Grape Expectations in Helping To Bring the Commonwealth Together
May 23, 2023 Virginia is home to a new and expanding wine industry with 5,000 acres of grapes, statewide. It does not have a geographically concentrated industry; the vineyards are scattered around the commonwealth. Despite that fact, the industry does an exemplary job of working together on all fronts: legislative, marketing, and production.
The viticulture and enology Extension team at Virginia Tech, based at an Agricultural Research and Extension Center near Winchester in the northern tip of the state, offers a great deal of collaboration between disciplines. But with a location in the top corner of the state, it establishes a geographic span between the Extension specialists and the majority of the industry.
The geographic distances provided a challenge for collaboration in the vineyard. Growers knew what was going on generally in their area but wanted a way to know what was going on across the state.
A NETWORK IS BORN
In 2019, an industry-listening session took place. Among the top priorities was the desire to establish a sentinel vineyard network for growers to share what they were seeing in their vineyards.
Enology Extension Specialist Dr. Beth Chang and Grape Disease Management Specialist Dr. Mizuho Nita created a sentinel vineyards communication network. During the growing season, growers around the state volunteer their time to participate in monthly virtual meetings. During these meetings growers share what is going on in their vineyards. This information is then recorded and shared back with the industry by way of Extension newsletters and meetings.
In the first half of the season, topics include grapevine phenology, disease updates, and vineyard tasks. Utilizing the information from the sentinel sites and weather stations, a Grape Disease Risk Summary is created for regions around the state. After veraison, a fruit chemistry component is added. This allows the industry to have a general sense of how vineyards are faring across the state. We modeled this after the spectacular Véraison to Harvest newsletter put together by Cornell’s grape and wine Extension team.
We know nothing beats the experience of physically being in a vineyard, but where that type of scouting is not feasible across the whole state, this type of collaboration is the next best thing. It’s a good example of efficiently sharing knowledge through virtual meetings. Growers can get feedback from around the state without leaving their farms.
RELATED CONTENT: Virginia Grape Growers Ready To Take on Spotted Lanternfly Scourge
We are working to improve the amount of data we collect and make the program cover more of Virginia by soliciting participation from growers in other parts of the state. This will provide more and better information for the reporting. This framework will also be a good way to monitor the spread of spotted lanternfly so we can appropriately help our growers with this new invasive pest.
We are also helping growers install and utilize weather stations to show trends specific to vineyard conditions across the state. The end goal is a more informed grape-growing community across the state, and this network is making progress toward that goal.
Source: Google Maps with modifications by Dr. Beth Chang
GROWERS RESPOND
We recently conducted an anonymous poll of industry growers. Here is some of their feedback:
● “Keep up the good work! The broader industry in the Mid-Atlantic will benefit from this for years to come.”
● “The Sentinel Vineyard Project is probably the most important tool I have to grow the absolute best wine possible at our vineyard. Climate is the top environmental influence on wine quality, and we have no control over the weather. We are able to adjust our winegrowing practices when we have great data about weather-related disease pressures. Expanding the scope and amount of immediate seasonal data will allow winegrowers to fine-adjust (farming practices). …We fully endorse the substantial increase of funding to grow the scope of this project throughout Virginia. Virginia is growing world class wines. We need to reach higher to continue the huge increase in quality Virginia has enjoyed over the recent history of Virginia wine.”
● “This project is coming out of the infancy stage. As a winegrower, I see a lot of benefit from reading what’s going on in the state and more importantly what [we] can or should … be doing. With weather impacting us quickly, having a process in place that helps us react faster is invaluable and keeps our industry moving forward, impacting the wine quality that we produce. If we can’t keep improving wine quality, the industry will go into decline, in my opinion.”
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