Bring Us the Sun!

Vineyard Owners Hold Out Hope After Difficult Growing Season

Chris Torres
Staff Writer

It’s been a difficult growing season for wine grapes.

“It’s unprecedented. Harvest is still not going. No one has really started yet,” said Mark Chien, Penn State viticulturalist, on Tuesday, referring especially to red grape varieties.

A late frost in May combined with a rainy summer has created challenging conditions for wine grape growers.

Now cooler weather combined with a lack of sunlight is delaying harvest.
“It’s been a hard, difficult vintage so far,” he said.

September can be a crucial time for growing grapes.

That extra late summer sunlight enables the development of sugars which Chien said add balance and texture to grapes, along with alcohol.

Red wine grapes, particularly late harvest varieties, are being particularly effected by the recent weather conditions.

“There are drastically reduced crops out there, very uneven ripening due to cool conditions,” he said.

At Stargazers Vineyard in Chester County, much of the vineyard’s grapes still hang on the vine, waiting for some sun and slightly warmer weather.

“We’re in kind of a holding pattern at this point,” said co-owner Alice Weygandt. “The sun is important for higher sugar and nice, ripe taste. It’s just not quite there yet. The fruit is starting to break down rather than finish.”

Similar years in 2003 and 2004, Weygandt said, produced lower quality wines.

Ralph Heffner at Stone Mountain Wine Cellars in Pine Grove said along with a lack of ripening fruit, he has seen a lot of rot in the vineyard.

“I’ve seen some rot in the Vidal grapes. It’s been an interesting season,” he said.

A season like this no doubt creates headaches, but Chien said it also forces vineyard owners to take a better look at their operation.

“You can see if you have a good disease and canopy management program, which is good,” he said. “It’s basically lessons learned in extreme viticulture. This is where sort of your knowledge and intuition are truly put to the test.”

It also helps to have a good winemaker. Chien said the sugar process can be replicated in the cellar, but “chapitalization,” he said, is not an easy thing and requires time and knowledge to do.

Not one for predictions, especially during a vintage, Chien did say that he predicts hybrid varieties will pan out better because they tend to ripen quicker.

Late red varieties, however, could be in trouble if the wet weather continues.

In the meantime, vineyard owners like Weygandt will continue praying for some sun.

“We need sun. If anybody knows a sundance, they should commence immediately.”