Wine East Features
Rising 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.
But growers and winemakers rise to the occasion, and many craft wonderful wines even in difficult vintages. All growers and winemakers should take a good, hard look at the harvest just finished and learn from the many lessons of 2011.
In the following article, two extension educators reflect on these lessons and discuss how growers can improve their vineyards in future years. Mark Chien, statewide viticulture extension educator for the Penn State Cooperative Extension, offers a range of suggestions for improving eastern vineyard practices, and Tony Wolf, professor of viticulture and director of the Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Virginia Tech, discusses vineyard sanitation issues. Richard Carey, owner and winemaker at Vitis Wine Center in Lancaster, Pa., offers comments from the winemaking aspect of the recent vintage.
Controlling Disease Pressure
The harvest in 2011 was a puzzling and frustrating vintage for many winegrowers in the East, particularly along the corridor that got hammered by Hurricanes Irene and Lee. Despite adequate heat summation, sugars stopped accumulating in mid-September, and the weather never dried out enough to make a difference. Nevertheless, winemakers appear optimistic that flavors and phenolics are at levels that can make good wines.
In discussing the situation in vineyards with growers and extension educators in the mid-Atlantic region, there certainly are not a lot of obvious solutions to the fruit rot problems. Downy mildew was expected with all the rain, and some growers controlled it better than others. Botrytis and sour rot also were encouraged by rain, warm days and nights, wet soils, splitting berries, early and ferocious bird predations, yellow jackets, ants, fruit flies and whatever else wanted to jump into the fray.
There is no magic bullet for a vintage like this, but here are some suggestions that may help grapegrowers survive these kinds of vintage conditions (especially fruit rots) in the future.
• The most important defense against disease and unripe fruit is a high-quality vineyard site that will create a balanced vine. Find a place that will grow the smallest vine necessary to meet production and quality goals for the type, style and price point of the wine you intend to make. Use Richard Smart’s rules of balance as a general guide for vine balance. We learned during this harvest that smaller, open vines had less disease, riper fruit and often picked earlier.
• Properly design and develop a vineyard that will take full advantage of the virtues of your site, including slope, local topographic features, aspect, etc. Consider planting disease-resistant varieties.
• Avoid trees around the vineyard because they block wind movement, create shade and harbor diseases and insects.
• If planting vinifera or some hybrids, choose the right rootstock.
• Once the vineyard is in production, read the season in the spring and plan accordingly. Utilize IPM, canopy management, fruit management, etc.
• The spray program is very, very important. The sprayer must be properly calibrated, the correct materials used at the right time, and it all has to fit together.
• Control botrytis!
• Captan, Flint and Pristine have been identified as broad-spectrum fungicides that may help with sour rot. Plan the spray program so these sprays will be available later in the season.
• Canopy management in our cool and often damp climate is so much more important than in dry wine regions. Pruning, achieving balance, 3 to 5 shoots per foot, uncluttered head and inter-vine area, hedging and (perhaps most important) timely and correct leaf removal—with a nod toward trace bloom on tight-clustered varieties—will all help to mitigate disease. Get air/wind, light/heat, spray materials, etc., into the fruit zone and interior of the canopy.
• Be proactive in dealing with birds. Net the vineyard, no debate—just do it. Use the best and most appropriate net material.
• Deal with deer, raccoons, yellow jackets, etc., as best you can.
• Don’t overcrop your vines. Distribute clusters evenly in the fruit zone, and make certain that one cluster does not touch the next one.
• Set up to sort fruit, in the vineyard, before the harvester goes through—and, if possible, before the destemmer.
• Talk with your winemaker throughout the grapegrowing season, as he or she has to make wine from the fruit you grow.
—Mark Chien
Vineyard Sanitation
I’ve had several requests for advice on what to do with grape clusters that remain in the trellis, those that were not fit to be harvested for one reason or another. Clusters that were affected by disease organisms such as botrytis could serve as a source of inoculum for those diseases in the coming season. The conventional wisdom is to remove these clusters from the trellis so that they are not in close proximity to susceptible tissues next year.
But should the clusters be dropped on the ground or removed from the vineyard and destroyed by burying, burning or composting? My own opinion—and our practice here at Winchester, Va.—is to remove the clusters from the vine and toss them in the grassy row middles where they can be mowed/shredded with the season’s final cover crop mowing to hasten their decomposition. Notice that I said in the “row middles,” not on the soil under the trellis, where decomposition might take longer (and where the clusters would be that much closer to new growth next spring.)
