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96 WINES&VINES November 2018 GRAPEGROWING WINE EAST grapes to fully ripen. As a result, growers often leaf-pull, sometimes quite extensively. "None of the vineyards have any kind of ir- rigation," Hatterman-Valenti said, "because usu- ally they don't need it. They haven't had to worry about drought or heat, but this year the vines were being stressed. One place had dropped all the fruit in order to save the young vines." Because of restrictions on fungicides and pesticides in both Sweden and Denmark, most of the vineyards are organic. The very warm temperatures and dry weather may have played a part in the fact that Hatterman-Valenti reported seeing very little disease on the vines and not many insects. "Solaris is the predominant grape in any vineyard and in most of the white wines. It tends to put on sugar, but this year it may get higher alcohols," Hatterman-Valenti said. Sev- eral styles of Solaris wines were served at the wine reception held on the first night of the conference, and she especially liked a spar- kling wine that was 75% Solaris and 25% Phönix and thought that the wines in general were "very good." Hatterman-Valenti also observed that be- cause of the short growing season and low growing degree days, growers have focused on white wines and sparkling wines. However, Copenhagen University has "The Pomentum," the national fruit, berry and nut genetic re- source collection, where 60-70 cultivars are being tested for potential to produce quality wine in Denmark. They would like to get more diversity and are trying different cultivars and accessions from other breeding programs." In Sweden, she was most impressed by the Kullabergs Vingård where the owner, a ven- Swedish growers often remove many leaves, sometimes to the extreme, as in this row of vines at Dyrehøj Vingård.