Transcript
00:00 Patty Skinkis
This is the HiRes Vineyard Nutrition Podcast Series, devoted to helping the grape and wine industry understand more about how to monitor and manage vineyard health through grapevine nutrition research. I am your host, Dr. Patty Skinkis, Professor and Viticulture Extension Specialist at Oregon State University.
00:22.00 Patty Skinkis
A lot of effort is placed on grapevine nutrition in the vineyard to ensure healthy vines and clean, sound fruit for wine production. We know vineyard nutrition plays an important role in ensuring good crop health and quality fruit and we have some specific nutrients that we care about from a winemaking standpoint--mainly nitrogen and potassium. Nitrogen is important for yeast consumption during the fermentation process, and we focus on quantifying yeast assimilable nitrogen (YAN) which is a combination of ammonia nitrogen and nitrogen from primary amino acids. For potassium, we know that it plays an important role in sugar accumulation for the grapevine and the berry in ripening, but too much can cause issues with buffering pH; basically, having too high of a pH. When pH’s is too high, probably in practice between 3.9 and 4, then there are issues with fermentation and potential for microbial spoilage. We've covered information on this podcast about the research being done on both YAN and potassium from nitrogen trials and potassium trials through to wine analysis, but we're turning our attention today to what really matters in the winery. By talking with Emily Hodson, winemaker at Veritas Vineyards and Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia. Emily Hodson is a member of our HiRes Vineyard Nutrition Project Advisory Panel, and she has been part of the project from the beginning, and she helped us work with other advisory panel members to figure out what we should really focus on. Having this feedback from the industry end users of research is critical. We work to provide useful information from the research that we are conducting and her input, and that of the other advisory panel, helps to steer our research in the proper direction to meet those objectives.
Thank you for joining us today.
02:09.81 Emily Hodson
Thank you so much for having me; I'm excited.
02:12.00 Patty Skinkis
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the company? As I understand, it's a family operation. Can you give us an idea of the size, scope, and what you do.
02:23.00 Emily Hodson
Sure. My name is Emily Hodson, and I'm the winemaker at Veritas Winery. We planted our first grapes in 1999, and my first vintage was 2001, so I'm coming up on 25 years which is shocking. It is a family business. It's my mom, my dad, my brother, my brother-in-law and my uncle as well as our vineyard manager, so we've got a lot of layers of a family in the business. We started small but now we have just about sixty acres on property and another sixty acres that we're managing. Focusing primarily on Vitis vinifera [grape cultivars]. We have a couple hybrids, but just a little bit. We're growing Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Viognier, Merlot; you know you the whole the whole gamut of classic Vinifera.
I am on the project advisory panel and that's because of my involvement with NGRA, so Donnell (Executive Director of NGRA) thought that I would be a good fit for the project advisory panel. I ended up on NGRA because I started a winemaker's research exchange in Virginia. The Virginia Wine Board decided I'd be a great fit to serve as the representative for the NGRA. So, that's how that whole loop connects as far as how I got involved in the High-Res Vineyard Nutrition Project.
03:54.98 Patty Skinkis
That's great to hear! I always wondered how you got involved with that. So, for our listeners, the NGRA is the National Grape Research Alliance, which has been around for probably almost 15 to 20 years, and it's really focused on developing research ideas. It's not a funding agency. It's really to represent the national grape and wine industry, including grapes in other sectors, not just the wine industry. Donnell Brown is the executive director of the NGRA. They've been really involved with getting this project started, and back in Episode 1 of Season 1 we cover a bit of information on NGRA’s role.
So, I have a few questions for you, Emily, about your production. You mentioned that you have basically 120 acres that you're working with, and you grow both Vitis vinifera cultivars and some of the improved varieties (or hybrids). So, I'm assuming that 120 acres, that's a pretty large operation in Virginia, is that correct?
04:57.73 Emily Hodson
Yes, we're on the larger side. Not the largest by any means.
05:02:00 Patty Skinkis
What are some of the hybrids that you grow?
05:06:00 Emily Hodson
I have a red hybrid, Chambourcin, and I have a white hybrid called Traminette. Both were chosen and planted in some lower areas where we wanted vines aesthetically along the entrance as you come in, but we were aware that it was a little bit low for vinifera cultivars as far as elevation. So that was more aesthetic, but I've enjoyed working with them as well and learning more about how they fit in wine and wine making.
