LI vineyards are bracing for the potential impacts of climate change

Long Island’s 3,000 acres of vineyards are on the front lines of climate change, and  growers are planning to use new tools, grape varieties and skills to face the challenge. But the news isn’t all bad, experts said at an East End forum Tuesday.

The changing climate already has ushered in subtle changes, such as an earlier period of bud break that starts a vine’s spring growth, and harvest periods that are in some cases weeks earlier than in the past, helping to reduce the time the grapes are exposed to disease and pests, they said.

But climate change is also bringing new challenges to the vineyards as weather grows more mercurial and increases the need for maintenance of vines that are already relatively high maintenance and susceptible to disease, the experts told a Long Island Association East End committee forum at Claudio’s in Greenport.

“For sure, no question, the number-one concern and issue is climate change going forward,” said Kareem Massoud, winemaker for Paumanok Vineyards in Aquebogue. “There is no margin of error. We have a constant infection period for things like powdery mildew at a time like right now when we have this constant humidity. With climate change there’s more pressure.”

Nighttime low temperatures are higher than they’ve ever been, he said, increasing the incubation period for disease. But help may be on the way.

“There is some technology we hope can come to the rescue soon,” said Massoud, who is also president of Long Island Wine Country, an industry group. Paumanok has ordered three self-driving electric tractors that could be equipped with a solution better than spraying chemicals.

“An electric tractor driving itself at night in the middle of our vineyard, towing behind it, instead of sprayers spraying fungicide, it will be emitting ultraviolet light,” he said. “And UV light is going to knock out the powdery mildew spores which are most sensitive at night.”

Alice Wise, viticulturalist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension in Riverhead, who’s been at the job helping Long Island’s wine growers since the 1980s, said there’s “no question in my mind” the climate has changed “since I first started in the 1980s. Absolutely.”

An example: “It doesn’t rain for five, six, eight weeks, it’s bone dry, and then all of a sudden we get three inches of rain in one day and two inches the next,” she said. “For all farmers those are challenging conditions.”

The solution: “In viticulture we have to be really on top of vineyard management. We have to try our hardest to make sure things get done on time, that things stay healthy.”

At the same time, she said there are potential upsides to climate change. “Maybe with more heat we can ripen varieties that we never used to be able to ripen fully here,” Wise said, and the ripening period for those grapes that long have done well here is shorter.

“Everybody’s happy to be done earlier,” she said.

But longer-term, Wise said, the Long Island grape-growing industry “shares the same concerns as everyone else. We’re very concerned about what’s going on in the environment.”

Massoud said one way he expects Long Island vineyards to adapt to the changes is through planting and testing grape varieties that are better suited to the changing conditions.

“The number one thing you can do to adapt to a changing climate is have the right DNA,” he said. “We’re talking about the variety, the clone, the root stock.”

He’s already introducing hybrids that have tougher skins and greater resistance to disease.

In addition to challenges that are climate-based, Long Island’s dozens of wineries are also facing increased costs of labor and a workforce that’s beginning to age out.

“There’s an explosion in our payroll costs,” said Massoud. “It’s just so frustrating because just when you think this might be a [financially] viable business, we’re still barely making it because our payroll just exploded.”

Wise pointed to an upcoming “dire need for technical personnel” to work and manage the farms.

She noted the approximately 1,000 people working directly in the Long Island wine industry are “of a certain age, and we’re all going to be retiring around the same time.”

“We could use an infusion of young people who are interested and passionate,” she said. "We have female vineyard managers  and winemakers, so it’s not just men only."

By Mark Harrington

mark.harrington@newsday.comMHarringtonNews

Mark Harrington, a Newsday reporter since 1999, covers energy, wineries, Indian affairs and fisheries.