Training Vines with Vigour

rootstocks the Kings used to support their apple trees would only keep them in check for about six years. “After that we had a hell of a time controlling the vigour,” he says. “John suggested I talk to Andy Reynolds (Research Scientist, Viticulture, AAFC) at Summerland about different grape planting styles.” Reynolds was just finishing an eight-year grape training systems trial looking at what would work well for growers in the Okanagan valley. He was evaluating VSP as well as Scott Henry, Geneva Double Curtain, and several others, recalls King. “He wanted to see what worked best across the valley and at the Summerland site, which also has really good soil.” The trials followed the vine production right through to wine making and then blind tastings, King explains. “I was actually able to sit in on some of the tastings. I think the dozen or so winemakers who attended were from most of the wineries in the valley.” The Kings looked at the data that Reynolds had collected, including labour costs. They had sampled the wine, and they went all in. “Andy wasn’t aware of any other planting like this in North America at the time,” says King. “It came out of New Zealand. Dr Richard Smart developed it for high vigour sites down there.”

“The training system we use doesn’t have a name,” King explains. “We call it a double Scott Henry with a V. We are putting twice the crop load of a typical Scott Henry on a given root system.” The Kings plant their chosen variety on root stock and select two main-stem trunks. The trunks are angled at 30’ off vertical to form a ‘V’ shape and attached to wires that are 4 feet apart. The Scott Henry system trains the vines into two sets of cordons, an upper and lower, rather than the single set of cordons in a VSP system. The shoots on the top cordons grow vertically, but the shoots on the bottom cordons grow downward. Each cordon row supports fruit, so there is a greater yield, but the canopy is also divided up and down and is more open providing more light than VSP. A robust plant can support a lot of fruit, son Ian explains. “The amount of fruit per square foot or square centimeter of leaf area on our trellis is the same ratio as a standard VSP,” says Ian. “We have double the fruit, but we also have double the leaf area per acre. The trellis can support it, which means all things being equal, you have the same quality of grape someone else would have at four tons, but we can have eight.” This system would not work on the sandy soils of the south Okanagan. It requires the vigour of the King’s site to drive the fruit production.

“Our input costs are about 50 per cent higher than a standard trellis system, you have double the wire and roughly double the labour to install, but everything else is about the same cost,” notes Ian. They have to be very careful on canopy management and not get behind, but there is nothing unusual about the system, King explains. “We need a lot of labour through the season but that means we are also able to provide steady work from the beginning of February. Some of my crew planted these original vines,” he notes with pride. Ian explains that clusters are thinned for a 2/3 to 1/3 split. “Generally we will leave two clusters per shoot on the top cordon and one cluster on the bottom,” he says. “With reds that might go down to one on top and one per shoot or every second shoot on the bottom.”

The Kings average about seven tons per acre on their reds, like Merlot and Cab Franc, and eight to 8.5 tons on their whites, such as Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and Auxerrois. In the early days, they sold their grapes to Cedar Creek winery. Now most of their production goes to Peller Estates under long-term contract. After the comments from the French winemaker, King turned to Andy Reynolds for confirmation and Reynolds suggested they do a trial on their own site. “We took a Merlot block that was in full production and we managed for different crop loads of 4,6,8 and 12 tons per acre,” says King. “It was a nightmare to harvest but we did it for three years and had Cedar Creek make the wine.”

Rod and Ian King on their Naramata vineyard.

The training system we use…we call it a double Scott Henry with a V. We are putting twice the crop load of a typical Scott Henry root system.

Rod KIng "

A close up of the King family trellis system.

ters were massive. “They were the size of a leg of lamb. The outside grapes were ripe, but the insides were still green,” King says. “Six tons per acre was pretty good, but the vines were still really bushy and we needed lots more labour to keep them in check.” At 12 tons per acre there was less labour and still reasonable clusters, but King says fruit quality suffered as the clusters shaded each other. “Eight tons was the sweet spot, which was great, because after the Frenchmen’s visit we were worried that we had made a mistake and wouldn’t be able to sell our grapes.” And that, of course, is the whole point. The Kings have a profitable farming business that has enabled son Ian to come on board. “In the late 90’s Lee Cartier (business professor at Okanagan College) did a complete analysis of the cost of production for grapes, not including land costs.” says King. “His analysis concurred with what we had figured out on our own. It just doesn’t make any sense at 4 tons, and I think it is still true today. “ The Kings also say they don’t need or want to build a winery. “Why do you think there are 400 wineries in the valley?” King jokes. “I’m losing money growing grapes and I can’t sell them, so I lose more money by building a winery?” King says they are happy with what they are doing. “After we put the last bin of grapes on the truck we can start to relax, but the winemakers are just starting to get busy.” 

