‘Widespread, horrific, devastating’
Vinyards surveying damage caused by polar vortex
The extreme cold snap earlier this month caused extensive losses to Nova Scotia’s vineyards.
“It’s going to be a widespread, horrific, devastating event,” Steve Ells of the Grape Growers Association of Nova Scotia said recently.
Growers have been checking their vines during the first full week of February and doing a lot of sampling and dissecting of buds “to get some facts instead of emotions,” said Ells.
Those facts are not good. “Basically, what we’re seeing is a huge loss of crop this year,” he said.
“All the vinifera vines, it looks like there’s not going to be a crop this year.”
Vinifera varieties are those used for higher-end wines such as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc.
Hybrid varieties used to produce Tidal Bay, l’Acadie and Frontenac also had significant losses but not as bad as the vinifera.
Ells said growers are working with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and Perennia to try to get a full handle on the damage, “but everything I’m seeing so far is 95 to 100 per cent loss in
vinifera. With hybrids there are some that are a little hardier than others, but what we’re seeing for an average there is looking like a 50 per cent bud loss.”
He said that may be able to be corrected a little with pruning “but there’s no chance of a hundred per cent crop.”
Ells said the hybrids will come back next year but probably not at full production. However, “it’s the viniferas we’re extremely worried about.”
He said it’s too early to tell
at this point so he doesn’t want to say too much right now, “but with the vinifera, it will definitely be a multiyear rebuilding program.”
Beside the buds, it's not known yet how extensive vascular damage was to the plants over the two-day cold snap, Ells said. Regardless of whether there is such damage, “it will take multiple years to get back into full production, whether it’s replacing vines or rebuilding plants that are there.”
Vinifera accounts for as much as 40 per cent of the province’s crop.
The mild winter so far made the damage worse.
Ells said Agriculture and Agri-food Canada specialists in Kentville told him there has never been a similar “perfect storm” event in recorded history.
The warm winter delayed the hardiness of the vines, and the sudden plunge in temperatures came with the polar vortex, which meant there was no way to mitigate the cold in the vineyards.
In the spring, when there are cold and starry nights with no wind, berry producers will use fans or fires to prevent frost damage to their crops, but the vortex “meant there was nothing we could do,” Ells said.
He said if the winter had been cold, the vines would have been somewhat better able to weather the weekend.
Ells said he doesn’t know what percentage of the vineyards have crop insurance, and the association will be checking to see what kind of government assistance might be available for the industry.