Posts Tagged: wine
Associated Press profiles two Latino family wineries
Latino winemakers are rare, but some are finding success by catering to Latinos developing a taste for fine wine, according to an Associated Press article by Olivia Muñoz. The story ran in the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, on the ABC News website and other media outlets.
The article profiled two Latino family wineries whose founders started out working in the fields.
"I would work my regular shift and then pester the vineyard manager with questions until I knew everything he knew," Reynoldo Robledo of the Robledo Family Winery near Sonoma was quoted.
The winery sells 20,000 cases per year bringing in about $1 million.
Ceja Vineyards in Napa president Amelia Ceja and her husband Armando worked in vineyards as children, and also obtained formal education. Armando earned a degree in enology and viticulture from UC Davis, and worked as a vineyard manager for other wineries before the family started their own, the story said.
Both vineyards were reported to be targeting the Latino market. Half of the Ceja Vineyard's wine club is Latino and the company promotes the wine at dinners pairing traditional Mexican dishes with Ceja Vineyard reds and whites. The Robledo Family Winery also built its business by catering in part to Latino wine drinkers interested in quality and a connection to their heritage.
Esau Herrera of the Hispanic Vintners Association, a marketing group with about a dozen members in California and Florida, told Muñoz that part of Latino vintners success comes from making a connection with Latinos.
"There are people like me who are very proud of our roots and don't mind plunking down $125 for a bottle of wine," Herrera was quoted.
wine
Shasta College teams with UCCE for winemaking class
A two-acre vineyard on the Shasta College campus will produce grapes for the school's growing wine-making program and a venue for collaboration with UC Cooperative Extension, according to an article in the Redding Record Searchlight.
Although the young vineyard is still about a year away from producing its first crop, the college is already working with UCCE to use the vineyard for research and community workshops.
“That’s been a good partnership,” Shasta College horticulture instructor Leimone Waite was quoted in the article. “We are trying to be a completely organic vineyard, which has been a real challenge.”
The vineyard is also used for instruction in some of Shasta College's 14 wine-related classes. Students plant, prune and train the grapevines. Some vines were purposely trained the wrong way so students can see what happens.
Shasta College is one of four in the 112-campus community college system to have a bonded winery. The designation allows the college to bottle wine with its own label. So far, Shasta College wine is not for sale, but it has been sampled at campus events.
The Shasta College's viticulture and enology program includes students seeking careers in the wine industry, as well as those who simply want to grow a few grapes and make wine at home.
Green winery begins making wine
Grape crush has begun at a new UC Davis winery that is intended to become self-sustaining in terms of energy and water, according to a UC Davis news release that ran in the Daily Democrat. The facility's environmentally friendly features include onsite solar power generation and a system for capturing rainwater and conserving processing water. The stored rainwater will be used for landscaping and toilets. "We want to demonstrate a self-sufficiency model that is applicable to any business with limited water," the article quoted Roger Boulton, a UC Davis winery-engineering expert. Plans call for eventually operating the facility independent of the main campus water line. The winery was also designed to capture carbon dioxide, a byproduct of fermentation, from a port in each of the new fermentors. "The goal is for the facility to be not just carbon neutral, but carbon zero, in terms of its carbon emissions," Boulton said. The 34,000-square-foot teaching-and-research complex is expected to be the first winery, brewery or food-processing facility to earn LEED Platinum certification, the highest environmental rating awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. (LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.) The facility will be only the third in the UC system to receive the LEED Platinum certification. The $20 million complex was funded entirely by private donations; no state or federal funds were used in its design or construction, the news release said.
Students work on the fall crush in the new winery.
Grapes put the squeeze on Riverside citrus
The value of Riverside County citrus crops dropped 25 percent in one year, from $135.7 million in 2008 to $101.6 million in 2009, according to an article in the Riverside Press-Enterprise. The story credits the growth of the wine industry in Temecula for the decline in citrus production.
A farmer told reporter Jeff Horseman it makes more sense to grow citrus in California's San Joaquin Valley, where land and water are cheaper, or to import the fruit from other countries - such as Mexico and South America - where fewer regulations cut into profits.
