Recent cold snap causes 'devastating' damage to Nova Scotia vineyards

Vineyard owners in Nova Scotia are assessing the damage after last weekend's record-breaking frigid temperatures.

Grapes are particularly vulnerable to extreme cold this year because the winter has been warmer than usual.

In an effort to keep his plants alive, John Eikelenboom lit80 round bales of hay throughout his vineyard in Port Williams, N.S.

“I went out at 10 that night and lit the bales and stayed with the bales until 4:30 in the morning,” says Eikelenboom, who owns 1365 Church Street Vineyard and Winery.

“(Wednesday), we went to work dissecting the buds. It wasn’t all pretty news,but it’s not a disaster, but it’s pretty close.”

A couple of Eikelenboom’s hybrid varieties made it through, but the Arctic-like temperatures were too much for some of his less-hearty varieties.

The president of the Grape Growers Association of Nova Scotia says it will take years for vineyards to recover.

Steve Ells says between 95 and 100 per cent of Nova Scotia-grown vinifera variety grapes -- used for Chardonnays, Pinot noirs and Rieslings -- were lost because of the extreme cold.

Ells says the level of damage is the worst he's seen in his 12 years in the business.

He says last weekend’s temperatures, which dropped to -25 C,came amid an unseasonably mild winter and equated to a "perfect storm" for crop damage.

The Domaine de Grand Pre winery in Grand Pré, N.S., has an in-field weather station, which recorded some of the freezing temperatures.

“The temperature at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning was about 25below celsius, and the wind chill was 37,” says vineyard manager Jim De Kock.

De Kock says it stayed that way for almost 12 hours.

“We know there will be problems but we can’t say what the scope of the problem is,” he says.

De Kock came to Nova Scotia last August and has been working in vineyards around the world for 25 years, most recently in South Africa. He says he’ll lean on other wine producers for advice on how to mitigate the damage.

“What I will use mostly is knowledge from this area, producers from this area with the cultural knowledge,” the winemaker says.

Ells says he and his peers are still assessing the structural damage of the vines, adding that the sector is looking at a "multiyear" recovery for vinifera grapes.

With files from The Canadian Press