production. That was the impetus for this project: to investigate the impact of different crop levels by cluster thinning and harvest date on yield, fruit quality and primarily winter hardiness of Vidal grapevines grown in northern Ohio.
Experiment description
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2014Triage for a Basic Wine/Grape Lab
My mantra for all wine and grape production has always been: The more you know about your grapes or wines, the better grapes you will grow and the better wine you will make. All wineries, no matter how big or how small, need to have at least a minimal laboratory set up to provide basic test results at the winery. Whether initially setting up your wine/grape laboratory or reviewing your current laboratory and its capabilities, it is important to have a plan for the role a laboratory plays in delivering high-quality fruit or making high-quality wine.
This article, the first in a two-part series, will review the essential equipment you will need and the choices available for a minimum wine laboratory. While a winery must evaluate the cost benefit of these purchases, in many cases spending a bit more initially will save many dollars later on and, along the way, help make better wine. In creating the essential laboratory, the approach is to obtain the minimum set of equipment to be able to conduct those analyses that are absolutely essential for a winery’s day-to-day operation.
Reference tools
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2014The Potential of Hybrid Grapes
In “Vitis Hybrids: History and Current Status” (read the article here), we explored the necessity that led to hybridization of wine grapes in Michigan and the Great Lakes region of the eastern United States. But once hybrid cultivars are developed, what challenges and opportunities do growers face?
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2014Vitis Hybrids: History and Current Status
The full story of Vitis hybrids should involve biological sciences of genetics, plant pathology and physiology, entomology, soils, social sciences, economics, political science and that collective form of individualism we call nationalism. It’s impossible to address all of those topics in this space, but we hope to pick a thread that runs through these and reflects the history, current status and suggestions for future as a focus on the experiences of the authors in the state of Michigan in the Great Lakes region of the eastern United States. This is the first article in a two-part series, and it will address the history of hybrid grapes and their current status in the United States, while a second article will focus on hybrid grapes in Michigan and the outlook for those grapes in the future.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2013Improving Eastern Industry Profitability
Winegrowers in the eastern United States are accustomed to farming wine grapes under a variable climate and challenging conditions. Spring frosts, winter cold, extremes of summer precipitation, possible hurricanes during the ripening season and a wide range of disease and insect pests are all familiar adversities. Despite the risks, the wine industry in the eastern U.S. is experiencing remarkable growth. Vineyard acreage, wine production, wine-quality benchmarks and total economic impacts are trending upward, due in part to states’ marketing efforts and consumer interest in local wines and wineries.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2013Establishing a Noiret Vineyard
Noiret is an interspecific red hybrid wine grape that was released by Cornell University in 2006. The original cultivar description (Reisch et al. 2006) describes the growth as semi-upright to semi-trailing and reports that Noiret is smaller than both Concord and GR7 with respect to yield and vine size. However, anecdotal reports from Finger Lakes growers suggest that Noiret vines can be vegetative and unruly. Many growers are interested in planting this cultivar, but there is little research to provide guidance about the appropriate viticultural practices for Noiret. Should the vines be own-rooted or grafted? What training system should be employed? How close or far apart should the vines be spaced? The objective of this field study was to investigate the impact of training system, vine spacing and rootstock on vine growth, yield components, fruit composition and consumer preference for Noiret wines produced from a young vineyard.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2013The Resurgence of Hard Cider
Editor’s note: This article is the second in a two-part series about hard cider. The first, written by Linda Jones McKee, focused on the history of cider in North America.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
August 2013Strategies to Manage Dissolved Oxygen
The benefits and drawbacks of dissolved oxygen in wine can be discussed at great length. This article will provide an initial overview of some of the benefits and negative aspects regarding the impact of oxygen in wine. However, to extend aging potential and prevent undesirable changes in wine due to excess oxygen, a winemaker must recognize that in most cases oxygen is considered to be detrimental to the production of premium-quality wines. Key areas where oxygen can be introduced into the winemaking process will be identified to help winemakers recognize practices that prevent excess oxygen absorption.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2013Ancient Beverage to Hot New Trend