If you want to achieve an incremental increase in inoculum reduction, the unharvested clusters could be collected and removed from the vineyard rather than dropping in row middles. The choice is really a matter of vineyard scale and labor availability as well as personal convictions about vineyard sanitation.
I asked two grape pathologists this question and essentially got a confirmation of the shred-in-place (row middle) recommendati on. Wayne Wilcox at Cornell University added that it’s also important to consider the thoroughness of removing the clusters from the trellis. His point was that if you’re going to remove the clusters from the vines, be sure to do a good job of it, regardless of whether the clusters are dropped in the row middles or removed from the vineyard. Wilcox used the analogy of protective fungicide sprays: If you’re going to apply fungicides (and most of us do), make sure that you’re getting good coverage. If you remove affected clusters from the trellis, try to remove them all.
This approach to sanitation will not eliminate the disease threats next season, but it can help with disease management. As Mizuho Nita, research/extension grape pathologist at Virginia Tech, mentioned when we talked about this issue, your approach to sanitation this fall will not be worth much if you miss a critical spray or two next spring.
The next question is: What about secondary clusters? Should they all be removed too? Chances are good that the secondary clusters would be removed during dormant pruning and probably don’t have quite the rot issues that the primary crop might have suffered. Here, too, the follow-up question would be whether to remove prunings (and secondary clusters) from the vineyard or shred them in row middles. We currently shred the canes in our own vineyard, but I’m leaning toward removal and burning in the future—not for fruit rot issues but more related to concerns about vascular, wood-rotting pathogens.
—Tony Wolf
Winemaker’s Point of View
As a former California vintner, making wine on the East Coast has broadened my understanding of winemaking. I appreciate the range of flavor profiles that the many different kinds of grapes grown in the east provide to the winemaker’s palette, and those varieties have pushed me to develop different cellar treatments to bring out each wine’s character and quality. The 2011 harvest season, however, has offered a winemaking challenge to test the mettle of even the most seasoned East Coast winemakers. It’s a challenge that would drive most West Coast winemakers crazy with worry.
In the mid-Atlantic region, the storms of 2011 brought between 15 and 30 inches of rain in a two-week period early in September, which is quite early for harvest in this area. In many vineyards, strong winds during those storms essentially stripped the leaves off the vines. Because Vitis Wine Center is a custom crush/alternate proprietorship wine-production operation, we receive fruit from a variety of customers over much of the mid-Atlantic region, and we saw a range of effects from the extremely wet conditions.
One variety, Vidal, was particularly hit hard. Normally, these grapes would not have arrived at the winery until two to three weeks later. Vidal from one vineyard where the leaves were not completely stripped came in at 17° Brix, while at another vineyard that lost most of its leaves, the grapes came in at 13° Brix. Both lots were chaptalized up 2° Brix and fermented.
Interestingly, other than the difference in Brix, the harvest parameters for both lots were reasonably normal. The pH was 3.3 to 3.4 (somewhat higher than normal for this variety at harvest), and the total acids were in the mid-7 to low-8 grams per liter range. Perhaps the most surprising fact was that the seeds were toward the darker brown stage for both lots. This indicates to me that these grapes had reached a turning point in their physiological development and were ready to be harvested, even though the normal level of sugar was not present.
Wines fermented from these lots have typical varietal character, with the major difference being the concentration. Now the challenge is to develop good-quality, drinkable wines.
During this same time frame in early September, we received some Merlot from one of the better vineyards in our area. The grower was hit hard on yields, but the fruit we did receive was in excellent condition. Brix levels were normal, and the grapes required only a small amount of chaptalization and a bit more nitrogen during fermentation. It became clear as the grapes fermented that the biggest difference in this year’s Merlot was the lower level of tannins in the grapes. We added nearly twice the recommended amount of tannin adjustments that we typically use to augment flavor profiles, and the resulting wine is now very well balanced.
Later developing varieties such as Chambourcin, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc seemed to survive the vagaries of the weather and produce reasonably ripened fruit. The only variety that demonstrated any differences during fermentation was Chambourcin, a grape variety that has a tendency to lose its structural integrity toward the end of fermentation. The cap loses its strength, and the juice permeates much higher into the cap sooner than just about any variety I have encountered. This year Chambourcin completely fell apart during fermentation. One lot completely blinded the filter press, and it took heroic efforts on the part of our cellar staff to clear it out. The other lots were also more difficult than normal.
In summary, this harvest season has certainly tested the skills of both grapegrowers and winemakers. There are lessons to be learned both in the vineyard and in the cellar. But for the consumer, I am hopeful that there will be many pleasant wines to experience from this harvest.
