Farmers Club Article Sept 2010 Red, white and green wines: What the UK wine industry can learn from Oregon By Jo Cowderoy, Lecturer at Plumpton College, East Sussex The Farmers Club kindly awarded me a bursary to visit the vineyards of Oregon, USA, and attend the 7th International Cool Climate Symposium in Seattle in June 2010. This article aims to identify the similarities between our wine industry and that of the Pacific North-West, and outline some of the key ideas that the UK Wine Industry can learn from the Oregon State. First, a bit of biography: after graduating from Wye College and managing vineyards in France and Sussex, I have become a lecturer in Wine Production at Plumpton College, near Lewes. My main activity there is the management of the Wineskills project, which provides training to support the UK wine production industry through regular practical workshops, masterclasses, and a mentoring scheme. My visits to the Pacific North-West focused on the coolest wine-producing area of Oregon State, the Willamette Valley. I visited eight wineries and was warmly welcomed by enthusiastic winemakers and vineyard managers who willingly shared their knowledge and time. I also attended the Cool Climate Symposium in Seattle, followed by seminars given by the American Society of Enology and Viticulture (ASEV). The Oregon and UK wine-production industries are similar in several ways: •
We are roughly of the same age; the first commercial plantings of vines in Oregon took place around the same time as ours in the 1960s
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The Oregon wine industry is presently about three times the size of the UK’s with around 830 vineyards, 300 wineries and total of 7,850 ha of vines. In comparison, the UK currently has around 380 vineyards, 115 wineries and 1,200 ha. But, with the current surge of new plantings, wine production levels in the UK are set to triple in five years, bringing it to a similar size to the Oregon industry.
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Our climates are similar, the average rainfall being around 40-45 inches per year, driving along the Willamette valley, you could almost be in Kent or Surrey!
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We share similar challenges, such as botrytis, powdery mildew and rain at harvest time!
However, Oregon has evolved into a world-class wine-growing region selling its high quality Pinot Noir wines for over £20 a bottle, whilst the UK wine industry has only recently emerged from its ‘hobbyist’ reputation. So, what can we learn from the Oregon wine industry? 1
Their industry appears to be much better-organised, particularly with the Oregon Wine
Board. The Oregon Wine Board is a semi-independent state agency that replaced the Oregon Wine Advisory Board in 2003. The Board supports oenological (winemaking), viticultural, and economic research and also the promotion of grape growing and winemaking in Oregon. Funds to support this work come from mandatory taxes on grapes used to produce Oregon wine ($25/ton) and on certain wines sold in Oregon ($.02/gallon). Nine industry leaders, from Oregon vineyards are wineries, are appointed to the Oregon Wine Board. The funding of research and support in marketing (both domestic and export), tourism, and education have considerably advanced the Oregon wine and wine grape industry. In my opinion, the UK wine industry desperately needs to strengthen and increase the financial clout of its professional association. Throughout my visit to the Oregon wine industry, I noticed a great spirit of community and professional collaboration amongst its members. For instance, in the 1980s, the growers set up the Steamboat Pinot Noir meetings, where winemakers could discuss their wines and compare them with others from around the world. These events made a huge difference to the quality of their wines in the early years, but meetings still continue to this day. Similar events in the UK would be a good platform for benchmarking quality within the UK wine industry and comparing ourselves with similar wines from around the world. In Oregon, many growers, faced with the huge investment required to set up a winery, developed collaborative, joint enterprises. For example, there are several winemaker’s studios, jointly using state-of-the-art winery facilities and sharing trained cellar crews. The growers also see the financial sense of sharing the cost of a single cellar door sales facility, with the added advantage of offering customers a range of wines to experience. Such collaborative enterprises don’t yet exist in the UK, maybe because we are too small and spread out, but, as we grow, training programmes could consider the models that are successful in Oregon and assist collaborative business development. The Oregon Wine Board provides grants and funding to Oregon State University, which conducts research and provides an extension service in viticulture and oenology which helps the wine industry put in place sustainable practices, solve problems, develop new ideas, and share information in order to produce a high quality product. The UK wine industry could certainly do with this level of support. We have, in Plumpton College, an educational institution specialising in wine, but further funding from the industry is needed if it is to offer a similar service to that provided by Oregon State.
Visiting wineries in Oregon is a real pleasure, and has that ‘holiday-feel’ about it. A ‘wine route’ of blue signs makes vineyards easy to find, and sweeping entrances are welcoming. 2
Tourism has steadily increased and other businesses have emerged to cater for the wine tourists such as restaurants, hotels, wine bars and shops, contributing significantly to the local economy. Wine tourism is developing fast in the UK, with many vineyards offering vineyard tours and tastings, but we lack the promotion, direction and coordination supplied by the Oregon Wine Board to its members. Apart from being famed for its Pinot Noir, the Oregon wine industry is also renowned for being eco-friendly or ‘green’, and its members are world-leaders in organic, biodynamic, and sustainable wine production. The Oregon wine producers I spoke to were all extremely proud of their commitment to sustainability. Their degree of involvement varied, some were growing organically and biodynamically, but most were following the voluntary LIVE (Low Input Viticulture and Enology) programme (http://liveinc.org/). LIVE was founded just over 12 years ago by a group of Oregon growers and is now an internationally recognised certification of vineyards and wineries in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The programme combines the three circles of sustainability, encouraging practices that are economically viable, socially supportive and ecologically sound. LIVE has technical committees for vinegrowing and winemaking, and also provides support, education and resources. During my visit to Oregon I spoke to many enthusiastic vineyard managers about the LIVE programme, and witnessed successful, well-supported sustainability policies in action, to mention a few; alternate row mowing, cover cropping, raptor perches and solar panels. “The programme is easy to use, the website provides a checklist and the technical committees and other members of LIVE are able to help. It starts you thinking about best practice and better ways of doing things” said one Oregon vineyard manager. The UK wine industry has started considering a sustainability framework to support its grapegrowers. As a direct consequence of my visit to Oregon, I was able to organise, through the Wineskills project, a Masterclass for the UK wine industry with three key people from the Oregon LIVE programme. With support from EU & DEFRA funding, this will lead to the appointment of a Sustainability Mentor and Project Coordinator, followed by an ongoing series of practical workshops, where member of the industry will receive training to help them improve their practices and achieve the goals of the sustainability programme.
My study tour of Oregon has provided me with a huge amount of new knowledge that I can now pass on to the UK wine industry to the students at Plumpton College and through the Wineskills training programme. Along with my improved understanding and experience of cool climate viticulture, I have seen what the UK can learn from the Oregon Wine industry, for instance; in industry structure, collaboration, tourism, and research programmes. In particular, thanks to the Farmers Club grant, I am able to offer the opportunity to adopt a very successful sustainability programme to help the development of wine production in the UK. 3
END Photos Photo-caption. Scott Henry, creator of the ‘Scott Henry’ trellising system at Henry Estate in Oregon. An engineer by background, Scott developed the system after he found that his vines, planted on fertile soils, had very vigorous canopies, but low quality fruit. With a split canopy he managed to improve both yield and quality. Green hills, green wines. Allen Holstein, Vineyard Manager at Argyle Winery and member of the LIVE technical committee. Beaux Frères biodynamic vineyard co-owned by Robert Parker. The wild flowers of Sokol Blosser’s barrel cellar. In 2002, it was the first winery in the nation to receive the prestigious Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification. Willamette Valley view
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