Category: Archived Articles

Maragas Winery: Old World Greece Meets New World Oregon

Cyndi
crowd outside a winery

By: Nan McCreary

Deep in the heart of Central Oregon, strategically located between the beautiful rock formations of Smith Rock State park and the majestic peaks of the Cascades, is a gem of a winery that traces its history to the 13th century in Greece.  It’s Maragas Winery, owned and operated by Doug Maragas and his wife, Gina, and, while it sits in a New-World location, it’s wine-making traditions date back to those used by the founders’ family hundreds of years ago.

  The Maragas story began in Crete, when the island was a province of the Roman Empire, and the family started a vineyard to support the growing wine culture.   From this beginning, they farmed grapes, olives and figs for centuries, surviving the invasion of the Ottoman Empire and the occupation of Crete by the Germans in World War II.  The family still owns the vineyard today.

  The family narrative spreads to the U.S. when, in 1941, Doug’s grandparents, George and Anna Maragas, began commercially brokering grapes and making wine out of Lodi, California.  It was Anna and her stories of family history, said Maragas, that led him to winemaking. “My history inspired me, particularly my grandmother, who I was very close to at a young age,” he recalled.  “She was a head of a business, which was unusual in the early 40s.” Maragas remembers spending a lot of time with her, learning about winemaking and the business of owning a vineyard. Essentially, his grandmother was more than a loving family member: she was a mentor.

  With encouragement from Anna, Maragas left his law practice in Ohio and, after searching the country for a viable and affordable place to grow grapes, he settled on Central Oregon.  Not only did the beauty of the area appeal to Maragas, it also reminded him of Crete, with identical soil (volcanic and sandy loam) and a similar Mediterranean climate (warm dry summers and wet winters).  In 1999, he and his wife established Maragas Winery as the founding winery and vineyard of Central Oregon.

  The Maragas vineyard is located near Culver, 25 miles north of Bend.  Conditions are optimum: well-draining soil, a south-facing slope located at 2800 feet and a large diurnal range that promotes seed and berry growth and complex flavors.  After more than a decade of experimenting (with over 48 varietals), and defying naysayers who said it was too cold to grow grapes in the area, Maragas Winery is producing award-winning wines and bringing recognition to Central Oregon as an official wine region.

  Maragas’ grapes are all grown organically, just as they were centuries ago in ancient Greece. This means selecting the right grape variety for the specific region, and excluding the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. Rather, Maragas relies on hand labor to control weeds, and chickens to eat the bugs.  He also has large dogs to keep the deer out, as well as small dogs and feral cats to control the rodents.

  Honoring his Greek heritage and extending his “all natural” philosophy to winemaking, Maragas uses proven Old World techniques that have been handed down from generation to generation. “I don’t put any ‘junk’ in my wine,” Maragas told the Grapevine Magazine.  “I only use four ingredients: bacteria, yeast, grapes and sulfur. There’s a movement to make wine according to the American palate, and to use chemistry if the vintage is not quite right.  I don’t think those chemicals are good for you.”  What makes Maragas’ wines particularly unique is extensive use of barrel aging.  Maragas barrel-ages his red wines anywhere from two to eight years, longer than any known winery in the U.S.  These red wines are all natural, with no filtration or fining.  The result is wines with exceptional Old World flavor and complexity.

  Currently, Maragas is growing 24 grape varieties in his vineyard and at a contract property in Warm Springs, Oregon.  Wines for sale include five barrel-aged red wines:  Malbec, Tempranillo, Zinfandel, Cabernet Franc and a Bordeaux Blend; and three white wines: a Pinot Gris, a barrel-fermented and barrel-aged Chardonnay, and a barrel-fermented and barrel-aged dry white blend, Blanco, that includes Muscat Ottonel, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris,  Chardonnay and Chenin Blanc. Prices range from $20 to $52.  Because Maragas is a boutique winery with limited production, these wines are only available at nearby limited retail outlets or by ordering direct from the winery.

  Maragas Winery in Oregon, like the winery in Crete, is still a family, hands-on operation. The winery produces 2,000 cases annually, with no more than 400 cases of any varietal.  “This gives me more control, and I love what I do,” Maragas said. All work, from crushing grapes to bottling wines, is completed onsite in the 4,000 square-foot winery. “I manage the vineyard, make the wine, and do maintenance. Our office is in the house and my wife does the books. We do it all.” Maragas employees four additional people who help with everything from pulling weeds to operating the crush pad. “I received a strong work ethic from my Greek heritage,” he added, “and we all work very hard and help with whatever needs to be done.”

  While Maragas takes his winemaking seriously, he has added a little fun to his enterprise with his comic wine bottle labels, which feature artwork from his late mother, Joanne Lattavo. The drawings are caricatures of family members and friends created during the beatnik area of the late 50s and early 60s,’ “I’m trying to be a great winemaker,” Maragas told The Grapevine Magazine, “but I don’t want people to see me as stuffy.  I think the drawings are funny, and if I can make people laugh, they won’t see me as hoity-toity.” As a further tribute to his mother, Maragas is displaying paintings from her former art gallery in Ohio in his Barrel Room at the winery.  The winery’s website notes that this may be the first art gallery in a Barrel Room in the country. 

  As Maragas looks to the future, he is experimenting with many different grapes, including Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, as well as Alsatian varieties such as Gewurztraminer, Pinot Blanc and Riesling. He is also growing Nebbiolo, an Italian red wine grape known world-wide for making outstanding Barolo and Barbaresco wines.

  Maragas, in his enthusiasm for Central Oregon, is also working to promote the area as a great grape-growing region. His Estate Vineyard, he notes, sits on the same parameters of famous grape growing from the Burgundy and Alsace regions of France, while the Contract Vineyard is on par with similar growing degree days and average growing temperatures as the Loire Valley. “Just because an area hasn’t been tapped doesn’t mean you can’t make great wines there,” he stated. “After years of experimenting, we now know that Central Oregon, in particular Jefferson County, is a fantastic place to grow traditional wine grapes.”  With global warming, he adds, the prospects are even brighter for the area.  “We have lots of people looking,” he said.  “I’m hoping we can attract winemakers who want to make great wines rather than grow grapes as a hobby or as an asset to increase grounds beauty for resorts.  There is great potential here.”

  In an area dominated by craft breweries, a growing number of wine destinations are already popping up, and, along with Maragas Winery, are part of the new Oregon Wine Trail.  And most recently, the Oregon Wine Brotherhood, an organization dedicated to promoting wines in Oregon and southern Washington, established a Central Oregon chapter, with Doug Maragas as one its supporting members.

  While growth in the area is inevitable, Maragas has no plans to expand his operations.  “We were growing,” he said, “but it took so much time that we decided to wait until our teenage daughter grows up and leaves home.” In the meantime, Maragas is content to focus on making distinctive, hand-crafted wines. He is also committed to sustainability. For example, the “corks” he uses are the first zero carbon footprint “corks” and are actually made of sugar cane.  The company also has a solar array that powers a substantial part of the operation. And finally, he doesn’t use foil around the bottle neck because it has no beneficial effect on the wine and isn’t recyclable.

  Doug Maragas, with his passion for his heritage, has created a taste of ancient Greece in Central Oregon. His tasting room, scenic and family-friendly, is a popular destination for weddings and special events.  One of his premiere events, the annual “Love of the Grape”  Grape Stomp, has become a Central Oregon tradition, a full day festival of food and wine where hundreds of visitors climb into ½ barrels and stomp the grapes with their bare feet, just like they did at the Maragas family vineyard in the 13th century. The crowds at Maragas Winery may be New World, but the traditions are clearly Old World.  And you don’t have to travel to the other side of the world to enjoy them.

For more information on Maragas Winery, visit their website at www.maragaswinery.com

Four Important Ways to Use Software in a Winery

Cyndi
staff placing info at a tablet

By: Alyssa L. Ochs

For hundreds of years, wineries got by with keeping track of their operations with little more than pen and paper. But in today’s competitive wine industry, getting by isn’t good enough, which is why an increasing number of wineries are relying on high-tech solutions that make running a wine business more productive and profitable. Fortunately, there are some excellent software companies that specialize in wine business software to address the common challenges that wineries face.

  With a focus on inventory, fulfillment, compliance, and wine club memberships, here’s how an investment in software can assist modern wineries.

Inventory Software

  Inventory management is a tedious job at a winery, which is why this type of software is in such high demand. Inventory software helps winery owners keep track of how many bottles of wine are available, understand the production history of the bottles, and ensure that each wine batch is traceable. This is a good type of software to invest in because it can ensure fewer counting errors and reduce the amount of time your staff has to spend manually keeping track of wine bottles that are produced, sold, and shipped.

