How Climate Change's Extreme Weather Events Affect Grapes and Wine:

 We (Epona) joined the Porto Protocol a year or two ago; it's a collaboration of grapegrowers and winemakers, worldwide, who are focusing on "Green" issues--sustainability; adaptation to changing climate, etc. To join, they ask you to write a short case study about what you're doing or have done, to be more "Green" (we used our solar-powered, earth-sheltered winery, and our modern varieties of grapes as our "reasons to beg into the group"). Here's a report I wrote to my winery association:

Today, the PP held a discussion of experts from around the world, on "Extreme Weather Events." The panel included Gregory Jones, a research climatologist specializing in the climatology of viticulture. He is the Director of the Evenstad Center for Wine Education, holds the Evenstad Chair in Wine Studies, and is a professor and research climatologist in the Department of Environmental Studies at Linfield University. He conducts applied research for the grape and wine industry in Oregon. I think he was on the smoke taint panel for the WSU event last week?

Major points:

1. In Australia the hotter temps are causing growers to move to the cool sides of hills (KLE: Note: This is being done in Walla Walla), and to stop all leaf removal, and to adopt new canopy styles which shade the fruit.

2. We need to get politics out of the climate change discussion.

3. A number of major insurers have stopped insuring Oregon grapegrowers, due to increased climate-related claims. They are literally leaving the state.

4. Climate extreme events are being seen in every grapegrowing region. 

5. Mendoza, Argentina sees increasing summer hail events due to climate change.

I submitted this comment: "Growers should consider earlier-ripening modern varieties, which spend fewer days on the vine and thus are a bit less exposed to extreme weather events. Such as, avoiding some of the earlier Fall rains here in the US' Pacific Northwest, because they can be harvested before some of those rains." I also told my grapebreeder friends that if smoke is going to be more common, they should consider putting the tenteurier trait (colored juice in red grapes) into their grapes, as that allows a dark red wine to be made even if we press the juice off the skins immediately after harvest, thereby reducing the risk of smoke taint. Many of these guys are/were  research professors and/or very deep into practical science, and one responded that the tenteurier trait is expressed through a single identified gene and should not be too difficult to cross into grapes. At Epona we have three red winegrapes which are tenteurier: Golubok, VB Labelle, and Delicatessen. All of them are earlier-ripening than, say, Pinot Noir.

Each of us will make her/his own decision about what to change, and when and how to change it, in response to growing environmental threats.

Kenton

We are really screwing up our climate

Read the story here: Budbreak of grapes in France is occurring earlier and earlier, putting the grapes at greater risk of a killing late frost. So grapegrowers are having to implement expensive approaches to fighting frosts. And ironically, they often use smudge pots to make the heat amongst the vines, which contributes to more climate change!

The answer is to globally reduce our hydrocarbon burning, starting with the dirtiest sets of emissions: The burning of coal and oil. It can be done, but we have to do it.

I published a book on modern grapes for the Pacific Northwest!

After researching, collecting, and testing many different grape varieties over the past 23 years, I turned all those testing notes into what I hope is a useful book for anyone considering growing grapes in the Pac Northwest. It is also useful if you want to read about farming, winemaking, and general nature-based philosophy.

You can buy the book (printed paperback or Kindle version) here.

The photo is of my own Leon Millot grapes. Thank you for checking out the book!

Making Noble Wolf Malbec!

403 lbs of gorgeous Malbec grapes from Adolfo's "Noble Wolf" vineyard near Dallesport WA (high in the mountains above the Columbia River--about 1000' I think). 23 Brix; pH 3.2. Fantastic boysenberry jam flavor. Well-tended vines (a really pretty site, actually). Lucky to have sourced this fruit.

"Mal bec" in French means "bad mouth," meaning the wine tastes green when young. Right now, the juice is pure and rich, with great body and deep flavor, with no greenness, but that may come soon. The secret to good Malbec appears to be aging the wine for a long time, which lets the wine soften and mature into its final richness. Will do.