Editor’s note: This article is the first in a two-part series about hard cider. The second, written by Chris Stamp, will focus on the nuts and bolts of cider production.Two processes for making ice cider are depicted in this video produced by staff with La Face Cachée de la Pomme in Québec Canada. Click the image above to watch the video.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2013Quantity and Quality in a Tunnel
In the March 2013 issue of Wines & Vines, I looked at how growers could use high-tunnel technology to control environmental factors affecting fruit quality, described how a tunnel works and reported the results of a research project that compared vines grown inside a tunnel and vines outside its protection. My article in the April 2013 issue examined the economic impact of using three-season tunnels and discussed factors that should be considered when constructing a tunnel and how they impact grapegrowing.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2013Northern Grapes Project Sees Results
With the growth of the cold-climate grape and wine industry since the 1990s, it became apparent that the new cold-hardy varieties had unique characteristics that called for different growing, production and winemaking practices, and that the wines made from them would require marketing and promotion to increase sales. A planning grant from the Specialty Crops Research Initiative allowed a group of regional grower organizations and university researchers to hold workshops in Vermont and Minnesota to learn about the cold-climate industry’s needs and how they could be addressed.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
April 2013Commercial Establishment of High Tunnels
In the previous article about growing high-quality grapes in a covered environment (see “Beating Mother Nature at her Own Game” in the March 2013 issue of Wines & Vines), I presented evidence that winegrape quality was more than sufficient to examine the business/financial and physical aspects of growing grapes in a three-season tunnel.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2013Grapevine Training System Trends in the South
During the past decade of working as a viticulturist in the eastern and southern United States, I have observed that the vertical shoot positioned (VSP) vine-training method is the most commonly used of all available systems. There are many good reasons for the dominance of the VSP system: It is relatively simple to install and implement, and it adapts to a wide range of grape varieties including vinifera and interspecific hybrid winegrapes. In-row vine spacing, between-row spacing and canopy height can all vary a great deal within the VSP-training system, and both spur- and cane-pruning techniques can be applied within its confines, resulting in a wide range of canopy architecture. Furthermore, the VSP system seems to best conform to vineyard mechanization, which is a big advantage at a time when decreases in labor input and production costs per acre are ever present.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2013Beating Mother Nature at Her Own Game
Those of you who have followed my columns know that I usually discuss interesting and different ways to make better wines, more efficiently and more consistently. You may not have known that I came to winemaking as a plant physiologist. I became fascinated with the chemistry of wine in graduate school and proceeded to ferment anything I could in the course of getting my degree. So it is from the plant physiologist’s perspective that I am now writing about one of the most important aspects of winegrowing: how to get grapes to the best physiological maturity and at the highest sustainable yield. When that goal is achieved, growers make the most money and have the most incentive to give winemakers the best-quality grapes to make into wine.Click the photo above to listen to Dr. Eric Hanson with the Michigan State University Department of Horticulture discuss his experience building Haygrove High Tunnels for research into organic fruit farming in this video by Bonnie Bucqueroux.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2013Commercial Mead Production
People are often confused by mead: Is it wine, or is it beer? Historically, it has been known as both. While the primary ingredients of mead are honey and water, the basic recipe has been augmented with an array of other ingredients, many of which are common to either wine or beer, such as fruit, hops and barley. In addition, some production methods employ boiling, an activity more akin to beer brewing than winemaking. In reality, mead blurs the lines between wine and beer and makes it difficult to assign it to one realm or the other.Click the photo above to listen to Bob Liptrot and Dana LeComte discuss how they harvest honey and make mead at Tugwell Creek Honey Farm & Meadery in Sooke, B.C.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
December 2012Small Wineries Choose Tanks
Tanks are pretty simple, right? Originally they were made of clay, then wood or concrete, and now from stainless steel. Winemakers can get them in a practically limitless range of sizes—with or without jackets for insulation and cooling, with valves and manways and a variety of attachments that permit stirring, punching down, pumping over and removing seeds. Call your local supplier, and you can get whatever you need.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2012Tracking Grape Berry Moth in the South