  Fulfillment Software

  Order fulfillment can also be a challenge for wineries because it is a time-consuming and error-prone task. Fulfillment software winery can help winery staff create new orders, search past orders, view inventory details, facilitate returns, and be alerted about inventory shortages. Other fulfillment software features include the ability to view invoices, run reports, and get order status updates.

  It’s important to choose fulfilment software that integrates easily with the current information you are working with and that can provide detailed reports about supply chain issues.

Compliance Software

  Wineries must comply with many rules and regulations, which can be hard to keep track of and put you out of business if guidelines aren’t met. This is why compliance software is a popular choice among wineries to reduce business risks and keep up with important deadlines. Software companies offer solutions that help wineries follow the legal requirements of operating an alcohol-based business in a more accurate and precise way. This is particularly important when your winery begins to sell bottles to new markets outside your home region.

  However, this type of software can be unnecessarily expensive if you have a very low production volume, and you’ll still need a staff member to manage the compliance software system in-house or on an outsource basis.

Wine Club Software

  Wine clubs are great ways to retain loyal customers and stay connected with the wine-loving community. Good wine club software informs consumers how much they will save over time by becoming a member, makes it easy to buy bottles, and simplifies the process of running a wine club. With this type of investment, a winery can create shipments, print shipping labels, report on member statistics, customize shipments, and stay in touch with members more regularly.

Recommended Wine Software Companies

  The wine industry is big business for software companies, but it is a smart idea to choose a company that has specific applications for wineries rather than more general applications that are broad enough for any type of company.

  One company that specializes in the business side of wine is Microworks Technologies in Napa, California. Microworks provides direct consumer sales management software for the wine industry though tasting room, wine club, wine marketing, and winery accounting solutions.

  Scott Meloney, the president and CEO of Microworks Technologies, told The Grapevine Magazine that one thing that sets his company apart from others in the industry is that when you call Microworks, you will reach a real human being.

  “If you need technical support, we encourage you call us by phone, where you will speak to a live person and your question(s) will be answered to closure on the first call 99% of the time,” Meloney said. “Our staff is made up of industry veterans who understand the wineries business and will relate to your questions.”

  Meanwhile, VinNOW LLC is a winery software company that provides customer, wine club, and sales and inventory management all under one roof. This Mesa, Arizona-based company also offers free training and support, extensive reporting real-time wine club management, point of sale, and QuickBooks integration.

  Ted Starr, the CEO of VinNOW LLC, said that what sets his company apart is VinNOW’s extremely reliable customer service.

  “This ranges from customer support when the wineries need it, seven days a week, to the ability to support wineries who can’t rely on their internet connection.”

  Another company that provides a comprehensive software package that integrates numerous aspects of winemaking is The Winemaker’s Database. This Los Gatos, California company has been in the industry since 1983 and assists wineries with everything from tank transactions to barrel tracking, analytical data, customizable reports, 702 generation, and more.

  The Winemaker’s Database’s Vice President, Emily Vahl, told us how her company was originally created by a winemaker and how it still offers winery solutions from a winemaker’s perspective, rather than that of a company or programming team with no winemaking experience.

  “Also, our entire support team consists of former winemakers or winery employees that have worked hands-on with crafting wine,” Vahl added. “When our customers call WMDB, they speak with people who understand their specific needs.”

Considerations and Important Software for Wineries

  There are many considerations to take into account before investing in a new winery software system, and you may want to talk to other wineries in your region about what they use and what works well for them before making any decisions. Compare costs for similar types of software and think about whether you only need a single-service type of software or would benefit more from a comprehensive software program that addresses multiple needs.

  Other considerations include how customizable software is for your winery’s specific needs, the data setup process, and how you will transition from your current system to a new one. You might also think about the ability to use software through a mobile app, how easy to navigate the web interfaces are, and how secure the site is for cloud computing technology and data center privacy. Customer technical support for software purchases and access to future software updates as technology improves are also important considerations.

When asked about the most crucial products that are must-haves for a modern winery, Meloney of Microworks Technologies said, “At the very least, a winery will need a good CRM package with POS, club, ecommerce, inventory, and accounting software so it can leverage sales efficiently with the right tools to promote, track, and measure business goals.”

  Starr of VinNOW pointed out that crucial software needs vary with each winery because some only sell wine online, while others sell through retail, clubs, have tasting rooms, or incorporate a combination of these sales channels.

  But overall, for software or hardware, POS, club, cart, compliance, accounting, communications, and other products, Starr said that wineries “need products that work the way the winery wants to run their business, which are affordable and supported with great service and have the ability to grow with the business as the business grows and changes.”

Vahl of The Winemaker’s Database said that the most important type of software for a winery to have is anything that can help it reduce paperwork and be efficient and organized.

  “Winemaking is an art form, but it is also a craft, meaning the end product needs to be consistent each time,” Vahl said. “Software is an excellent tool because you can click a few buttons and gather the data instantly to view the numerous components of a blend.  Plus, since nobody enjoys paperwork, so it’s pretty handy to let your computer do the leg-work when it comes to providing the required reports to the government.”

How to Avoid Common Software Mistakes

  Meloney from Microworks Technologies said that many businesses make the mistake of not taking the time to learn the full capabilities of their software. This means that you might be missing out on important efficiencies that the software has to offer. Another common mistake he noted was inadequate hardware.

  “Can you image pulling a boat up a hill using a bicycle?” Meloney asked. “Recognizing the impact of outdated computer equipment on the performance and reliability of software can be the difference between success and failure of a software system.”

  To avoid future regrets, Starr of VinNOW emphasized the need for wineries to call multiple references with similar business demands and review the hidden costs and expenses of possible solutions.

  “Ask references about the surprises and difficulties they uncovered during the installation and first six months of using the solutions,” Starr advises. “Also, ask references about any shortcomings and strengths of features and service.”

  Vahl of The Winemaker’s Database said that a common mistake is looking for an entire software package from just one provider. For example, her company has specialized in wine production software for over 35 years and that is its primary area of expertise.

  “Often, wineries approach us looking for a software package from a single company that can do everything from vineyard management to POS,” Vahl explained. The areas of vineyard management, wine production, warehousing, accounting, point of sales, and wine club are vastly different from one another, which is why I am a fan of software interfaces. When companies work together to create interfaces, then they can offer some pretty amazing options to clients because they are each doing what they do best.”

Software Advice for Wineries

  Modern wineries rely on software for accuracy, efficiency, and to be competitive, but a software decision could either help or hurt your business. Therefore, it is advisable to talk to a few software companies to get a sense of how their products can work with your current operations.

  Meloney from Microworks Technologies advises wineries to know their business needs, be thorough, and check with as many references as possible before implementing new software for their operations. 

  “You don’t want to favor one department in the decision when it may cripple another,” Meloney said. “Make sure you are provided an in-depth demo of the features in detail. Know that what you see on the surface does not represent the software’s capabilities. Ask references about the vendor, not just the software, because the quality of your vendor is just as important as the software itself.”

  Starr of VinNOW’s main pieces of advice are to review your winery’s goals, assess the strengths and weaknesses of your team and location, and know what questions you need to ask software companies. He also recommends making sure a company has the features you need and to remained focused.

  “It is so easy to get distracted with features like customer photos in your POS and club, but since most of us don’t have facial recognition features, we end up finding out that a customer is a club member when we speak with them,” Starr said. “And every customer should get excellent customer service, so the feature sounds great but is not highly used.”

  “Then have a hands-on test-drive of the software,” Starr recommended. “If you plan to keep the solution for three to five years, dedicate a few hours per solution to truly see the depth of the solution and avoid picking the wrong solutions. Try adding a sale, changing the order mid-stream, cancelling an order, processing a club release, and managing returned packages and cancelled orders. Take the time to access reports that you need. Some solutions are strong in reporting but need a rocket scientist to use them. Ask how they meet ADA and PCI compliance and how they deal with D2C compliance and all the new tax reporting requirement and permits that are required.”

Finally, Vahl of The Winemaker’s Database advises wineries to start small and not try to resolve all of your issues right away because this is a common way that wineries end up paying too much for way more software than they really need.

  “I always recommend starting with the simplest form of the program and then adding on components as they are required, when users become accustomed to how the software works,” Vahl said. “Modular-based solutions are excellent for keeping costs down and also for helping wineries create a tailored solution for their operations.”

Wine Filtration Focuses On Clarity & Quality

Cyndi
Close up cassette filter device used on modern winery
Close up cassette filter device used on modern winery

By: Gerald Dlubala  

Filtration of wines is absolutely a necessary and important step in winemaking,” says Massimiliano Buiani, Vice President Enological Sales for ATP Group. “But only if used and conducted in the proper way and manner, otherwise you will damage your wine.”

