Unpredictable winters causing significant damage to vineyards in Niagara region
CBC
The Niagara region is seeing some of its worst winter damage in 17 years, with early estimates measuring around 50 per cent of grape vines damaged.
Chair of Grape Growers of Ontario Matthias Oppenlaender said the impact of extreme climate events is more concerning each year. Despite warmer weather bringing benefits to vineyards, the unpredictability of winter has become problematic.
"We are seeing some warm and milder winters in the past but we also see the extreme colder weather events, extreme weather events," Oppenlaender told CBC Hamilton.
"We don't know what happens from one week to the next week."
Damage in vineyards happens when the bud of a plant freezes to an extreme either in winter or spring.
"There's a main [bud] but there's a secondary and tertiary, but when it gets too cold, then these buds freeze, they die. And obviously, the vine doesn't bud out in the springtime."
He said, however, that even the warm stretches of winter and fall affect grape vines.
"We could have a mild stretch in December — and that was part of the problem, we had a very wet fall with excessive rain and milder December and then January really, very cold."
The loss rate for crops is usually 10 to 15 per cent, Oppenlaender said, and the last time a significant loss like this happened was in 2005.
"We were surprised. We knew that there were cold temperatures, we expected a certain amount of damage, but we didn't expect to [this] extent."
"We're still trying to get a handle on this. It makes everything more difficult in the vineyard."
Oppenlaender has been growing grapes for 38 years, he said the effects of these losses can be devastating.
He said there's extra labour required to try and recover the vines where possible, as well as high demand for material needed for this process.
"Depending on the extent of the damage, it takes us a couple of years to come back to a full crop and that's providing that Mother Nature will be kind to us over the next couple of winters."
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