The rapid expansion of the Texas wine and grape industry has brought with it an ever-increasing list of pest and disease pressures as vineyard production is pushed into newer areas of the state. One pest, the grape berry moth (Paralobesia viteana), has been identified in much of the state of Texas—including the central Texas Hill Country, the eastern, northeastern and Gulf Coast regions of the state—and has been particularly problematic in vineyards planted near heavily wooded areas where dense stands of native grapevines are established.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
August 2012Rootstocks and Pest Management
This is the second installment of a two-part report that includes abstracts of recent articles that deal with the part of the grapevine we don’t see—the root system and its immediate environment. The first installment included articles related primarily to rootstock effects on vine performance: yield, berry composition, scion physiology, etc. (See “Rootstocks and Vine Performance” in the July 2012 issue of Wines & Vines.) The second group of abstracts deals with pest problems that may be reduced by rootstock choice, including viruses and nematodes.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2012Understanding Malolactic Fermentation
If Winemaking 101 is about alcoholic fermentation, then Winemaking 201 should be about the fermentation of malic acid. This important bacterial fermentation has nowhere near the same name recognition as its yeast-induced cousin, yet the fermentation of malic acid to lactic acid (a.k.a. malolactic fermentation, or simply “MLF”) plays a very important role in the production of many high-quality wines. In the northeastern United States, with many of our high acid varieties, it is an irreplaceable winemaking tool because the most pronounced chemical effect of MLF is the reduction of acid. But as we’ll see, its impact on a wine can be far more complex than simply taking a bunch of hydrogens off the table.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2012Lenoir Gains Recognition
Perhaps the longest standing commercial red winegrape variety to survive in the South, Lenoir is often planted in areas of the country where Vitis vinifera (European grapevines) would quickly succumb to Pierce’s disease—and where it was previously believed that only the hardy Muscadine species (Muscadinia rotundifolia) could survive. The Lenoir winegrape has a long history in the southern United States, and its progress in the wine industry continues to evolve and expand as its wine quality gains recognition.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
April 2012Pruning Grapevines After Winter Injury
Extreme low temperatures in winter can cause significant economic losses to grape production by substantially decreasing yield and fruit quality and increasing the cost of production. It can cost an estimated $155 to retrain or replace a dead grafted Vitis vinifera vine. Because extreme freezing events do not occur on a frequent basis, little research has been conducted on the best pruning strategies for optimum grapevine recovery. While reports from Washington state describe how to deal with winter-injured, own-rooted vinifera vines, there is no such published research on grafted vinifera grown in the eastern United States.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2012Improved Hose Passes Winery Tests
The shape of Tรผdertechnica's Glidetech hose is noticeably different from conventional hoses.Fancy tanks, high-tech presses and other innovative winery technologies get lots of press. One item of great importance in any winery, large or small, is often neglected: the lowly hose. No winery can do without them, as hoses transfer wine from place to place, from truck to winery, from one tank to another, from tank to bottling. During the many years I have been a winemaker, I have used a wide range of hoses to transfer wines throughout many aspects of winemaking.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2012Blanc Du Bois Takes Root
Source: O. Anas, U.J. Harrison, P.M. Brannen and T.B. SuttonThe southeastern United States is a difficult climate for grape production. Frequent and heavy rainfall combines with warm temperatures and high humidity during the growing season to provide ample moisture to encourage the spread of a multitude of fungal diseases in grapes. The most notable grape varieties grown in the southeast have long been the Muscadines (Muscadinia rotundifolia), because their thick berry skins and foliage resist many common fungal diseases. Most importantly, this species is resistant to Pierce’s disease3 (PD), a major bacterial grapevine disease in the southeast.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2012Exposition Fills in Program Gaps
A practical and relevant seminar program for eastern wineries and growers has been finalized for the Eastern Winery Exposition scheduled to take place March 7 and 8 in Lancaster, Pa. Industry leaders, most of them from the East, will speak about eastern-oriented enology, viticulture, marketing and economic subjects. Richard Leahy, conference director for the Exposition, told Wines & Vines, “It’s important to learn something new. We’re trying not only to present new technology, but new ways of dealing with new challenges.”READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2012VESTA Localizes Education Across U.S.