  “Filtration is a very personal issue for winemakers because it is a process of endless possibilities,” says Buiani. “We filter wines for different reasons, including stability, aroma, clarity and overall aesthetics. There are different steps to take and different materials to use to filter wine to different levels. We can filter very aggressively or very fine. Some methods can tolerate mistakes better than others. We can filter at different speeds that will affect the process and subsequently the results. We can filter too tight at the wrong time, blocking membranes, damaging pads and cartridges, and ultimately adding cost to the production that wasn’t necessary. Filtering should be done step-by-step, slowly getting tighter and tighter as the process moves toward the winemaker’s goal. All of these variables affect the quality of the wine to some degree, and what works for a wine this year may not work next year because of all the variables that occur during the winegrowing season, both naturally and man-made.”

Filtration Methods Are An Ongoing Choice

  “There are many types of materials to choose from for filtration, and they all serve purposes that the others may not,” says Buiani.

•    Diatomaceous earth (DE) based systems are traditionally used for coarse filtration. The DE powder is added to the wine, clinging to the larger particles to make it easier to remove at a later time. It is a very forgiving way to filter wine, but it also absorbs a lot of product with it, too much in the opinion of many winemakers. There have also been recent health concerns raised over the handling of this powder so most wine producers are moving away from this method.

•    The crossflow class of filtration is highly recommended by ATP Group and can be used with an endless type of membranes. Crossflow filtration is the latest and most popular technology, being completely automated, self-cleaning, internet-based and remotely accessible with the ability to run days on end without a stoppage. It was and is still considered the new frontier of wine filtration.

•    Pad filtration systems are great for smaller wineries that can’t afford a high-end crossflow system. The pad filters are attached on vertical supports in a sandwich configuration. You have one system that can accept pads for different filtration settings from coarse to sterile. The downside is that these systems are more labor-intensive. They are non-automated, having to be manually cleaned, and the pads must be replaced after each use. They are also prone to leakage, translating to loss of product.

•    Cartridge style filters are slid into housings, and able to be cleaned and used again, but that usefulness and ability to last longer are reflected in their increased cost over pad filters. Cartridge filtration is the best, most reliable option as a final safety check right before bottling, but it is also the most responsive, meaning small mistakes can turn into costly errors. It is in the winemaker’s best interest to take care and properly filter their product during all previous steps so that the final cartridge filtration catches very little, lengthening its lifespan.

•    Centrifuges can be used in all wines, using G-forces of gravity to accelerate the process of separating the wine from the coarse particles. It provides in just fractions of seconds what we would have to wait months for gravity to do. And by the time gravity satisfactorily separated the liquid from the solid, the wine would be old and undrinkable. The downside of centrifuge use is their cost versus the limitations of the machine.

  While all of these methods are valuable and useful in different situations, Buiani believes that a well-planned and implemented sterile filtration process is the formula for success. Just using one type or stage of filtration is not a proper solution. A combination of filtering processes is preferred, considering that choices of membrane, whether organic or ceramic, can affect the qualities of the wine. Buiani tells The Grapevine Magazine that experience matters.

  “In today’s market, there is an abundance of over filtering and trying to get wine to market too soon, Over filtering turns into an extremely aggressive process, reacting negatively with aroma, flavor and color of the wine. The great winemakers recognize the correct process to get crystal clear, great tasting wine in the hands of the consumers while knowing that the methods proving successful this year may not be the answer next year. Each year’s harvest will vary, needing proper analysis to achieve great results.”

Mobile Filtration Helps Create Successful Wines

  Along with selling filtration systems and accessories for every need in the winery, ATP Group provides a mobile filtration service that caters to those wineries that can’t or don’t want to invest in stationary filtration equipment. ATP Group uses its equipment and experienced operators on site to process volumes up to four thousand gallons within a ten-hour time frame.

  Mobile lees and crossflow filtration are performed by the same units that the ATP Group sells. You’ll get all the benefits of a quality filtration system when you need it, saving you time and money by having the correct filtering units and experienced personnel come to your winery and perform all functions from setup through final filtration. Then, they’ll perform the cleanup and leave no trace that they were even there, except for that crystal clear, great tasting wine.

Koch Membrane Systems Deliver Crystal Clear Wines

  “The amount of filtration needed during your wine production is a direct result of how your grapes are handled through harvest and crush,” says Nicholas Barretto, North American Wine Sales Manager for Koch Membrane Systems Inc. “Rough handling causes turbulence, which in turn causes more solids to be disrupted and in need of filtering. Although some high-end red wines are not filtered, sediment in the wine is just not very appealing to most consumers. Consumers want clarity, so filtration is necessary to remove the unwanted solids and deliver a crystal-clear end product. Equally important, filtration provides sterility, removing any remaining yeasts and bacteria that can cause secondary fermentation.”

  Commonly used options include crossflow and pad filtration. Crossflow filtration uses a filter medium similar to what one may find within an HVAC system, but the orientation of the filter is different. In crossflow filtration, the filter medium will be situated perpendicular and on end to the flow of wine, allowing a lot of flow while being filtered.

  Pad filtration is another option that allows different grades of pads, rated as coarse, medium and fine to be used during different stages of filtration to remove unwanted solids or polish a wine for clarity and color

  “Think of wine like freshly squeezed orange juice with its pulpy, hazy appearance,” says Barretto. “It’s the same for the freshly squeezed wine. If you have months that you can just let your wine sit, it’ll eventually separate and filter itself just like that bottled orange juice in your refrigerator, with a clear separation between the solids on the bottom and the liquid above.”

  To accelerate that settling, Barretto says that you can add Bentonite, a cleaning medium used for clarifying wines, liquor, beer, cider, vinegar and mead. When added to the wine, gravity makes it slowly descend while attracting other particles on the way to the bottom. It’s the same basic principle of gravity that is used in French Presses with coffee. The resulting crystal-clear wine is removed using a racking arm and sight glass for further processing.

  Flotation filtration is another method of separating the solids that occur after crush when the juice is pumped into tanks. “It’s a little different process than the rest,” says Barretto.

We pump in nitrogen, taking advantage of its extremely small bubble properties to reverse gravity and send remaining solids to the top of the tank for removal.”

  Most effective when your percentage of solids is between ten and twenty-five percent, centrifuges are also a valuable tool for separating solids and can be used on single decanters up through entire batches.

  “And those solids left at the bottom of the tank still have value,” says Barretto. We can filter those down even further to get the remaining liquid out. Some winemakers consider this low-quality product and refuse to use it, but there is real value in the remaining liquids removed to be used in red blends.”

Improvements In Filtration An Ongoing Process

  “We can be better,” says Barretto. “The best improvements have come from advancements in the filtering medium. They’re now reinforced with stronger mesh and coatings, providing a longer-lasting filter to start with. If we provide a way to control the pressure and concentration of the chemicals used to clean the membrane, we can save money by not having to replace as many membranes due to over fouling or damage.

  Ceramic membranes are traditionally expensive and susceptible to damage, but the advantage is that they degrade very slowly, if at all. And technology has allowed the equipment operators to be hands-off, using self-guided touchscreens to control the systems. It decreases user error and also helps during times of employee turnover. Touchscreens provide much-needed simplicity in training to get new employees up to speed.

Koch Membrane Systems Offer Quality With Environmental Responsibility

  Koch Membrane offers high-quality, internet and phone-enabled crossflow filtration systems that are self-cleaning and self-testing. Whether portable or in-house stationary units, they are designed to grow with your business, being expandable by 3 times the volume, cutting down on labor costs by potentially reducing the length of time it takes per filtration cycle or increasing the number of filtration cycles run per day.,

  Completing the filtering cycle while staying environmentally friendly, Barretto tells The Grapevine Magazine that the final retained solids have shown to be valuable and compostable, even being able to be added back into the vineyards as soil additives.

Falconry at Featherstone

Cyndi
woman holding a bird

By: Michael Strickland

For Louise Engel and Dave Johnson, the decision to fly a raptor over their 23-acre vineyard and winery was a no brainer.

  Like so many other fruit growers across North America, the owners of Featherstone Estate Wineries in Ontario’s Niagara Region had waged a frustrating war against starlings. A flock of 5,000 can consume a ton of fruit in just 10 days, though they cause even greater damage by pecking more berries than they eat. The weeping fruit attracts fruit flies, which encourages rot.

  Grapes are often the last crop to be harvested, long after cherries, strawberries and tender fruit have left the field. With less soft fruit to binge on, bugs start to disappear. By October, grapes are one of the last food sources—a juicy-fruity one no less—visible from the sky.

