A Pinch of This, a Dash of That

The Importance of Understanding Micronutrients in Grapes

By Brian Charles Clark
wine.wsu.edu

When humans don’t get enough zinc, we can get sick with cancer and suffer immune-system dysfunction. The same is true of plants. Micronutrients such as boron, zinc and copper, although only a tiny part of a plant’s diet, can have a profound effect on the plant’s health.

Washington State University soil scientist Joan Davenport and her colleagues at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser are studying micronutrient utilization in Concord grapes. Washington is the nation’s number one Concord grape producer, so understanding what happens with micronutrients is important to the industry’s bottom line. And what Davenport learns about micronutrients in Concords is going to be applicable to wine grapes, too.

Micronutrient availability is an issue in Washington’s grape-growing region, with its high pH soils. The soil availability of micronutrients decreases as pH increases.

“Right now, growers apply micronutrients based on their experience and on what’s commercially available. We want to give them quantifiable data to work with,” said Davenport. “Then they’ll be able to supply plants with what they optimally utilize without spending more than they need to on inputs.”

If the vine doesn’t get enough boron, Davenport said, pollen lands on the flower but doesn’t germinate. “That’s a disaster,” she said, “because if there’s no pollination, there’s no seed, and then there’s no fruit.” Copper and zinc don’t affect the plants so dramatically, but do affect the size of the canopy.

Davenport’s current project is based on one that her doctoral student, Suphasuk “Bird” Pradubsuck, finished recently.

The Beautiful Mistake

Wine Spoiler May Be Good for Fuel Production

By Brian Charles Clark and Suzanne Stanard
wine.wsu.edu

Ever had a glass of wine that tasted the way a barnyard smells? The culprit likely was a yeast, Dekkera (Brettanomyces) bruxellensis, that plagues wine production worldwide. Thomas Henick-Kling is part of a multi-institutional team working to control the yeast and potentially reprogram it to add value in bioethanol production. Henick-Kling is director of WSU’s viticulture and enology program.

The team is headed up by North Carolina State University researcher Trevor Phister, assistant professor of food, bioprocessing and nutrition sciences.

Collaborators from five labs won a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute (JGI) to sequence the Dekkera genome. Along with Phister and Henick-Kling, the team is comprised of Scott Baker of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Linda Bisson of the University of California-Davis, and Fred Dietrich of Duke University.

“From a microbial spoilage standpoint in wine, this yeast is the big problem we have,” Phister said. “Because the yeast thrives in high-ethanol environments, it also is a contaminant in biofuel fermentations, causing a decrease in the amount of ethanol that those fermentations produce.”

Your Mother Doesn’t Work Here

The Northwest Grape Foundation Service and WSU are keeping Washington’s vineyards clean

By Brian C. Clark, Washington State University

The Northwest Grape Foundation Service is part of the National Clean Plant Network, a nationwide effort to supply agricultural producers with “clean,” virus-free plant material. Considerable scientific expertise and rigor is needed to thoroughly screen plant material for viruses and to propagate the clean material. The clean material is then released to certified commercial nurseries throughout the Pacific Northwest, where it is grown for sale to producers. Considering the prevalence of viruses and the expense of keeping them at bay, the National Clean Plant Network is not only a great investment, it is a necessary one.

Late in 2008, the organization Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) issued an analysis of the 2009 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, also known as the Farm Bill. The organization focuses on government waste of tax payers’ money, a laudable form of activism.

Vine Doctor

Leafroll isn’t as fun as it sounds

By Brian C. Clark

Seeking Answers for Grape Diseases

Gardeners may prize ornamental grapes that turn crimson in late summer, but that’s not something wine grape growers want to see in their vineyards. Crimson leaves are a characteristic symptom of a complex virus-associated disease called grapevine leafroll. The untreatable disease delays ripening, causes a significant drop off in yield and grape quality, and can shorten the life of the vine.

King of the Yeasts

By Brian Charles Clark
Washington State University
wine.wsu.edu

Where does a great glass of wine get its start? In the vineyard, certainly, as the foundation for good wine is always good fruit. But once the fruit is picked and turned over to the winemaker, yeast can make or break a great wine.

Once yeast is added to grape must (the juice and, if red, skins of the grapes), winemakers hope it performs as expected. Ideally, yeast should perform consistently batch after batch, regularly metabolizing a certain amount of sugar into ethanol. A yeast that underperforms may result in a sluggish or “stuck” fermentation—an expensive, stinky disaster for a commercial winery and a disheartening mess for a home winemaker.

Future Grape

By Brian Charles Clark, Washington State University

How many merlots can you make? At some point, speculates Amit Dhingra, consumers are going to want something different.

Dhingra is a horticultural genomicist at Washington State University. His research focuses on sequencing genomes and then taking that information to produce better fruit. He recently told me that “as tastes change, I think there will be more wines filling specific niches. People always want something new.”

Paradox, Anti-Ox, and Co-Evolution

By Brian C. Clark, Washington State University

Probably the best way to maintain lifelong health is by eating very little food. The writer Michael Pollan puts it in a nutshell: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

So how do the saucy French manage to eat so richly? How do they do it?

Indeed, despite a diet rich in saturated fats, the French enjoy a relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease. First noted as early as 1819, the term “French paradox” was coined in 1992 by a scientist from Bordeaux University to describe this fatty-but-healthy diet.

The scientific validity of the paradox has been questioned, but when a 1991 episode of 60 Minutes suggested that the heart-healthiness of the French could be attributed to red wine, sales soared 44 percent. Like many foods, wine is a complex mélange that looks like a dream date to an organic chemist. What, if anything in that mix is proactively healthful for humans?

Grapes Gone Wild Part 3: Mixicology in Mesopotamia

By RM Shor

This article is the third installment in a multipart history on the making and consumption of wines.

Part 3: Mixicology in Mesopotamia

I must digress for a paragraph or so to explain how the world really works.

In spite of what you might see on cable channels, history is a lot more like our national highway system than a one-lane road through flat rural country. There are lots of lanes; there are slow cars in the fast lane, working-stiff commuters with eerily realistic baby dolls in children’s seats in the HOV lane, and crazy teenagers zigzagging in and out of traffic (yes, even in Washington State). In reality, the history of mankind, and of wine, has its on-ramps and exits, tunnels and bridges, overpasses and underpasses, semitrailers and motor-scooters; and on the tarmac it has recently liberated spare parts, ladders, mattresses, and road-kill. All this means that, as much as we would all like to see the cause and effect of events and the rise and fall of empires line up in a neat little queue, it didn’t happen that way.

Feeling Red

By Brian C. Clark

Us normal folks call it “mouth feel,” but for enologist Jim Harbertson that puckering, velvety sensation is a complex of astringent chemicals called tannins.

Harbertson, based at Washington State University’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in the heart of Washington wine country in Prosser, has been sampling tannins for years. Instead of the typical swirl, sniff, sip and spit of wine samplers, Harbertson and his research team gathered samples with a Pasteur pipette. The samples were brought back to Harbertson’s lab and subjected to analysis with a spectrophotometer.

We’re Going to Party Like it’s 1969

A Look at the Roots of Washington’s Vines

By Brian C. Clark, Washington State University

Imagine going to a dinner party today and bringing along a bottle of Boone’s Farm or MD “Mad Dog” 20/20. A bit of a faux pas today, but there was a time when Americans drank very little wine and what we did drink was sweet, awful stuff lacking in mouth feel but ripe in hang-over potential.

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