Heavy grape damage after extreme cold won't kill wine supply

Devastating winter weather that caused heavy damage to grape buds won't immediately cripple local wine production, according to members of the Windsor-Essex wine industry.

While some varieties of grapes won't be produced this year, the industry is designed to weather these disruptions, according to Tom O'Brien, the founder of Cooper's Hawk Vineyards inHarrow.

"When you're in the wine business, you know you're going to get one year out of 10, or two years out of 10, where the winter's going tobe hard and you can't get wine," O'Brien said."The general health of the vineyardis good, not excellent, but good."

Almost every type of grape grown in Windsor-Essex has been decimated, according to researchers at the University of Guelph.

According to Vine Alert, based at Brock University and which measures the percentage of grapes expected to survive the winter, the survival rates of grapes grown inColchester are:

• Four per cent of Merlot
• Seven per cent of Sauvignonblanc
• Nine per cent of Chardonnay
• 16 per cent of Cabernet Franc
• 30 per cent of Riesling

The numbers may look bleak, but they don't tell the whole story, said Debbie Zimmerman, the CEO of the Grape Growers of Ontario.Once temperatures warm up and the snow melts, it may appear the situation isn't as bad as it looks, shesaid.

"We're not 100 per cent sure what kind of crop damage we've had, it's far toearly to tell what the crop's going to look like," she said."We don't want to tell people we've had a failed crop yet."

Even if there are major damages to the crop in Windsor-Essex, things aren't desperate for local wine makers.

O'Brien said his grape production will be down 50 per cent, but the plants themselves are still healthy, and they will still be able toproduce, if there isn't another extremely frigid winter next year.

The wine industry also works on a longer-term cycle, with wine being soldtwo years after the grapes were harvested.

Zimmermansaid many wine makers have bottles from 2013, when80,000 tonnesof grapes were harvested, left to sell. For consumers, there is enoughcompetition from this stock and international wines to keep prices competitive, she said.

"This is a cyclical business, there's no doubt about it," she said. "You go through these cycles of ups and downs."