Weather prompts Oregon vintners to use unconventional tricks

SALEM, Ore. — Oregon’s grape growers are starting the 2005 season the same way they ended the last one — worrying about the weather.

Last year’s problems were caused by too much rain in early summer, but this time the prospect of unseasonably warm temperatures and too little moisture has growers concerned.

Oregon vineyards are often muddy and wet in early March. Not this year.

“We can already drive tractors on every slope,” said Dai Crisp, who manages Temperance Hill Vineyard northwest of Salem. “There’s even dust out there. It’s just nutty.”

Unlike the past half-dozen years, when almost ideal conditions put a cork in weather worries, growers are looking anxiously to the skies. Unless Oregon gets drenching rains or an unlikely cooling trend soon, wine grapes, the state’s fastest-growing agricultural commodity, could take a significant hit.

That threatens to drive consumer prices sharply higher and dent Oregon’s effort to establish itself as a force in the international market for fine wine.

Vineyard managers across the state are responding by dipping into bags of tricks they haven’t employed for years.

Some, for example, are removing soil-protecting cover crops that would otherwise compete with grapevines for moisture. Others are changing their pruning techniques to leave extra canes — the offshoots that grow out of vine trunks and bear the current year’s fruit — in the event that a late, bud-killing frost sweeps the state.

“No one likes to see this much heat this early,” Crisp said. “It changes everything you have to do and think about out in the vineyard.”

Until extended rains hit last June, right when the crop’s new blooms were getting ready to pollinate, Oregon wine makers seemingly had become immune to the vagaries of weather. Starting with a 1998 vintage that was widely acclaimed in the wine world, and running nonstop to 2003, Oregon vintners pretty much had the luxury of picking when they pleased.

Two weeks of unrelenting rain last summer changed that. Average vineyard yields dropped by 19 percent across the state, and growers in the hardest-hit regions lost upward of two-thirds of their crop.

“It got really cold and wet,” said John Paul, owner of Cameron Winery in Dundee. “That did something to the vines, and they started aborting their flowers. The vines, especially the older ones, really took a hit.”

Unseasonable weather led to the state’s fourth-driest February on record, and forecasts predict March, at least, will not be much wetter.

The warm, dry winter has left its mark on grapevines by accelerating bud break — the emergence of the buds that eventually lead to grapes — by at least two weeks.

“Everything needed to develop this year’s crop and even the next year’s crop is on those shoots,” said Greg Jones, an associate professor of geography at Southern Oregon University. “The reason so many growers are concerned right now is that the early growth creates a much greater risk of frost damage.”

Jones, whose areas of study include climate changes and their effects on plant systems, said the cycle can right itself if temperatures cool in coming weeks.

The longer-term probability of summer water shortages most concerns Stirling Fox, who manages about 20 vineyards in the north Willamette Valley, including those owned by Rex Hill and Bergstrom wineries.

Unlike vineyards in Southern Oregon, which are routinely equipped with irrigation systems, only about 20 percent to 30 percent of the vineyards in the northern part of the state have direct watering capabilities, Fox said. Unless the skies unexpectedly open up from March through May, many of those vineyards are going to suffer substantial damage, he said.

“We really need above-average rains over the next 90 days to have a good season,” Fox said. “But beyond that, irrigation is going to provide a definite competitive advantage this year.”

At Pheasant Hill Vineyard in the Rogue Valley town of Talent, owner Laura Lotspeich isn’t afraid of a late frost because her operation is equipped with large fans that blow air around to prevent heavy deposits of frost.

“Anyone without that kind of protection could face some big losses,” she said.

Beyond this year’s crop, the gradual warming that seems to be hitting the state isn’t lost on Lotspeich, either.

“If this keeps up much longer,” she said, “we’ll be growing nothing but coffee and bananas around here.”

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