Displaying items by tag: viticulture

Summary:

No one who has visited the classical vineyards of the Mosel, the Douro or Cote Rotie will ever forget the often dizzying experience of their steep slopes and tiny terraces – but these astonishing sites are also workplaces, too.  What are these vineyards like to work?  How profitable are they?  Is the younger generation ‘heroic enough’ to follow their forbears up the steep paths?  Should there be a ‘heroic surcharge’ on bottles of wine created in exceptionally difficult circumstances?  Or do we have to let viticultural evolution unfold as it will?  Many of the steep-slope vineyards of the past have disappeared and are not coming back. Listen to and engage with our panel as they tackle these and other questions in our Meeting of the Minds – Heroic Viticulture webinar.event.

Host & Panelists:

Andrew Jefford will be joined by:

Paul Symington, Honorary President of the WSET and a long-term Douro resident.  He joined the family port firm, Symington Family Estates (which today includes Graham’s, Dow’s, Warre’s, Cockburn’s and Quinta do Vesuvio, as well as Altano and Prats & Symington) in 1979, becoming joint managing director in 1988 and retiring in 2018.  Symington Family Estates is today the leading vineyard owner in the Douro valley, with 26 quintas (farms) covering 2,255 ha (1,024 ha are under vine), most of them acquired during Paul’s tenure.

Caro Maurer MW was the first woman from the German-speaking world to have become a Master of Wine, which she did in 2011.  A career journalist who has served as a foreign correspondent in both New York and LA, Caro now reports exclusively on wine from Bonn in Germany and writes for many publications including Feinschmecker and Decanter.  She teaches for the WSET diploma course in Germany, Austria, Italy and Norway as well as tutoring and mentoring the MWs of the future.

Dani Landi (or Daniel Gómez Jiménez Landi, to give him his full name) was born to a family of vineyard owners and farmers in Méntrida, almost all of whom sold to local co-operatives.  He began to work independently with his cousin, and then formed his own winery in 2012, and has since become one of the leading exponents of the distinctive old-vine, single-site, high-altitude Garnacha (and Albillo) wines of the Sierra de Gredos.  He also works in partnership with Fernando Garcia on the wines of Comando G.

Summary: 

Climate is a pervasive factor in the success of all agricultural systems, influencing whether a crop is suitable to a given region, largely controlling crop production and quality, and ultimately driving economic sustainability. Climate’s influence on agribusiness is never more evident than with viticulture and wine production where climate is arguably the most critical aspect in ripening fruit to optimum characteristics to produce a given wine style.

This webinar will provide an overview of regional to global research on: 1) aspects of terroir that influences optimum quality and production characteristics; 2) the suitability of different winegrape cultivars to different climates; 3) how climate variability influences production and quality variations; 4) how climate change has and will likely continue to alter the global wine region map; and 5) measures being taken by the wine sector to mitigate and adapt to changes in climate.

Presenter: Greg Jones

Greg is a world-renowned atmospheric scientist and wine climatologist, having held research and teaching positions at the University of Virginia, Southern Oregon University, Linfield University, and as an adjunct professor at the University of Adelaide. He has taught extensively across many areas including meteorology, climatology, ecology, hydrology, geology, statistics, GIS and remote sensing, and wine business, viticulture, enology, and sensory evaluation.

For over twenty-five years his research has firmly linked weather and climate with grapevine growth, fruit chemistry, and wine characteristics in regions all around the globe. His work was also one of the first to tie climate change to fundamental biological phenomena in vines and the resulting influences on productivity and quality, informing and influencing the wine industry worldwide. Greg has served on the editorial advisory boards of multiple international and national scientific journals and organizations and serves as a Director on the Oregon Wine Board and the Erath Family Foundation board.

He was named to Decanter Magazine’s 2009 Power List representing the top 50 most influential people in the world of wine, named the Oregon Wine Press’s 2009 Wine Person of the Year, has been named in the Top 50 Wine Industry Leaders in Wine Business Monthly in 2016, 2017, and 2018, and has been in the top 100 most influential people in the US wine industry in 2012, 2013, and 2018 (intowine.com). He was also bestowed the Honorary Confrade with the Rank of Infanção (Nobleman) from the Confraria do Vinho do Porto and installed as a knight in the Oregon Wine Brotherhood. He had the pleasure of appearing on CBS 60 Minutes in December 2021 in a segment called "Effects of climate change taking root in the wine industry".

