Harsh season extends grape harvest
Hail and heavy rains take toll on crops as growers time picks
Timing was everything for grape growers in Western New York as this year’s weather-beaten harvest wound down last week.
This year’s grape crop, like apples and other fruit, fell victim to hailstorms that raked the area over the summer and suffered from a shortage of sunlight late into the season.
The nasty weather made for an extended harvest, and, in some cases, poorer quality wine. Some crops will be sold for grape juice and not even bottled as wine.
Harvesting at Merritt Estate Winery in the Chautauqua town of Forestville finished last week, a week or 10 days later than the previous year because of the weather, said Jason C. Merritt, the general manager.
“The quality is not as good as last year, but production will be no less,” he said.
Merritt Estate will produce 20,000 cases of 21 varieties of red and white and sweet and dry wines, about the same as last year.
Some grape growers in Western New York and Southern Ontario were hit harder than others. Heavy rains and less sun lowered the sugar content of the grapes, which, in turn, affected the quality of the wine.
One of the hardest hit grape crops in the summer hailstorms belongs to Paul Bencal, who owns a 31-acre farm on Albright Road in Niagara County’s Ransomville.
He harvested 92 tons of Concord and Niagara grapes, compared with 116 tons last year.
Bencal, who sells all his grapes to Welch’s to be processed into juice, has worked his precarious livelihood down to the bottom dollar. This year’s grape crop will earn him $22,080, down $5,760 from last year’s $27,840.
A good year nets him $38,000 and a very good crop of 250 tons brings in $60,000.
“The hard part about the grape growing business is dealing with nature,” he said. “A year of adverse weather can really hurt — and several years can knock you out.”
With the random nature of the weather affecting vineyards in different ways, the harvesters had to make sure they picked no grapes before their time.
Many growers had to leave grapes on the vines longer than last year to let them catch some late-season sun and dry out the excess water they received from heavy rains.
“Timing was very important this year,” said Jeffrey G. Murphy, wine-maker at Johnson Estate Winery in Westfield, Chautauqua County. “We hardly had any hail damage, but frost took some leaves off.”
The unpredictable weather in Western New York was crucial to the overall quality of wines statewide, said Jim Trezice, president of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation.
“The weather problem was not statewide or even region wide, but very spotty,” he said. “Some vineyards got hit by hail and others by frost, which damaged the berries and the leaves. If a vine loses its leaves, grapes don’t continue ripening. Leaves are needed to absorb the sunlight and turn it into sugar. No leaves, no way to collect sunlight — good old garden variety photosynthesis — and the quality of the grapes suffers.”
The state crop of 155,000 tons of grapes this season was 6 percent lower than last year’s 180,000 tons, he said.
“This was not a fantastic year,” concluded Michael VonHeckler, a partner in Warm Lake Estate winery on Lower Mountain Road in Cambria. “Berries hit by the hail shrivelled up and died. Sugar levels were down. We still had a crop, but it was down from last year.”
Harvesters at Warm Lake picked 85 tons of grapes this year, compared with 110 tons in 2007.
After an unusually wet summer, a bright and sunny fall saved the vintage. “The moisture problem abated toward the end of harvesting,” VonHeckler added.
The poor quality of grapes will result in “fewer more-expensive wines,” he noted. “and more less-expensive wines.”
Niagara Landing, on Van Dusen Road in Cambria, experienced some hail damage and lost some of its quality grapes, but better weather at the end of the summer helped save the overall harvest, said Jackie Smith Connelly, proprietor, who runs the winery with her brother, Peter Smith.
The hail damaged the berries and shredded the leaves, causing the harvest to be extended for about 10 days. “The weather cooperated in the last week of October and the sugar content reached the right level for harvesting,” she said. “We got through it OK.”
The weather was particularly important to Robin and Duncan Ross, who opened Arrowhead Spring Vineyards on Townline Road in Cambria in February.
“This is our first real harvest,” Robin Ross said. “We got hit by hail twice in one day in July, but it caused no lasting damage.”
In Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., with 18 wineries more or less sheltered below the Niagara Escarpment, hailstorm damage was less than it was above the escarpment on the New York side of the Niagara River, but they did see a lot of rain.
“The sugar content is down because of all the rain and lack of sun,” said Caroline Pohorly, vice president of Joseph’s Estate Wines in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where the harvest was extended a week. “But the production is up.”
In the end, it all came down to the weather. “The quality of the grapes was down early in late September and then the sun finally came out and the sugar content came up,” Bencal said. “We had a long bloom stage. It’s normally seven to nine days, but this year the bloom stage was nearly two weeks.”
