Science Friday - Fine-Tuning Grapes For Iowa’s Wine Industry

Episode Date: May 23, 2024

Did you know that almost all the wine we drink, no matter what color it is or where it’s produced, comes from a grape species called Vitis vinifera? But these grapes can’t survive the cold, harsh winters of Iowa, so researchers at Iowa State University are growing special varieties that can withstand a wider range of temperatures. Through this effort, they’re even hoping to expand Iowa’s wine industry.Onstage in Ames, Iowa, Ira talks with Dr. Erin Norton, director of the Midwest Grape and Wine Industry Institute at Iowa State University. They chat about the science of growing cold-hardy grapes, taste a selection of Iowan wines, and explore the basics of viticulture.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Did you know that Iowa has a burgeoning wine industry? You have to say, I'm very surprised how good that tasted. A lot of people tell me, oh, I'm pleasantly surprised. And I'd like people to not be pleasantly surprised that we can produce these kinds of wines in Iowa. It's Thursday, May 23rd, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm SciFri producer, Rasha Irides. When you think of delicious wine, you might envision rolling vineyards in California, Italy, France, Argentina. but have you considered the Midwest?

All wine grapes are variations of the same species, Vitis vanifera. But those grapes can't survive the Midwest's cold winters. That's why researchers are growing special varieties that could weather the seasons. Here's Iroflato, live in front of an audience at Iowa State University in Ames. Joining me to tell me all about the science of Iowa wine

is my guest, Dr. Aaron Norton, director of the Midwest Grape and Wine Industry Institute. at Iowa State University, based right here in Ames, Iowa. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. You know, I never thought of Iowa as wine country. Most people don't. I surely didn't before I arrived as well.

So how long have Iowans been growing wine grapes here? Iowa actually has a very rich history in grape growing, dating back into the mid-1800s. And we were actually sixth in the nation in 1919 for grape growing. Six? Sixth in the nation in 1919. Now, after this, prohibition, of course, came into effect, and so there's some other factors that led to the decline of the grape and wine industry.

But around the year 2000, some new grape varieties were released, and that really encouraged the Iowa grape and wine industry to kickstart again, and we've been going strong ever since then. So you can't grow every kind of grape here, right? No, we cannot in Iowa, and I would say the upper Midwest. It's just too cold. That's the main factor that prevents us from growing these. I call them the European grape varieties. So there's no Pino Noir, no Chardonnay, no Merlot. It would not survive here. So what do you have here? So what do we have? We grow interspecific cold-hardy grape varieties.

So interspecific meaning that researchers and also private breeders and mostly researchers up at the University of Minnesota have been working on this for a while. And they took vitus vinifera grapes and native North American grape varieties. So vitus riparia and things like Concord and Vitus Lebraska and breeding them together to get what we call interspecifera. So they're hybrids. Hybrids is a positive word in a lot of other industries, not always as well known in the grape and wine industry. Now, what makes them able to survive? It's really that native North American grape variety background in their genetics that allows them to survive the cold winters. And it also does provide as well some help with disease resistance and allows those grapes to survive here in the Upper Midwest. Now for the most fun part of the day here.

You've brought some wine. Yes, I did. Tell us what you brought with you. So Iowa State University has a small commercial winery now. And we have three wines today from two different varieties. So up at the Horticulture Research Station, we grow Marquette and La Crescent. So Marquette is a red grape. And we were talking about vitus vinifera being part of the background.

Pino-No-Noir is actually a grandparent of, of Marquette. So we like to talk about Marquette being like Pinot Noir in its flavors and structure. So I have in my hand this beautiful, red, it's a Marquette? It's a Marquette, yes. You have to do that wine snob thing with me now, like move it around. Sure, yes. So swirling is an important thing, and there is a reason behind it. If anyone wants to learn how to swirl, the first I would say, thing to do is do it on a table. It's much easier on a table and you can impress all of your dinner guests. And the reason that we're swirling our wine is to release the volatile aromatics.

So there's lots of smelly things in wine. And in order for them to get into your nose, they need to be in the gaseous form. And so you need to get them out of that liquid. And so swirling it helps to get them up and out of there and then we sniff. and I could sniff forever. Well, let's eat your hearts out there. I know. I'm sorry, everyone. Then when do we taste it?

