Recent Posts

As part of our symposium series, the Lake County Winegrape Commission and The Elevation of Wine hosted a special Friday session at the 2010 Unified Wine & Grape Symposium entitled High Elevation/High Latitude: Wine Growing on the Edge.

The day was broken into four sub-sessions exploring different definitions of high elevation and high latitude viticulture and highlighting some of the regions included by those definitions.

The first part of the morning session, moderated by Glenn McGourty of the UC Cooperative Extension, dealt with general environmental and climatic factors.  Climatologist Greg Jones from Southern Oregon University gave a broad introduction to how elevation influences weather and climate as well as some of its impacts on vine physiology.  Daily variations not only in temperature, but also humidity, are among the most important impacts, especially in hillside vineyards where the elevation changes from one end to the other.  Atmospheric density and the related issues of CO2 availability and intake and UV exposure were also discussed.

Next, Pat Bowen from the Pacific Research Center in British Columbia expanded the discussion to include the effects of high latitude as well, using the specific case of than Okanagan Valley in Canada situated between 49 and 50 degrees north latitude.  Because latitude affects many of the same environmental factors as both elevation and degree of slope, even oridinary vineyards at these high latitudes experience many of the same challenges as high elevation and mountainous vineyards at lower latitudes.

Vittorino Novello from the Univeristy of Torino and CERVIM next presented some of CERVIM's philosophy on heroic viticulture and gave an overview of the winegrowing regions in Europe that meet fit into the definition ofmaintain viticulture proposed by CERVIM, which takes into account slope and accessibility as well as elevation.  One of CERVIM's primary goals has been the official recognition and cultural preservation of this mountain vitculture by European government.

The second half of the morning's session dealt with winemaking quests.  First, John Buechsenstein of Sauvignon Republic Cellars described his quest to make a better and better Sauvignon Blanc which ultimately brought him to the high southern latitude regions in New Zealand and South Africa.  Randle Johnson from Hess and Bodega Colomé next outlined the quest turned obsession to create the world's highest elevation wine in Argentina's Calchaquí Valley, involving the establishment of a vineyard at over 10,000 feet above sea level.

Both parts of the afternoon session dealt entirely with specific case studies of high elevation vineyards in Northern Calfornia.  Bill Easton of Terre Rouge, Scott Harvey of Scott Harvey Cellars and Ann Kramer of Shake Ridge Vineyards described the difficulties and successes they'd experienced in their Sierra Foothills vineyards.  Eagle Point Vineyard's Casey Hartlip, Peter Molar from Obsidian Ridge and Kendall-Jackson's Randy Ullom gave case studies for their vineyards in Mendocino and Lake Counties of the California North Coast region.  Through all their varying experiences, each speaker coming from a different background and ending up with a high elevation vineyard for widely differening reasons, there was an agreement that high elevation viticulture involves an amplification of all the challenges of normal vineyards, from the impacts of weather to water availability to the correct timing of management decisions, these things were all described as "amplified" in the case of highelevation vineyards.  But at the same time, the speakers felt that the amplified challenges brought them in closer to their fruit and ultimately forced them to better fruit and better wines that they felt showed amplified characteristics that matched the amplified environment and challenges in the vineyard.

We'd like the thank all the speakers once again for their time and the insights they gave and also CAWG ans ASEV and the rest of the sponsors for hosting a great Unified Symposium this year.

I invite anyone who attended the session to post their thoughts and reactions here, any information or techniques that you thought were particularly interesting.  What did you away from the session?

The European group CERVIM (The Center for the Research, Study and Advancement of Mountain Viticulture) will be hosting its Third International Congress of Mountain and Steep Slope Viticulture beginning May 11th and continuing through the 14th at Castiglione di Sicilia on the island of Sicily.

In addition to special plenary sessions, roundtables and tours, the Congress will be broken into three primary topic sessions for presentations dealing with positive aspects and opportunities, problems and risks, and proposals for development, respectively.  Within each of these sessions, mountain viticulture will be addressed from technical, environmental, economic, cultural and tourist industry points of view by speakers from throughout Europe and the world.

Visit CERVIM's website for registration and additional general information:

http://www.cervim.org/en/congress-viticulture.aspx

Is there a wine from a high elevation vineyard that has really struck you as an example of what high elevation winemaking has to offer?

Or just generally, what do you think are some of the best wines from high elevation sites?

Share your opinions and experiences.

This has been a recurring topic from both the 2007 and the 2010 symposium, so I thought I'd pose the question here: how would you define "high elevation"?

Is it simply based on altitude? For instance, any vineyard above 1000 feet is a high elevation vineyard?  If so,what do you consider the cutoff altitude?  There seems to be a lot of different ideas even about that.

Or does it have more to do with relative elevation?  So a vineyard at five or six hundred feet on a slope above a valley that's roughly at sea level could be high elevation, but a vineyard on a valley floor further inland doesn't really count even if the valley is 1500 feet above sea level.  What if the valley is 5000 feet above sea level?

Just to confuse matters, the European group CERVIM chooses to focus instead on "mountain viticulture" which they define in terms of slope and difficulty of access, so even vineyards on rocky, inaccessible shorelines or islands in the Mediterranean only a few meters above sea level can fit their definition of heroic viticulture.

So what do you think?  Are there enough shared factors or challenges common to all vineyards above a certain elevation regardless of how they sit relative to the nearby terrain?

See our map of suggested lodging for the event.

http://www.theelevationofwine.org/map/

[Originally posted by Michael on August 8th, 2007]

First, can you post the URL of the W&V wine page you referenced in you post?  Thanks! 
 
I read about this symposium in the July issue of American Vineyard magazine (that is also where I found the www.theelevationofwine.org web site.   
 
Do you know where to find the results of the research the students at UC Davis and Fresno State did in preparation for this symposium?   
 
My vineyard is located in northern New Mexico (roughly between Santa Fe and Taso) at approximately 5800 feet in elevation.  We currently grow a tiny amount of syrah; we are focused on pinot noir andhave 5 acres planted to 8 different own-rooted clones.  The vines are one and two years old.  Like you, our biggest challenge is "winter kill" and "false spring" events.

[Originally posted by Antonio60 on June 19th, 2007]

I just finished reading the article on High Altitudes Wines in the W&V web page.  I thought it was a good start to have a conference on high altitude wines, since many of us here in the high New Mexico deserts have small vineyards and wineries.  Our lowest vineyards are at 4,000 ft in Deming to our vineyards at 6,400 ft here in San Fidel, NM.  Our biggest challenges are winter kill, frost, and for me elk.  The positives are high acid, with average brix around 22-24.    I grow Gewurztraminer, Riesling, and Muscat.  They are dry, and I agree with the article.  They make great food wines.  Anyway,  I know that there are many in Colorado, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico that are learning through hard knocks the reality of grape growing and wine making at these altitudes.  Somehow they should be notified about this conference in the future.  I am sure there would be some good discussion from these individuals as well as for myself about the terrior of this class of grape.  The terroir of high altitude grapes could be classified in the similarity of acid, pH, sugar, alcohol, skin thickness.  Definintely our wines are not the fruit bombs of California or Australia, but more in the consitency of Piedmont, Germany, and Languedoc in finesse, clarity, acidity, and crispness that are found in these food wines.  Anyway, these are just my thoughts.  I guess this is it for now.  Antonio