THANK YOU to Andrew who helped me crush this fruit in very high heat (for so late in September).

Tasting notes: 2015 K Vintners "The Boy" Grenache

This is a difficult review to write. For years I've stated that K Vintners is one of the three best wineries in Washington state (the others being Cayuse, and Barnard Griffin's white and rose wines only).  I called those three the "First Growths" of Washington.

But something has happened to K Vintners. We went to their Spring release party, and 80% of the wines weren't good to me. Who am I you ask, and it's a fair question. I'm a wine retailer and a commercial winemaker, and I've made wine for 23 years and grown grapes for longer than that. I've collected fine wines and resold them on the international market for over 40 years now. So I'm entitled to have an opinion.

Which brings us to this wine by Charles Smith. 95 points by Robert Parker, and 94 by Wine Enthusiast. Etc, etc. No doubt, Charles has reliably high reviews by the pros. Parker said:

"The 100% Grenache 2014 The Boy is a ripe, wild, peppery, meaty, rose petal and olive scented effort that has full-bodied richness, with a sensational, layered and silky texture, as well as ripe, polished tannin and a great finish. It's difficult to find a better Grenache from the New World."

Friends, I am here to tell you that, even with perfect cellaring, at four years old this wine is nowhere close to being worth $50. It has a good cherry nose, and it's rich and silky, but it's fleeting. The palate is meh. The finish is meh.  My spouse is a very tough critic on wines; she wouldn't drink this one. Wow. I gave it two days in the fridge, but it was no better, so I didn't rob the cradle with it. There is very little to commend it at this price point. Just another example of "experts" being wrong. 

Here is what you need to know: Every fiber of our imperfect mind wants to believe that a more-expensive wine is a better mind. But you need to retrain your instincts to rebel against such mistaken thinking. Italy and southern France and northern Spain and Argentina give us GREAT wines that cost from $9-$13. So why would you overpay $50 for this one? It is not ethereal. Yes, some expensive wines CAN be ethereal, and the search for them is worthwhile. But in general, any fool can overpay for wine--it is the easiest thing to do. What is very difficult is to find great wines at lower prices. That is what I've spent my years trying to master, with much success I think.

Now, understand: Charles is still a wine god to me. He can do amazing things with grapes. But I can no longer expect all his wines to be great. His Kung Fu Girl Riesling is one of the best lower-cost wines in the world. His higher-end Syrahs can be mesmerizing. But do not assume that all his wines are great. They are not. My suspicion is that once a winemaker achieves fame and fortune, it becomes exponentially more likely that their quality will slip. Just my opinion. 

The ugly truth about the USA's western forest fires

This article explains how we have caused the massive, destructive California (and Oregon and Washington and Idaho) wildfires: In nature, about a quarter of that area's forests would see a fast-moving fire every year, which cleared out the brush, pine and fir needles, and understory plants, while sparing the large trees. Those are relatively "cool" fires, which pass through an area quickly. But they still do cover the area with smoke and haze.

But we fight the fires, preventing them from doing what nature wants, and allowing the understory brush to thrive, until a fire comes along that is so hot and fast-growing that it can overpower our firefighting efforts, and then there is so much fuel that even the large trees burn, which makes the fire linger over any one particular place and burn much hotter. And of course our homes and barns burn then, also.

What we should do is allow the frequent fires to keep the forest floor clean, and design our rural homes to survive a fast-moving "cooler" fire (large no-plant buffer around the homes). That is the price of living in the dry West--a very sparse yard, and a house made of fire-resistant materials.  Then, we could save many billions in firefighting costs, and lives. But the dry West would be smoky every summer.

But smoke is not good for grapes. It taints the flavors. Hot fires can even kill the grapevines.

So maybe we shouldn't be growing grapes in the dry West, you say? Hmm. Maybe that's right.

