SA's Wine Grapes Under Pressure

With South Africa’s wine grape harvest getting underway, some producers’ irrigation resources were placed under pressure due to rolling blackouts during the second week of January.

- Pieter Dempsey

In viticulture, the term veraison means the onset of ripening, when the grapes start to change colour and develop most of their flavour. It is important that, during this crucial growth phase, vines experience minimum stress such as heat and drought. According to Conrad Schutte, consultation service manager at Vinpro, that was why farmers needed to be able to irrigate their vineyards during this time.

Warm conditions were expected in the coastal region during the third week of January, he said. “Producers will want to protect vines against this heat so that no sunburn and associated crop losses occur.”

He added that producers would want to irrigate their vines as close as possible to this predicted warm weather period, and power interruptions could therefore affect irrigation scheduling.

Thys Louw, owner of Diemersdal Estate and the winemaker there, said he had installed two generators to mitigate the effects of the rolling blackouts. However, the cost of diesel affected operations.