In May 2003, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided funding through its Advanced Technological Program to develop the Viticulture Enology Science and Technology Alliance (VESTA), an online education program based at Missouri State University. Collaborating with schools, government and industry, VESTA established online educational programs in viticulture and enology. In addition to online coursework, the program offered students opportunities to get hands-on experience at area vineyards and wineries. Shortly thereafter, VESTA expanded to include a two-year college in Oklahoma. A second grant from NSF in 2007 made it possible for VESTA to expand its alliance to include Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas and Wisconsin.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2012Community-Based Direct Marketing
When Brian and Sharon Roeder opened Barrel Oak Winery in Delaplane, Va., in time for Memorial Day 2008, the winery attracted more than 500 people and tallied sales of $38,000 that first weekend. During the ensuing three years, Barrel Oak continued to bring in large numbers of visitors. It sold 2,800 cases of wine in the first year and approximately 6,500 cases in 2011—a retail value of almost $2 million. During the 2011 harvest, Barrel Oak Winery produced the equivalent of nearly 10,000 cases.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
December 2011Rising to the Occasion: Harvest 2011
It is well known that grapegrowing east of the Rockies is a challenge in many different ways. The list of potential problems starts with winter injury and spring frosts and progresses through rain, hail, drought, hurricanes, floods and even earthquakes.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2011A New Southern Classic
“Petit what?” I gasped when my husband mentioned he wanted to plant Petit Manseng at Tiger Mountain Vineyards. I had that same uneasy feeling I’d experienced when he told me he was going to plant Tannat, which had caused me to wonder if we’d be peddling grapes out of the back of a pickup truck instead of making fine wine, our ultimate goal. Of course, I had to admit the Tannat turned out to be popular with our wine club members and several upscale Atlanta wine shops.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2011Replacement Viticulture Is a Fact of Life
In cold areas there is an abhorrent (but very necessary) practice called “replacement viticulture” in recognition that vines and/or their parts come and go and that the ability of the grower to replace them will determine the economic success of the vineyard. Needless to say, outstanding viticulture will help all aspects of fruit quality and vine survival. If it is accepted that vine and vineyard uniformity is an important contributor to wine quality, then replacement viticulture is not the route to fine wine but rather a reality of winegrowing in the cold.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2011Overcoming Cold-Climate Challenges
In the first part of this series (“Grape Varieties for Cold Climates,” Wines & Vines, August 2011 issue), we discussed how cool or cold climates can be defined and looked at some of the varietals that can be grown in these challenging areas. This article will address some of the problems faced by grapegrowers in cold climates.
Illustration of local elevation effects on air drainage. Source: Tony Wolf, Virginia TechREAD MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2011Grape Varieties for Cold Climates
The cooler the climate, the more important vineyard planning, design, viticulture management and winemaking are in making a high-quality wine, when compared to warm, arid wine regions. The vigneron just has to be better, smarter, more patient, creative, flexible and able to cope with heartbreak.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2011Winery Numbers On the Rise
In the past 10 years, wineries in the Ohio River Valley and mid-South have grown in number and capacity, while looking out-of-state more often to source their grapes, according to results of a wide-ranging survey about marketing activities, winery-grower relationships and grape prices in seven states.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2011Methods for Calculating SO2
In the first part of this article about the use of SO2, we reviewed the functions that SO2 performs in the process of making wine and looked at the use of SO2 before and after fermentation. This article covers ways to monitor and adjust SO2 during aging and bottling.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2011How Much SO2 to Add and When
Winemakers come from many different disciplines. I’ve known English teachers, architects, plumbers and even philosophy majors who were all excellent winemakers. Another thing they all had in common was a weak knowledge of chemistry. While a chemistry background is helpful in winemaking, it isn’t a prerequisite. Even though nearly everything we do with wine deals with chemistry and biochemistry, we do not need to understand these reactions on a molecular level to make use of the results.Like so many wine lovers, I enjoy cooking, but I’ve never taken a cooking class in my life. Despite this, I can still crank out a mean pot of gumbo (albeit a beer dish). I can do it from memory, adjusting the ingredients by taste. But for the first pot of gumbo I ever made, I followed a recipe to the letter, carefully measuring every ingredient. This recipe provided a proven starting point from which to build my knowledge and, eventually, my own style.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2011Sunlight Enhances Fungal Disease Control
Unlike the general public, grapegrowers know that disease management does not involve a choice between “chemical” and “non-chemical” approaches, but rather an informed integration of those components to fit each individual’s needs and philosophies. This article’s focus is the new information pertaining to a non-chemical tool for the vineyard, specifically the dramatic effect that sunlight has reducing powdery mildew development—and its implications with respect to disease management.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2011Sunny Wines, Cloudy Wines
I am a strong advocate of calibrating the palate in order to gain a sense of relative quality and value not only for one’s own wines, but also the progress of our emerging Eastern North American wine regions. In Pennsylvania, with its diversity of climates and, if you wish, terroir, the comparisons can come from around the globe.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2011Making a 'Vice' Out of Ice wine
Vineland Estates Winery launched ?Vice to boost its ice wine sales.Two years ago Allan Schmidt, president of Vineland Estates Winery in Vineland, Ontario, had a problem. He had looked at the sales numbers for ice wine and realized they were no longer increasing by as much as 20% per year but rather beginning to decrease 5% per year. It didn’t take a crystal ball to figure out why: More and more wineries were producing quality ice wines, the great recession was taking hold and, since ice wine was a luxury item, people could do without it.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2011N.C. Promotes Wine Tourism
Set amid 44 acres of winegrapes, Grove Winery & Vineyards islocated about 20 minutes from downtown Greensboro, N.C.
