Flooding across Ontario's wine country has raised the alarm for grape growers, who are watching heavy rain reshape their vineyards. According to CBC News, the Niagara region experienced three months of rain in a single week, an unprecedented amount of water that some winemakers say has left them dealing with uncharted territory as they try to protect their crops.
The scale of the deluge was clear at Southbrook Organic Winery, where the owner said that when he was out in the vineyard just earlier last week, the area was under a foot of water. That kind of flooding has pushed some growers to rethink how they operate, treating the extreme rainfall not as a one-off but as a sign of what may be coming more often.
For the Southbrook owner, the answer is a shift in mindset about the entire craft of growing grapes. "What we have to do is to get away from the old ideas on how to grow grapes and start to realize that we need to expect this kind of weather, wild weather in every direction, global weirding, as I like to refer to it," he said, adding that the response has to center on increasing resiliency.
The pressure is being felt across the sector, not just at a single vineyard. Grape Growers of Ontario says the industry is working to adapt to the extreme weather, but that adapting comes at a real financial cost, one that is not always obvious to the people buying a bottle of wine off the shelf.
A representative for the growers tied that cost directly to consumer demand. When people buy the product, money comes in and can be reinvested in Ontario and in new technology, the representative explained, but if no one buys the product, it becomes very difficult to reinvest. What might seem like a very small thing to the consumer, they said, makes a huge difference to growers trying to weather the swings.
At the vineyard featured in the report, the water had mostly drained by the time crews returned, something the owner attributed to a deliberate strategy. He said they are putting a big focus on soil quality, working to make sure that water can drain naturally through the ground rather than pooling on the surface and lingering around the vines.
For now, the growers are left in a waiting game. The owner said they will not know the full impact the rain has had on the grapes until they harvest in the fall, and the uncertainty is compounded by the outlook, with more rain still in the forecast for a region already saturated by an extraordinary week of storms.