Innovation in the vineyard workshops
Early on the 14th of June, the WA wine industry technical committee and Wines of WA ran the ‘Innovation in the vineyard’ workshop at Howard Park Winery in Margaret River and on the 16th they ran the second workshop at Faber Vineyard in the Swan Valley. These workshops where funded through the Wine Australia Regional’s program.
Over 60 grape growers, winemakers and other industry stakeholders came along to these workshop to listen to the presentations and take the opportunity to ask the presenters questions.
The workshops kicked off with a big breakfast followed by presentations from:
- Bruce Hamilton and Michael Rocca from Wine Australia who provided the details around vineyard data management in Australia and trialling the Bacchus vineyard data management project in Western Australia.
- David Kelly & Jim Campbell- Clause provided preliminary details on the “evaluating the effect different hang times have on Margaret River Cabernet grapes and wine” project. See Cabernet Hang-time forum under Future events.
- Stewart Learmonth from DAFWA provided information on the outcomes on the “trialling pheromones to manage Apple Looper” project and the DAFWA MyPestGuide app.
- Jim Campbell – Clause & Richard Fennessy provided a summary of the 2015-16 pruning, thinning and crop load trials to better manage Tempranillo in the vineyard and winery.
- David Botting from Howard Park Wines (HPW) provided a summary of the “managing extreme heat and wind events” project which trialled the use of spray on Kaolin clays and shade cloth to protect fruit on vines planted in North-South orientated rows. Fruit from these trials was further evaluated through small batch winemaking at HPW to determine the potential impact Kaolin and shade cloth may have on wine quality. Though the 2015 and 2016 growing seasons did not offer any extreme weather events, the data collected throughout the trial clearly demonstrated that the use of the Kaolin and shade cloth greatly diminished damage to the more exposed bunches on the western side of the vines. An information sheet is being developed and will soon be available on the WoWA website.