The wine industry in North Carolina, which now has more than 110 wineries, according to WinesVinesDATA, is rapidly becoming a big player in the wine business in the Southeast. A combined effort by state government, regional tourism bureaus, winery owners, grapegrowers, chambers of commerce and associations is attempting to transform the state from its history of textiles and tobacco production to one of tourism, wine and green industry.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
December 2010Ontario Makes Amarone-Style Wines
Appassimento is the Italian name for the grape-drying process used in Italy to produce Amarone wines. Interest in producing Amarone-style wines in the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario is growing rapidly, with two wineries producing commercial wines from wholly or partially dried grapes by using this technique. At least six wineries are experimenting with the process, and extensive research is just getting under way to see how the appassimento technique can best be adapted for Ontario. Since Amarone is a protected name and cannot be used by the Canadian industry, the term “appassimento-style” is being used, with the wines referred to as “appassimento wines.”READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2010A Numbers Game in the Finger Lakes
It took 40 years before the words Finger Lakes and Riesling strung together gained international recognition. At home, however, some say the region may be off-message. The issue is whether Finger Lakes Riesling should be 100% from the Finger Lakes, or if the current legal leeway of using up to 15% of grapes from outside the region is acceptable.
Riesling grown in the Finger Lakes region can cost three times as much as Riesling grown in other parts of New York or in Washington.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2010Finding Brett Before It Finds You
One of the most vexing developments for winemakers in recent years has been the increasing incidence of spoilage by Brettanomyces yeasts, or “Brett.” The emergence of this age-old contaminant is undoubtedly due to a shift in current production factors that immediately preceded it: longer and longer hang times, extended maceration before and after fermentation, extended aging in barrels and a desire to reduce SO2 levels to an absolute minimum, all of which contribute to an environment where Brett can survive, grow and multiply rapidly.
Figure 1: The agar plate at left contains an acid indicator with no growth. Growth of Brettanomyces causes color change (right).READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2010Making Sense of Sensory Evaluation
Growers and winemakers rarely consider what is involved in the practice of sensory evaluation, which is, after all, what every taster does when sampling wine.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
August 2010Snapshot of Nova Scotia
Dr. Debbie Inglis (left), director of the Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute, surveys a vineyard with David Fullerton of Nova Scotia Agricultural College and Hans Christian Jost.For most people, wine in Canada means the wine industry in Ontario and British Columbia, but after a recent visit to Nova Scotia, I think this province will soon be added to the list of serious Canadian wine regions. The wine industry is somewhat scattered, but a concentration of wineries can be found near the town of Wolfville, about an hour northwest of Nova Scotia’s capital city, Halifax.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2010Blending Red Hybrids
A notepad and pen, large matching wine glasses, an odor-free area and other items are among the tools of red wine blending.The practice of wine blending is probably as old as winemaking itself. In some wine regions, the practice is so entrenched that regional names have become synonymous with certain blends. Ask any winemaker what the purpose of blending is, and the answer will probably be “to make a wine greater than the sum of its parts,” and this is the best intention of any blending exercise.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2010Drilling Concerns in the Finger Lakes
In the second half of the 20th century, the Finger Lakes wine region of New York became a tourist destination. Visitors come by the thousands to drive the winding country roads, look at the scenery—vineyards stretching down hillsides toward clear blue lakes—and to taste and buy the area’s award-winning wines.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
April 2010Primer on Atypical Aging
In the history of describing wine aromas accurately, atypical aging, or ATA, has come to the scene as a relatively recent aroma characterization. Its first documented appearance dates to the 1980s in Germany. It is now recognized as one of the most serious quality problems in white winemaking in nearly all wine-producing countries, including the eastern growing region of North America.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2010To Net or Not to Net
Bird netting is expensive. It’s difficult to apply, and even worse to remove. It has to be handled gently, or it will rip or tear—or even act like a zipper and unzip. It has to be stored in some manner between seasons. And because of its exposure to sun and the elements—as well as any damage from snags on vines, posts or clips—netting has to be replaced every three to five years.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2010Why Wither Winegrapes?
