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Rising to the Occasion: Harvest 2011 Grapegrowing t is well known that grapegrowing east of the Rockies is a challenge in many different ways. The list of potential problems starts with winter injury and spring frosts and progresses through rain, hail, drought, hurricanes, floods and even earthquakes. But growers and winemakers rise to the occasion, and many craft wonderful wines even in difficult vintages. All growers and wine- makers should take a good, hard look at the harvest just finished and learn from the many lessons of 2011. I In the following article, two extension educators reflect on these lessons and discuss how growers can improve their vineyards in future years. Mark Chien, statewide viticulture extension educator for the Penn State Cooperative Extension, offers a range of sug- gestions for improving eastern vineyard practices, and Tony Wolf, professor of viticulture and director of the Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Virginia Tech, discusses vineyard sanitation issues. Richard Carey, owner and winemaker at Vitis Wine Center in Lancaster, Pa., offers comments from the winemaking aspect of the recent vintage. —Linda Jones McKee Controlling Disease Pressure The harvest in 2011 was a puzzling and frustrating vintage for many winegrowers in the East, particularly along the corridor that got hammered by Hurricanes Irene and Lee. Despite adequate heat summation, sugars stopped accumulating in mid-September, and the weather never dried out enough to make a difference. Neverthe- less, winemakers appear optimistic that flavors and phenolics are at levels that can make good wines. Carolina Wine Supply The Southeast's Most Complete Winery Supply Company Stocking Distributor for Della Toffola - Filtration Equipment Nomacorc - Synthetic Closures Hanna Instruments - Testing Equipment In Stock - Cartridge Filters & Filter Pads 336-677-6831 Yadkinville, NC www.CarolinaWineSupply.com Free Branding Fresh Corks Directly From Portugal 4th Generation Family Cork Producer All Natural Cork Closures Ask about our Progressive Discounts Free is Better Phone (203) 681-7743 Cell (860) 335-0667 email: reliablecork@gmail.com www.reliablecorksolutions.com Wines & Vines DeCeMBeR 2011 59 Free Shipping Rain and warm temperatures coupled with splitting berries encourage botrytis, seen here on a cluster of Riesling. In discussing the situation in vineyards with growers and exten- sion educators in the mid-Atlantic region, there certainly are not a lot of obvious solutions to the fruit rot problems. Downy mildew was expected with all the rain, and some growers controlled it better than others. Botrytis and sour rot also were encouraged by rain, warm days and nights, wet soils, splitting berries, early and fero- cious bird predations, yellow jackets, ants, fruit flies and whatever else wanted to jump into the fray. There is no magic bullet for a vintage like this, but here are some suggestions that may help grapegrowers survive these kinds of vin- tage conditions (especially fruit rots) in the future. WineEast Natural disasters and disease pressure make growing season a real challenge