Frigid Arctic air delivers another blow to Okanagan wine industry

There’s a good chance that the frigid temperatures this past weekend were even more harmful to Okanagan grape vines than last winter.

Given that 45% of Okanagan grape vines suffered irreparable damage during the winter of 2022/2023, that’s a huge blow to the industry.

“I did a really quick look and the buds are all gone, 100% dead," Ben-Min Chang, a scientist at the Summerland Research and Development Centre, told iNFOnews.ca, Jan. 15.

Those are the buds on the vines grown at the research station.

He plans to inspect the trunks to see if they too were killed after temperatures dropped to -25 Celsius Saturday morning.

“It’s pretty devastating,” Chang said.

On the weekend, the mercury fell to -26.9 C in Kelowna, -22.9 C in Penticton and -22.3 C in Osoyoos.

Chang has less than an acre of grape vines so what he sees at the Summerland Research Station is just a sample of what may have happened throughout the Okanagan since there are many micro-climates and a wide range of grape varieties planted.

It'll probably take a couple of weeks to get a clearer picture of how widespread the damage is and a few months to really know the full impact.

“So far, I just have a rough guess,” Chang said. “Based on the temperature data the impact will be bigger than last year. I'm worried about the vine cells being killed in certain places.”

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