California's record heatwave over the last few days – how did you like 111 degrees on Sunday, Los Angeles? – has made things much worse for wine grape growers, who are stuck between unfaithful wineries and rigid crop insurance policies.
Only one lab in California right now, ETS, tests grapes and nascent wines for smoke taint. With every part of the state worrying about smoke, ETS is receiving hundreds of samples a day and has fallen weeks behind. Its website said Monday that, for current clients, "Grape berry samples received early today are projected to be reportable by 17 October, and wine samples received early today are projected to be reportable by 28 September." Anyone who isn't already a client of ETS is told: "We anticipate that we will be able to start processing these samples not sooner than November." November!
A delay that long has potentially catastrophic consequences. Some growers may not be paid for their grapes this year because of the situation – and their crop insurance, if they have it, may not reimburse them.
Moreover, grapegrowers and wineries, usually allies with only slightly divergent agendas, are drawing battle lines. Some wineries are trying to back out of grape contracts because they're not sure how much wine the public will buy next year, and potential smoke taint is a convenient excuse.
With lab results unavailable, grapes either stay on the vine, slowly becoming raisins in a record heatwave, or they are picked and processed before lab results come in, and hopefully turn out to be untainted.
Soaring temperatures
Exacerbating this dilemma is a truly impressive manifestation of climate change. Here are some high temperatures Sunday from key wine-country cities in California: 110 Farenheit (43.3 Celsius) in Boonville in normally cool Anderson Valley; 111 (43.9) in Healdsburg, gateway to the Russian River Valley in Sonoma County; 113 (45) in St Helena in the middle of Napa Valley; and an intimidating 117 (47.2) in both Paso Robles and normally cool Santa Ynez in Santa Barbara County.
The heatwave was predicted, and many wineries rushed to harvest their grapes before it hit, even in some cases while wildfires were still burning nearby.
"I'm not going to lie, it was a challenge," said Ashley Herzberg, winemaker for Bacigalupi Vineyards in Healdsburg. "We run a small crew for our vineyards. We were in a mandatory evacuation zone. Those first few days, it was a whirlwind like I've never experienced before, Bringing all this fruit into the winery and having it safe and sound made it worth it."
Brooks Painter, winemaker for Castello di Amorosa in Napa Valley, said he picked some grapes two to three weeks earlier than normal, which turned out to be a blessing.
"The acids and the pH look quite good," Painter told Wine-Searcher. "Some varieties get beat up more in a big heatwave like this. We're starting to see some shrivel. But in many of the vineyards, the vines are holding up remarkably well. We pick at night, and we're probably going to be picking every night for the next two weeks. Everything's been accelerated. We're seeing very good results from Pinot Noir so far."
Bacigalupi and Castello di Amorosa are in the fortunate position of being estate wineries, so they don't face a grower-winery conflict. Hopefully their grapes will turn out to be smoke-free – there's no reason to assume otherwise – but, if not, there won't be an argument over who pays for them. That's not the case when growers and wineries are separate.
Trouble brewing over smoke
The California Association of Winegrape Growers (CAWG) put out a statement last week saying, in part: "Numerous growers have reported that wineries will not schedule delivery of grapes under contract until laboratory test results are available to indicate the grapes are unaffected by the presence of certain smoke compounds ... These delays ... mean many growers face the prospect of significant crop losses and economic injury. This is unacceptable. Unless specified in a contract, no buyer should believe they are entitled to reject a grower’s grapes based on concerns over smoke damage without corroborating evidence to indicate those grapes have, in fact, been damaged. It’s important to acknowledge a key fact: the presence of smoke in a vineyard, even if heavy at times, does not mean the grapes from that vineyard will invariably be smoke damaged. The challenges posed by recent smoke exposure events do not provide license to buyers to cast aside their contractual obligations to growers."
Expect lawsuits later this year between vineyards and wineries, and possibly between vineyards and their insurance companies as well.
