How technology is minimizing the differences between good and bad wine vintages

Monday, 27 March, 2017
Forbes, Brian Freedman
I was born in a bad vintage. Aside from Port—which I adore, and which was stunning in my birth year—1977 was not exactly a benchmark year.

1977 Bordeaux, if you can find it, is likely to be long past its short-lived prime. Same thing for Burgundy. And Napa. The list goes on. Those 1977 vintage Ports are still singing, but overall, the year was a terrible one for much of the wine world.

Still, for all the talk about good and bad years in one wine region or another in our times, the impact of all but the most extreme weather is being attenuated with greater success all the time, which has a tremendous impact on both the market itself and the economic wellbeing of the people who produce and grow wine.

Stephan Joubert, Group Viticulturalist for Douglas Green Bellingham in South Africa, sees this improved ability to manage and work with adverse natural vintage conditions “as a combination of technology but also the human factor,” he told me in an email. “As viticulturists and winemakers get more experience with their specific vineyards and terroir, they build a better understanding [of] how to manage the vineyard (and juice in cellar) during the different vintages. One important key to success is to ‘read’ the vintage right, and adapt vineyard management [and] winemaking techniques according to the vintage.”

Niel Groenewald, Winemaker for South Africa’s Bellingham, elaborated. “In the vineyard, we have a better understanding of water management in irrigated areas where possible, or crop and canopy management in unirrigated areas,” he explained in an email. He also stressed the many benefits of “better plant material, new clones, and virus free material,” as well as the ability to measure water stress on the vines in the vineyard and the ability to adapt appropriately. “In the winery,” he added, “grape sorting is better and more effective (less green as well as less over ripe), optical sorting and early adjustment of juice pH and [more]. Wild yeast inoculations and better enzyme and tannin management also helps with longevity and ageability of wines.”

Vineyard design is also key. “Getting the right variety on the right rootstock for the area is the first step,” Jeffrey Stambor, Winemaker at Beaulieu Vineyard, explained in an email. “Designing a trellis system including row orientation allows for the correct sun exposure of the fruit and promotes complete phenological maturity. These decisions set the future and potential of the vineyard.”

Making those decisions is being immeasurably aided by modern technology. Indeed, the common perception of a vineyard as basically a vine farm, where the main decisions are which grape varieties to plant and when to harvest, could not be further from the truth in contemporary winemaking. “95% of the improvements that directly improve quality are in the vineyard,” Robb Mann, Winemaker and Estate Director at Napa Valley’s Newton Vineyard, said in an email. The technology being brought to bear is stunning. “Soil resistivity mapping—via a ground penetrating radar that passes over the surface of a new or existing vineyard[—]provides an understanding of the variability of the soil and can be cost effectively assessed. This makes decisions on soil sampling, vineyard and irrigation layout, rootstock and clonal selection, and retrofitting existing vineyards all to improve uniformity and quality more readily available.”
 
Gavin Taylor, Winemaker at Montes, which has vineyards and wineries in both Chile and Argentina, noted that the best results are not necessarily the product of either just technology or human intuition and experience, but the confluence of both. Still, he stressed, improved weather forecasts, better harvesting and fruit selecting, filter technology, and more all allow the best of a particular harvest’s fruit to shine. Montes is also experimenting with large canopies over the vines, which allow the sun to penetrate but not any rainwater that might fall.
 
To read more online, click HERE.