  “When you look at that vineyard, and you’ve looked after and babied these vines along, and it’s now October 10th, and the fruit is loaded and healthy, and you see a flock of starlings—of five, six or ten-thousand—just descend on you, we run out and we’ve got all kinds of cannons and bangers, it is breathtakingly annoying,” says Johnson.  So, when Engel said she thought she had a solution, Johnson says, “it was a no brainer.”

  Engel attended a bird of prey demonstration in October 2003, four years after the couple opened Featherstone. She returned determined to take up falconry, undertook the 15-month certification required in Ontario and purchased a Harris Hawk named Amadeus.

  Today she is president of the 200-member Ontario Falconry Club. While falconry is a common bird abatement technique in the U.S., she’s not aware of anyone else really adopting the practice in Canada.

  “We’re certainly the only winery that has a resident bird of prey, or that does it on a regular basis,” she says.

  While Featherstone continues to use noisemakers and netting against starlings, few things work quite like Amadeus. “The one thing they never get used to is hawk silhouettes,” says Engel. “When you put a bird of prey in the air, everyone leaves, and it becomes very quiet.”

  Only for a little while, however. Like nets and noisemakers, falconry has its limits. Starlings will find holes in the nets, and they’ll return when the noise dies down, or Amadeus leaves the sky.

  “So it’s effective while I fly him, but then I put him away and go do other things, and it ceases to be effective,” says Engel. “So it’s best not to get on too much of a routine, to fly him as periodically as I can.”

A Working Relationship

  After spending one long night looking for Amadeus, Engel no longer flies him without a tracker. He is a bird of prey, she stresses, with no emotional attachments. He can and will leave if and when he wants. She relies on a trust relationship—a rather mercenary one—to bring him back at the end of each flight.

  Amadeus views Engel as a source of hunting opportunities. She regularly provides him with the chance to hunt starlings and, if he catches something, he gets to it eat it. Since he frightens away far more prey than he finds, Engel is also a ready source of food. When he returns empty-handed, she greets him with bits of quail.

  “So there’s a bond there that is predicated on positive reinforcement and hunting.”

  For growers interested in using birds as a pest control method but hoping for a little more control, Harris Hawks are a popular choice for beginners. They are one of the few avian predator species that hunt in castes, a family unit akin to a wolf pack, working collectively in the wild.

  “When I, as a falconer, am in the field with them, that kind of fits in with their paradigm quite naturally,” says Engel. “They’re a little less independent and a little more predisposed to want to work with you to find hunting situations.”

Natural and Eco-friendly

  Adding Amadeus to the mix of pest abatement strategies fits with Engel and Johnson’s eco-friendly approach to viticulture. They live on their 23-acre property, farming 20 acres of it, and have a vested interest in being responsible stewards.

  Featherstone has been insecticide-free since day one and has adopted a range of natural practices to deal with pests that threaten the vines. Methods include using diatomaceous earth (which is abrasive and irritating to insects), bringing in beneficial predatory insects like the ladybug, and using pheromones to disrupt mating cycles. In 2008, they purchased a recycle sprayer to capture and reuse any spray that does not stick to the vines.

  Johnson is mainly focused on natural ways of keeping his soil as healthy as possible. He plants cover crops (25% legumes, 25% daikon radish and 50% ryegrass) between rows of grapes. He’s also determined to fight soil compaction by reducing tractor passes, aiming to reduce the total by one pass each year.

  “The big issue for us, and the thing we’re working on all the time is compaction of the vineyard floor,” says Johnson. “We’re trying to get tractor trips reduced. I think that’s more important than organics, biodynamics or anything else. We need to get the equipment out of there.”

  To that end, Featherstone has adopted “lamb labor” to help keep the vineyards “sheep shape.”

  Johnson first learned of the practice in 2007, when he spent time in New Zealand as a guest Pinot Noir specialist at the Sileni Estates Winery and Cellar Door. He’d noticed that the leaf pulling was flawless—the low fruit zone was cleared, allowing sunlight and air to reach the grapes, while the upper canopy looked unmolested—and wondered how that was accomplished.

  At the time, Featherstone was paying migrant workers $200 to clear each acre. Sileni were letting sheep do it for free.

  “They can’t afford to irrigate a pasture for sheep,” says Johnson, “and the vineyards are all fenced to keep the sheep out. Then, at a certain time of year, they open the gates, and they allow the lambs to flood into the vineyards. They strip out the grass, then pick their heads up and start eating those lowest leaves.”

  Featherstone has been using lamb labor ever since. Each February, they purchase 25 or more baby sheep and begin confining them to one-hectare areas as soon as the first varietals, the Pinot and Chardonnay grapes, need leaf clearing. That seems the perfect number to entirely clear a hectare in roughly 10 days, after which he moves the flock to the next area. By the fall, they’re clearing the Cabernet Franc.

  Sheep are perfect because they eat only leaves. Goats, Johnson points out, would eat everything and likely destroy the vineyards. Lambs, it turns out, are also the perfect size.

  “What we worked out here is that they need to be no more than 22 inches high at the shoulder. Otherwise,” he says, “they reach too high and are stripping too many leaves. So we have set the vineyard and pruned it particularly so that the fruit zone is sitting at 22 to 32 inches above the ground. That is the reaching height of a lamb.”

  For Engel and Johnson, these eco-friendly practices are about living a more natural life, a life where all aspects are as fully integrated with nature as possible.

  “We’re interested in complete integration, in being integrated with all aspects of the property, and capitalizing on natural relationships where possible,” Engel says. “Whether its natural predator-prey relationships, or it’s help that just naturally grazes in the vineyards and then helps you with leaf removal, those kinds of integrations appeal to us on a number of levels.”

  The approach seems to be producing one key result: great wines. Featherstone turns 20 this year and was just named Winemaker of the Year at the Ontario Wine Awards. The judges recognized Featherstone’s consistent quality across the portfolio, successes in wine awards and overall contributions to the industry.

  Engel and Johnson realize that their approach is not for everyone. For one thing, it reflects their personal beliefs. They also acknowledge economics and other factors would make all of these practices more challenging if Featherstone were larger, or more commercial than craft.

  “We’re still classified as a small winery, at the larger end of small, but a nice size for us, given our tank capacity, the size of our press and all that,” says Engel. “Were we to get bigger, we’d need to get a lot bigger, and we’re pretty happy at this size. It lets us keep our fingerprints all over everything, and stay craft or artisanal.”

Needs of the Animals

  There’s also the added responsibility of owning livestock, which includes letting it out to pasture each morning, rounding it up each night, and maintaining fences. Ontario has problems with coyotes and other predators. Lambs are extremely sensitive to copper, so Johnson can’t use elemental copper, an inexpensive organic spray used to protect grapes from mildew, until after the lambs have cleared an area.

  “It’s an animal, so now you’ve introduced animal husbandry to what is normally horticulture,” says Johnson. “Once you have animals on-site, they add another layer of complication. They need to be handled. They need to be protected and looked after.”

  When you own a bird of prey, the demands are especially high.

  There’s a 15-month apprenticeship program to become a licensed falconer in Ontario. There are stringent rules around housing and care, though the requirements differ from those in the U.S. With only 200 licensed falconers in the province, says Engel, it’s easy to support one another and ensure all members are practicing falconry at the highest level.

  “It’s kind of like owning a horse. There’s a real commitment there,” says Engel. “These birds need to be worked and hunted and flown. They’re not just meant to be put on your glove and shown to your friends. You do them a real disservice is you’re not getting them in the air and hunting them on a regular basis.”

B.C. Wine Industry Launches 10-Year Growth Plan

Cyndi
B.C. Wine Industry facility
Penticton, British Columbia, Canada – October 26, 2017: Exterior view of Hillside Winery located in the Okanagan Valley on the Naramata Bench in Penticton, British Columbia, Canada.

By: Briana Tomkinson

The wine industry in British Columbia has bloomed over the past 30 years from a handful of grape growers and wine producers to several hundred. As the industry matures, producers are facing new challenges, including shifting consumer preferences and climate change.

  Industry players, including the B.C. Wine Institute, B.C. Wine Grape Council, the B.C. Grapegrowers’ Association, and the B.C. Wine Authority, have responded by coming together to create a unified vision for the wine industry and to support B.C.’s many smaller producers in meeting these challenges.

  According to a long-term strategic plan developed by Artemis Group and O’Donnell Lane for the British Columbia wine industry, the future of B.C.’s relatively young wine industry depends on tourism, export, and brand-building, as well as a strong focus on environmentally sustainable business practices.

  The 10-year plan was released in March at the B.C. Wine Industry Insight Conference in Penticton. Developed over 18 months, it included input from more than 650 industry stakeholders who participated in over 30 meetings in 12 locations throughout the province. The plan was funded by the governments of Canada and British Columbia through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative.