I have been saying "dry West," because there is a "wet West"--it's the area west of the Cascades in OR and WA. However, smoke blows wherever the wind takes it, and often lately, therer's been too much smoke and haze in the wet West for ideal grape conditions. So it's an issue in the entire west. But in most years, the wet West has enough good onshore winds, blowing from the cool, clean Pacific, that the grapes here do fine.

Lots to think about. I believe a wise government would start requiring homes to be built (and retrofitted) to be more fire-safe, and then let the forests burn, and fight the fires only to protect designated "safe areas" that are small towns and large cities. We are unable to defeat these megafires, so we need to let their awful destructive power occur once, and then perhaps the frequent cooler fires that keep the floor clean won't be so difficult to deal with, as we let them burn.

(photo credit: Google images)

Rose sales climbing fast! Why not try Olequa's Brilliant 2016 Foch Rose?

Thanks to Steve for turning me towards this article.

I also found this one.

Some salient points:
1. Rose wine sales are headed sharply up.
2. In France, more rose is drunk now than whites!
3. Men are drinking more and more rose.

This is great news. All colors of wine need to be enjoyed by all winelovers!

I am particularly enjoying Olequa's Rose of Marechal Foch. It has a brilliant clarity, a bright and inviting deep red color, and loads and loads of jam-packed strawberries, cherries, and cranberries, riding on a strong acid backbone. This is a wine for summer! Serve it chilled. Keep some for Thanksgiving! because this would be awesome awesome awesome with turkey. Don't worry any more about gerrymandering Pinot Noir or Merlot or Gewurz or Riesling into the Turkey Tango--just use this wine! I promise. If you want to buy this one from me, it's just $13 with more flavor in each bottle than you have ever had! Email me at kenton.erwin@gmail.com . Epona Wines (virtual wine retailer)...

(image credit to Google stock images)

Southern Joaquin Valley in CA awash in hard-to-sell winegrapes

This is upsetting: Winegrapes from a huge portion of the southern San Joaquin Valley were sold this year for as low as $200 per ton. That is only $0.10 per pound. A lousy price for a grower.

To be sure, these aren't your upscale vineyards--these are factory-farmed grapes on vineyards thousands of acres big. Those grapes go into cheap wines. But the growers are switching to nut crops, which produce more revenue.

So the cheap-wine market may find a shortfall in grape supply. An ongoing pendulum shifting in grape/wine economics.

Check this out: A map showing areas of the world that will lose, and gain, the ability to grow quality winegrapes

This map shows scientists' best guess of the effects of climate change upon the world's winegrape regions.

Note that Tri Cities, Red Mountain, and Walla Walla will see loss of vineyard acreage due to the increasing heat. Ditto for the areas south of the Great Lakes. The Willamette Valley gains the ability to grow more kinds of winegrapes. Bordeaux and Napa are huge losers, as are much of Italy and Spain. This is why growers in Champagne are planting in southern England. Yes, southern England. It's a game-changer, folks.

The article is here.

2013's triple whammy of record weather for grapes in the Pacific Northwest

What a year this 2013 has been, for grapegrowers!

1. Some sites in the PacNW saw record heat in July. Above 90 or 95F, a grapevine suspends the fruit ripening process, so very hot days are "lost time" and they can impair the production of fully ripe fruit.

2. The entire region had record rainfall in September, which had heavy impact on a small portion of regional vineyards. Ripening earlier, many of the modern varieties were harvested before the rains, but most of the vinifera had to keep hanging. Fortunately, most of those were able to "hang through" into a dry late September and October. But too much water can dilute the desired flavors in the grapes.

3. In December, we saw very frightfully cold (and suddenly cold) weather: Hermiston OR got down to -8F, Ephrata WA and Yakima WA saw -2F (breaking a record held since 1972), and even sheltered Hillsboro OR (just west of Portland) saw a low of 9F with two weeks of all-day sub-freezing temps. These sudden, extremely cold temps can kill vinifera grapevines, especially younger ones.  Modern varieties of grapes (hybrids) are fine at these temps, however--a real advantage of growing them, as they have hardier American grapes in their lineage.