—Richard Carey
But growers and winemakers rise to the occasion, and many craft wonderful wines even in difficult vintages. All growers and winemakers should take a good, hard look at the harvest just finished and learn from the many lessons of 2011.
In the following article, two extension educators reflect on these lessons and discuss how growers can improve their vineyards in future years. Mark Chien, statewide viticulture extension educator for the Penn State Cooperative Extension, offers a range of suggestions for improving eastern vineyard practices, and Tony Wolf, professor of viticulture and director of the Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Virginia Tech, discusses vineyard sanitation issues. Richard Carey, owner and winemaker at Vitis Wine Center in Lancaster, Pa., offers comments from the winemaking aspect of the recent vintage.
Controlling Disease Pressure
The harvest in 2011 was a puzzling and frustrating vintage for many winegrowers in the East, particularly along the corridor that got hammered by Hurricanes Irene and Lee. Despite adequate heat summation, sugars stopped accumulating in mid-September, and the weather never dried out enough to make a difference. Nevertheless, winemakers appear optimistic that flavors and phenolics are at levels that can make good wines.
In discussing the situation in vineyards with growers and extension educators in the mid-Atlantic region, there certainly are not a lot of obvious solutions to the fruit rot problems. Downy mildew was expected with all the rain, and some growers controlled it better than others. Botrytis and sour rot also were encouraged by rain, warm days and nights, wet soils, splitting berries, early and ferocious bird predations, yellow jackets, ants, fruit flies and whatever else wanted to jump into the fray.
There is no magic bullet for a vintage like this, but here are some suggestions that may help grapegrowers survive these kinds of vintage conditions (especially fruit rots) in the future.
• The most important defense against disease and unripe fruit is a high-quality vineyard site that will create a balanced vine. Find a place that will grow the smallest vine necessary to meet production and quality goals for the type, style and price point of the wine you intend to make. Use Richard Smart’s rules of balance as a general guide for vine balance. We learned during this harvest that smaller, open vines had less disease, riper fruit and often picked earlier.
• Properly design and develop a vineyard that will take full advantage of the virtues of your site, including slope, local topographic features, aspect, etc. Consider planting disease-resistant varieties.
• Avoid trees around the vineyard because they block wind movement, create shade and harbor diseases and insects.
• If planting vinifera or some hybrids, choose the right rootstock.
• Once the vineyard is in production, read the season in the spring and plan accordingly. Utilize IPM, canopy management, fruit management, etc.
• The spray program is very, very important. The sprayer must be properly calibrated, the correct materials used at the right time, and it all has to fit together.
• Control botrytis!
• Captan, Flint and Pristine have been identified as broad-spectrum fungicides that may help with sour rot. Plan the spray program so these sprays will be available later in the season.
• Canopy management in our cool and often damp climate is so much more important than in dry wine regions. Pruning, achieving balance, 3 to 5 shoots per foot, uncluttered head and inter-vine area, hedging and (perhaps most important) timely and correct leaf removal—with a nod toward trace bloom on tight-clustered varieties—will all help to mitigate disease. Get air/wind, light/heat, spray materials, etc., into the fruit zone and interior of the canopy.
• Be proactive in dealing with birds. Net the vineyard, no debate—just do it. Use the best and most appropriate net material.
• Deal with deer, raccoons, yellow jackets, etc., as best you can.
• Don’t overcrop your vines. Distribute clusters evenly in the fruit zone, and make certain that one cluster does not touch the next one.
• Set up to sort fruit, in the vineyard, before the harvester goes through—and, if possible, before the destemmer.
• Talk with your winemaker throughout the grapegrowing season, as he or she has to make wine from the fruit you grow.
—Mark Chien
Vineyard Sanitation
I’ve had several requests for advice on what to do with grape clusters that remain in the trellis, those that were not fit to be harvested for one reason or another. Clusters that were affected by disease organisms such as botrytis could serve as a source of inoculum for those diseases in the coming season. The conventional wisdom is to remove these clusters from the trellis so that they are not in close proximity to susceptible tissues next year.
But should the clusters be dropped on the ground or removed from the vineyard and destroyed by burying, burning or composting? My own opinion—and our practice here at Winchester, Va.—is to remove the clusters from the vine and toss them in the grassy row middles where they can be mowed/shredded with the season’s final cover crop mowing to hasten their decomposition. Notice that I said in the “row middles,” not on the soil under the trellis, where decomposition might take longer (and where the clusters would be that much closer to new growth next spring.)
