Extremely cold temperatures blanketed the Okanagan last week, which could have a major impact on the already struggling wine industry.
The cold snap follows a challenging couple of years of extreme weather events that have led to significant bud damage.
“We are a robust industry of a lot of farmers that have dealt with a lot over time: heat domes and extreme weather conditions both cold and hot over the last five years,” said Tantalus Vineyards’ general manager and winemaker David Paterson.
“I don’t want to try and crystal ball what this means, all I can say is that it doesn’t mean a lot of profitability or good things for our industry at the moment.”
Experts say a grapevine can generally survive temperatures of -20 C and above while anything colder can pose a problem.
Last week’s cold snap broke several daily temperature records across the Okanagan as temperatures dipped well below -20 C.
“I think the thing that is disheartening for this industry is this is not about control,” said Paterson.
“It’s not something that any one individual did wrong to then cause what we are now seeing, and it can be very frustrating for our entire industry for all of my colleagues and myself included to put in all this hard work years and years of farming which is not an easy thing to do, but we do love what we do.”
According to Wine Growers British Columbia, approximately 54 per cent of vines were impacted due to last year’s extreme weather event.
Summerland Research and Development Centre research scientist, Ben-Min Chang, says the most recent cold snap could have a more significant impact on the vines compared to the similar event last year.
“The minimum temperature went to the level that could kill the trunk,” said Chang. “Last year, it didn’t go to that far.”
Chang said the Okanagan hasn’t seen damage to vines this extreme since the 1990s, when the temperature dipped to approximately -27 C.
This year, the potential damage is believed to be widespread and not specific to any area or variety.
“Overall, the whole valley got impacted pretty hard,” said Chang.
“The low went to -23 C now that definitely killed almost all the roots. So probably really, really low crop yields this year.”
Although it is too early to tell exactly how much may have been lost, wineries are prepared for the worst.
“We won’t know until early spring but there is no way that we suddenly bounced back to a full crop after this kind of event,” said Paterson.
“And after last year, which really, really hammered the industry as well, this is quite the blow to our industry. It’s not good for sure.”
Patterson adds that the impact goes beyond just the wine industry. It also plays a large role in local tourism.
“A lot of other industries really rely on a robust wine industry for the tourism industry that snowballs down into hotel nights, it snowballs down into restaurants, seats, bar seats, anything that you can think of is to do with tourism is impacted one way or another by the wine industry in this valley,” said Paterson.
“The impact of this is yet to be measured … but without sounding too despondent here, there is a lot of spin-down effect from a damaged wine industry in this valley.”
Industry members are looking to take steps in order to adapt to the changing climate and hopefully protect the industry in the long run.
“Everyone in our industry that sees this, keep your head up,” said Paterson. “As an industry if we can come together and forge forwards in one direction.
“We can talk to government, we can talk to Ministry of Agriculture, there’s plenty of help out there as long as we have a clear message to those people that make those kinds of decisions that we need help as an industry.”
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