This summer's drought was good news for Ottawa-area winemakers
CBC News | Posted: September 19, 2016 12:48 PM | Last Updated: September 19, 2016
'A lot of sunshine, a lot of heat, and that's what grapes like. Hay fields dry up but vines just love it'
This summer's drought was bad news for many farmers in the Ottawa region, but winemakers say the hot and dry conditions have made for a bumper grape crop.
At Jabulani Vineyard and Winery in the southwest Ottawa village of Richmond, co-owner Janet Moul says they're expecting almost double the grapes they harvested last year.
"Grapes don't like to have their feet wet. They like dry, and so it's been a spectacular year," Moul says.
"We've got farmers around us who have been cursing it and we're saying, 'No this is a good thing.' Yeah, it's a little bit different, a different type of farming."
Good year for Ontario wine
It was a bad year for the vineyard in 2015, so the company only harvested about six and a half tonnes of grapes. Thanks to this year's excellent conditions they're hoping for 12 tonnes, but realistically expect anywhere from nine to 10 tonnes.
A crew of 10 volunteers will be harvesting the grapes by hand starting today.
"We could wait a little longer — the forecast is saying brilliant sunshine, so the [sugar content] could go higher and higher — but we've got a bunch of turkeys that have discovered the field, so before Mother Nature takes it out in a whole different way, we're going to start harvest," Moul says.
Hot and dry conditions were prevalent in much of Ontario this growing season, so winemakers across the province should also be having a good year. Other good years for Ontario wines were 2010 and 2012, Moul says.
Denis Perrault, who owns the Domaine Perrault winery in east Ottawa's Navan area, says the vineyard is recovering from a bad frost last year, which means less quantity this year, but that the quality of the grapes is high.
"Less rain, hardly any rain. A lot of sunshine, a lot of heat, and that's what grapes like. Hay fields dry up but vines just love it," he says.