“There’s a huge suite of things that
we choose to do in a vineyard
that must complement the
terroir, the site conditions, to
get the very best out of it.”
– Pat Bowen, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
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the clusters by removing leaves, these are
all important to achieving high quality,”
Bowen said.
Bowen says most of the research her
team does is conducted in commercial
vineyards instead of at the Ag Canada
research centre, which enables the industry
to see first-hand what’s happening with
the experiments.
Over the years, Bowen and her team
have developed great relationships with
vineyard operators and others in the
Okanagan wine industry who fund much of
their research work.
“They’re really pro-research and I’m
really appreciative of that. It’s fantastic to
be able to partner with such a progressive
industry,” she said.
Investing in high-tech
Part of being progressive is staying on top
of the latest trends in technology that can
help viticulture scientists and vineyard
operators stay on top of their game.
“The growers here are really interested
in investing in technologies for vineyards,”
Bowen said. She acknowledges that the
information generated by high-tech devices
isn’t always useful, but if it can be used
in meaningful ways that helps vineyard
operators fine-tune their management
practices and produce superior wine
grapes, then the money spent acquiring it
is most likely worth it.
“We’re dealing with a high-quality crop
where a little bit of improvement in quality
means an exponential increase in price.
That’s a rare kind of crop,” said Bowen. “You
need to do the best things for that terroir
to get the best quality wine. And people ask,
‘What about yield?’ Well, yield matters, but
quality matters more. It’s worth more to
have high quality with wine grapes.”
As an example, she says Okanagan
producers who harvest good quality
Merlot grapes can expect to be paid in the
neighbourhood of $3,000 a ton.
“But if the quality is superior, suddenly
it’s $4,000 dollars a ton or so,” said
Bowen, adding that another incremental
improvement in wine grape quality could
conceivably boost the price tag to $5,000
a ton.
“It’s huge. That’s a big difference in
how much money you can make, just
by improving your quality or by having
consistent quality, not just patches of really
good fruit within your vineyard, but a
whole vineyard of really good fruit.”
COV E R F E AT U R E
FALL 2020 § POURED CANADA § 23
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