After four years of declining yields, it appears grape production has bounced back in BC, and particularly in the BC Interior.
While the crop assessment reports won’t be published until next year, winemakers across the province told Orchard & Vine they are seeing much higher yields than in 2021, when growers faced the heat dome, torrential rain events, and a brutal cold snap.
This year also brought challenges, but the prolonged drought in the autumn literally saved the 2022 crop for many growers, and also guaranteed better quality grapes for most varietals.
Michael Kullman, winemaker at Osoyoos Larose, said he’s expecting a stunning 80 per cent increase in yields for his vineyards as a whole, although he also adds that the results were better for Merlot than for Cabernet Sauvignon.
“Last year was just horrible for everybody,” Kullman said. “My yields won’t be double this year, but last year I got about 900 hectolitres (from 80 acres), and this year I’m expecting more like 1,600 hectares, so that’s ballpark about 80 per cent more this year than last year.”
Lynzee Schatz, winemaker for TIME Family of Wines, is seeing the same results in her vineyards.
““There was a bit of uncertainty in the growing season but we made it there,” Schatz said. “The 2022 crop came in well above average in some areas, and the red grape varieties seemed to be carrying a heavier crop load than the previous couple of years.
“When I realized the grapes were coming in heavy, tank logistics in the winery got a bit complicated… something I call “liquid chess”.
Further north, winemakers Penelope and Dylan Roche at Naramata’s Roche Winery said they were hugely relieved to experience a year that was not filled with one crisis after another.
“After last year’s heat dome, floods and toutes sortes de catastrophes, it was such a relief to experience a reasonably uneventful summer,” the couple said. “As grape farmers, we are always ready to adapt, but it is a blessing to have nice weather every once and awhile!”
While 2022 may have had some challenges and some unusual twists and turns, the Roches said the season overall was excellent for grape production in the Penticton/Naramata region.
“You may remember that spring took forever to arrive in 2022,” they said. “This was actually good for our vines. In early springs we worry about the new buds appearing and then being frozen off by frost. In contrast, the buds arrived safely, and with les belles journées d’été the vines flowered, made fruit, and ripened the grapes perfectly.
Photo credit: Time Family of Wines
Time Family of Wines
The harvest is a team effort at Time Family of Wines, including Lead Cellar Hand Maja Syska and Winemaker Lynzee Schatz.
“After a long and languid summer it really was breathtaking here on the Naramata Bench,” they added. “We harvested the grapes much later than usual. The fruit is of fantastic quality and we were happy to wait. There is plentiful acid in each berry, which will give the wines energy, and assist them to age.”
O&V’s survey of winemakers this year showed that, in general, both the yields and the quality in 2022 have improved in the BC Interior regions of the Okanagan, Similkameen, and Thompson Valleys, but the weather’s blessing extended even more decisively in coastal regions like the Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island.
Ironically, while many tree fruit and berry farmers across the province were suffering due to the prolonged drought this autumn, grape growers say their crops were literally saved by the unseasonably warm, dry weather in September and October.
“In general the harvest for my varietals has been larger than average,” said Jim Moody, winemaker at Zanatta Winery near Duncan, BC. “This year was a bit odd because it was actually quite dry, and it saved the island’s harvest for sure.
“I was looking at attrition in August and I was wondering, what are we going to get here, because at that point it did not look like we would get anything near what we ended up getting,” Moody added. “Then things dried up, and it was like, wow, this is actually really good! Everybody else was screaming, we need rain, and I’m like, no, no we don’t.”
At the nearby Blue Grouse Estate Winery, winemaker Bailey Williamson was getting very similar results, with an abundant harvest and high quality fruit.
“The crop seems to be abundant this year,” Williamson said. “We have not had the same crop fluctuations in the Cowichan (Valley) as other areas.
“Honestly, without the beautiful autumn we would have been screwed, it was the only thing that saved us from not harvesting.”
The bounce in grape yields comes at an important time for the BC wine industry, which has suffered a drastic, four-year decline in total tonnage. According to the BC Vineyard Resiliency Report issued in July this year, crop yields have declined in BC by roughly 33 per cent between 2018 and 2022, with the tonnage decreasing from 30,000 tons to 20,000 tons over that period.
