Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/59998
WINEMAKING the vineyard that could improve the value of the grapes. (See "Assay in Real Time," Wines & Vines, October 2010.) "If you can make the economics work," he says, "people will listen." Beck was one of the speakers at a Jan. 25 panel titled "Produc- tive Ways to Talk About Wine Quality" at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium in Sacramento, Calif. In a very different market segment, the toasty San Joaquin Valley, California State University, Fresno, professor and researcher Kaan Kultural and his team are exploring ways to improve the phe- nolic profiles of warm-climate, high-yield vineyards. Leaf removal right after fruit set turns out to be essential for banishing the greenies, and deficit irrigation tech- niques encourage smaller berry size and thus higher phenolic content in grapes from a region that has traditionally been thought of as producing flabby, pale fruit. Preliminary results appear in the final 2011 issue of the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture. Several attempts have been made in Aus- tralia and elsewhere to use measurement of grape color on the vine as a predictor of eventual wine quality, using sensors attached to mechanical harvesters as they collect the fruit clusters. While this kind of color mea- surement is likely a better proxy than simple Brix levels, the results have been mixed. White grapes harder to fix In the Finger Lakes, on the other hand, better phenolic profiling may not be as valuable for a couple of reasons: The main struggle for red grapes is simply to get them ripe in such a cool climate, and the larger issue for the industry is the quality of white and hybrid grapes. (In this nor- mally cool, humid climate, grape contracts often do specify the maximum acceptable proportion of rotted clusters, as well as the maximum infestations of Asian Lady Beetles.) Sacks at Cornell says that fixing problems in white grape composition in the vineyard is generally harder and less well understood than with reds. Mans- field notes that Finger Lakes growers were confronted in 2010 with an entirely novel problem, warm temperatures, leading to a surprising round of questions about har- vest decisions in new circumstances. If progress in developing new quality benchmarks is slow, some progress is at least being made in undermining knee-jerk reli- ance on some of the older ones, like the pre- mium on savagely low yields. The evidence that balanced vines are more important than tons per acre is mounting, coming from both academic and industry trials. Beck men- tioned one grower in El Dorado County, Ca- lif., who discovered through consultations with Coppola that his grapes profiled (and tasted) much better at 5 tons per acre than at the mystical 3 tons. When potential cus- tomers wrinkle their noses at the yields for grower Ron Silva's Silvaspoons Vineyards in Lodi, he walks them around the vineyards, shows them the farming and points out that his yields aren't depressed by Eutypa and other vine maladies. Farther south in the Central Valley, Kul- tural's work has helped develop mecha- nized viticultural practices that deliver "textbook" balanced grape chemistry at 10-12 tons per acre. In fact, given the very warm Central Valley conditions, yields need to be higher than in cooler places, and attention to deficit irrigation, mecha- nized leafing and other practices can bring in very good fruit at what may sound like ridiculous tonnage. (You'd be surprised how many of those grapes end up in pre- mium wine you are happy to drink.) Back at Cornell, Sacks says that there is very little research shedding light on proper yield levels for cool-climate vinifera grapes, 54 Wines & Vines MARCH 2012