A (Very!) Brief History of Washington Wine

I’ve been running around the state trying to capture the stories of some of Washington’s wine industry pioneers. The video below is one I made for a recent WSU viticulture and enology program fundraiser, so its very short — but a lot of fun. Hopefully I’ll find the resources to produce a full-length documentary on this subject.

Seven Ways to Puncture a Wine Windbag

By Richard H. Miller/Washington State University

Uncle Patrick gargles his wine. “I taste blackberries and cherry and oak,” he says, “and a lot of tannins.”

The only thing you know about wine is that it comes in different colors. But, with holiday meals approaching, here’s how to puncture wine windbags, thanks to Washington State University Professor Kathleen Williams:

Precipitate saliva. When Patrick says he tastes tannins, you say: “Tannins don’t have a taste. They create a sensation as they precipitate the proteins out of your saliva.” Tip: Stroke your chin sagely as you pronounce “precipitate.”

Throw in a German word. Patrick swirls the glass. “Good legs,” he observes. You say, “The French call them tears. The Germans call them Kirchenfenster or church windows, because they form an arch.” Want more? Try this: “Water has more surface tension than alcohol. The evaporating alcohol pulls the water up with it. When the alcohol breaks through, the water runs down.”

Hit him with Brix. Patrick looks at the label. “Oh my,” he says, “14.9 percent alcohol.” You’re ready for him. “Did you know that wines from hot areas tend to have more alcohol? That’s because the grapes have more sugar. As a rule of thumb, every 2 percent of sugar will produce about 1 percent alcohol. So this wine was originally almost a third sugar. Of course, wine makers don’t call them sugars. They call them Brix.” Tip: Refill his glass. Keep refilling his glass. This becomes important later.

Diamonds are your best friend. He holds the glass up to the light. Tiny crystals stick to the sides. “It’s going bad,” he says. “Not really,” you say. “Those are potassium tartrate crystals, same thing as cream of tartar. They’re a naturally occurring acid in grapes.” Smile tolerantly, and add, “In Canada, they call them wine diamonds.”

Herbal harmony. Patrick says, “A red wine would overwhelm the turkey.” You say, “It’s not really about the turkey. It’s about the herbs with the turkey, such as onion, celery and sage. What works well is to contrast the herbs with a fruity wine, such as a Beaujolais Nouveau or a Gewürztraminer.”

Make something up. By now, Uncle Patrick should be a bit toasted, so hit him with something ludicrous, but difficult to disprove: “Gewürztraminer has an umlaut,” you say. “The word umlaut is derived from the word omelet and Gewürztraminer pairs well with omelets. As a matter of fact, most umlaut wines go well with egg-based dishes, such as quiche. It’s called a bio-linguistic reaction.”

Fancy footwork. As he sputters to object, quickly change the subject: “Do you know what the best pairing is? Scientists in England proved that it is milk and chocolate chip cookies. Speaking of dessert, how about some pie?”

WSU’s viticulture and enology program offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees, and certificates. For more information go to http://wine.wsu.edu/education.

Disease Detectives Tackle the Mystery of the Fall Colors

WSU plant pathologist Naidu Rayapati and his colleagues are carefully unraveling the intricate biochemistry and molecular biology of grapevine leafroll disease.

Grapevine leafroll is a complex viral disease that can cause a marked decline in grapevine vigor, grape quality, and fruit productivity, according to Rayapati. The disease can reduce yields as much as 50 percent or even more, depending on the severity of infection. A few years ago, it was estimated that nearly 10 percent of Washington’s vineyards have grapevine leafroll disease. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the disease is more wide spread than previously thought, raising alarm among industry stakeholders. Grapevine leafroll disease accounts for about 60 percent of the production losses of grapes worldwide, Rayapati said.

One of the most perplexing questions Rayapati is addressing is one of symptomology: why do some grape varieties show the “fall colors” symptoms in their leaves while others do not?

Chinese Market Thirsty for Washington Wine

Economists at Washington State University are investigating ways to market Washington wine to the growing Chinese consumer market.

The research consists of examining Chinese preferences for wine from different countries coupled with economic experiments, said economics professor Jill McCluskey.

“It is important to understand Chinese consumers’ preferences so the United States can enter this growing market,” McCluskey said. “There is great potential within this market.”

China is one of the most populous nations in the world, and currently, per capita wine consumption within China is at 0.3 liters. This is meager in comparison with France and the United States, which are set at 59 liters per year and 12 liters per year, respectively.

“If per capita wine consumption in China rose by just 0.1 liters per year, that would mean consumption would rise by 100 million liters,” said Hainan Wang, a graduate student who assisted McCluskey in the study. “There is so much potential to create incredible profits by marketing wine to China.”

Currently, Chinese consumers perceive wine as stylish and prestigious. The Chinese prefer imported wine, and there is a preference for French wine among consumers, McCluskey said.

