{"id":4492,"date":"2020-06-04T13:48:30","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T16:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/?p=4492"},"modified":"2020-06-04T13:48:30","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T16:48:30","slug":"understanding-wind-an-underappreciated-part-of-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/understanding-wind-an-underappreciated-part-of-wine\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Wind, an Underappreciated Part of Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BY\u00a0ROGER MORRIS<\/a><\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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\"Illustration<\/em><\/p>\n

Illustration by Julia Lea<\/em><\/div>\n
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Most winds that sweep through the world\u2019s vineyards bring both positive and negative results for winegrowers, often depending on the time of the season in which they blow. Whatever happens, you often can taste \u201cthe wind\u201d in your glass.<\/p>\n

Whether a gentle breeze or howling tempest, wind is generally an underappreciated part of a vineyard\u2019s\u00a0terroir<\/a>. Unlike soil, sun and location, you can\u2019t see wind. Yet, winds are very important to the quality and quantity of the wine.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., we seldom give names to winds, but Europeans and Asians have honored them with almost human characteristics.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most famous, the Mistral powers down through the vineyards of\u00a0the Rh\u00f4ne Valley<\/a>, then fans out into parts of Provence and Languedoc. The Sirocco is the fierce, often sand-filled wind that blows off the Sahara Desert and flies north through the island vineyards of the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe old people say, \u2018The Mistral can destroy grapes, but overall, it saves grapes,\u2019\u201d says Victor Coulon, whose family owns\u00a0Domaine de Beaurenard<\/a>\u00a0in Ch\u00e2teauneuf-du-Pape just outside of Avignon.<\/p>\n

That duality can be observed in vineyards around the world. Winds can cause the most damage in spring, do the most good in the weeks before harvest and have mixed results during summer.<\/p>\n

In the springtime, when tender shoots and buds can be killed by frost, air movement through the vines can ward off freezing for a few degrees. For one recent vintage, grape growers at\u00a0Cloudy Bay<\/a>\u00a0and other\u00a0Marlborough<\/a>\u00a0producers brought in a fleet of helicopters to hover over the vines in the cold, early dawn hours to circulate air.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Argentina<\/a>, the Zonda wind blows in from the Pacific Ocean and down over the Andes Mountains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Zonda blows in Mendoza, it produces a quick increase of the temperature and drops the humidity to almost zero,\u201d says Franco Bastias, chief agronomist for\u00a0Domaine Bousquet<\/a>. It helps to hold back freezing temperatures that creep north from Patagonia.<\/p>\n

\"Large
Wind machines, like this one in British Columbia, Canada, help to protect a vineyard from frost damage.\/Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But spring winds can also do a lot of damage. On the\u00a0Sicilian<\/a>\u00a0island of Pantelleria, winds from Africa during the late spring often influence crop size.<\/p>\n

\u201cPantelleria is only 38 nautical miles from Africa,\u201d says Antonio Rallo, whose family owns\u00a0Donnafugata<\/a>. \u201cBetween March and May, the wind can be insidious. The more intense, the less will be the quantity of the shoots whose flowers will grow into berries, and the fewer clusters of berries, the scarcer the harvest will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scenario flips in summer, when humidity in most vineyards rises. Rainstorms are common.<\/p>\n

\u201cWind and sun are nature\u2019s antibiotics, and wind dries things out more quickly after a rain,\u201d says Ed Boyce, co-owner\/winemaker at\u00a0Black Ankle Vineyards<\/a>\u00a0in Maryland. \u201cDowny mildew, for instance, needs about six hours of wetness to establish itself, so a nice breeze after a storm can significantly reduce the incidence of disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Ch\u00e2teauneuf-du-Pape<\/a>, Coulon says that the strong Mistral \u201cblows away the clouds, helping our region be so sunny. The vines love it.<\/p>\n

In California\u2019s\u00a0Santa Lucia Highlands<\/a>, cooling winds are as regular as clockwork. They begin around noon each day, from Monterey Bay and up the Salinas River Valley.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo things are happening during berry ripening as a result of photosynthesis,\u201d says Steve McIntyre, owner of\u00a0McIntyre Vineyards<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Monterey Pacific<\/a>\u00a0vineyard management company. \u201cThe first is accumulation of sugar. The higher and longer the temperature, the faster the sugar content rises in the berry. Everything else\u2014flavor, aroma and structural precursors\u2014is only time dependent, so higher temperatures have no impact on accumulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe wind slows the process of sugar accumulation, allowing more time for all of the other goodies to accumulate in the berry, [and is] one of the reasons our growing season is so long.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the\u00a0Sta. Rita Hills<\/a>\u00a0of Santa Barbara County, Matt Dees deals with strong coastal winds up to 50 miles per hour in the vineyard from which he makes The Hilt wines.<\/p>\n

\u201cClusters are smaller,\u201d says Dees. \u201cSkins are thicker, and the resulting wines are defined by concentration of fruit, high acidity and a powerful tannic structure, producing some of our finer wines, but often in smaller quantities.\u201d<\/p>\n

The vineyards in the edges of\u00a0Israel\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Negev Desert also need relief from the heat.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe westerly winds off the Mediterranean during summer serve to cool the vineyards near the end of the day,\u201d says Eran Goldwasser, winemaker at\u00a0Yatir Winery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of California\u2019s newest appellations,\u00a0the Petaluma Gap<\/a>, became an American Viticultural Area (AVA) in 2017. It\u2019s partly defined by its \u201cwind gap\u201d that channels cold air from the Pacific Ocean into the interior of Sonoma and Marin counties.<\/p>\n

\u201cWind dries things out from the cooling fog, and we need that window of time,\u201d says Ria D\u2019Aversa, farming manager for\u00a0McEvoy Ranch<\/a>. It\u2019s especially important to an organic operation like McEvoy, where synthetic sprays can\u2019t be used to kill fungus.<\/p>\n

Winegrowers on the East Coast worry about another type of harvest wind: hurricanes that sweep up the Eastern seaboard.<\/p>\n

Anthony Vietri, owner\/winemaker at\u00a0Va La Vineyards<\/a>\u00a0in Pennsylvania, has made wine through a few hurricanes, but one that struck just before harvest sticks out in his mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat one knocked down an entire end row loaded with Pinot Grigio,\u201d says Vietri. \u201cWe had to reset new posts with the trellises still burdened down by vines full of fruit. Not fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Published on May 14, 2020<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY\u00a0ROGER MORRIS Illustration by Julia Lea Most winds that sweep through the world\u2019s vineyards bring both positive and negative results for winegrowers, often depending on the time of the season in which they blow. Whatever happens, you often can taste \u201cthe wind\u201d in your glass. Whether a gentle breeze or howling tempest, wind is generally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4502,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/domainebousquet.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}