It’s the busiest time of the year for Steve Hendricks and Flora Habibi.
The owners of Ruby Winery high in the hills of Washington County planned next week to begin the annual grape harvest. The harvest would likely stretch over the next several weeks as they and other area vintners hoped for the perfect combination of early fall sun and mild temperatures that can transform a good pinot noir into a great one.
Then came the fateful phone call Tuesday night. Get out now, the automated voice said.
Hendricks rushed to the door. A wall of flame was a half-mile away. For the first time in the memory of area residents and veteran firefighters, out-of-control wildfire had come to Washington County.
Hendricks and his wife herded their two cats and Stanley, their aging Doberman mix, into the car and motored two-and-a-half miles down the hill to the winery. The five of them gathered on the floor of the Ruby tasting room.
As Stanley snored, Hendricks stewed over the continuing climate change’s role in the crisis. .
Life on the vineyard had convinced him long ago: Grapes don’t lie.
His vines were planted in 1976-79, making them some of the oldest Pinot Noir fields in the state. The Tektronix engineer who grew them from sprout to maturity kept scrupulous records, as has Hendricks since he bought the place in 2012. There’s no denying, he said, the entire annual life cycle of the vines have changed.
There are three major events in the year of a grape vine: The bud-break, when the first green shoots break through, the blossom, and the ripening of the fruit that leads to the harvest.
In the case of Hendricks' fields, the bud break traditionally came on tax day, April 15.
The blossoming came in mid- or late June. And harvest traditionally began the first week in October.
Each of those events now occur a week or two earlier.
A subtle and invisible change to the outsider. A major issue for wine makers.
The timing has changed because Oregon has grown warmer, argue Hendricks and his winemaker Andrew Kirkland. Summers are hotter, droughts are more common.
That’s particularly difficult for growers of Pinot Noir. The grape reaches its full potential only with a prolonged growing season that stretches into October. To last that long, it needs the intense heat of summer to rapidly give way to cooler temperatures in September.
But the mellow relief of the classic Pacific Northwest September is now a rare commodity.
“There’s no arguing with it,” Kirkland said. “The historic normal for Oregon is no longer the norm. I talk to guys who have been in this business for decades. There’s no living memory of anything like this.”
Climate change skeptics are fewer now as the evidence mounts, and in the face of this week’s fires.
Prof. Greg Jones, director of the Evenstad Center for Wine Education at Linfield University, said every wine grower in the world is dealing with similar issues. Jones argues the strong winds and low humidity that set the stage for the fires were themselves the product of climate change.
“A warmer atmosphere can’t help but produce more extreme events,” he said.
Amid all the horror and misery caused by the rampaging wildfires, the plight of a wealthy lawyer and his team of winemakers will not earn much sympathy. Hendricks actually shares that sentiment, especially as the wildfire threat in Washington County eased late in the week.
“We were lucky,” he said. “We’re not one of those people who got their houses burned out from under them.”
But the fire could turn what he anticipated would be a solid year into a disaster. Grapes can be ruined by what growers call “smoke taint.” Ash falling onto a grape’s skin can lead to chemical changes that alter the taste.
The good news so far is that while the smoke has been thick, they haven’t seen a lot of ash.
For Kirkland, the Chehalem Mountain/Bald Peak fire offers an obvious lesson:
“You can choose to believe in Climate change or not,” he said. “But the fact is, nature’s in charge.”
The Link LonkSeptember 12, 2020 at 11:01PM
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Washington County wine grower on climate change and wildfire: The grapes don’t lie - OregonLive
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