The 2009 growing season was particularly cool in much of the eastern United States. Many growers complained that red vinifera varie-ties did not mature sufficiently. Generally, soluble solids values were low, and titratable acidities were high. Those numbers, of course, often are accompanied by pronounced green and herbaceous characters in the wines. It was, overall, a great year for whites and for Pinot Noir, but not so great for Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
January 2010Beware the Bacteria
After more than 30 years in the wine business, we thought we had seen just about everything that could happen in a winery. In March 2009, however, we at Tamanend Winery experienced an event that totally surprised us. This is a cautionary tale that all winemakers should take very seriously and apply to their own winemaking facilities.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
December 2009Post-Harvest Checklist
Wouldn’t it be nice if after you picked the last grape you could just walk away from the vineyard and forget about it until pruning started in January or February? That shouldn’t happen. There is a lot to do in the vineyard before winter arrives, and as beat as you are from harvest, these things are important. Here’s a laundry list for Eastern growers after the 2008 harvest.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2009How Viticultural Factors Affect Methoxypyrazines
Green pepper, herbaceous and vegetal are three terms sometimes used to describe aromas in wines, especially Eastern red wines such as Cabernet Sauvignon or Cabernet Franc. More than 20 years ago, researchers identified the source of these aromas as a potent class of odorants called methoxypyrazines—also known as MPs, or by their chemical name, 2-methoxy-3-alkylpyrazines.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2009Indispensable Inert Gas
As earthlings, we live at the bottom of a giant ocean of air. Roughly 21% of this gaseous ocean is made up of oxygen, which is essential for life. Although we cannot survive without it, ironically it is what ages and eventually wears out our mortal coils. This irony is also true of wine. Wine requires oxygen, yet oxygen inevitably leads to its demise.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
August 2009Remembering Riesling
A vertical tasting of Dr. Konstantin Frank's Rieslings reveals the effects of climate and aging on the popular Finger Lakes varietal. The 1985, '87, '88, '91 and '95 vintages are represented.A vertical tasting at any winery is always an instructive event, and a vertical tasting of a signature varietal from one of a region's top producers is even more exciting. Consequently, an invitation to sample Rieslings from three different decades at Dr. Frank's Vinifera Wine Cellars in Hammondsport, N.Y., was welcome.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
July 2009Standing Up to the Cold
A Review of Cold Climate Grape Cultivars by Lisa Ann Smiley is a valuable reference tool that gives basic information on 74 grape varieties that will withstand the severe winters, mature during short growing seasons, and be productive in the cold climate regions of eastern North America.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
June 2009A Study in Riesling
Peter Bell of Fox Run, Johannes Reinhardt of Anthony Road and Dave Whiting of Red Newt (from left) blend lots from each of their wineries to create Tierce, a Finger Lakes, N.Y., Riesling.Just what is a tierce? My dictionary defines it as several things--the third of seven canonical hours; the time of day set aside for prayer, usually the third hour after sunrise; a former measure of liquid capacity, equal to a third of a pipe, or 42 gallons; and a sequence of three cards of the same suit. The Tierce of this article, however, is an ultra-premium dry Riesling, collaboratively produced in the Finger Lakes region of New York by three wineries, Anthony Road Wine Co. and Fox Run Vineyards in Penn Yan, and Red Newt Cellars Winery in Hector. This article explores how the three parts of this special Riesling are grown, vinified and then blended by the three winemakers.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
May 2009Tools for Disease Management
The 2008 grapegrowing season was a wet one for many growers in different parts of the East. It's anybody's guess what the new season will bring, but we do know that there are new products on the market to help growers deal with disease pressure. First, however, we should investigate a rumor that an old standby may be difficult to find.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
