Wines & Vines

October 2016 Bottles and Labels Issue

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74 WINES&VINES October 2016 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS WINE EAST G eneva, N.Y.—The North- ern Grapes Project, a five-year coordinated ag- ricultural program that involved 12 institutions, 34 researchers and 23 industry associations, came to an end Aug. 31. Under the leadership of Dr. Tim Martinson, senior extension associate at Cornell University, the Northern Grapes Project (NGP) focused on the integration of viti- culture, winemaking and market- ing of the new cold-hardy cultivars in 12 Midwestern and Northeast- ern states. Martinson and the current NGP team of Murli Dharmadhikari (Iowa State University), William Gartner (University of Minne- sota), Jim Luby (University of Minnesota), Anna Katharine Man- sfield (Cornell University), Chris- lyn Partcka (Cornell University) and Paolo Sabbatini (Michigan State University) are stepping down, but they have received nu- merous requests from the wine and grape industry to move the project forward. Sabbatini, associate professor of horticulture at Michigan State University, told Wines & Vines he is hopeful that a project to con- tinue the work of the NGP can be created and funded. He and sev- eral other researchers are devel- oping a program that will do that, but also add new objectives, members and states, and estab- lish a new team to run it. "Our new objective is to un- derstand that anything done in the vineyard applies to what hap- pens in the winery," he said. "Then we have to market those new varieties." Sabbatini plans to apply to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for 2017 Specialty Crops Re- search Initiative funds for at least three years. The original NGP received $2.5 million in funding from the USDA's Specialty Crops Research Initiative Program, and then a $3 million renewal for two years. In the interim, Mike White, field specialist in viticulture at Iowa State University, is running an initiative to raise $2,000 from each state association involved with the NGP. These funds would allow re- searchers to move forward with the basics of the NGP, including the project's newsletter and popu- lar webinar series. Participant surveys at the conclusion of the program showed that there were 3,083 participants in the live we- binars. Martinson hopes that the archived webinars and newsletter articles can be stored on a data- base that is readily accessible. —Linda Jones McKee Wine East Covering Eastern North America Northern Grapes Project Comes to an End Researchers do shoot tipping and basal leaf removal for a trial of Fronte- nac training systems in Clayton, N.Y.

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