He serves as a Director on the Oregon Wine Board and on the boards of the Erath Family Foundation, the Society for International Terroir Experts, the Porto Protocol, the Sustainable Wine Roundtable, and the Umpqua Valley Winegrowers Association. He is honored to hold adjunct professor positions at Southern Oregon University and the University of Adelaide. Dr. Jones also has lifelong ties to the Oregon wine community, most closely with his family winery and vineyards at Abacela where Greg was appointed CEO in 2021. To find out more about his research and access videos, podcasts, and publications visit this website (www.climateofwine.com).

Summary: 

Sustainable wine growing can cover various practices from farming to production techniques, environmental and social policies, and even packaging and waste reduction choices. The challenge for wineries is how to present their sustainable principles and practices to consumers.

This webinar will focus on the importance of sustainable certification programs around the world, such as Napa Green, and how they are helping to shape the conversation about what is sustainable in the age of climate change, and how to move the wine industry forward using measurable data and accountability.

Presenter: Martin Reyes Mw 

A first-generation American, Martin is the first Master of Wine of Mexican descent. With a prolific career as a buyer, importer, educator, speaker, judge, writer, and winemaker, he has held influential roles in many sectors of the industry. Martin’s wine story began with an over-indulgent dinner while studying in Paris as a Stanford undergraduate and, by 2003, he was stocking shelves at K&L Wine Merchants in California. After managing St. Helena Wine Center for several years, Martin was hired as the principal buyer & importer for prominent wine club programs for partners such as The New York Times, Food & Wine Magazine, and Williams-Sonoma. In 2015, he was named one of Wine Enthusiast’s Top Forty under Forty Tastemakers. That same year, he worked the harvest at Salomon Undhof in Austria.

Today, Martin is General Manager for Sonoma-based Peter Paul Wines, works closely with Spottswoode Estate on climate action & sustainability initiatives, and consults across the full wine supply chain. Clients have included Vice Versa Wines, Copa Fina Wine Imports, and Vivino.com. He launched Reyes Selections in 2018, a small portfolio of his favorite producers, singled out from years spent sourcing wines globally for the US market.

An internationally recognized wine professional and speaker, Martin has judged at Texsom International Wine Awards, International Wine Challenge (Panel Chair), Decanter World Wine Awards, USA Wine Ratings, Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, and Taittinger Sommelier d’Or Competition, Mexico; and most recently, the James Beard Foundation, and recently won Best Paper Award at the AAWE Conference, Vienna 2019 for his research in wine purchasing behavior. He is a Speaker/Moderator & Organizer for IBWSS, Porto Protocol, Green Wine Future, and 2022 Napa THRIVES Symposium as well as co-hosts  the James-Beard award-winning podcast, The Four Top.

Summary:

Join vigneron Olivier Humbrecht MW, of the famed estate Zind Humbrecht in Alsace, for a deep dive into one of the key building blocks of wine: acidity!

In this WSG Live, you will learn about:

• The different types of acids found in grapes and wine and their sensory perception
• How to not only quantify but qualify acidity in wine
• The viticultural factors influencing acidity in the grape
• The vinification practices and factors impacting acidity in the final product
• Evolution of wine acids with age

Olivier will also illustrate his talk with some real-life data and text-book examples of acids measured in various types of wine depending on various variables such as grape varieties, vintage, ripeness, with/without malolactic fermentation and terroirs.  Sharpen your tasting skills by understanding one of the key parameters that makes up the structure of a wine!

Presenter: Olivier Humbrecht MW

Olivier Humbrecht studied wine together with wine marketing and wine business for five years in Toulouse, and then got the chance to do his ‘military service’ working for Sopexa in London. 

He learned about and enrolled on the MW course, becoming France’s first-ever Master of Wine in 1989.  He began to work with his father and converted the family domaine to biodynamics in the early 1990s.  His father had painstakingly built up a unique collection of hill-site vineyards over the decades, notably clearing and replanting a quarter of the great historic Grand Cru of Rangen de Thann with Olivier in his later school years. 

