Drought Wine

Drought Wine

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Two Oregon winemakers hope to convince their grape-growing counterparts to resist irrigation—for the sake of the palate andthe planet. By 2004, the two had become so troubled by the ongoing irrigation trend that they founded the Deep Roots Coalition to challenge it. (The roots of non-irrigated vines tend to sink deeper into the soil in search of moisture and minerals.) Environmental concerns were a motivating factor, one made more prescient by the fact that more than half of Oregon’s counties have been under a state of drought emergency. But the primary reason John Paul and Russ Raney began promoting dry farming came down to matters of taste. They wanted to encourage others to create complex wines that reflect where they come from. Jocelyn Zuckerman Executive Editor of Modern Farmer. “Growing wine grapes without irrigation is less radical than you might think. France, Italy, Germany, and Spain have been dry farming for centuries. The European wine industry doesn’t just frown upon the supplementation of rainfall; it forbids the practice (with a few exceptions; most European countries permit irrigation for newly planted vines, and some have begun loosening regulations in the case of drought).”

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