Nova Scotia vineyards flourish as temperatures grow warmer

The skies have been brilliant blue in Nova Scotia wine country this October, the vines heavy with grapes, and winemakers like Sean Sears are seeing crops they could only vaguely hope for in the past.

Amid the havoc wrought elsewhere by global warming, Annapolis Valley vineyards have flourished as temperatures have moderated.

“If this trend continues we’ll be sitting in one of the great wine regions,” Sears says in an interview.

Sears says his Petite Riviere vineyard has already clipped fruit with sucrose counts higher than anything his plants have produced in his memory, while the skin, seeds and flesh are ripened to ideal levels for the wines he will create.

Meanwhile, the solar warmth stored in his plants avoided the need to prune the vines, increasing his yield by 30 per cent over last year.

“Every winery is planting more plants . ... I have colleagues that are having about 10 hectares a year coming on,” he says.

Global warming is proving to be both blessing and curse for the wine industry, with some traditional regions like California coping with wildfires and premature harvests, and even France seeing centuries-old patterns of grape growing disrupted by freak frosts.

But in Nova Scotia, vineyards in areas once thought too cold for anything but hardy hybrid grapes designed for North America have started planting European chardonnay and riesling varieties, says Sears.

Across the province, cultivation for the 21 wineries has grown from 160 to 323 hectares in a little over five years, according to the Grape Growers Association of Nova Scotia.

Mathew Vankoughnett, a researcher at the applied geomatics research group at Nova Scotia Community College, has tracked changing temperatures and provides data to confirm the farmers’ instincts.

One key shift is that the fiercest winter days once capable of killing the vines are becoming a rarity.

“Bottom line, as climate warming continues on the current trend, experiencing -25 (Celsius) will not occur in future (besides as an episodic event),” he writes in an email.

The college’s research says that from 2007 to 2016 the average growing season temperature for the Annapolis Valley was 14 degrees, while from 1977 to 1986 the average growing season temperature was 13.2 degrees.