World’s worst wine disasters

5th August, 2014 by Lauren Eads

Finger Lakes frost 2014

Ice_wine_Niagara_Falls_canada The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) declared an “agricultural disaster” in 19 upstate New York counties earlier this year after a “long and bitter” winter caused by an unprecedented polar vortex which swept across the US east coast, leaving the region’s vines in tatters.

Some vineyards reported bud loss of 50% or more due to the severe cold weather caused by a polar vortex which slammed into the east coast of America early this year breaking US temperature records with some places experiencing temperatures 40 degrees Fahrenheit colder than average. According to a report by The New York Post, farmers in the Finger Lakes are expecting to have lost between 75 and 90% of their crops due to “bud injury”.

An agricultural disaster was declared the USDA to allow winemakers and vineyards to apply for aid from an emergency loan scheme to rebuild their battered crops.

The disaster area covers the counties of Cattaraugus, Cayuga, Chautauqua, Oswego, Yates, Allegany, Cortland, Erie, Jefferson, Lewis, Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Schuyler, Seneca, Steuben, Tompkins, Wayne and Wyoming counties – all of which will be eligible to claim support.

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2 Responses to “World’s worst wine disasters”

Ducourt says:

August 5, 2014 at 9:50 am

1956, the extreme frost wiped out 80% of all vineyards between Bordeaux and Languedoc

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Richard Smart says:

August 5, 2014 at 1:28 pm

Who wrote this about phylloxera…So many mistakes.

There are several books on the subject, and a fulsome entry in the Oxford Companion to wine.

Phylloxera did not come close “to killing every vine on the European continent, and all of its grape varieties”. There are experimental vineyards in France, on sandy soils, still own-rooted.
Phylloxera was reported in a London glasshouse, and did not “devastate British vineyards”, probably the majority of which, and there are many more now, remain free of phylloxera.

Burying toads under vines, which might be praised today as “biodynamic”, was one of many bizarre solutions offered for prize money. The solution was to graft to resistant American rootstocks. Sadly the author of the article confuses this process with “hybridisation” which is a sexual crossing of two varieties.

Phylloxera is controllable by grafting on resistant rootstocks, and many but not all vines are planted this way. The vineyards of Chile are free of phylloxera, as are the great majority in Australia.

I have recently written an article suggesting that grapevine trunk diseases pose a greater threat to the worlds vineyard than phylloxera. If you are going to include vineyard pests and diseases in “the worlds worst wine disasters”, trunk diseases and maybe red blotch virus are major omissions.

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