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I recently read an good article by Jamie Goode at Vinepair titled “Why the Wines of the Future Will Be Made From Hybrid Grapes” and it got me thinking about my journey with hybrid grapes here in the Puget Sound AVA. When I first started growing grapes, all I wanted was some interesting red grapes that would ripen in our cool and sometimes wet climate. We have very specific needs because of the problems we can have with rain at harvest time. (Our summers are bone dry, see my article on The Rain Myth) Because of this we get a lot of rot on the grapes at the end of the season and most of the grape that seem to ripen early also have thin skins. Pinot and Chardonnay come to mind. Both will turn to mold quicker than you can bat an eye if you aren’t careful about spraying and leaf pulling. It’s a common issue with 100% vinifera grapes. Some do better than others. Grapes with thicker skins have less of an issue, but thin skin also seems to equate with earlier ripening characteristics. That’s where hybrid shine. Even if you impart even some of the mildew resistance on vinifera stock through breeding it seems to help tremendously.
Let me back things up a bit. In the Vinepair article they reference something called PIWI grapes which is an acronym for a German tongue twister “Pilzwiderstandsfähige”. Basically it means fungus resistant grapes. These grapes are formally known in English as hybrids. They are a hybrid between vitis vinifera the European grape and one of the various other vitis species mainly from North America. North American grapes mostly became resistant to a variety of maladies that befall European grapes. Before someone brought American grapes to Europe there was no Powdery Mildew or the buy Phylloxera. These combined destroyed the wine industry in Europe starting in the 1860s. Europeans took two routes. Hybridization and later they figured out they could graft European grapes to American roots. Up until the 1970s a large portion of grapes grown in Europe were hybrids until anti-hybrid zealots demanded that they all be ripped out in France. Americans have had a laissez faire attitude towards hybrids because they work so well in so many places east of the Rocky mountains. But the vast bulk of wines in California, Oregon and Washington are made with vinifera grapes.
As is pointed out in the article, there is a dark secret that the wine industry doesn’t want to tell you, they spray a crap of chemicals on your grapes to keep bugs and mildew off of them. Even organic grapes are sprayed constantly. I spray my grapes constantly. It’s what we have to do. But imagine a world where the grapes didn’t get mildew and rot. Spraying was reduced by 90% (there are bugs you can’t do anything about like spider mites). Think of all the labor costs. The diesel to run the tractors. The chemicals sprayed on the grapes were gone. That is the ideal of PIWI vines.
I realized this when a grape called Regent was introduced to us in the early 2000s here in North America. We got vines from Gary Moulton at the WSU Mt. Vernon Research center and went on to plant them at my first vineyard on Maury Island. They did real well and I convinced a new grower to plant a couple of acres. Eventually, I was able to buy a couple of tons of Regent from him and make wine for a couple of years. I know for a fact he never sprayed anything on his grapes and Regent just shrugged off the wet Falls we have and never got botrytis fungus. That grower, for whatever reason I’ll never know, ripped out everything and stopped growing grapes. But it showed me the potential of PIWI grapes.
About the same time I got my hands on Regent another grower in Canada started working with Vallentin Blattner a Swiss grape breeder. Blattner has churned out quite a few of PIWI grapes for the European market. The German speaking grape growing areas seem to be more willing to accept PIWI grapes than France, Spain and Italy. We all longed to get some of them because they were geared for almost the same exact conditions we have here, but importing vines is a long and costly business so we just pined away. In the meantime, grape breeders all over North America have been working on their own PIWI vines. Some in New York for their special conditions. Some breeders in Minnesota mainly to survive cold weather. Even the renowned UC Davis has bred hybrids to resist Pierces Disease which is endemic in California.
Back to the grower in Canada, he worked with Blattner and got seeds from him which he propagated and grew out for several years until he had something to work with. Many of those grapes have hit the market mainly on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, but I was lucky to work with a guy that is the official importer to the USA for these vines. Last year I was able to aquire Epicure, LaBelle and 48.05.83 (un-named so far). The 48.05.83 is the most interesting one of the bunch. It apparently has some Cabernet in it’s parentage and ripens very early and also resistant to mildews and fungus. It’s in it’s 2nd year so it will be 2-3 years before I have a crop from all these vines.
I really think this is the future of grape growing. Especially in the no-spray market. Breeding efforts are producing high quality grapes with traditional methods and no genetic engineering involved. This is also a game changer for backyard growers that have a hard time spraying vines. I will keep posting updates on this subject as time goes on.