05:41:00 Patty Skinkis
Can you tell us, as a winemaker, what you think is the most important from a vineyard nutrition standpoint? I led in with an introduction about nitrogen and potassium, but as a researcher we always want to know what is important. We do all this analysis, and we can figure out what nutrition is but what is it that we really need to be focusing on from your perspective as a winemaker?
06:03:00 Emily Hodson
The two that you listed, the nitrogen and potassium are definitely highest on my list. Not only speaking as a winemaker, because those are things that we really do have to look at as far as potassium with stability of wine, and then nitrogen as far as a healthy fermentation. As a winemaker, that’s not why I say those things, but when you're out in the vineyard and you can find nutritional balance, that equals higher grape quality which equals higher wine quality. There's just no if, ands, or buts about it when you have a healthy vine that's balanced and has what it needs, you get even sugar accumulation, you get ripening that's predictable and “happy,” for lack of a better word. All of the flavors and intensities are just there. It's just a better starting crop; it's a better start for the wine. The less I do in the winery, the better the wine quality is, period. You know the old saying that wine is made in the vineyard. It really is, and finding that balance in nitrogen, specifically, and having a balanced vine, and then potassium as well, so that I can harbor it safely in the winery are definitely two of the highest pieces of importance to me in practice.
07:32.00 Patty Skinkis
I can appreciate that too because I know exactly what you're talking about, and our listeners might be wondering, if you produce grapes and wine, what is a balanced vine. As researchers we always want to put numbers on it so we can look at it with pruning weights and those sorts of things. So, I have an idea from a standpoint of Oregon Pinot Noir, but generally speaking, that balance we're talking about is not having too much plant growth, not too much fruit or too little fruit. Just having that balance between the canopy and the fruit load naturally, not with us doing hedging and crop thinning and all of those other things, but naturally coming to that balance. So that is difficult, and I think vineyard nutrition plays a part in it, but trying to figure out: Is it water? Is it nutrition? It’s all linked in with soils and the whole terroir. I know a lot of researchers don't like that term (terrori) because it's all-encompassing instead of being reductionist. We often times as researchers want to reduce and say, “well which one matters the most?”, but as an extension specialist, I think they all matter.
08:41.00 Emily Hodson
Right! They all matter, and then you throw vintage to vintage variation with weather. Add that factor in and again it becomes harder and harder to be reductionist on it and really dial in on which piece. They are all so closely interrelated.
08:57.00 Patty Skinkis
What are the most important nutrients, from your perspective, to manage in the winery? Are there others than just looking at the potassium, pH and YAN?
09:07.00 Emily Hodson
No, not really. I mean you know potassium is really impacting pH, so we are talking about acid balance as well. As far as a healthy fermentation, really I'm just looking at YAN and those assimilable nitrogens and also measuring potassium so that I’m able to predict the wine's progression. A lot of times with a high potassium, we'll see some of that fall out in processing, so just having that measure of potassium helps predict steps moving forward and really think ahead about where we’re going to land with a given wine and its final wine quality.
09:50.85 Patty Skinkis
Do you have a benchmark or a threshold that you're aiming for on either of those two measurements?
09:55.79 Emily Hodson
Yeah, certainly. For nitrogen and for YAN, 150 mg/L is kind of my benchmark. I have different directions that I go depending on whether I'm working with a white or a red, a hot fermentation or a cold fermentation, and whether I have skins in the fermentation or not. Some of those factors will mitigate how I actually end up, either adjusting or not adjusting YAN. With potassium, that's more of just a helpful tool to understand the stability of the wine. It's nothing that I adjust in winemaking technique. It just helps me understand the stability, and steps I need to take in the future. It's kind of like a little flag, like a little triage. If you're in the ~3,000 mg/L in potassium you kind of get a red flag that you've got to watch. You can't do standard acid additions and expect standard pH changes. You just know that you're in it for the long haul with some of those higher potassium levels because you have to get through a milliliter and throw some of those tartrates out before you can really adjust or protect the wine correctly.
11:18.54 Patty Skinkis
How often are you above that threshold for potassium?
