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November 2018 WINES&VINES 97 WINE EAST GRAPEGROWING Vejrhøj Vingård with the Baltic Sea in the background. Weighing Your Packaging Options? WATERLOO CONTAINER Experience Service Expertise Don't be Penny Wise and Pound Foolish Choosing a packaging provider can be one of the most important decisions you make when planning and branding your product. Be sure to look past the pennies to the overall value you are getting with your packaging purchases. Look for real people with real experience. Look for quality and availability. Look to Waterloo Container. 888-539-3922 • waterloocontainer.com OTHER GUYS ture capitalist, "was putting a lot of money into the vineyard with several pieces of new equipment and plans to renovate a building into a winery," she stated. He had recently planted 20 hectares (49 acres) of grapes and had plans to expand the vineyard further. Wayne Wilcox, emeritus pro- fessor of plant pathology at Cor- nell University, told Wines & Vines, "They have the basic hor- ticultural knowledge, but it's a small industry with small infra- structure behind it. They are ex- panding and bringing in expertise from other European countries and abroad to supplement what they already have." He, too, was "pleasantly sur- prised by the quality of the wines. I expected thin, highly acidic wines, but that's not what we tasted. They were quite nice." Wilcox commented that he had tasted Solaris as a "classic dry table wine, a sparkling wine, a late harvest and a sherry." The wineries seem to have settled on Solaris because it can get to ripeness without a high number of heat units. While they are focusing on Solaris, Wilcox stated that they also are looking at other, similar vines that "are being developed in Germany with a Vitis vinifera base and downy and powdery mildew resistance. They are calling them 'disease- resistant varieties,' not hybrids, because growers are not allowed to plant hybrids in some parts of Europe. If it looks like vinifera, tastes like vinifera, in some coun- tries they'll call it vinifera, even if it's not 100% vinifera." According to Wilcox, the in- dustry "thinks that they have powdery and downy mildew in hand by their choice of culti- vars." He didn't see any disease on the vines but noted that it had been a hot and dry summer. With different weather conditions, they could run into some disease problems, especially with late- season rots. And as in the rest of the world, trunk diseases are likely to become more problem- atic as new vineyards age. Wilcox concluded by noting that the wine industry in both countries is getting to critical mass, where there are enough vineyards and wineries to "build an industry. It's very scenic and every place is well set up for tourism." Linda Jones McKee has been editor of the Wine East section of Wines & Vines_ since 2008. She is based in Lancaster, Pa.