  The plan highlights potential threats to the industry, including climate change, crop failure, land value inflation, decreasing talent pool, competition from exports and Canada’s fledgling legal cannabis industry.

  The Wine 2030 plan includes 12 strategic recommendations to strengthen the B.C. wine industry, including committing to industry-wide sustainability standards, promoting wine tourism and links with restaurants and other hospitality partners, and building name recognition for B.C. wines in leading export markets.

  B.C. Wine Institute President and CEO Miles Prodan said that many of the recommendations are in line with initiatives already underway, which he said was a good sign that the industry is on the right track. The plan has been endorsed by the Wine Institute’s board of directors and will influence operations planning going forward.

  “We’ve been doing too much, and spreading ourselves too thin,” Prodan said. “Now that we’ve sat down and identified what we need to do to sustain our growth, we can be more focused. This will rally the industry around the key objectives and strategies.”

  The number of grape wineries in B.C. has ballooned from just 17 in 1990 to more than 280 today. According to Wine B.C., wineries in the province welcome over a million visitors a year to its 370 licensed wineries.

  More than 90% of B.C. vineyards are located in the Okanagan and Similkameen Valleys, which boast ideal growing conditions for grapes: short, hot growing seasons in a dry, desert-like microclimate that is distinct from the rainy, cool coast. The area is known for its extreme temperatures, dipping as low as -4 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter and as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.

  Other Official wine-growing regions in B.C. include the Fraser Valley, Vancouver Island, Gulf Islands, Thompson Valley, Shuswap, Lillooet, and the Kootenays. Sub-regions include Golden Mile Bench, Okanagan Falls, Naramata Bench and Skaha Bench.

  There are over 900 vineyards in B.C., representing more than 10,260 acres of planted land. The ratio of white to red wine planted is nearly even, with red representing 51% of grapes planted.

  Consumer demand for locally produced wine is strong. B.C. VQA wine is the second-best-selling category in the province, representing about one-fifth of market share. The top-selling category is non-VQA wine produced in B.C., which includes both wine made from local grapes and international blends from imported and domestic wines.

  VQA, or Vintners Quality Alliance, is the official stamp to mark wine that produced with only B.C.-grown grapes. When including B.C.-produced non-VQA blends, B.C. wines represent more than half of the wine sales in the province. When it comes to imports, U.S. wines are the largest segment, at just under 10% of wine sales.

  While local support for B.C. wines is strong, the Wine BC 2030 report notes that future growth depends on exports. More than 90% of the region’s wine production sells within the province. In the next five to ten years, industry players hope to position B.C. wines as a premium product on the international stage. Prodan said another key goal is to lift restrictive interprovincial trade barriers on alcohol to open up new export markets for B.C. wineries within Canada.

  The report identifies that amping up promotion of B.C. as a wine tourism destination is an important tactic to build the brand reputation of B.C. Wines in international markets. According to research from Tourism B.C., inviting visitors to taste wines results in sales more often than not. It estimates well over half of wine tourist visits result in sales for wineries. Other noted benefits included higher margins when wine is purchased directly from the winery, the opportunity to attract new customers and enhance brand loyalty, and also to get detailed customer feedback on products.

  Prodan said that B.C. wine country was already gaining traction as a desirable tourism destination. Many wineries have begun investing in onsite restaurants and accommodations, making the experience an even more memorable one for visitors.

  Sustainability is another crucial area of focus for the industry, and not just for growers. A new sustainability certification program is in development from Sustainable Winegrowing B.C., which is expected to launch next year. SWBC was created by a coalition of viticulturalists, winemakers, hospitality directors, researchers and sustainability and marketing specialists.

  SWBC already offers several free online resources for vineyards, wineries and wine-related hospitality businesses, including online assessments, educational resources and training to help growers protect the health of their vineyards, cut costs and reduce the environmental impact of wine production.

  Because most B.C. wines are produced in desert-like climates, water-use efficiency is an essential component of SWBC’s sustainability education. While the cost of water alone may not be a significant line item on most growers’ balance sheets, SWBC notes that inefficient irrigation can have significant hidden costs, including increased system maintenance, a need for canopy management due to vigorous growth, the need to spray for powdery mildew and other diseases, and additional wear and tear on machinery.

  However, Prodan said the focus on sustainability isn’t just about farming; it extends to every facet of the industry from tourism to trade.

  “Sustainability is not a marketing tactic for us. It’s about taking care of what we’ve got. To be a winery here in B.C., you need to have land. Our wineries are literally tied to the land, so we can’t say if things aren’t good here, we can pull up and go somewhere else,” he said. “We know we have to take care of our land. Without it, we wouldn’t have anything.”

Pillitteri Estates Winery: The Passion Behind The World’s Largest Icewine Producer

Cyndi

By: Adrienne Roman

huge gate of a wine cellar

Globally recognized as the world’s largest estate producer of Icewine, Pillitteri Estates Winery in Niagara-On-The-Lake has provided excellence in viticulture since opening in 1993. Their premium V.Q.A award-winning ice and table wines are widely distributed to local events, businesses, and markets, and are currently being exported to International clientele in 39 countries. 

  The Niagara Peninsula is situated between two of the Great Lakes, Ontario to the North, and Erie to the South. The region is the largest wine producer in Ontario, with primary varietals of Riesling, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay, and Vidal. With the protection of the Niagara Escarpment, and the moderating climate of the Lakes, the region’s temperature is similar to prime grape producing regions in France.  The cool climate sub-appellation terroirs allow for the development of diverse root character, complex grape flavours, and a number of new varietals.

  “ We bought a wonderful piece of land, ” said Charles Pillitteri, C.E.O and President of Pillitteri Estates Winery. Pillitteri’s cherished Sicilian heritage remains at the forefront of every aspect of the family business. Working alongside his two sisters, his sharp business acumen is focused on ensuring the winery forges forward for generations to come.

  A single glance of the majestic ten foot tall stainless steel doors leading into the Pillitteri’s press house and cellar reveals the imagination of blacksmith Ken Robertson’s unique vision. Carefully designed linear lines on the ground visually direct the visitor inside where they’re transported on an aesthetic adventure. Both natural and synthetic elements juxtapose together seamlessly to produce a truly imaginative space.  Ceramics, composites, polyurethane and steel tell the elegant story of natural growth, culminating in Robertson’s striking sculpture of the stages of grapes on the vine at the center of the atrium, depicting the flower, to veraison, and finally maturity. Intricately carved vine detail adorns the newel posts of the majestic staircase as you travel downwards and encounter the monolithic, Neo-Norman, and Roman influenced oak barrel cellar.

  Designed by close friend and Niagara architect Frank Wieler, a monumental 500-inch terrazzo top concrete table spans the length of the room, with 23 carved stainless steel chairs cleverly mounted on the adjacent walls representing the number that has significance to the family history. Each chair has it’s own designated position at the table, represented by a smaller carved triangle in the stainless steel denoting where it should be placed among the others. The unique chairs were commissioned by Pillitteri’s parents to tell the symbolic story of the winery.  

  Red wines are separate from the whites in the cellar, where the French and American oak barrels work to increase oxygen interaction, enrich development, and further flavour. The press house is no less impressive, with its large-scale open concept glass viewing station and colossal pressing machines that utilize pulse air technology to set the grapes in motion while ensuring the pressure remains gentle. 

  “Volume isn’t an issue for us, we’re a declassification house and we wait for the next great vintage. We’re all about quality and sustainability, it’s definitely our priority,” said Pillitteri.“ I’ve done a lot of method research and I’ve found that the carbon footprint can be remarkably higher with many types of organic farming. Copper doesn’t break down and can kill the insects that work to help the vines. We need to keep the vines as healthy as possible. “

  Their innovation excellence in grape and wine research was recognized in 2011 with an Ontario Premier’s Award for their work on the Verona Appassimento Project.  The family developed techniques now utilized by other wineries in the production of Appassimento wines. They planted the first Verona varietals in Ontario, and laid the foundation for their Riserva Famiglia series. Grapes produced during the Verona project were used to make their 2010 Riserva Famiglia Cabernet Franc, which won Red Wine of The Year and Gold at the Ontario Wine Awards in 2015. These reserve wines are hand crafted in the classic Appassimento style, as it was previously done for generations in Italy. 

  The chosen grapes are harvested by hand and dry naturally in racks over weeks or even months in order to concentrate the sugars.  “ We follow French rules when it comes to making reserve. I look to classification when choosing quality wines, an intense richness with our cabernet’s, elegant and not too tannic. Our reserve fruit definitely helps our baselines,“ said Pillitteri.

