Frigid Arctic air delivers another blow to Okanagan wine industry
There’s a good chance that the frigid temperatures this past weekend were even more harmful to Okanagan grape vines than last winter.
Given that 45% of Okanagan grape vines suffered irreparable damage during the winter of 2022/2023, that’s a huge blow to the industry.
“I did a really quick look and the buds are all gone, 100% dead," Ben-Min Chang, a scientist at the Summerland Research and Development Centre, told iNFOnews.ca, Jan. 15.
Those are the buds on the vines grown at the research station.
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He plans to inspect the trunks to see if they too were killed after temperatures dropped to -25 Celsius Saturday morning.
“It’s pretty devastating,” Chang said.
On the weekend, the mercury fell to -26.9 C in Kelowna, -22.9 C in Penticton and -22.3 C in Osoyoos.
Chang has less than an acre of grape vines so what he sees at the Summerland Research Station is just a sample of what may have happened throughout the Okanagan since there are many micro-climates and a wide range of grape varieties planted.
It'll probably take a couple of weeks to get a clearer picture of how widespread the damage is and a few months to really know the full impact.
“So far, I just have a rough guess,” Chang said. “Based on the temperature data the impact will be bigger than last year. I'm worried about the vine cells being killed in certain places.”
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