The drought is bad news for the Northern Virginia area in a lot of ways, but at least we’ll be able to drink some good wine in a couple of years.
Tremain Hatch, a viticulture research/extension associate at Virginia Tech whose family owns Zephaniah Winery in Leesburg, says the hot, rain-free summer was actually good for the commonwealth’s crop of wine grapes.
“It’s helpful for the vines to have a moderate amount of water deficit during the growing season — kind of what you’d see in a more Mediterranean environment,” Hatch says, adding that lots of rain can bring about “disease pressure that we have not had this year.”
The first phase of the season, “from bud break to bloom,” needs rainfall, to get the vines growing well.
In the middle section, however, “We do want a little bit of water deficit so that we can have the vines kind of turn off the engine of vegetative growth, and more rapidly switch into a mode for ripening fruit. So the dry conditions we had in July were really desirable for that shift. And then we’ve had really nice conditions here in this last phase so far,” Hatch says.
He says the region is about halfway through the picking season, and the past two weeks have seen clear, warm afternoons and cool evenings. That wide temperature swing “is really desirable for flavor development and acid retention in wine grapes and acid retention. So if we can have these things continue, we’ll really be looking at a really nice wine quality here.”
Hatch is quick to recognize that dry conditions aren’t good for a lot of crops. “We did flirt with getting way too dry, but then when the remnants of Hurricane Debbie came through and dumped a couple inches of rain across most of the state, that alleviated our concerns with drought stress,” he says.
That said, there is such a thing as too-dry conditions, even in the wine business, Hatch says.
Virginia wine growers “have been through two really dry seasons,” he says. If climate change continues to play havoc with the weather, they might have to make some difficult and expensive decisions about irrigation. It’s especially precarious for new vineyards, Hatch says. “Young vines do need some supplemental water, just because they’ve got a small root system.”
“It’s anybody’s guess what happens for the next month — you know, we could have a slew of hurricanes come through,” Hatch says, adding that one of the adages of the wine industry is: “Wine quality is determined by the journey of the growing season rather than the destination.”
He says the fundamentals for a good season are in place.
“We’ve got really good winemakers across the state of Virginia, but this year, they’re going to be working with really nice fruit quality,” Hatch says. “It’s like fresh ingredients for a salad: The deck is stacked for the winemaker to make really nice wine this year.”
Feature image by Africa Studio/stock.adobe.com
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