The winemaker vs. the weather
Published: December 13, 2009, 12:30 am
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There’s an old saying in the wine business: “In the good years the wine carries the winemaker, and in the bad years the winemaker carries the wine.”
After a growing season like the one we just had in Western New York, this was a year the winemaker will carry the wine.
Hard frosts in late spring and early October heavily damaged several varieties of grapes. Many that survived the highs and lows of spring, summer and fall were less mature, with less balanced flavor, when plucked from the vineyards in recent weeks.
“The bottom line is that costs are up in the vineyard and the yield is down,” said Duncan Ross, owner of Arrowhead Spring Vineyards in Cambria, who lost half the crop in his seven- acre spread along Townline Road.
Spring frosts, followed by the cold rains of early to mid-summer, slowed the growth of grapes and other fruits, limiting their natural sugar content. A beautiful late August and September failed to open a window quite large enough to bring them up to speed.
More summer rain meant more leaves to prune and weeds to pull. It created the need for more organic spraying to guard against fungus growth. Then frost hit in early October, dropping leaves and ending the process of photosynthesis that keeps grapes drinking in nutrients.
In years like this, farmers harvest grapes sooner than they would like, just to save them, said Domenic Carisetti, winemaker for several wineries on the Niagara Wine Trail. Varieties that mature earlier in the season – including Niagara, Reisling and Baco Noir – fared better than later varieties, which include Vidal Blanc, Steuben and Concord grapes, he said.
Ross said mildew practically wiped out his Syrah grapes and put a big dent in his Merlot. The Cabernet Sauvignon and Cab Franc fared much better. Wines from those grapes “are going to be great,” he said. “There’s just not going to be a lot of it.”
Niagara Landing Wine Cellars owner Peter Smith bemoaned what had happened to his Concords, some of which he uses for wine but most, if their sugar content is high enough, he sells to Welch’s for grape juice. In a good year, Smith and his work crews can harvest up to eight tons of several native grapes per acre; this year, it was more like four or five.
The story was similar in the Lake Erie, Finger Lakes and Southern Ontario wine regions, said Jim Trezise, president of the New York Wine&Grape Foundation.
The goal of good wine is to bring the acid and sugar contents into a balance that brings out the best flavors, Trezise said. When grapes don’t mature as well, there can be too much acid and not enough sugar.
That’s why the winemaker’s job becomes more crucial in years like this.
Carisetti and other winemakers will look to bring a better balance to their wines. With the sweet wines, Carisetti will add a bit more cane sugar early in the fermentation process and shortly before bottling; with the drier varieties, yeast will be used to ferment the sugar to dryness.
“Wine has a life of its own,” Carisetti said. “We’re just here to guide it.”
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