April 2009Dialing in Vine Size
This year, Cornell University and the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station celebrate 100 years of cool-climate viticulture research in the Lake Erie production region of western New York. For a large portion of those years, the focus has been on vine size management as a way of improving vine productivity, juice quality and grower profitability. Nelson Shaulis established long ago in Concord vineyards that vine size is the key to success, but little research has been done in New York on how to reach the ideal vine size in the more expensive winegrape varieties. Below we'll present new results from trials with Riesling, Traminette, Cabernet Sauvignon and Noiret.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
March 2009Grape Sorting for Better Wine
As winegrape growers, we understand that the quality of the fruit we bring into the winery will have a great--some might say paramount--influence on the quality of wine produced. The old adage about not being able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear really is true, even with all of the magic winemakers have in their tool boxes. We can undoubtedly all agree that the best wines are produced from the best grapes, but what about all of the other stuff that can follow the grapes into the fermenter?
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2009Beginners Guide to Striking Balance
The arsenal of tools in a winemaker's cellar works together to balance four key criteria: acid, alcohol, tannin and sweetness.Because balance is important to wine quality, it is necessary to identify exactly what balance is. In the most basic sense, a balanced wine is a wine in which the various components work together to provide a pleasing taste. To begin to understand balance, the four components of alcohol, acid, tannin and sweetness must be examined individually. If any of these components is too long or short, the wine will be out of balance. Here, we look at balance in white wines.
Alcohol
Alcohol (ethyl alcohol) gives the wine viscosity and body, warmth and a degree of sweetness. It can also help tame astringency (tannins) and balance sugar (in this sense it can, to some degree, substitute for acid). If alcohol is too high for the wine, it can overshadow the fruit, or make the wine seem unduly hot and awkward.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2009Clean Vines From Coast to Coast
The scenario is all too familiar in eastern viticulture. A new grower, bubbling with enthusiasm and anxious to enjoy that first glass of wine, spends considerable amounts of time, money and effort developing a vineyard. Everything is going great: The vines appear healthy, and the vineyard looks like a million bucks. Then, in year two, three, or maybe year five or seven, unexpected symptoms appear on the vines--perhaps red leaves or a grotesque corky, woody tissue at or near the graft union. It may affect just a few vines or a large percentage of those planted.
READ MORE »
Wine East Features
February 2009History Goes a Long Way
Coming from the East, where antiquing is a way of life and Civil War and American Revolutionary War re-enactments are annual summer events, it hadn't occurred to me until I first visited the West Coast that California missed out on so much of this early American history. This history is reflected on eastern wine labels in a way that is seldom found on their California counterparts, and very often it helps sell wine.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2008Pad Filtration Breakthrough
These findings are based on a study conducted using this standard plate and frame filter setup, powered by a positive displacement pump.In my last column ("Depth Filtration vs. Crossflow," October 2008), I reviewed the new BecoPad depth filter by Begerow and found that this pad has performance characteristics superior to other types of depth filter pads in use today. Flow rates are faster, and the set up time is shorter. In this column I'll report on the workability of this pad in cellar operations.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2008Consumers Contribute to Wine Footprint
One of the single biggest contributors to the environmental impact of wine--at least in Atlantic Canada--is the purchase of the wine itself by consumers. That's one of the conclusions reached by Emma Point, a postgraduate student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as part of an analysis of the environmental impacts of producing and consuming a 750ml bottle of Nova Scotia wine produced in 2006.