Until this year, growers could not win a crop-insurance claim for smoke taint unless they tested their grapes before they were turned into wine, and the grapes showed taint. Reporting from Wine-Searcher apparently helped convince the federal Risk Management Agency to accept microfermentations as evidence after a CAWG seminar explained that some smoke taint does not show up until grapes are fermented. The new (as yet unverified) standard will help – but only if the microfermentations can be tested rapidly. Here's why.
Let's say you're growing Merlot in Lodi. You know the air quality was bad after the wildfires, but there was no fire right next to Lodi, so the smoke wasn't fresh. Current scientific belief is that only fresh smoke causes smoke taint. If this is true, then most of the state's wine grapes should be unaffected.
Here is the problem. You couldn't harvest your Lodi Merlot before the heatwave because you didn't have test results yet. At the peak of the heatwave, the vines probably shut down, closing their stoma to retain moisture, and not ripening the grapes further. But all those high-90s days on either side of the peak are ripening those grapes rapidly. You'd really like to harvest. But without pre-harvest test results, if your grapes turn out to be smoke-tainted, the winery won't pay for them (and depending on the contract, probably won't have to) and your crop insurance won't pay for them.
Trying to beat the backlog
But every day that you wait, those grapes are getting riper. Your test results aren't available until September 28, but the grapes will have no acidity by then, and won't be salable – and your crop insurance won't pay for them being left on the vine too long.
ETS president Gordon Burns told Wine-Searcher that his company is working hard to clear the backlog of samples.
"The equipment required for the analysis of smoke impact markers is called GC/MS (gas chromatography Mass Spectroscopy) and GC/MSMS QQQ (gas chromatography Mass Spectroscopy triple quad)," Burns told Wine-Searcher.
"These instruments are highly complex and expensive, and require very specialized folks to run them. Also critical is that sample handling, preparation, and analysis techniques necessary to obtain actionable data are very specific to wine grapes and wine. We have worked since 2008 perfecting such techniques, and on developing a team of analysts skilled in the implementation of them. We have shifted most of our GC/MS and GC MSMS QQQ capacity to analysis of smoke-related markers. The instruments are at work seven days a week and 24 hours per day, and yet more instruments will be installed very soon. Within a couple of weeks will have a total of 16 GC/MS and GC MS/MS QQQ instruments running in support of the industry."
Let me pause to state that it's unlikely that much if any wine that reaches the market will have smoke taint; that's what testing is for. This is a problem for the industry, not the consumer. But it will be in the mind of the consumer, and that adds to an uncomfortable problem for wineries.
Wineries want to make wine in 2020 based on how much wine they expect to sell in 2022. Who knows what the wine market is going to look like then? With the pandemic sending grocery store sales soaring while restaurant sales are miniscule, nobody even knows for sure what the wine market looks like right now. And after consecutive large vintages, there is still bulk 2019 wine available for wineries that are worried about 2020 grapes.
Plus, the Constellation-Gallo deal for some of the biggest volume wine brands in the state has STILL not been approved by the federal government, leaving in doubt the future of not only those brands, but of the thousands of grapes that would have gone into them.
"Wineries have wines to sell. There's no shortage of wines," says Stu Smith, enologist/partner of Smith-Madrone Vineyards & Winery in Napa Valley. "For farmers, nobody wants to lose a crop. We've just spent all spring and all summer nurturing and caring for a crop, and nobody wants to lose that crop. But being a winery and having inventory is a whole lot better than being a grower and losing your sole source of income. If you are a grower and something like this happens and you don't have crop insurance, it's ugly."
If you want a bright spot, Smith found one: maybe the 2020 cluster of crises will discourage dilettantes.
"Everyone thinks that if you are a grapegrower or winery in Napa Valley it's wonderful, but here is another year where it could be catastrophic," Smith said. "And we've had several of these in a short span of time. The basis of wine is agriculture and agriculture is enormously risky. When celebrities and tech billionaires get into wine, it's God's way of telling them they have too much money."
The Link LonkSeptember 08, 2020 at 07:00AM
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California Heatwave Leaves Grape Growers Sweating | Wine-Searcher News & Features - Wine-Searcher
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