Wines & Vines

June 2017 Enology & Viticulture Issue

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8 WINES&VINES June 2017 A member of Wine Communications Group Inc. President & Publisher Chet Klingensmith Chairman Hugh Tietjen Publishing Consultant Ken Koppel Associate Publisher Tina Vierra Publishing Assistant Tiffany Maxwell Special Projects & Events Coordinator Johanna Rupp EDITORIAL Editor Jim Gordon Managing Editor Kate Lavin Senior Editor Andrew Adams Senior Correspondent Paul Franson Contributing Editor Jane Firstenfeld Northwest Correspondent Peter Mitham Columnists Grapegrowing: Cliff Ohmart and Glenn T. McGourty Contributing Writers Laurie Daniel, Richard Smart, Richard Carey, Chris Stamp, Andrew Reynolds, Craig Root, Ray Pompilio, Andy Starr, Fritz Westover Practical Winery & Vineyard (PWV) Editor Don Neel Wine East Editor Linda Jones McKee DESIGN & PRODUCTION Graphic Designer Rebecca Arnn DATABASE DEVELOPMENT – INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Vice President — Data Management Lynne Skinner Project Manager Liesl Stevenson Database & Web Development James Rust, Peter Scarborough EDITOR'S LETTER JUNE IS THREE MONTHS BEFORE HARVEST, and the vines in most of North America are like college students at a freshman kegger. Their work is just beginning, yet senior exams (or 25° Brix) will come more quickly than they realize. That's why this is the Pre-Harvest Issue of Wines & Vines. We have two outstanding viticulture articles to help you think about improving the man- agement of your own vines or your contracted vines leading up to harvest, as well as a wide-ranging look at new crush pad equipment and how wineries are using it to make grape and wine processing safer and more efficient. Starting in the vineyard, editor Don Neel sourced the two viticulture articles for the Practical Winery & Vineyard section of the magazine. The first begins on page 49 and explains research done by Washington State University to determine how low you can go with deficit irrigation. Melissa Hansen of the Washington State Wine Com- mission authored the article. Reporting on work headed up by Dr. Markus Keller, Hansen writes: "The WSU study showed that regulated deficit irrigation…while gener- ally beneficial, can be taken to extremes and go too low." Read the full article to see how Keller's team did the research and what the takeaways were. The second grapegrowing article takes a broader and deeper look into vine balance (page 53). The author, Mike Trought, is a principal scientist with the Plant and Food Research department at the Marlborough Research Centre in Blen- heim, New Zealand. Trought reviews research done from 1927 through 2015 to consolidate his view of the "Grapevine Triangle," consisting of shoot growth, root growth and fruit yield. His central message is that, "To achieve the correct balance between fruit yield and root and shoot growth, viticulturists need to enable the current season's crop to ripen without 'stealing' from vine reserves and negatively affecting next year's crop." While that's obvious to most experienced growers, the instructions that Trought gives for measuring vine growth and calculating how to balance it with fruit yield are well worth reading and applying step by step as you ripen and harvest this year's crop and get ready to prune next winter. On to the crush pad. Senior editor Andrew Adams sees more crush pads in a year than a swarm of yellow jackets. His cover story, "New Equipment for a Safer, Quicker Crush" (page 32), pulls together dozens of examples of new equipment and fine-tuned grape- processing flows that he and other Wines & Vines contributors have seen during the past 12 months while reporting various news and Technical Spotlight stories. He found that new and renovated wineries are investing in more expensive, automated equipment to save on labor costs. These include cutting-edge sorting and destemming machines, as well as tanks with dedicated pumps and pumpover setups. His article is an easy read that will give you plenty of ideas for how to improve your own crush operations based on what your peers are already doing. We hope you have good crops developing this month and will get some time to go to the mountains or the ocean during the lag phase. But as our columnist Andy Starr likes to remind winemakers, "It's OK to plan." In this case, that means planning for harvest 2017. —Jim Gordon Get ideas about how to improve your own crush operations based on what your peers are already doing. CONTACT US SUBSCRIPTIONS Email: subs@winesandvines.com Online: winesandvines.com/subscribe Phone: (866) 453-9701 EDITORIAL Email: edit@winesandvines.com MAIL 65 Mitchell Blvd., Suite A San Rafael, CA 94903 CONNECT WITH US facebook.com/WinesandVines twitter.com/WinesandVines youtube.com/WinesandVines1919 Preparing the Vineyard and Crush Pad for Harvest 2017

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