11:21.00 Emily Hodson
For me, believe it or not, it is very vintage-determined, but in the whites not very often. I'm usually shocked if I have a higher potassium in whites. In the reds, I'd say 30 to 40% of the time I'm looking at what I consider high or extremely high potassiums. And again, let's make sure all the listeners remember-- I'm in Virginia; I'm on the east coast. We have been described in our soils as being on a potassium feldspar, so we do have naturally high potassium growing environments. We also have plenty of water availability, so these vines are moving a lot of water throughout their infrastructure. I think that impacts either potassium uptake or just general potassium levels as we're seeing them. We're still learning a lot about potassium.
12:19.00 Patty Skinkis
I genuinely wanted to know that threshold that you have because just recently here in Oregon, growers have been asking “what can we do to reduce our potassium?”. I've been here seventeen years, and I've never had that question, and it turned out that they started getting higher pHs than the winemakers were wanting, and then they started asking about potassium management in the vineyard, but when I started asking about their potassium numbers, many did not have an idea of what they were. I went back to my 10 year crop load data set and saw juice potassium were anywhere from 1500 to 2000 mg/L at harvest, so not probably to be worried about then?
12:56.00 Emily Hodson
You know, there's a lot that we can look at too. With early acid additions, being more aggressive with early acid additions, knowing that our potassium is high and that we're safe doing those early acid additions that seem so aggressive because a lot of that is going to fall out of solution. We still have, even down to coming up with techniques of accurately measuring potassium in juice and in berry samples. I think there's still a lot of work to be done on potassium, in the winery and in lab techniques but also in the in the vineyard and what steps we can take to reduce potassium uptake. So far, from my limited survey of the literature and what's out there, there's very little that we can do as an industry to actually reduce the vine's decision to take up potassium.
13:50.00 Patty Skinkis
That's right, absolutely. It's pretty much hedging or leaf removal or choosing a rootstock that's excluding potassium. It's very limited in what you can do with an already established vineyard in an established region. It's really just managing it. One of the things that you mentioned was accurately measuring potassium in the juice or the berry. Do you do those measures yourself or do you send those off to a lab?
14:16.00 Emily Hodson
I'm sending them off currently. I would really like to be able to do them in-house, but so far, I really haven't found anything that I feel is reproducible or accurate enough that I can use it myself. But I would love to because I feel like the more that we understand and the more that we can see these shifts: Where is the potassium coming completely out into solution? When is it the highest and when is it the lowest? When are we throwing it? The more I could understand about that, I think could be really useful in wine stability and wine health.
14:50.00 Patty Skinkis
There are surprisingly few studies that map out different components of berries as they come to harvest, and it's amazing how little is out there, especially when it comes to potassium. We know generally, as you go from berry ripening, that your potassium is loading and if you keep going--doing hang time--you're going to get even more. But we don't know exactly what we start out with and then what we finish with in that time slot. Lots of those sorts of things still exist. We at my lab just started looking at berry or juice potassium because of the industry interest. That's a concern about processing--do you handle it as a fresh berry versus a frozen--because, you know, pH, and freezing will change the potassium. That makes it hard when you're trying to get samples ready to send. For us, we do them ourselves, so we have “DO NOT FREEZE”, these big signs. Do not freeze the sample that we're going to do potassium measurements on because they'll totally change the numbers if you freeze them.
15:57.42 Emily Hodson
What I love about this industry, as well as this project, is the more you learn, the more you have questions, and they're all good questions, and they all help us to just fine-tune our skill and understand better where we can and cannot improve our process, whether that's to improve our process in final wine quality or whether that's improve our process by really looking at sustainability and reducing impact out in the vineyard, whether it's nitrogen or chemicals or just tractor presence. All of that is so important in the grand scheme of things.
16:37.72 Patty Skinkis
You mentioned this a little bit before that you prefer to do less in the winery and do more in the vineyards. In terms of nutrient management, can you talk a little bit about what nutrient concerns you have in your area? You mentioned nitrogen and that might not be a sake of adding nitrogen, but maybe trying to take it away. I’d Imagine we have some of the same concerns. Are there other things that you do in the vineyard to manage nutrition?