Once you're satisfied and if you're... I'm no dummy. I want to get to the good part. If you're really, you know, you've evaluated the wine and you think you're happy with the smell of it, you can put a small amount into your mouth. And what I usually do when I'm wine tasting as a professional swishing it around. And what that's doing is, yes, you're going to taste the wine, but you're also going to smell the wine while it's in your mouth. Because those aromatic compounds are going to go up the back of your mouth into your nose, and that gives us flavor. And so those retronasal aromas give us the flavor of the wine.

Let's do it. Oh, you didn't drink your whole thing like I did. That's okay. And what did you think? This was delicious. Great. I mean, this really is delicious. I don't know how to describe, you know, not too fruity, but over romantic. I don't know how to do those sort of things.

I just don't really taste good. That's a good place to start. It does take training and practice. Yeah, I have to say, I'm very surprised how good that tasted. A lot of people tell me, oh, I'm pleasantly surprised. And that's actually one of my, I'd like people to not be pleasantly surprised that we can produce these kinds of wines in Iowa. It was delicious.

It was delicious wine. Can you grow these grapes in other parts of the country, not just here? Yes. So we are hearing and seeing about growing in Washington State and in Canada as well. They're growing quite a bit of these grape varieties. And British Columbia, actually, they have a significant grape and wine industry and really got wiped out with winter damage the past couple of years. And we've heard that they're planting these grape varieties.

And what's in the chemicals that give you? wine its taste, this different, distinct taste. So the chemicals are right in the grapes themselves. One thing to note, you know, when I'm saying that there's floral or tropical or, you know, even more specific strawberry, we don't add any of those things. They just happen to grow within the grapes themselves. And it just, it comes out as a note in the final wine. So what needs to happen?

I mean, you see, it sounds like you have a very successful industry going here. What's the future look like? So we have about 100. wineries here in Iowa. A hundred. A hundred wineries, yep. And so where do we go from here? So we've had hundreds of years of growing vitus vinifera and we really know how to make the best wine from those types of grapes and how to treat those grape varieties. And so that's really what we need to figure out is how do we make the best lacrescent possible. Should it be the style that we're currently making it? Could it be a sparkling wine? Could it be an iced wine or things like that? So there's,

there's a lot of work to be done, but there's also a lot of work to be done to understand these grapes on a fundamental level. And what are the differences chemically between these grapes versus the vitus finiferum? Or how much sunlight they might need, right? Exactly. Yes. So how do we grow them best as well? Because I will say growing these grapes is completely different than growing the vizvenifera varieties. Is that right? Tell me what you mean by that. A lot of these grapes like to grow up high. And so vittis vinifera, if you go to vineyards around the country or around the world, usually the grapes you'll see at waste level. And then the shoots like to grow up straight. The grape varieties that we grow here mostly have recumbent growth. So the grapes are all the way up

high on the top of the wire trellis. And then the shoots like to grow downwards. And so there There are some mechanical mechanization challenges and labor challenges with that, as well as sun exposure. So we do like to expose the grapes to sun. What does the sun do to the flavor? So the sun helps to promote the mechanisms to create those flavor compounds. And those flavor compounds are really the last to develop in the season. But we need to get those mechanisms, those pathways started as early as possible. Let's go to the questions over here.

Yes. About how long does it take to grow the grapes? That's a great question. So when you plant a vine, when you buy a vine and you plant it, it does take about three to four years to get a crop off of it. And remember that these are perennial crops, meaning that we put a vine in the ground and we probably keep it there for at least 20 plus years. So we really have to take care of these plants.

And so it takes about three or four years to get a crop off of them. And every year, if you're treating your vines properly and doing proper viticulture, which is the science of vineyard management, of working with the vines, if you're doing that properly, you should be able to get grapes off of them every year. Are there any drawbacks to using these cold-resistant varieties? And in terms of the flavor you get here versus the other kind of phrase. Yeah, and explaining those flavors to consumers, some of them just are, they're different. I think if you tasted the La Crescent, for example, it's hard to compare those to the other varieties.

They're just, there's different flavors. Yeah, because I noticed these are lighter tasting. They're not the heavy kind of California wines that you might. Right, especially the red wine. So a lot of the consumer market right now really loves big, bold, heavy red wines. The great varieties that we're growing in Iowa are just not cut out for that. Because of? So we're lacking in tannins. So inherently the tannins are low in these grape varieties. And part of that is because of the North American characteristics. We're also not able to extract and retain those tannins into the wine. There's some chemical challenges with the makeup of these grapes. That's part of the research that we're doing in my labs right now is trying to overcome those challenges.

