Perhaps the single most impactful and devastating series of events from the 2017 Napa vintage were October’s wine country fires. As the final presenter of the 2017 Napa Vintage Report, Dr. Eric Hervé, PhD. of ETS Laboratories, presented on his latest work, on smoke taint studies carried out by the […]
The goal of the swiss study presented by Dr Zufferey was to investigate the impact of water stress on vine hydraulics, berry composition and wine quality. Context: how well can Pinot Noir sustain drought conditions ? Combined effect of climatic trends associated with vineyard topography can lead to severe drought […]
In this blog we discuss an overview of the different comparative studies involving biodynamic vs organic vs. conventional farming. Results presented by Dr. Stoll focus on what we have learnt from multiple studies comparing 3 different farming practices: Organic, Biodynamic and Conventional? Earlier results were discussed here in our Wine […]
The Cool Night Index The Cool Night Index was created to study nocturnal conditions of grapes ripening according to the different wine-making regions (Tonietto, 1999 ; Tonietto et Carbonneau, 2004). By convention, this index is also called nycthermal index and is equivalent in the North Hemisphere to the minimum temperature […]
This discussion is a follow up with our last blog on the 2017 maturation What is the situation end of september? A general disorder in sugar accumulation is observed in northern California. The trend is widespread and shows sluggish sugar accumulation rate across many different vineyards. The extend of the phenomenon indicates […]
Harvest decision 2017: A ripe Cabernet Sauvignon in Napa “should be worth the wait!” We discuss a preliminary analysis of the 2017 vintage effect on berry ripening dynamics. Our main conclusions are synthesized in this short summary below. If you are interested in the rationales and discussion points, please scroll down after the […]
If you read this blog you are probably interested in understanding the complexity of vine response to contrasted environmental conditions. Everyday scientific results shed new light on plant mechanisms which, if they are properly understood, can help the winegrower optimizing his practices. Today, we discuss the relationship between :root temperature, […]
The graph below shows the average sugar loading of 250 blocks of Californian Cabernet Sauvignon. It is based on more than 2 500 analyses of sugar quantity per berry, from véraison to harvest, during the 2016 vintage (Figure 1) Figure 1: time variations of sugar per berry in California vineyard in […]
How can a winegrower harness vineyard spatial variability to make better wines? Numerous studies carried out since 2000, on irrigated and non-irrigated vineyards have shown that vineyards exhibit great spatial variability for many factors such as yield or berry quality components (Santesteban et al, 2013). This spatial variability can […]
One of the main challenges for a winegrower before harvest is : “where is it best to sample?” and “how many locations do I need to sample to get a reliable estimate?” In this blog we discuss how to design a sampling scheme to best capture vineyard spatial variability. The plant […]