17:07.40 Emily Hodson
Good question. With our water availability and we're all on mainly on loam soils, very rich loam soils. So as far as vineyard mitigation with nutrients, we're not doing a whole lot of that. We're also into our twenty fifth year on some of our vines. But for the most part, our vines are younger and I'll see some magnesium deficiencies and we need to work with that a little bit. I find that specifically Viognier is showing nitrogen, it's showing really low nitrogen consistently and that's something that is one of those mystery questions that we're still trying to figure out, but for the most part we're really just looking at nitrogen balance and making sure we don't have any deficiencies throughout. With a relatively young vineyard and a lot of nutrient availability, we're not doing a ton of nutrient replacement right now. But that said again, I'll remind our listeners, I'm in Virginia on very nitrogen-rich soils where vigor is one of our bigger constraints. Constraints is not the right word--one of our bigger challenges-- is reducing vigor and trying not to be in that constant hedging situation.
18:28.31 Patty Skinkis
So, you mentioned Viognier. Is the nitrogen issue in YAN’s, or by looking at tissues?
18:36.10 Emily Hodson
Looking at tissues.
18:38.86 Patty Skinkis
Okay, and the YANs are okay?
18:40.15 Emily Hodson
The YANS are all over the place. Frustratingly enough, as you are saying, trying to reduce it down to figuring out how the puzzle pieces fit together. The YANS are all over the place. One vintage I'll have really what I consider a high YAN, over 300 mg/L, kind of across the board. Then I'll have vintages where I have really consistently low YANs throughout all of the crops. Not just specifically here on Veritas's property, kind of throughout the Virginia Commonwealth. Viognier also is one of those varieties, and I don't know what else to compare it to, but it does set crop very differently also from vintage to vintage, which we haven't quite been able to put a finger on, or figure out any causation or relationship with that. So, there's a lot of questions around it, but it's one that I always check in on everything that comes into the winery partly because it's one of the easiest things if you have a low YAN to be able to take care of the juice and start from the beginning. It's just one of the easiest things to measure and treat and partly because I'm always curious.
19:52.94 Patty Skinkis
Sure. You brought up the YAN question. A lot of people, at least in premium winemaking, I've heard that people don't like to add diammonium phosphate, or DAP, in the winery because it changes the aromas, flavors, etcetera. Are you in that camp as well? Do you feel it fundamentally changes?
20.14.74 Emily Hodson
Yeah, I am in that camp. I'm not afraid to use it if I'm severely deficient, and that would be less than 100 mg/L. When I add diammonium phosphate to a fermentation, I feel like I lose control of the fermentation. The yeast are so aggressive at taking up that form of nitrogen that it does change aroma and flavors, or it can, especially if overused. Not only does it have that impact, but it has an impact on my yeast population. That makes it just go too fast, too hard, and I feel like that's just as problematic for me as having not enough nitrogen in a fermentation. So diammonium phosphate is the last thing I like to use. I'm not afraid to use it when needed, but it takes a lot of work because I try and add that in very small doses over a long period of time so it just requires being there a lot more during the fermentation, constantly. Diammonium phosphate, it smells! I don't like adding things to wines if I don't have to, period. Secondly, I don't like adding things that that smell like diammonium phosphate.
21:46.26 Patty Skinkis
Are there other nutrient additions that you've used or that work well in place of them?
21:53.28 Emily Hodson
Sure, there's a whole array of them commercially available, whether it's organic, including all the micronutrients that the yeast may need or may not need. There's a whole panoply of it which is even derived from some yeasts, in some senses, where they're breaking down yeasts. I think I've tried all of them. I do like the idea of allowing the yeast to have everything they need to do their job completely. When you are aware that you're below 100 mg/L, you really do have to start looking at the options that you have within the market to make sure that you have a healthy fermentation. The number of products that are available is almost overwhelming within the marketplace. I tend to really lean towards all of the organic products. I feel good about adding things that aren't necessarily chemically formed; they are byproducts of something else that can add to and have the things that the yeast need to do their job, so I tend to lean that direction.
23:05.94 Patty Skinkis
Do you do a lot of bench trials?
23:10.0 Emily Hodson
On adding the nutrient? No, for me it's formulaic. You look at what your YAN is and where you want to be. I want to add a little bit more nitrogen when I'm doing a cold white fermentation because I know that's really slow. That’s really hard on the yeast, so you need to provide a little bit more. If I'm adding nitrogen to a red fermentation where the skins are in there and there's actually more probably more bioavailability of everything because the seeds are in there, the skins are in there, there's thiamine; they've got just a lot more resources than a clarified juice with those additions. I'm adding less total nitrogen because I feel pretty good that even though my nitrogen is low, a lot of the other micronutrients are in there. So yeah, no bench trials. It's just basically like I want it to be one 150 mg/L; I have 80 mg/L, so I add the other 70 mg/L.