If you want to achieve an incremental increase in inoculum reduction, the unharvested clusters could be collected and removed from the vineyard rather than dropping in row middles. The choice is really a matter of vineyard scale and labor availability as well as personal convictions about vineyard sanitation.
I asked two grape pathologists this question and essentially got a confirmation of the shred-in-place (row middle) recommendati on. Wayne Wilcox at Cornell University added that it’s also important to consider the thoroughness of removing the clusters from the trellis. His point was that if you’re going to remove the clusters from the vines, be sure to do a good job of it, regardless of whether the clusters are dropped in the row middles or removed from the vineyard. Wilcox used the analogy of protective fungicide sprays: If you’re going to apply fungicides (and most of us do), make sure that you’re getting good coverage. If you remove affected clusters from the trellis, try to remove them all.
This approach to sanitation will not eliminate the disease threats next season, but it can help with disease management. As Mizuho Nita, research/extension grape pathologist at Virginia Tech, mentioned when we talked about this issue, your approach to sanitation this fall will not be worth much if you miss a critical spray or two next spring.
The next question is: What about secondary clusters? Should they all be removed too? Chances are good that the secondary clusters would be removed during dormant pruning and probably don’t have quite the rot issues that the primary crop might have suffered. Here, too, the follow-up question would be whether to remove prunings (and secondary clusters) from the vineyard or shred them in row middles. We currently shred the canes in our own vineyard, but I’m leaning toward removal and burning in the future—not for fruit rot issues but more related to concerns about vascular, wood-rotting pathogens.
—Tony Wolf
Winemaker’s Point of View
As a former California vintner, making wine on the East Coast has broadened my understanding of winemaking. I appreciate the range of flavor profiles that the many different kinds of grapes grown in the east provide to the winemaker’s palette, and those varieties have pushed me to develop different cellar treatments to bring out each wine’s character and quality. The 2011 harvest season, however, has offered a winemaking challenge to test the mettle of even the most seasoned East Coast winemakers. It’s a challenge that would drive most West Coast winemakers crazy with worry.
In the mid-Atlantic region, the storms of 2011 brought between 15 and 30 inches of rain in a two-week period early in September, which is quite early for harvest in this area. In many vineyards, strong winds during those storms essentially stripped the leaves off the vines. Because Vitis Wine Center is a custom crush/alternate proprietorship wine-production operation, we receive fruit from a variety of customers over much of the mid-Atlantic region, and we saw a range of effects from the extremely wet conditions.
One variety, Vidal, was particularly hit hard. Normally, these grapes would not have arrived at the winery until two to three weeks later. Vidal from one vineyard where the leaves were not completely stripped came in at 17° Brix, while at another vineyard that lost most of its leaves, the grapes came in at 13° Brix. Both lots were chaptalized up 2° Brix and fermented.
Interestingly, other than the difference in Brix, the harvest parameters for both lots were reasonably normal. The pH was 3.3 to 3.4 (somewhat higher than normal for this variety at harvest), and the total acids were in the mid-7 to low-8 grams per liter range. Perhaps the most surprising fact was that the seeds were toward the darker brown stage for both lots. This indicates to me that these grapes had reached a turning point in their physiological development and were ready to be harvested, even though the normal level of sugar was not present.
Wines fermented from these lots have typical varietal character, with the major difference being the concentration. Now the challenge is to develop good-quality, drinkable wines.
During this same time frame in early September, we received some Merlot from one of the better vineyards in our area. The grower was hit hard on yields, but the fruit we did receive was in excellent condition. Brix levels were normal, and the grapes required only a small amount of chaptalization and a bit more nitrogen during fermentation. It became clear as the grapes fermented that the biggest difference in this year’s Merlot was the lower level of tannins in the grapes. We added nearly twice the recommended amount of tannin adjustments that we typically use to augment flavor profiles, and the resulting wine is now very well balanced.
Later developing varieties such as Chambourcin, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc seemed to survive the vagaries of the weather and produce reasonably ripened fruit. The only variety that demonstrated any differences during fermentation was Chambourcin, a grape variety that has a tendency to lose its structural integrity toward the end of fermentation. The cap loses its strength, and the juice permeates much higher into the cap sooner than just about any variety I have encountered. This year Chambourcin completely fell apart during fermentation. One lot completely blinded the filter press, and it took heroic efforts on the part of our cellar staff to clear it out. The other lots were also more difficult than normal.
In summary, this harvest season has certainly tested the skills of both grapegrowers and winemakers. There are lessons to be learned both in the vineyard and in the cellar. But for the consumer, I am hopeful that there will be many pleasant wines to experience from this harvest.
—Richard Carey
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