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Headlines JULY NEWS NEWS BY TE S S TECH fROM vINE TO MARKET ince 2005, the annual Wine Industry Technology Symposium (WITS) has brought together experts from within and outside the wine business to help growers, wineries and marketers make the most of the newest tools available to them. It's a moving target, and every year yields valu- able insights for both techies and techno- phobes. This year WITS is scheduled for July 12 and 13 at the Napa Valley Marriott. The 2010 symposium drew more than 300 attendees. Visit wine- industrytechnology- symposium.com. winesandvines.com Learn more: Search keyword "WITS." Rhône varieties such as Grenache (above) were hit particularly hard by the April frost. 30% Crop Loss Expected P Central Coast growers gauge effects of April freeze aso Robles, Calif.—In the weeks since a frost event battered coastal California vineyards from Santa Barbara to Monterey counties April 8 and 9, buds have failed to push out and sucker growth has popped up. Overall, many predict that the region's 2011 crop will be down 30% as a result of the freeze. Vineyard managers reported that stan- dard frost-protection measures were not effective in combating the frigid tempera- tures, which surprised many by striking some high-elevation regions harder than the low-lying valleys that are often worst hit by frost events. The most damaged area follows a 60-mile swath of Highway 101 from Templeton in San Luis Obispo County north to King City in Monterey County. During the 1970s, de- velopers started installing wind machines as the primary frost protection program for Central Coast vineyards; few vineyard acres are protected by overhead sprinklers. At the time of the mid-April freeze, there was no inversion layer of warm air above, and wind machines designed to circulate warm air down into vineyard rows proved ineffective: They circulated only more frigid air. Temperatures dipped below freezing before midnight and stayed there until 14 Wines & Vines JULY 2011 early morning. Dana Merrill, who owns Templeton, Calif.-based Mesa Vineyard Management with his wife Marsha, said that temperatures in some areas dropped as low as 24ºF; other zones were pounded with hail. Richard Smith, president of Valley Farm Management in Soledad, told Wines & Vines that the April freeze marked the first time in 39 years that he'd had notable damage from frost. About 300 of his 3,000 vineyard acres were damaged by frost—all of them planted to Chardonnay. The area's No. 1 grape, Cabernet Sau- vignon, wasn't budding out at the time of the freeze, but frost conditions still killed a good number of Cab buds across the 27,000-acre appellation. Merlot (the No. 2 grape in San Luis Obispo County) fared a bit better. Merrill said that Rhône variet- ies such as Viognier and Grenache were hit hardest. "Syrah is growing again, but there are no grapes on it," he said. Merrill said that there is nothing to do but wait. "We just have to see what we get out of these grapes. In a lot of ways, we're farming the 2012 crop now. The 2011 crop is gone and we're just raising a vine," he said. winesandvines.com —Kate Lavin Learn more: Search keywords "April freeze." RULES BOx-IN B.C. vINTNERS ignation must be sold in glass bottles. The VQA industry standard is applied to wines made entirely from B.C. grapes that meet specific criteria of composition and quality. "All B.C. VQA wines must be bottled in glass bottles of a standard size," regulations now state. The decree created issues for wineries that want to market wines that meet VQA standards in alternative formats such as PET and Tetra Pak cartons. B winesandvines.com Learn more: Search keywords "VQA box." T UC NAMES ExTENSION ENOLOGIST he Viticulture & Enology Department at the University of California, Davis, re- cently hosted a field day to update the in- dustry about department facilities, programs and extension resources—most notably, the introduction of a new cooperative extension enology specialist, Dr. Anita Oberholster, who joined the faculty April 1. During the next several months on the job, Oberholster intends to visit grape- and wine-producing counties within California and meet the cooperative exten- sion farm advisors for each county. winesandvines.com Learn more: Search keyword "Oberholster." ritish Columbia wines bearing the VQA (Vintners Quality Alliance) des-