  It all started with one Black Tartarian cherry tree and a flash of entrepreneurial spirit.

  After settling in Niagara-On-The-Lake in 1965, Pillitteri’s parents Gary and Lena recruited their three children to sell the cherries on the roadside of their Niagara Stone Road property.  Their small fruit stand on the farm soon flourished and they opened “Gary’s Fruit Market” in 1973. In 1988 they decided to focus on the grapes, and the Pillitteri Estates Winery was born. The cherry orchard remains, as does their very first muse, that century-old Tartarian tree. Today, the first thing that appears on the fruit stand in the morning when the winery opens is a plump basket of cherries for sale.

  The Pillitteri passion for wine can be traced back to the region of Racalmuto in Sicily, where grandfather and father worked together grafting and tending to the vines. Gary, now 83 years young, remembers the oppression as though it were yesterday. The widespread hunger in Italy in the 1940’s instilled in him a social consciousness as a six-year-old child that brings tears to his eyes as he recounts a poignant story that changed his outlook on life at a very young age. Gary’s father Calogero asked him to give his shoes to another little boy who was barefoot, his first life lesson about the importance of giving to those less fortunate.  Gary has lived his life echoing those same values, working in farming and politics with the hopes of eliminating discrimination and promoting greater equality among his fellow men.  “ My life is a dream,” he said with a smile. Currently building a tree house for his grandchild, there’s definitely no slowing down in sight for this hardy yet hospitable Pillitteri gentleman.

  As official supplier and private label for Team Canada, Tokyo 2020, and the Paris Olympics 2024, the Pillitteri family are honoured to support the Olympic foundation with proceeds from their sales while helping to further expand the rapid growth of the Ontario’s wine industry.

  The true jewel in the crown for the Pillitteri family is their cherished Icewine. With the Niagara climate moving rapidly into colder temperatures after the summer season, it’s perfectly suited for the icewine grapes that like to go hot and cold, picked at just the right time when they are golden and endorphins are at their highest.  It’s been an evolution since their first Icewine developed in 1988, with 13 styles now available.  Pillitteri decided early on that he needed to take an assertive stand in the promotion and showcasing of Canadian wines, setting his sights on the Asian wine market, and making lasting connections in Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

  The Pillitteri’s understand that not every season will be what they had hoped. Luckily with a world-famous Reserve Vidal, and a Canadian trophy for Best Dessert Wine with their 2013 Reisling Icewine at the Six Nations Wine Challenge, the winery has the freedom to study, explore, and create. 

With over 1000 awards from top competitions, and 200 000 visitors a year, Pillitteri Estate Winery’s dedication to perfecting the art of making Canadian wine is evident. Each creatively designed wine label tells a story that follows the installations that came before. The Pillitteri logo is a representation of their treasured family Carretto, a hand-painted Sicilian cart, traditionally used to bring wares to the market, and personally brought to Canada in 1952 by Pillitteri’s grandmother.

  Wine bias of the past is waning in favour of a new set of rules, discerning clientele who look for quality and taste, and appreciate the progressive innovation of, “ old world meets new world “ experimentation.

  Pillitteri’s winemaker Aleksandar Kolundzic returns to Europe regularly to explore traditional methods, yet always keeping up to date on the latest practices to bring back to share with the winery.

  The Pillitteri story exemplifies the Canadian dream. With reverence for the past, fierce determination, and three generations of family strength, the Pillitteri’s are moving forward with their expanding collections, presenting Canadian wines to the world that are truly worthy of the award-winning recognition they so deserve.

Chi si volta, e chi si gira, sempre a casa va finire.

No matter where you go or turn, you’ll always end up at home.

For more information contact:

Pillitteri Estates Winery

 1696 Niagara Stone Road

Niagara-On-The-Lake

LOS 1J0

www.pillitteri.com

@pillitteriwines

STVM® WASHDOWN STATION COMBINES STEAM, WATER, AND SAFETY IN AN EASY TO MAINTAIN PACKAGE

Cyndi
ThermOmegaTech logo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

(Warminster, PA USA) In food processing, dairy, beverage, chemical, petrochemical, and pharmaceutical facilities maintaining a clean environment is critical. High temperature washdown equipment is used to quickly and efficiently clean and sanitize equipment in place to keep production running on time. These washdown stations mix steam and cold water to provide hot water for facility clean up.

Maintaining competitor washdown units can be time consuming due to complex disassembly, special tooling requirements, and non-reusable components. ThermOmegaTech®, a leader in self-actuating thermostatic valve technology, supplies an innovative solution to the challenge of difficult to maintain washdown units. 

ThermOmegaTech®’s STVM® Washdown Station delivers a high temperature wash at a user-defined temperature using our proprietary Silent Venturi Mixing Valve (STVM®) to combine steam and water. Our mixing valve’s design is self-scouring, which prevents mineral buildup in tight spaces and reduces maintenance frequency.

To minimize downtime during routine maintenance, the STVM® Washdown Station has a simple cartridge design, which is removed with a wrench and cleaned in a descaling solution before reassembly. The station is in-line serviceable, so the operator simply switches out the STVM® Cartridge with a spare and the unit is operating in minutes. 

Worker safety is every facility’s priority, so we built it into our washdown’s operation. “The STVM® Washdown Station has two safety features to keep your employees safe. One, the mixing valve is designed to reduce flow if the output temperature exceeds the factory set-point and will completely stop flow 15°F above that,” Nick Tallos, ThermOmegaTech®’s VP of Engineering said. “Two, the unit has interlocking steam and water shut-off ball valves, so both inlets shut-off at the same time to prevent accidental steam-only, ‘hose full of steam’ operation.”

Due to the unique design of the STVM® Cartridge’s water and steam mixing spool, the unit operates at around 20 decibels less than competitor washdown units. This reduces overall operator stress and improves workplace conditions.

The unit functions completely mechanically and requires no outside source of electricity to operate. Compact and reliable, the STVM® Washdown Station is a beneficial addition to any facility.

ThermOmegaTech®’s STVM® Washdown Station is available for purchase through the company. For more information, visit www.ThermOmegaTech.com or call 877-379-8258.

About ThermOmegaTech®:

For over 35 years, ThermOmegaTech® has been a leader in the design and manufacture of self-actuated thermostatic technology. Founded in 1983, ThermOmegaTech® is a privately held organization with 40,000 square feet of manufacturing and office facility located near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The company provides innovative solutions for a wide range of applications including freeze & scald protection, mixing & diverting, steam traps, thermal bypass, tepid water delivery, washdown, balancing, drain tempering, and many other applications where temperature control is critical. Key industries it serves include railroad, commercial plumbing, aerospace & defense and industrial. Over 95% of its products are manufactured, calibrated, and tested in-house. R&D, prototype development, and integrated solutions are managed on site. ThermOmegaTech® has been ISO 9001 certified for over a decade and its products are distributed and used worldwide.

Five Areas to Focus on When Maintaining Your Website

Cyndi

By: Susan DeMatei

Website under construction with Laptop

Maintenance is an important and often overlooked part of having a website. Which is odd because you spend a great amount of effort on maintaining other aspects of your life and business. You go to the gym and the doctor to maintain your health; you repair and clean your house, your car, and your yard; at work, your tasting room, Wine Club, and your wine education or tasting senses are all given careful attention to make sure they are kept in shape. Why, then, do we expect to set up our website and then let it sit? Websites need to be maintained, too.

Your website is your front door to the entire world. Will customers or the trade find broken links, missing images, or an insecure page––or will they not even arrive at your website due to poorly tagged pages, making it impossible to find it on a search engine?

The bad news? The internet, software, hardware, and browsers are constantly changing. But the good news is there are lots of plugins and systems out there to keep your website up to date and healthy. Here are 5 areas you should focus on when maintaining your website.

Security

This may seem like it goes without saying, but if your website doesn’t use the proper, up-to-date security measures, your website will suffer. First, search engines will likely put you near the bottom of a list of search results or not even display your site. Second, a scary warning can appear where your website should be strutting its stuff.

Security is especially important if you have a WordPress site. WordPress powers over a third of the internet today. Because of sheer volume and the number of WordPress websites online, it’s the most hacked content management system on the web.

You should set up a routine schedule for removing malware, scanning for viruses or hacks, removing spam blog or product comments as well as spam signups to your mailing list. And don’t forget to monitor your SSL certificate to let purchasers know that you are safe to enter credit cards. Nothing says “don’t buy wine here” like a big security warning.

Data Preservation

You may not realize this, but on many mainstream platforms, including WordPress, there isn’t an automatic backup feature that you can just revert to if your website gets hacked, corrupted, or damaged.