Speaking of challenges, let's go right here. Yes. Where can you get the varieties of grapes that you mentioned? Where can you get them? So these grapes, you probably won't ever see them at a grocery store. They're not table grapes. So wine grapes are actually a lot different than table grapes in that they're quite a bit smaller and they have a big seed in them. They're not great for people to be eating them.

I sort of detected a slight Canadian accent. Did I say out? You did a few times. I love it. I love it. But they let the grapes freeze, right? Yes. Right?

Do you do that here? No. We make ice wine. Actually, it's my hometown where ice wine is produced in Canada in Niagara. The grape varieties that they're using for ice wine are not the same grape varieties we're growing here. Unfortunately, the weather conditions would lead to rot here before we would be able to get a hard. freeze. So we're not, there are, there are several places in Wisconsin trying ice wine, but in Iowa, we just don't get that hard freeze fast enough. Let's go to the questions over here.

Yes. How long does it take to make wine? That's a great question. So we harvest here in Iowa, we harvest our grapes towards the end of August, beginning of September. And that's a little bit earlier than a lot of other regions. For myself here at the Iowa State University, winery, we are finished bottling in March. And so that's about the amount of time it takes. To go from juice to wine, the fermentations usually last between seven to 14 days. So it's not terribly long. Yeah. And we know that Io has some of the best, if not the best, soil for growing. How does that affect the grapes as opposed to maybe Minnesota or Wisconsin or some other places? Yeah, that's it. That's an interesting one. Grapes actually don't need super fertile soil. A lot of the famous wine regions around

the world, they have more rocky soil or the grapes really have to go send their roots down deep to find the water and find the nutrients. And that kind of struggle in the vines means that they put more effort into their fruit. And so they get really great quality fruit. Here in Iowa, really fertile soil. The grape vines here put a lot of effort into their leafy canopy. And so that is a challenge for us to deal with. And it's more labor, more work in the vineyard to balance the vines between leaves and canopy so that the fruit can ripen appropriately. Do you collaborate with other winemakers? Oh, yes. Tell us about that. On a daily basis. And so I'm constantly, part of our work is working with the industry and teaching them how to make wine, but also finding out from them

what challenges they're having and developing either educational programs or resources for them or research projects. If they're having a problem, for example, the tannin, if a winemaker came up with an idea to freeze the grapes, to try and break the cells and let some of those tannins be extracted more easily. And so we took some of his samples that he had done and analyzed them to see if that was indeed a good idea. You know, I remember when Napa Valley got on the map, so to speak, right? It wasn't until, what, the 1970s? Well, we heard about that.

Where is Iowa in terms of its 1970s moment? Are we in the 50s now, or where are we? I don't know if we're going to have our own judgment of Paris, but, I mean, that would be, that would be great. I'm constantly trying to get our wines in particular. out to competitions so that people can taste them around the country and not just here in Iowa. But I do think we're at this point where we have about 100 wineries and that's been stable for a while. And so it's a maturing time for the industry. And I think what will push us past

that is just to continue to make quality wines and to work together to raise the awareness of the industry. One last question. I'm going to give you my blank check question. I give some researchers, and that is if you had an unlimited budget, if you had a blank check, what would you use it on? Where would it be best spent in your research or what you need to know or want to know about the wine industry, making wine fermentation that you don't know now? So I think I had a conversation earlier today about genetic markers in whether they're using genital. genetic markers to breed better than my grapes. So there's genetic markers that we can target to see where certain molecules are being made in the grape. And whether you can turn those on or turn

those off or express them more or things like that. And I'm not a geneticist. So, but I would love to be able to go and work with the breeders to say, we need this. We need tannin or we need less acidity. It's worked together to designer grapes, I suppose. Hopefully that would catch on with winemakers, but I think to design better grapes for the climate, the coming climate, would be great. Well, if you need anybody to help you test out the results of that engineering, please get back to me. You're my guy. Thank you very much, Dr. Norton. Aaron Norton, director of the Midwest Grape and Wine Industry Institute at Iowa State University.

Lots of folks help make this show happen, including Beth Rami, Santiago Flores, Diana Plasker, John Dancosky. On tomorrow's episode, we round up this week's science news. Join us. I'm CyFRI producer Rasha Iridi.