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Frosty spring raises concerns

COLD COULD IMPACT SIZE OF ’08 HARVEST, ALSO TAXES RESERVOIRS

NORTH COAST – Some winegrape growers are calling this spring the frostiest in years, with scattered reports from many of the region’s appellations of close calls and some damage to vine shoots that had budded early this season.

The temperature around the North Coast dropped to around freezing on up to 13 nights in late March and early April, forcing growers to lose sleep as they wielded or readied frost-protection measures such as water sprinklers and wind machines for sometimes four or five nights in a row.

Early projections for how much frost damage will affect winegrape crop yield this season range from 5 percent to 10 percent. Yet the full extent won’t be known until grape clusters start forming in a few weeks and any secondary or tertiary vine growth appears after any frost-burned initial shoots die, according to growers.

Jeffrey Popick, a vintner in St. Helena who represents more than 100 North Coast growers for the Allied Grape Growers marketing group, said he’s seen and heard about frost damage in the Carneros appellation and in Suisun Valley of Solano County, locations where three- to four-inch chardonnay shoots show signs of burn. “It’s not widespread, but it’s enough to add up to something,” he said.

Wild swings of cold and warm spells in the past several weeks are courtesy of four cold-air and high-pressure systems from western Canada that were too dry to allow clouds to form a nighttime blanket, according to Mr. Popick, who writes a local newspaper weather column. A fifth such system was forecast at press time.

The lowest temperature reported in Sonoma County was 25 degrees, and it reached 27 degrees for three hours in Russian River Valley, according to Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission.

“That kind of temperature puts a lot of stress on frost-protection systems,” Mr. Frey said. “I haven’t heard of anyone running out of water, but it taxed those with storage from winter diversions” from streams or rivers.

Charlie Barra of Redwood Valley Vineyards in northern Mendocino County said he’s used up a lot of the water in his storage ponds battling 15 nights of frost since March 16. “We’re hoping we will have a little rain water to fill them up,” Mr. Barra said.

Running out of water is a real concern. In 1973, Napa Valley growers used up all their frost-protection water after a dozen straight days of frost and lost a large portion of the crop on the 13th night. In the late 1980s the Potter and Redwood valleys of Mendocino were hit with 23 straight days of frost, and growers there nearly ran out of diesel for the wind machines and sprinkler pumps and water to spray, recalled Ed Berry Jr. of Cononiah Vineyard.

Guinness McFadden, who has been farming 160 acres of mostly white varieties of winegrapes in Potter Valley since 1970, said he’s burned several thousand gallons of red diesel at $3.85 a gallon running sprinkler pumps during 20 nights of frost, including 14 straight. Last year only a few nights had worrisome temperatures.

Significant frost damage, particularly to chardonnay and pinot noir, could exacerbate what some see as looming shortages for key North Coast winegrape varieties.

According to the 2007 California Grape Acreage Report, the proportion of North Coast vineyards that have yet to reach commercial maturity ranges from 2.7 percent in Sonoma County to 5.1 percent in Mendocino County.

“We feel that is at the rate of annual replacement or below,” said Brian Clements, a partner North Coast grape dealer for Turrentine Brokerage. “There’s been no real planting for five or six years.”

As a result, the brokerage has contracted all the Napa and Sonoma chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon grapes they were listing. He’s even found homes for two-thirds of the listed Napa merlot grapes, and the average price for merlot this year has soared to $2,750 a ton, compared with near give-away sales at $400 a ton last year.

After a strong start to 2008 North Coast grape sales following the second shorter-than-expected harvest last year, the local grape market has paused for the past couple of months as wineries assess wine sales for the past couple of quarters and the guesstimated crop size, according to Glenn Proctor of wine and grape brokerage Ciatti Co.

Another concern for future high-end winegrape supply from the North Coast is an increasingly scrutinizing regulatory environment and the reality that regions such as Napa Valley are virtually planted out or are too expensive for most to plant because of land prices and soaring farming costs, according to Michael Sullivan, senior vice president for Wells Fargo Bank in Santa Rosa. Those forces, plus farming costs, are requiring higher prices for grapes.

“This needs to be addressed because we can cycle into severe shortage,” he said.

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