The story said Temecula's future is now tied to wine as county officials and vintners collaborate on a plan to make the Southern California wine country a premier tourist destination. UC Cooperative Extension staff research associate Tom Shea told the reporter that the popularity of agricultural crops can shift with time. He recollects farmers in Sonoma County grew apples and prunes decades ago, but the wine industry proved more profitable when restaurants and other tourism amenities were added. "I believe the official name of the 'appellation' is Temecula Valley Wine Country," Horseman e-mailed in reply to my question about the capitalization. "Technically, Wine Country lies outside the City of Temecula proper. However, it's common for folks around here to refer to the area as 'Temecula Wine Country' or even just 'Wine Country.'"
A Riverside County vineyard.
Winegrapes ripen, unless berry shrivel strikes
August visitors to California wine country can see winegrapes ripening – green changing to gold, red and purple. This is the critical final stage of development, and its success drives one of the state's economic engines, with wine sales generating $18 billion in revenue in 2009. Wine country is also a tourist magnet and a job generator; the industry has a $61.5 billion economic impact statewide each year.
If this is a typical year, California will produce 90 percent of the nation’s wine. In normal vines, the ripening period means sugars and pH increase, while acids (primarily malic) decrease. Other compounds such as tannins develop, and all these factors contribute to the flavors and aromas in the wine that eventually results. (See healthy Cabernet Sauvignon, at right.)However, in recent years growers have become increasingly concerned about a malady that appears during this phase. Known as “berry shrivel,” this disorder leads to shriveling of berries on a cluster.
There are several kinds of berry shrivel. Of greatest concern to growers and winemakers are sugar accumulation disorder (SAD), in which grapes turn flabby and lack sugar, and bunchstem necrosis, (BSN) in which grapes turn raisin-like on the vine, losing juice and often developing undesirably high sugar content. (See California Agriculture) Either of these disorders makes the fruit less desirable for winemaking, with yield and production losses.
Berry shrivel afflicts both red and white varieties. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot are the major red varieties to be affected so far. Among the white varieties, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Semillon and Riesling have shown symptoms.
The malady usually becomes apparent when winemakers or sugar samplers are in the vineyard tasting fruit. Once detected, vintners will often make a pass through the vineyard just ahead of the harvest crew to drop this fruit due to its low sugar content and off-flavored juice.
"Berry shrivel usually affects a small proportion of a vineyard's fruit – perhaps 5 percent -- but in particular vineyards and years, shriveling can affect more than half of the crop," says Mark Krasnow, who was a postdoctoral student at UC Davis and is now at the Eastern Institute of Technology in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. "In some years and some sites, wineries will decide not to harvest a vineyard due to the amount of shrivel. Fortunately this is rare."
The origins of SAD and BSN are a mystery, in spite of research investigations. Krasnow and his colleagues at UC ran a battery of high-tech tests to determine the factors involved, but found little consistency in results and to date, all tests for pathogenic organisms have been negative.
Whether due to SAD or BSN — berry shrivel occurs in vineyards all over the world, managed under different climates, making it a globally significant problem in winemaking.
"The irregularity of when and where (or if) SAD and BSN occur makes them very difficult to study," Krasner notes. Tests conducted by UC Davis Foundation Plant Services were negative for phytoplasmas, closteroviruses (leafroll), fanleaf viruses, nepoviruses and fleck complex viruses.
“It is possible that SAD has multiple causes, and that one of those causes might be a pathogen,” Krasnow says. “In some cases, all the fruit on a vine is affected, even clusters that appear outwardly normal. In other cases, it is only the symptomatic fruit that develops abnormally.”
Preliminary studies suggest that SAD can be propagated by chip budding, but vine-to-vine spread has not been seen, according to Krasnow. Future studies will focus on tests for a causal organism and a more careful examination of the metabolism of fruit affected by this disorder.
Bunchstem necrosis also varies in symptoms and whether effects occur on clusters or whole vines, and can occur at bloom or at ripening (veraison). Future studies will examine varietal differences in susceptibility having to do with xylem structure, the importance of concentrations of mineral nutrients, and other cultural factors.