Going Pro with Online Wine Science Education

When Higher Learning recently talked to students in the WSU professional certificate program in enology, we learned that they not only come from all over the country, they’re also making connections, starting businesses and getting jobs in wine regions all over the place. Hear what certificate program students have to say in this short video.

The two-year certificate programs in viticulture and enology are continuing education programs offered through Washington State University Extension. These non-credit, professional certificate programs are tailored for people who are seriously interested in working in the wine industry — grape growing and winemaking — but are not interested in obtaining a college degree.

Mapping Complexity in Washington Wine Country

As you read this, a graduate student in Prosser is sitting in front of his computer, for the umpteen millionth hour, bashing his head against the mapmaker’s perennial problem: the map can never be as detailed as the terrain it represents.

But that doesn’t mean the mapmaker doesn’t try. Especially when there is tremendous pent up demand from Washington grape growers for a vineyard site-selection tool.

Ian Yau is the mapmaker, and he’s a grad student based at WSU’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser. Yau is trying to wrestle a vast amount of information to the ground in order to turn raw data into useful knowledge.

“It’s a lot of spreadsheet manipulation,” Yau said, the wry understatement of his project causing a smile to play across his face.

Consider what you’d want to know if you wanted to plant a vineyard in Washington. You’d want to know, of a given plot of land, how many growing degree days it got at a certain elevation on a particular slope. You’d want to know about the soil beneath your feet: is it going to drain properly so the grape vines don’t wallow and rot? Is there hardpan or some sort of other restrictive layer close to the surface that will prevent the plants from sinking their roots deep into the soil? And what’s the soil’s water-holding capacity and pH?

The Mendoza Connection

When Daniela Romero heard Washington State University’s Markus Keller talking about irrigation during grape ripening, her curiosity was piqued. After all, applying water close to harvest time was simply not done.

Keller was teaching a grape physiology course at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, deep in the heart of Argentina’s wine country. Romero is a graduate student at the university, and she asked if she could join Keller’s research team in Prosser to learn more about his tradition-defying research.

“Keller’s research is important to the wine industry, because it will influence the way growers add water to their vineyards. In most of the world’s wine regions, irrigation during grape ripening is thought to dilute the sugars in grapes–but this belief does not have any scientific foundation,” Romero said.

As Keller pointed out, “The European wine industries and their many regulators have it all figured out: irrigation during grapes’ critical ripening period is generally a bad thing and must be strictly regulated.”

A quote from the International Organization for Biological and Integrated Control in their 1999 Guidelines for Integrated Production of Grapes illustrates Keller’s point: “Irrigation of vines for wine production will not be applied after véraison or highly restricted by the regional guidelines in order to guarantee the good quality of the wine.”

“The tacit assumption is that irrigation boosts berry size and dilutes the quality-impact components of the grapes,” Keller said. “So pervasive is this argument that, even in the New World, many wineries encourage growers to withhold irrigation water during fruit ripening to avoid any perceived adverse effects.”

Keller and former graduate student Marco Biondi put the assumptions to the test–with startling results that fly in the face of viticultural tradition.

The Fine Details: The Ability to Blend Art and Science Helps Make Great Wines

When sipping a glass of a fine winemaker’s red blend in front of the fire, it’s easy to appreciate the art that went into that glass.

But anyone who has tried to make wine finds him or herself quickly caught up in what amounts to a science project.

“Winemaking is certainly creative,” said Carolyn Ross, assistant professor of food science at Washington State University and an expert in the sensory analysis of wine. “But at its core, winemaking is a scientific endeavor. What folks often forget is that those two things are not incompatible.”

Take the fine art of fining, for example. Fining agents are substances added at or near the end of the winemaking process in order to improve clarity, adjust flavor, aroma and wine stability. In other words, fining tweaks a wine’s sensory qualities.

And the sensory quality of wine is, of course, what enjoying a glass of great wine is all about: the mouth feel, the unfolding bouquet, the color, the acids, tannins, and other qualities that wine writers deploy armies of adjectives trying to describe. Ross takes a scientific approach to those armies of adjectives be finding ways to quantify their chemical properties and by training panels of wine tasters to communicate the importance of individual sensory qualities.

“Fining is critical for consumer acceptance of white wines as a haze or sediment in the bottle may eventually lead to consumer rejection and economic loss to the winery. Together with racking and filtration, fining agents improve clarity, define aromas and increase shelf life,” Ross and her colleagues wrote in a recently published article in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture.

But, the researchers add, fining may also “impact the sensory quality of wines,” though how much sensory impact fining has depends upon a complex relationship between the fining compound and the type of wine being fined.

“Fining is definitely where some basic scientific practice is essential to making a good wine,” said Ross.

Ross and her team fined Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer made by a well-known Washington winery which donated the wine to Ross’s team specifically for this series of experiments.

“There’s hasn’t been a lot of research done on the fining of Washington wines,” Ross pointed out. Because wine is so chemically complex, it is very “place specific”: grapes of the same variety grown in different areas produce wines with varying sensory qualities and so research, too, needs to be place specific.

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.”

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