This happens more likely than you think. Sometimes plugin updates can cause irreparable damage to the design. Other times, there’s human error when that new marketing intern deletes all your trade assets by accident.

It is up to you to back up your files. Luckily, there are many tools on the market that can do this automatically.

Broken Links

Whether your website is five pages or 30 pages, it can be easy to miss a broken link buried on your website. If the broken link is to your ecommerce store, it’s like having a malfunctioning door to your tasting room. Even if nothing is broken, if you don’t have a proper “continue shopping” link in your cart or checkout, you could lose the customer with their frustration. Maybe the link is minor and doesn’t lead to the store, but a broken link says you’re not paying attention, so why should your customers?

Again, routine maintenance should look for achieved products, employee bios, vineyards, vintages, distributors, events, or anything on your site that may be out of date and driving to a dead link.

SEO

Google is the most widely used search engine and now processes over 70,000 search queries every second, on average; which translates to well over 5 billion searches per day and closer to 2 trillion searches per year, worldwide. By 9:30 am on any given day there have been 2.5 billion searches on Google, globally.  Your winery is in there, somewhere, you just have to help people find it.

Search Engine Optimization doesn’t have to be overly complex. It’s primarily made up of tagging pages and images with keywords so Google can read them, and submitting the site and the sitemap to Google to index. The maintenance of these items requires checking that new pages and images are described and indexed. There are a number of tools on the market that will help identify and flag if a new page is missing tags, or if something is out of date.

ADA Compliance

There has been a lot in the news lately about ADA compliance, mostly coming from several lawsuits being brought against some wineries on the East Coast. The goal of this exercise is to make sure that everyone has equal access to the content on your site, including those with visual or mobility impairments.

Being compliant for something like ADA can be tricky and until the law has even more clear guidelines, it may be hard to be 100% compliant. But there are a number of ways to be accommodating for web visitors with disabilities. Think of it as very rigorous SEO: The requirements for being ADA Compliant cover tagging a large portion of your content, images, and overall accessibility. I would not recommend you try and tackle this on your own. There are scans and specific tasks required, like scripting to close modal windows, and tested functionality with the site text increased up to 200%. It is something your designer should look into. But once done, it needs to be maintained with each new image or block of text. The good news is, not only does it benefit your customers with disabilities, but it benefits your website functionality overall.

Ongoing maintenance doesn’t have to be a brain-teaser. If you consider the investment you put into your website and the sales you get out of it, then finding an agency with a maintenance package or setting up a series of plugins to manage these areas seems like a no-brainer.

Susan DeMatei is the President of WineGlass Marketing, a full-service direct marketing firm working within the wine industry in Napa, California. www.wineglassmarketing.com

Vineyard Technology & Equipment

Cyndi

By: Cheryl Gray

Drone flying above beautiful landscape
Drone flying above beautiful landscape with vineyards

At the moment a bottle of wine is uncorked and poured, the labor and innovation of the equipment industry helping to bring that wine from vineyard to table becomes inextricably tied to the end product consumers enjoy.  Across the United States, vineyards are dependent upon their equipment suppliers to provide them with the latest technology and product support  to keep costs down and produce a high-yield, high-quality harvest.

Take, for example, Progressive Ag, Inc., of Modesto, California, whose company history  reflects a cutting-edge approach to the design and manufacturing of sprayers used before harvest time.  Mark Ryckman, Progressive Ag sales manager and co-owner, keeps a close eye on technology focused on improving crop yield for his customers.

“New mapping software and drone technology are bringing in some great technology advancements into the spraying industry with variable rate application,” says Ryckman. The company manufactures its signature LectroBlast Electrostatic Sprayers with patented design elements aimed at delivering better coverage and reducing spray drift, both of which cut time and cost.  The technology-driven sprayers also promise delivery on other cost-saving measures, including more ground coverage in less time, fewer fill-ups, easy calibration, low maintenance and cheaper fuel and water costs.  The sprayers, which come in tank sizes ranging from 300 to 600 gallons, can be used for all vertical or cross arm vineyards.  These sprayers are capable        of handling vineyards of almost any size.

Progressive has another advantage.  The fact that the company’s manufacturing base is right in Modesto means that its local customers can readily get equipment parts either directly from the plant or at one of several parts depots throughout California, Oregon, Washington and Mexico with more parts depots coming in other locations soon.  As for new products, Progressive Ag has its Solar Blast Solar Panel Washer in production.

One of the largest expenses for vineyards is their labor force.  Years ago, a human workforce was a non-negotiable cost for vineyard owners, with jobs ranging from pruning, thinning, leaf removal to actual harvest.  Today, there is a trend toward using technology to escape heavy reliance on what is becoming an ever-dwindling labor pool, shifting instead to more mechanization.  Some experts predict a future with so-called “no-touch” vineyards, where every element is handled by machinery.

One of those industry experts, Gearmore, Inc., has been in business some 50 years and is on top of this trend.  As a farm equipment distributor, the company maintains its competitive edge by monitoring ever-evolving changes in equipment technology most attractive to its customer base and by keeping in touch with those customers beyond the point of sale.  It is a supplier to a target market that includes California, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.  Its global marketing efforts reach into Mexico and Canada.

Robert Emhoff, Gearmore’s president, describes the company’s singularly most important contribution to its commercial vineyards that he believes keeps those customers loyal to his brand.  “Gearmore supplies our customers with quality equipment sourced from leading manufacturers throughout the world and backs up these products with parts and service.”

The value of customer support after point-of -sale is not lost on those who run operations for vineyards whether large, medium or small.  Although mostly reliant upon trained, manual labor, Arizona Stronghold Vineyards in Camp Verde, Arizona, with an estimated 100 acres, knows all too well the importance of post-sale customer service for its equipment.  Matthew Raica, Winemaker at Arizona Stronghold, says that customer service is, “Critical, especially with how remote we are from where manufacturers or technical staff  are located.  When we have equipment go down that we can repair ourselves, we rely on good customer support to ensure we get back up and running.”

Trevor Amos, Director of Operations and Vineyard Manager at Rock Pocket Vineyards, agrees, emphasizing that this is especially true for small vineyards, whose investment dollars have to stretch farther than their larger competitors.  His company’s small vineyard is located in Oliver, British Columbia, considered the Wine Capital of Canada and part of the Okanagan Valley region.  Amos sees customer service for vineyard equipment important at every stage, from new purchase to need for repair.  “It’s important for good customer service pre, during and after the sale.  If people sell their product, they should support their product throughout its life span.”

Gearmore considers itself well-positioned to meet the needs of vineyards morphing into the “no touch” approach.  It can provide nearly every implement required for growing a successful grape harvest, including tillage tools, mowers, pre-pruners, vine trimmers, leaf removers and more.  The company offers Venturi Air Sprayers, available in 3-point or pull type, ranging from 75 to 500 gallons.  Distribution heads on Venturi Air Sprayers are versatile enough to fit any vineyard profile with nozzles that shear the chemical into fog-like droplets covering the entire plant.

Gearmore is also a chief supplier of Collard products, a family-owned business serving vineyards for five generations and responsible for inventing the first mechanical vine trimmer in 1962.  The Collard Vine Trimmer is especially designed for California’s multiple trellis systems, along with Collard Leaf Removers, which feature 3-point mounted air compressors that power the leaf remover’s defoliation heads. The system works through short, sharp bursts of compressed air blasting the leaves to open the canopy, allowing for more sunlight, better air flow and greater spray penetration.  Gearmore also is a supplier for the Collard Leaf Remover, an equipment choice that offers a solution to debris removal around grape clusters, which ultimately provides for a cleaner harvest.

Canada’s Slimline Manufacturing, based in British Columbia, touts itself as the sprayer manufacturer of choice for grape growers in the Okanagan area, Niagara region, California’s Napa Valley, Oregon and Washington coastal areas as well as other grape growing communities throughout North America.

Turbo-Mist Sprayers have been around in some form since 1948.  When engineer Kim Blagborne purchased the product and founded Slimline Manufacturing in 1991, his experience in design and fabrication led to many of the features and options now available on the modern day versions of Turbo-Mist Sprayers.  Return on investment, through product reliability and amortization, is something the company touts, as its team points out that some of its long-time customers are using versions of Turbo-Mist Sprayers built some 50 years ago.

Careful planning is essential to any farming enterprise and no less important for vineyards.  Slimline Manufacturing revolves its season around its customers’ needs, adding that its Turbo-Mist Sprayers play a vital role.  Slimline Manufacturing boasts of a dealer network that teams up with customers well before harvest time, often up to a year in advance. The goal is to help these customers achieve optimally planned, well managed and environmentally sustained spraying practices.