Assuming the average consumer might make a roundtrip of 5 kilometers (3 miles) in a car to pick up a bottle of local wine, Point determined that up to half the environmental impact occurs during the purchase and transport of the wine by the consumer.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2008Shawangunk Trail Paved with History
The Shawangunk Wine Trail (pronounced "Shawn-gum") is located in New York's Hudson River Valley, with the Shawangunk Mountains on the west side of the Hudson River and Marlboro on the east side. Wineries claiming two historic firsts are included on the 80-mile trail. Brotherhood Winery in Washingtonville had its first commercial vintage in 1839, making it the oldest continuously operating winery in the United States. Benmarl Winery at Slate Hill Vineyard in Marlboro is recognized as having the oldest continuously cultivated vineyard in the United States. That vineyard's history dates back more than 150 years, to when Alexander Caywood, the developer of the Dutchess grape, planted his vineyard.
Applewood Winery in Warwick, N.Y., is one of 10 wineries on the Shawangunk Wine Trail.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
November 2008Making Slow Wine at Stoutridge
Stoutridge Vineyard's winery is built on the site of a pre-Prohibition winery. The remaining foundation wall of Morano Winery was restored to become the front wall for the tasting room patio.Just as slow food links the pleasure of food with a commitment to the environment, slow wine focuses on making the best wine a priority while protecting the ecology and environment of a region. For Stephen Osborn at Stoutridge Vineyard in Marlboro, N.Y., speeding up the winemaking process in order to take a wine to the marketplace faster is hard on the wine and has a greater negative impact on the environment. Slow winemaking, as he practices it, involves using the gravity flow method of winemaking, and eliminating filtering.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2008Capitalizing on Cover Crops
Grass serves as a cover crop between rows of Chardonnay (above) at Waltz Vineyard in Manheim, Pa. Different species of cover crops--such as clovers, wildflowers or grasses--serve different purposes in a vineyard depending on the soil, nitrogen levels, vine height and growing season.In the past five years, cover crop management has improved wine quality more than any other technique implemented here at Linden Vineyards. This includes both vineyard and cellar innovations. As our management skills and experience are fine-tuned and expanded, we anticipate even more benefits in the years to come.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2008Finger Lakes Prices Dip
Penn Yan, N.Y. -- Most grape prices in the Finger Lakes of New York showed little change in 2008 from those paid in 2007. The biggest price change was in Cabernet Franc, where the price per ton fell $143 from $1,560 to $1,417. Traminette and the three recently named Geneva hybrids, Corot Noir, Noiret and Valvin Muscat also showed price weakness. In general, however, the difference in the average price paid for grapes in 2008 was less than $20 per ton up or down from what was paid in 2007.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
October 2008Historic Restoration
In addition to properties in Pennsylvania, Robert Mazza Inc. owns Mazza Chautauqua Cellars (above), a wine cellar, cafe and distillery in Mayville, N.Y.Robert Mazza is one of a handful of vintners to own wineries in two states. Thirty-five years ago, Mazza Vineyards Inc. became the seventh licensed winery in Pennsylvania. The winery, located in the small town of North East in Erie County, opened in June 1974, following the first crush in 1973. Mazza, who was the first president in what was then a family operation, has seen the winery expand to the point where it is now part of Robert Mazza Inc., a holding company that owns Mazza Vineyards in Pennsylvania, Mazza Chautauqua Cellars in Mayville, N.Y., which opened in 2006, and most recently a historical property, the South Shore Wine Co. in North East, Penn., which was restored to serve as an additional tasting room for Mazza Vineyards.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2008Slenderizing Wine
At our Tamanend Winery in Pennsylvania, we kid with couples who have a tasting dichotomy: One likes dry wines, and the other likes sweet wines. Sometimes this tasting dilemma results in the couple not buying bottles of wine at restaurants, because only one will be satisfied with the selection.
Dr. Charles Thomas of Chateau Thomas Winery devised his Slender Wines line for consumers who prefer sweeter wines but don't want the excess sugar.
We give our customers permission to "play with their food" and have suggested for years that they buy a bottle of wine for the partner who prefers dry wines and then sweeten the glass of the other partner using either sugar from the table or a packet of artificial sweetener (the latter being easier to get into solution). Still other customers worry about the number of calories they may be consuming by drinking sweeter wines, or the glycemic effect of the sugar--especially if they are on a diet or have diabetes.READ MORE »
Wine East Features
September 2008Tuscany in North Georgia
PHOTOS: Chris HornadayWinery tourism is an accepted norm in the travel business, an oft-used term at industry seminars, and every Chamber of Commerce wants a piece of the action.READ MORE »