It’s hardly groundbreaking news that technology has changed the way we deal with, well, almost everything, but it has surprised me to learn just how much contemporary viticulture is influenced by technological gadgets and expertise. My first glimpse of this post-modern industrial transformation was several years ago, when I happened to visit a new Hermann Weimer vineyard in the Finger Lakes that had been planted with the help of GPS technology.
Today the use of lasers or GPS guided gear for laying out vineyards is widespread. The machines, which are credited with offering much greater control and efficiency, can plant up to 20,000 vines a day at precise distances from one another. But things get even more hi-tech. At California’s Jordan Estate, for example, viticulturist Brent Young remembers the not-so-long-ago days when he and winemaker Rob Davis would assess the ripeness of the fruit as they strolled through the vineyard every autumn popping grapes into their mouths. “We could walk along a row and taste flavor changes in the grapes between individual vines,” he recalls. They would tie ribbons around the vines that produced grapes with the herbaceous characteristics Davis doesn’t like in order to separate those clusters from the ones that yielded the dark fruit flavors and ripe tannins he favors.
Consulting with a soil scientist, Young dug 40 soil pits, each 3-5 feet deep, and used high tech equipment to identify and analyze the textures, colors and other factors that characterized the overall makeup of the soils in the different pits. The blocks were also analyzed to determine how evenly water is distributed throughout the vineyard. The findings were “eye-opening,” says Young. “A vineyard that might have been farmed as a single block five years ago actually needs to be managed as three individual blocks to achieve consistency of flavors.”
GPS systems are increasingly being used in vineyards everywhere in the world to manage countless factors including elevation and trellising styles as well as soil components and irrigation patterns. GPS can help identify areas in the vineyard that may need treatment for leafhoppers or other pests. Using GPS with a handheld computer or PDA coupled with aerial imagery, vineyards can be evaluated for vine vigor. That imagery is then used during harvest, with GPS identifying specific blocks based on vigor index (fruit from low vigor vines typically goes into higher quality wines, while grapes from more vigorous vines are generally used for lower priced product). After harvest, that same information will be used in managing the vineyard the rest of the season.
No one believes that technology will replace going into the vineyard to observe vines and taste grapes. And according to current thinking, a vineyard cannot be properly irrigated by just looking at the soil–visual observation needs to be correlated with data sensors and other technical devices. I am certainly not suggesting that these tools that were once thought of as futuristic have led to better tasting wines–that is a topic for another day. But there is little doubt that, as its proponents affirm, technology has made viticulture extremely efficient, accurate and cost-effective. And to think that just a short time ago I was under the impression that the main purpose of a GPS was to help us find the closest wine shop.
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