Olivier has continued to build on this, notably with the recent acquisition of a parcel of Sommerberg to complement the family’s Grand Cru holdings in Brand, Hengst and Goldert, and to complement its other holdings of Rotenberg, Clos Hauserer, Clos Jebsal, Heimbourg, Herrenweg and Clos Windsbuhl.

Olivier’s respectful, non-interventionist winemaking, combined with his and his father’s fastidious viticulture, has given the world vintage after vintage of magnificently differentiated, nuanced bottlings: global white-wine references.  He has never stopped experimenting and improving on his work, using biodynamic practices, changed row orientations and re-thought canopies recently to produce a much greater percentage of dry wines than before.

Finally, we have reached the end of the winemaking year. 

In the vineyard, soil health is a common topic of discussion now that the vines are dormant.  This is a great time to dig soil pits and send samples off to discover more about the composition of the soil layers around the root system of the vines. 

Soil pH plays a large part in the health of a vineyard as it controls nutrient uptake.  Even if the soil contains plenty of a particular nutrient, if soil pH is wrong, that nutrient might not be available in a form that the plant can use.  This can lead to micronutrient deficiencies or toxicities. For this reason, it is very important to manage the soil pH.

Summary:

Presenter: Romana Echensperger MW

Summary:

Have you ever tasted a Souvignier Gris, a Solaris or a Bronner? What about Regent, Cabernet Cortis or Rösler? These are just some of the disease-resistant varieties that have been bred over the last few decades from complex crossings of vitis vinifera cultivars with American sub-species such as vitis labrusca, vitis riparia or vitis rupestris.

What started as a crude exercise in creating new plant material in the wake of the turn-of-the-century phylloxera catastrophe has become a cutting-edge niche in wine production. Varieties are being developed that have resistance to cold, drought, or to common vine ailments such as downy mildew and botrytis. This has opened the door to a form of viticulture that requires almost no inputs apart from pruning.

Should we call these varieties hybrids or PIWIs or something else? And how is a hybrid different to a crossing or a “direct producer”? Does laboratory crossing of grape varieties overlap with gene-splicing, CRISPR9 or GMOs? Where are the boundary lines in these techniques and what do they mean for viticulture and wine in general?

We’ll talk about why winemakers from France, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy and beyond are planting hybrids. Hybrids might just be the future in wine. So join me for this session if you want to stay ahead of the curve!

Presenter: Simon J Woolf

Simon J Woolf is an award-winning English author and wine writer, currently based in The Netherlands.

An acknowledged expert on the developing niche of natural wine, he's written for Decanter magazine, Meininger’s Wine Business International, World of Fine Wine and Noble Rot, and many other publications. Simon is the editor of The Morning Claret, an online wine magazine which specialises in natural, biodynamic, organic and orange wine.

Simon's first book "Amber Revolution - How the world learned to love orange wine" was published in 2018, and won the Roederer Wine book of the year award in 2019. Simon has also won numerous awards for his magazine features and online columns.

Simon travels regularly to countries such as Georgia, Slovenia, Italy and Portugal, where he continues to research the stories and traditions behind artisan winemaking. His second book, Foot Trodden, a collaboration with photographer and wine communicator Ryan Opaz, was published in October 2021. It is described as a journey deep into the soul of Portuguese wine.

Simon is also active as a presenter, editor, wine judge and translator.

WSG members still enjoy a discount on Simon's book "Food Trodden" ! Get your discount HERE

At the start of November, areas with long growing seasons are still wrapping up harvest, but most wineries in the northern hemisphere have brought their grapes into the winery.  An exception to this rule is any fruit being left out for ice wine production.

Ice Wine Production

Grapes destined for ice wine production must hang on the vine until temperatures reach a consistent 20°F/-7°C or below. Only at this point, can the frozen berries be harvested.

November begins with a lot of activity in the winery and ends with everyone taking a collective sigh of relief.  The growing season is at an end and most wine production professionals can take a moment to reconnect with their families and friends and take a well-deserved vacation.