With 85% of wine production taking place in California, what happens when drier growing seasons and increased threats of wildfires impact the state’s ability to continue that high production level?
Aude Watrelot, assistant professor of food science and human nutrition and extension enology specialist at Iowa State University, is leading a project to better understand the challenges faced by wine industry professionals across the U.S. The results of the project aim to improve future regional wine production.
“With everything that’s going on in the U.S. every year, water will become a struggle to find, and diseases and pests are continuous threats,” Watrelot said. “At some point, new practices need to be put in place to handle the changing growing conditions and make growing and producing wine grapes in all parts of the U.S. more viable.”
The challenge with grape and wine production in the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. is that cold-hardy grape varieties grown in these regions have a different flavor profile and acidity that consumers are not used to. Through this project, Watrelot and the other researchers hope to discover ways grape growers and wine producers can adjust their wines to meet consumer expectations – and help consumers better appreciate wines.
There’s also an opportunity to promote the benefits of purchasing locally produced wines.
“I think that’s where we need to educate consumers more and really push the topics of sustainability and local production. What environmental impacts does bringing in wines from other countries have and how can the industry become more sustainable and resilient?” Watrelot said.
The project, which included researchers from eight states, began in October 2023. It involved distributing a survey to wine industry professionals – grape growers, winery owners, winemakers and marketing/sales managers – across the U.S. The survey asked participants three things:
- What challenges are they facing?
- What needs to be done to address those challenges?
- What resources are needed to manage those challenges?
The challenges were categorized into three areas: viticulture (the growing of grapes), enology (the study of winemaking and wines)/winery, and business management. The top three national challenges per area of focus, as voiced by survey respondents were:
- Viticulture: disease management, pest management, environment and climate
- Enology/winery: management of production costs, microbial spoilage, wine acidity
- Business management: wine distribution beyond the winery or tasting rooms, learning about winery visitor profiles, consumers’ evolving preferences for alcoholic beverages
“It was interesting to see that all regions of the U.S. have to deal with the challenges of pest and disease management in the vineyards and microbial spoilage management in the wineries,” Watrelot said. “These challenges are common and unique at the same time but seem to all be the result of climate change.”
In the Midwest, the top challenge of viticulture was the environment/climate such as cold hardiness, and the top challenge of enology was wine acidity management.
As a follow-up to the survey, the researchers also conducted focus groups with wine industry representatives in each of the four regions of the U.S. (West, Midwest, Northeast, South), digging deeper into the data from the survey responses. The findings were shared at a strategic planning meeting organized before the American Society for Enology and Viticulture – Eastern Section conference in July.
The researchers are continuing to analyze the data and plan to use the results as background for a larger grant to further the project, set to end in August 2025.
Cain Hickey, assistant teaching professor of viticulture at Penn State, was the project co-director alongside Watrelot.
“It is nice to get feedback about challenges from the grape/wine industry stakeholders we serve and to understand the unique and similar issues across the diverse grape growing regions of the U.S.,” Hickey said. “We will leverage these findings and use them to partially inform research and education direction of a future grant we will apply for.”
Funding for this research came from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative Research and Extension Planning grant.
Contacts
Aude Watrelot, Food Science and Human Nutrition, 515-294-0343, watrelot@iastate.edu
Whitney Baxter, Agriculture and Life Sciences Communications, 515-294-2314, wjsager@iastate.edu