Missouri Vintner Speaks About the Spring Freeze

Early spring the temperature reached the balmy mid-sixties in Missouri. Thinking winter was over many gardeners sowed seeds and planted herbs and vegetable sprouts. Pale green shoots and leaves appeared on trees and bushes, and grass sprung from the warming ground. Then Mother Nature concocted a cruel joke. Temperatures plummeted to the low twenties during the night for five consecutive days. Daytime temperatures barely pushed in to the fifties. New growth shriveled, delicate young plants froze, and the halo of green on trees turned to browns and blacks.

The shock of the reversion to winter struck hard at the Missouri grapes important to the vintners and wine retailers in the state. Some vineyards sustained more damage then others. There was talk that most of the grape crop was destroyed or seriously damaged.

Visiting wineries and sampling their vintages is a favorite pursuit of lots of people in Missouri and from surrounding states. Summer music events are looked forward at many locations. Rumors started that Missouri wineries would not have product to sell to consumers.

I talked to Robert Mueller, the owner and vintner of Robller Vineyard Winery in New Haven, Missouri. Robller has been in business for nearly sixteen years. His wines have won bronze, silver and gold medals at state and national competitions. He put his vines in by hand and dotes over them every year.

Me: Tell us about the "freeze" and how it affected the vineyards in Missouri.

RM: Well, I can speak for our own. When the freeze hit we had five straight days of 20 degree weather that froze everything that was already out. The cane growth, two to three inches in our situation, died.

After a few weeks . . . we found a lot of green growth and a lot of fruit coming out. Budding that had not opened yet came out. Not necessarily the ones left on the pruned canes, but maybe from the cordons. They would not be quite as fruitful.

Me: Cordons? What are they?

RM: The cordon is a horizontal growth. The plant is T shaped. The vertical is a control, the part that grows horizontal on the wires are the cordons. The growth that comes off the cordons is known as the canes.

Me: You said they would not be quite as fruitful.

RM: When the freeze came if there were four buds on the growth cane then two or three of them had froze. There are three parts to each bud -- the primary, secondary and tertiary. The primary gives you normal fruiting. The secondary - if the primary is injured will come and give fruit, maybe one cluster instead of two. Some cane growth, but the production will be reduced. The tertiary is one that if the first two are injured will give you cane growth but no fruit, but the plant wonêt die from it. You will still have foliage, but no fruit.

Me: Have you determined how badly your vines were damaged?

RM: We had some primary buds left after the freeze. We will have, on most everything, 75% of fruit versus a normal year.

Me: You said, "on most everything". Are there varieties that will not fare as well?

RM: A couple of varietals may have only 30 to 40% because they were more susceptible to cold, or had more cane growth out. Mainly it was their susceptibility to cold. Varietals like the Steuben and Niagara, both American grapes, suffered.

Me: How will harvest time be affected?

RM: The plant growth started later so our harvest may delayed by a week. There could be a problem of fruit not being totally ripe all at one time. Some of the grape clusters may have come later than others. We will not know until harvest in late August.

Me: Will you pick only the ripe clusters?

RM: Well, with machine harvesting you cannot make a selection. You just pick what is there unless you go through before harvesting and drop the greener bunches of fruit. There is a considerable amount of labor involved in doing that.

If we were to hand pick, which we will do to one variety, the Norton. (NOTE: The Norton is the Missouri State grape and produces one of the stateês premiere wine varieties. It is a rich, complex red wine with a prized flavor.) The other varietals - if we let some of the fruit ripen a little beyond normal and the rest were not quite so ripe, we could pick it all and with the combination of over ripe and less ripe the acids and fruit flavors would balance out.

Me: Sounds like you may lose a lot of fruit.

RM: There is no way around that.

Me: When will the effects of freeze actually impact the amount of wine available at Missouri wineries?

RM: For the most part, white wines are available after harvest in six to nine months. That means next spring we could start selling the wines produced from this yearês grapes. Twenty-five percent less inventory is not a great problem for us. I donêt believe we need to supplement it with juice brought in from elsewhere. Most everything so far has been estate grown and produced. If weêre able to maintain our wine production with the grapes we have, depending on wine sales and carry over wine from last year -- we will still be selling estate grown wine.

Red wines can take three years after harvest before they are ready for marketing. So, it would not be until 2010 for that to be felt. For Norton, three years, for other red varieties it may be a year or two, depending on the style. Some of ours might be two years instead of three (St. Vincent, Le Trompe Noir).

Me: What does estate grown mean?

RM: The wines are produced from grapes grown and processed on site. No grapes or juice are brought in.

Me: What about Missouri wineries that suffered more extensive damage from the freeze?

RM: I heard from a winery in St. James that their Catawba and Concord, both American grape, lost all of their fruit. It meant that the only thing that grew back out were tertiary canes that would produce no fruit.

They will not have fruit, but they will be able to bring in more juice from out of state.

Me: How does importing grapes or juice affect Missouri wines?

RM: The Missouri Dept of Agriculture has opened up. We are annually allowed to bring in 15% of the previous year's production from out of state. If that percentage is in the wines, they are still considered a Missouri product. They could come from anywhere in the US. They could bring in grapes from as far away as either coast.

If there is too great a percentage of out of state grapes it cannot be a Missouri product. It can be an American labeled product. I would assume those that had a greater loss than we had would go out of state to get fruit or juice. Doing so they might have to change the label and call it American wine instead.

For example, if they want to call a wine Seyval, it has to have 75% of Seyval in the bottle. If a winery used a greater portion of Chardonnay grapes then they could not call it Seyval. They would have to have a different name.

Me: What effect would that have on wine sales?

RM: I do not think most people realize what that part of the label means. A small percentage of consumers might question it. There would still be a good percentage of Missouri fruit in their wines. I do not think they need to publicize they had to go out of state. If they are questioned about it, they should have an honest answer. People know that we had a problem with the freeze and understand that if wines are going to be available then fruit has to come from somewhere.

Me: What would you like to say to the reluctant consumer who has heard the doom-and-gloom rumors?

RM: We still have plenty of vintages from previous years. We are still going to be in business. We are still going to what we have to do, even if we do not make a profit on it. We will have a product for the consumer.