Most winemakers and viticulturists said that decline is due to a combination of climate change in general causing extreme weather events, and also the ‘knock-on effects’ of damage from recent weather anomalies like the heat dome, the flooding in 2021, and a damaging cold snap in the Thompson-Okanagan.
Photo credit: Jon Adrian
Osoyoos Larose Estate
“It’s Mother Nature, global warming, and the time it takes for vine recovery after weather events,” said Schatz.
Kullman agreed, but added he now has a theory that severe frost events at unseasonal times of the year is the single greatest culprit in the four-year decline.
“My theory is that with climate change we’ve been getting more and more frost each year … and that will cause lower yields,” Kullman said. “My gut feeling is that it’s the cumulative years of warmer winters and then more severe frost events in the spring, or like in early 2019 when we had the early autumn frost, is causing long-term damage to the vines.”
Whatever the cause, winemakers and growers alike were thrilled to see that both the yield and the quality are up this year, although not likely to see a return to the high tonnage values of 2018.
All winemakers we spoke to said their grapes have shown consistently good quality, and in some regions like Vancouver Island, higher brix values than normal.
“Everything was really good, and I wasn’t expecting that,” said Moody. “Initially I was expecting this would be the bottom five for any vintage we’ve done here, but after that warm dry spell saved us, I would rank it in the top five, going all the way back to the 1980s.”
His Vancouver Island neighbour Blue Grouse is seeing the same thing.
“Based on what we see, it will be a delicate vintage, with low alcohols and nuanced aromas,” Williamson said. “Early tasting is showing bright red fruits in the Pinot Noir, cherries raspberries red currants.
“After malolactic fermentation and some barrel aging we should see minerality and those bright Pinot Noir characteristics emerge. On the whole, 12 percent alcohol seems to be the norm this year. The whites are showing lots of aromatics, albeit lower alcohol.”
Back over the mountains in the Okanagan Valley, Schatz says her team is thrilled with the grapes going into the tanks this year.
“The fruit I have seen and brought in this year has been great,” she said. “Wines will be juicy and have a great acidic backbone.
“At our vineyard in Osoyoos we grow Merlot, Syrah, Petit Verdot and Grenache,” she added. “All those varieties are thriving, as they are young and the vine vigour is high.
“I haven’t seen anything struggling this year to grow, but I am sure in some areas some later ripening red varieties would have liked a bit of a longer season to fully mature and show their potential,” she notes. “That’s why there is a year on every bottle; every year is different.”
Photo credit: Blue Grouse Estate Winery
Blue Grouse
Julie Rufier grape processing at Blue Grouse Estate Winery.
Osoyoos Larose grows primarily Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and Kullman said that while the grape quality was good overall, it was much better for Merlot, which is a cold hardier grape.
However, Kullman also said the timing of rain events in June had a major impact. “We had a lot of rain over flowering, especially when the Cabernet was flowering in early June,” he explained. “When Merlot flowered in early June we had this window of beautiful weather, but when the Cabernet flowered 10 days later it rained quite a bit. As a result, we had about 50 per cent less (yield) in the Cabs than in the Merlots.”
Also for those reasons, Kullman says quality for the Cab Sauv is good, but he expects the coming vintage for Merlot will be fantastic.
“Generally I’m very happy with the quality,” Kullman said. “I think it’s definitely a Merlot year; the Merlot is just fantastic, while 2021 was more of a Cab year due to the heat.”
All in all, the winemakers we spoke to said that while 2022 has been a challenging year that required rapid adaptation by growers.
“I would say it was full of unknowns and some anxiety as we watched the weather and saw the vines react,” said Schatz. “The wait to harvest was a bit nerve racking, wondering if we would get to ripeness, so that was a bit stressful and then the extremely compact harvest, which usually happens over 6six to eight weeks, happened over two weeks, was a fast and challenging two weeks.
“Lots of vineyard visits and grape maturity monitoring was happening during September and the start of October,” she added. “As far as grape quality goes, I am really happy with the fruit we received; the flavours that are coming through and how the wines are finishing up ferment.”
