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It may be the middle of winter, but Quails’ Gate Winery is bringing the heat to its vineyard with infrared technology.
The West Kelowna winery is testing an infrared vacuum LED tube to stay sustainable through the winter or even a cold snap.“It’s a light source that produces more heat than light and the idea is to heat the vine itself rather than the air around it, above that critical freeze temperature,” said Rowan Stewart, Quails’ Gate winemaker.The technology is expected to bring the vines about 6 C warmer than the surrounding air, which is significant in avoiding bud loss.“-24 C is usually where you would see 50 per cent bud death and after that it progresses pretty quickly to 100 per cent, so if you warm -25 C to -20 C you could save your harvest,” Stewart said. Filling a vineyard with this tech can cost $10,000 to $20,000 an acre, but Stewart says it’s a one-time investment — aside from regular wear — and should pay off over time.
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“You save that crop in one year and you’re close to paying it off, and that’s not even considering the wine that it makes,” said Stewart.After two cold snaps caused catastrophic bud loss, the BC Grape Growers Association says wineries are looking at global and national approaches, but it could take time to find the right one.“Maybe we don’t find the silver bullet now, and I’m not expecting us to find the silver bullet, I’m not expecting us to come with something in the next six months, a year, but I think what [we] need to learn to become more resilient to these climates,” said Michael Kullmann with the BC Grape Growers Association. Kullman says wineries need to keep climate differences in mind when trying new practices.“I think we need to be really careful about the type of technologies we bring over because we’re a unique wine-growing region. I can’t think of many wine-growing regions in the world where it would be -25 C in the winter and 45 C in the summer,” said Kullman.
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