Fingers crossed for milder weather in 2014!

(image credit: Kendall Jackson winery)

Vineyards Marching North

This article says that French wineries are buying up land in southern England, in preparation for the continuing climate change which would make it difficult to continue growing Bordeaux varieties in SW France and Rhone varieties in SE France. Those climate changes are already noticeable but the point of Bordeaux leaving Bordeaux is surely not very imminent.  But perhaps it's not as far off as one might think.

We see the same threats mentioned as to Napa Valley in California, and I hear more and more about Syrah planted in the Willamette Valley. Another way this is manifested is the planting of grapes higher and higher up the mountains; as the mountain slopes warm and undergo fewer deep freezes in winter, they become more favorable for grapes. There are wonderful grapes being grown in New Mexico's mountains (check out Gruet sparkling wines), so perhaps we can look for quality vineyards in Colorado's mountains someday? Can you imagine Chardonnay being grown here:

And (this sounds impossible to one who has grown Pinot Noir here in NW Oregon, and so often could not get it fully ripe), could it be that someday NW Oregon will produce a great Cabernet? No, surely that cannot be--Cab is one of the sun-hungriest grapes--but who knows? If a trend continues for long enough, strange things will finally happen.

Ecological effects of vineyards pushing into new places

See this article.

As the heat builds in the southern climes, vineyards are pushing northward. Whereas the Romans grew winegrapes in southern Britain, for 2000 years afterward it wasn't possible, until starting about 10-20 years ago, winegrapes are making a comeback there. In southern British Columbia, vast areas have been planted to winegrapes, with great success, in areas that were formerly just grassland/desert. Places like Greece and southern Spain will be the losers (as might also be Napa Valley).  In the Willamette Valley our grandchildren may see  Pinot Noir give way to Syrah, and Pinot might become more successful around the Puget Sound.

It would be wrong to bet against such trends.

Meanwhile, the planting of vineyards in former wild places does have an impact on flora and fauna. That can be mitigated somewhat by use of modern hybrid grapes, which require less or no spray to control fungal and other diseases, and by using organic practices and avoiding irrigation. But the grapegrower must fence to keep out animals like deer, and this changes the ecological system. Study is needed to learn how to minimize the adverse effects of such changes. Perhaps vineyard areas need to remain surrounded by woodlands and grasslands that remain accessible to wildlife. This is what we have at our Woodland WA vineyard, the Epona Vineyard.

(the photo is of a vineyard in Cornwall, England. Photo credit: The Guardian, UK.)

Smoke from 2012 wildfires in Washington state a factor for wine quality?

This is interesting: Wildfires in eastern Washington last summer (2012) put a smoke haze over parts of the state for days. Smoke particles can come to rest on grape skins, and thus end up in the finished wine (I suppose the smoke could be rinsed off, but that is not practicable in the case of many tons of grapes and it could dilute the wine flavors, and if the smoke somehow binds to the grape then you have an unremovable flaw.

However, the Walla Walla wineries don't think they were impacted by this; I'm not sure where the smoke clouds were located.

Apparently the effects of smoke on wine will increase with the wine's age, so any damage won't be known right away. The damage would be worse with red grapes, where the smoke flavor could obscure the fruit flavors. However, since some white winegrapes are aged in burnt barrels (that's behind the name "Fume Blanc," for example), smokiness in a white wine can be a plus. And in a small amount it's just another beneficial flavor in a red wine.

We should know, over the next few years, whether and to what extent any WA wineries were impacted. Meanwhile, funding for remote firefighting is dropping, and the number of fires is increasing . . .

Read the article here.

[photo credit: Al Feldstein. Amazing artworks of his can be seen here.