Early Harvest Detrimental To Australia's Wine

Susan Allen

Last week the business section of the Wall Street Journal Reported that The Australian wine industry is attributing rising temperatures to causing grapes to ripen faster, and that can alter their flavor. Here is aginfo reporter Matt Rice who recently visited Australia with the story.

Susan, as we have seen with the apple, pear and cherry harvest here in the Pacific Northwest, our wine grapes are coming on early. Same for Australia, where grape growers are reporting grapes are ripening two weeks early. In South Australia's Clare Valley this is causing more grapes to ripen at the same time which can make harvest shorter.

The problem with the fruit ripening early is that grapes more often than not won't have the flavor that they should and if they leave them on the vine and wait to harvest them , they will have undesirable alcohol levels.

it's not just down under, and here in Washington, across the globe growers are reporting that warmer temperatures have caused the 2015 harvest to be exceptionally early,

Thanks Matt, and it can be devastating from a financial standpoint. Again the Wall Street Journal cited that there are over 24,000 jobs related to Australia wine industry and their exports are valued at $2.1 Billion. One way some of the largest wine makers are dealing with this early ripening delimia is to prune vines latter in the year. If these weather patterns continue winemakers worry their flavor will suffer.