Rachelle Wirth, Marketing & Communications Manager for Slimline Manufacturing, says the company strives to provide customers with genuine solutions in real time.  “Fuel costs in many of our customers’ regions are becoming astronomical; water shortages are becoming the new normal.  Operating as if these issues are going to correct themselves is not an option.”  Wirth says that Turbo-Mist products enable growers to drastically reduce fuel costs and water use without sacrificing coverage, yield or crop quality.

Working in tandem with vineyards to develop new products is another method by which some manufacturers, including Slimline, keep pace with customers’ needs.  Steve MacDonald manages some 300 acres under MRS Vineyard Service in Oliver, British Columbia.  “Our spray program is a good example of using the best equipment,” MacDonald says.  “Your starting point is choosing a sprayer that will deliver the droplet size you want to where you want it.  Slimline Manufacturing…worked with us to develop a couple of three row machines that are still as good today as when we purchased them in 2009.  Each has over 15,000 acres under their belts.”   MacDonald translates that coverage into less than five dollars per acre applied capital cost for a $70,000 machine.

Felco is another company which turns to its growers for input into product development.  Ryan Amberg, Marketing & Business Development Manager at Pygar USA, a division of Felco, says, “New product developed by Felco is done in a grassroots manner where the modifications and design requests happen from the grower and end user level. This is part of the reason Felco offers the most comprehensive assortment of high quality tools in the market.”

When it comes to vineyards, Felco products cater largely to pruning needs, although it also  offers a small snip range.  Among the current leader in this product line is the Felco 310 snip.   Its stainless steel composition resists rust in the field and its replaceable spring insures multiple seasons of use.

Amberg explains that his company is ready for harvest sales immediately following the end of pruning season, which means its sales cycle for harvest begins as early as March and doesn’t end until late September.  He adds that the variety of climates where vineyards are located in the United States dictates the calendar for Pygar USA.  The company is a division of Felco, which has a global network covering the continents of North America, Europe, Africa and Australia.

Equipment purchases can be a major investment expected to bring harvest benefits to vineyards over multiple years and the dependability of that product is perhaps second only to the customer service provided by the suppliers and manufacturers.  For vineyards, it can mean the difference between either a successful harvest or a failed one.  For equipment manufacturers and suppliers, it means keeping customers loyal and earning their respect in a highly-competitive industry.

Report Reveals New Taste Trends in Canada

Cyndi

By: Briana Tomkinson

Red wine glass and glass of beer

Change may tend to move slowly in the wine world, but new research published this year on Canadian wine trends reveal some important shifts in consumer tastes and spending habits.

According to the London, UK-based Wine Intelligence 2019 Canada Landscapes report, Cana-dians are drinking less but spending more and branching out to explore new tastes and varie-ties from a wider range of wine growing regions.

There’s also increasing crossover between the wine and beer worlds. A growing number of wine drinkers now also report that they choose beer at least occasionally. Craft beer culture, specifically the sense of strongly identifying with locally produced brands, also seems to be influencing consumer attitudes towards wine, with more Canadians now seeking out high-quality domestic wine.

According to COO Richard Halstead, also Wine Intelligencer’s Canadian market expert, Ontar-io’s Niagara region remains the dominant source for Canadian wine. However, the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia is now becoming highly regarded for the quality of its wine and the strength of its vineyard tourism offerings, while Quebec is an emerging presence in the wine world as well.

Of the over 700 wineries listed in the Canadian Wine Directory, almost 300 were in B.C., 200 in Ontario, over 150 in Quebec, with a handful in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island as well.

A 2017 economic impact study commissioned by the Canadian Vintners Association, the Win-ery & Grower Alliance of Ontario, the British Columbia Wine Institute and the Winery Associa-tion of Nova Scotia, the Ontario wine and grape industry generates about $4.4 billion in eco-nomic impact, while in British Columbia it was estimated at $2.8 billion, $1.1 billion in Quebec and $218 million in Nova Scotia. For every $1 spent on Canadian wine sold in Canada, the study estimates $3.42 in GDP is generated across the country.

Halstead said industry analysts are starting to speculate that the same zeitgeist propelling con-sumers to support local farmers’ markets and neighborhood microbreweries may be influenc-ing Canadians’ attitudes on domestic wine.

“We’re a wine research company, so we don’t really look at craft beer except to look at how it’s affecting our world,” Halstead said. “But there are parallels with the connection craft beer has made with local ingredients and making a local product for local people, and that’s seeped into the wine category and made buying local cool again.”

The divide between wine drinkers and beer-drinkers appears to be narrowing in Canada. The proportion of regular wine drinkers who also choose beer, both mass-market and craft, is growing. In 2014, 67% of wine drinkers said they also drank beer, with 29% drinking craft beer, but by 2018, 74% were also quaffing beer, and 40% drank craft beer.

Data released in May by Statistics Canada found beer remained the most popular choice for Canadians, with $9.1 billion in sales and representing 41% of total sales of alcoholic beverages in 2016/2017. However, the market share of other alcoholic beverages, notably wine, contin-ued to grow. Canadians spent $7.2 billion on wine during the same period, a year-over-year increase of 3%, or just over one-third of overall alcohol sales.

Beer, particularly craft beer, has been growing steadily in popularity in recent years. According to Wine Intelligence’s report, from 2014 to 2017, the number of breweries in Canada increased by 115%, mostly driven by a proliferation of microbreweries and regionally focused craft brewers.

Another reason locally produced wine is gaining in popularity is because local liquor boards have been doing more to spotlight local wines.

“The wine world doesn’t move very fast normally, because people’s habits are people’s habits, but the pendulum has swung slightly toward the domestic side,” Halstead said.

Almost three-quarters of English Canadians now say they have selected Canadian wine in the past year, compared to one-third of those in French Canada. While English-speaking Canadians are far more likely to drink Canadian wines, and Quebecers to choose European brands, the report found domestic wines are quickly gaining in popularity in la belle province.

Canadians are now reporting drinking less wine, yet are more willing to splurge on a good bot-tle, Halstead said. Spending on higher priced wine has increased, particularly when the higher price point is linked to a good story, as with many local producers.

The average price per bottle of wine for a relaxing drink at home has increased from $12.79 per bottle in 2014 to $13.44 in 2018, while the average price paid for a bottle selected as a gift for someone increased from $17.36 to $18.81.

“One of the differences today in Canada versus 20 years ago is that if Canadians wanted really nice wine then, it would either be France or the top end of California,” Halstead said. “Now they’ve also got Okanagan wine, which is selling at $40-50 CDN for some cabernets and char-donnays. It’s hitting a very similar market spot that California, or at least the Napa/Sonoma re-gion, used to own without much competition.”

The increase in average cost isn’t only due to consumer preferences, however. Increased regu-lation, taxes, and liquor board policies have made it difficult for many producers to charge less than $10 per bottle. Regional, government-run liquor boards have also been promoting higher-end brands to motivate consumers to spend more on better quality products, in the hopes that this will also encourage citizens to drink less alcohol overall.

“The LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) and SAQ (Société des alcools du Québec) have been trying to get people to spend more money and buy less because that fits with govern-ment social policy,” Halstead said. “It’s also good for business because you make more money from one higher-priced bottle than you would two lower-priced bottles.”

Four out of five Canadians surveyed drank wine within the past year, compared to seven in 10 who drank white. The most popular reds were merlot, cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir, shi-raz/syrah and malbec. White wine drinkers were attracted to chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, pi-not grigio/pinot gris, riesling and moscato. No matter what wines drinkers chose, they pre-ferred wines from California’s Napa Valley, Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula, the B.C. Okanagan, the Bordeaux area of France and Tuscany in Italy.

Consumption of rosé is going up, particularly among regular wine consumers in Quebec. While rosé used to be a seasonal beverage, rosé fans are now enjoying it throughout the year, not only in summer. The drink is particularly popular with young adults aged 19 to 34, women, and savvier wine drinkers.

Sparkling wine is also gaining, albeit from a small base, led by the popularity of Prosecco. The percentage of wine drinkers who consumed sparkling wine in the past year increased from just 12% in 2014 to 19% in 2018. Consumption of locally produced sparkling wine has decreased however, with most consumers choosing imports from France, Spain, and Italy—specifically Prosecco.

Halstead said many American brands are continuing to do well in the Canadian market, par-ticularly mainstream Californian brands like Barefoot, Gallo, Woodbridge and Apothic.

As you’d expect in a country where provincially run liquor boards maintain tight control over wine sales (with the exception of Alberta), three-quarters of wine consumers bought their wine from government-controlled liquor stores. Other notable sales channels (representing from one-fifth to one-quarter of consumers in each case) included grocery stores, wine stores at-tached to grocery stores, private liquor stores or dépanneurs (convenience stores).