Argon recently completed a major installation in the South Okanagan, reducing costs and emissions at a waste water treatment site.

An electrical company in Oliver is launching a campaign to encourage wineries to adopt solar power in the OkanaganSimilkameen as a way to save money and become more environmentally sustainable.

Eric Pierce, head of Solar Sales for Argon Electrical and Solar Services, says the company has primarily installed systems for houses and apartment buildings, with roughly 10 per cent of their installs involving commercial customers. But Pierce, who got his degree in Environmental Sciences in 1987, says it is actually the heavy power users like wineries who get the best bang for their buck when it comes to installing a solar array. “Since starting here, I’ve been moving more toward commercial accounts, because it makes more sense," says Pierce. "With a winery, for example, you are typically dealing with a flat roof, making it easier to install and maintain, and most importantly, the client tends to save a lot more money because of the higher amount of electricity they generally use.” One winery, for example, installed 492 photovoltaic solar modules, generating roughly 232,000 kWh annually, and offsetting carbon emissions by 118.5 tonnes per year. “There are three very good reasons to go solar,” says Pierce. “The first and most important from a business perspective is that it will save you money, but as well, going solar can help wineries get certified with the SWBC (Sustainable Winegrowers of BC), they are key in protecting the environment, and a third benefit is that it’s great for marketing. “A winery can honestly say we have helped the environment by generating this many kilowatt hours of clean energy, we’ve saved this many trees, and we’ve offset this much CO2 going into the air. Wineries can use that to attract more customers, as people are much more concerned these days with good environmental stewardship.” The best thing about solar power in the 2020s is the high Return On Investment, or ROI, of at least 6.5 to 8 per cent annually. “Let’s say it’s a $100,000 investment,” Pierce explains. “We use pretty modest figures of 6.5 to 7.5 per cent return on investment, so for a 100k system you are going to save 6.5 to 7.5 per cent on your electrical bill.

“At that rate a typical solar installation takes 10 to 14 years to pay off, and after that it’s all savings.” To get those savings, wineries are hooked up to the Fortis power grid, and during the summer they sell their excess electricity for credits. During the fall and winter when power use increases and solar generation decreases, the electricity they purchase is offset by the credits they earn in the summer.

As well, Pierce says there are a number of things that can greatly increase the ROI for wineries. For example, power costs are going up, not down, so the ROI is expected to naturally increase over time. Secondly, the cost of installing solar is a 100 per cent write-off in the first year, so a winery installing a $100,000 system would expect to write off $20,000 to $25,000. Lastly, both the BC and the federal governments are improving their carbon offset programs. In BC, carbon offsets typically sell for $8 to $15 a metric tonne. In the latest figures provided by BC, a company selling 132 tonnes of CO2 offsets was paid $1,600 in 2019. While these programs have traditionally been geared toward larger electricity users, new federal programs are expected to make it easier and more profitable to sell carbon offsets.

But more importantly than even the economics is the fact that the world faces a significant challenge in keeping global warming levels below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

An increase over 2 degrees Celsius is estimated to cost the world trillions of dollars in damage due to disasters, heat related deaths and disease, damage to coastlines and coastal cities, and specifically to crops. Fortunately, Pierce says winemakers and viticulturalists appear to be extremely aware of the need for action.

Already, wineries are responding to the call for a shift to renewable energy. While he’s only recently begun working with founder Dean Malmberg at Argon, Pierce says they are already working on one large winery project, and negotiating the scale and terms for a second. “I think our greatest advantages is that we aren’t just a solar company,” says Pierce. “We’re an electrical company that also does solar. In our case, we do it all, so we offer a turnkey solution.”  argonelectrical.ca, or contact Eric Pierce: sales@argonsolar.ca