WOOSTER, Ohio — National winemaking and grape-growing experts will convene in the Buckeye state this summer, as Ohio State University hosts the 34th annual conference of the American Society for Enology and Viticulture-Eastern Section (ASEV-ES), to be held July 20-22 at Quail Hollow Resort in Painesville, just east of Cleveland near Lake Erie.
Organized by the viticulture and enology programs in the university’s Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, the conference will bring together university specialists and professionals from vineyards, wineries and industry organizations east of the Rockies — where grape and wine production has substantially increased in the past few years, successfully competing with traditional West Coast wine regions at national quality shows.
“It is an honor to host this meeting and a demonstration that Ohio is an important player in the grape and wine industry among eastern and Midwestern states,” said Imed Dami, state viticulture specialist with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) and assistant professor in the Department of Horticulture and Crop Science. “It is also a recognition that our program is relevant to the nation’s grape and wine industry in both research and outreach.”
Those interested in registering for the conference can log on to http://www.nysaes.cornell.edu/fst/asev/index.php or contact Nancy Long at 315-787-2288. The cutoff date for Quail Hollow Resort (http://www.quailhollowresort.com or 800-792-0258) special conference rates is June 28.
The three-day affair will begin on Monday, July 20, with a pre-conference tour of northeast Ohio vineyards and wineries. The tour will include a full day of stops at premium operations in the heart of Ohio’s grape and wine region along Lake Erie. The tour costs $85 and includes bus transportation, lunch at Debonne Vineyards (http://www.debonne.com), and dinner at Ferrante Winery and Ristorante (http://www.ferrantewinery.com).
Tuesday, July 21, will be dedicated to ASEV-ES’s Technical Session. Activities include presentations of submitted papers by experts in the fields of viticulture and enology, a student paper competition, and a poster session. The Technical Session will be complemented by a business meeting at lunchtime and a sparkling-wine reception and ASEV-ES awards banquet in the evening.
Among the topics to be addressed during the Technical Session are freezing tolerance of various grape varieties, issues affecting ice wine production, herbicide-treated mulch as an option to reduce soil erosion and pesticide runoff, and the use of banked terraces to establish vineyards on steep slopes.
The meeting will end on Wednesday, July 22, with a symposium titled “Wines and Vines in a Changing Climate.” Symposium presentations will address the challenges facing vineyards and winemaking practices in the 21st century — including the demand for increased quality, the effects of global warming and climate change, and a potential labor shortage.
“The symposium will include presentations by a panel of enology experts and winemakers from the East and the Midwest who will share their experiences on how to deal with unusual cool or warm vintages in the cellar, followed by a wine-tasting demonstration,” Dami pointed out.
The ASEV-ES conference is held every year in a different eastern/Midwestern U.S. state or northeastern Canadian province. The last time it was held in Ohio was 1994. Since then, the Buckeye state has become one of the top wine producers in the country, boasting 2,500 acres of grapes, annual production of nearly 1 million gallons, and more than 120 wineries — growing from only 37 in the mid-1990s. The Ohio grape and wine industry now has an economic impact of more than $400 million a year.
The success of the grape and wine industry in Ohio has a lot to do with the work put forth by OARDC researchers and OSU Extension specialists: a unique team of viticulturists, enologists, plant pathologists, entomologists and weed ecologists who conduct research and develop programs and techniques aimed at boosting grape production, controlling vineyard pests and diseases, and improving wine quality.
For more information about the ASEV-ES conference or Ohio State’s viticulture and enology programs, contact Dami at 330-263-3882 or dami.1@osu.edu; or Todd Steiner, OARDC enologist, at 330-263-3881 or steiner.4@osu.edu.
OARDC and OSU Extension are the research and outreach arms, respectively, of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.