24:10.91 Patty Skinkis
I have a viticulture question for you. I'm assuming you grow your vines on rootstock. What rootstocks do you use, or do you have a mix of root stocks? Do you just have one or just a handful of rootstocks that you use?
24:23.70 Emily Hodson
I have a mix. I have a good mix. Part of that is learning by experience and then changing your rootstock. Here, currently, we have our early plantings were done on 3309. I have 101-14, 5C, Riparia gloire, are the ones that just kind of pop into my head as I'm talking. We found early on in the 1990s there was a lot of 3309 rootstock. We're finding that the other varieties, the other rootstock that I listed, are better at reducing our vigor whereas the 3309 is probably not my favorite rootstock to work with in these types of soils. Riparia gloire is one of my favorites right now. In our drier, hotter years, Riparia is a little bit stressful because it reduces vigor quite aggressively. But in our wetter years, I feel like it's outperforming some of the others.
25:25.00 Patty Skinkis
It's interesting. I have interest not only because I look at rootstocks as well, but because of the link to nutrition. You know, that interface of what's pulling up the soil nutrient levels.
25:33.65 Emily Hodson
I've never thought about potassium and rootstock before. That hasn't even come into the conversation in my world currently.
25:45.49 Patty Skinkis
Yeah, and in general, some of them are potassium-excluding. Some of the Vitis berlandieri species rootstocks. 101-14 is one of those that's supposed to be taking up more potassium, but I've also seen others report a reduction in potassium, so it's really something I've started to look at more within my rootstock trials, and what is it doing with the potassium.
26:13.52 Emily Hodson
That's awesome. Keep working on that.
26:14.45 Patty Skinkis
Yeah, it's one of those things that came up from just listening to industry and their concerns. I'm like “well I can look at plant-tissue-potassium, I can look at fruit-potassium”. That was my impetus for really starting to look at that further. So maybe more to come…
26:29.13 Emily Hodson
Oh, I hope so.
26:31.98 Patty Skinkis
You had mentioned the work that you are doing with the Virginia Research Exchange. Can you talk a little bit about what that's all about and different things that you might have done with that group?
26:41.82 Emily Hodson
Yeah, so the Winemaker's Research Exchange is a nonprofit that was set up by Virginia winemakers really to do production-scale research because what we were finding was a lot of the literature that was explaining, whether it was a rootstock trial, or a leaf-pulling trial, or a tannin trial, we weren't seeing the same application of results in the fruit that we were growing. So we realized we wanted to start doing a lot of that experimentation ourselves, on our own fruit, in conditions that that we have. It started off just in in my AVA, the Monticello AVA. The Virginia Wine Board funds it. When I went back to get the next year's grant, they said they were happy to do the project again, but it really had to be the state of Virginia. Now, it's statewide and its industry driven. Producers come to the Winemaker's Research Exchange. We have an enologist and a project coordinator. We're running anywhere from 30 to 40 projects a year. They're done, as I said, production scale in wineries at full scale, not in carboys, and the research topic is really driven by the winemaker or the viticulturist, wherever the idea comes from. We're finding that when someone comes to the Research Exchange with a question or a project, their efficacy and how well they do these projects are unparalleled right? Because it's a question they really want to figure out and the Winemaker's Research Exchange's role is to set up the project so that it is scientifically sound and to do all the sampling and analysis of the project. Basically, the winemaker's responsibility is just to make the wine. Then, once the wine is made, the Research Exchange collects the samples. They all go to sensory session where we have an education piece around what the project was, whether it's early bentonite addition during fermentation and whether that affects final wine quality. Can you tell in the final wine quality that all of the bentonite was added in juice or wine? The sensory is done blind and then that's available on our website which is winemakersresearchexchange.com. It's a long one.
It's an industry research interface where we're able to start pushing the envelopes on technique.
We are also learning about potassium, for example, really looking at how timing of acid addition is related to potassium level and final wine quality and or wine stability. Also just looking at some primary indicators. In Virginia, for example, if you do an early acid addition with this potassium, what's your final wine quality, and how does that relate to Virginia and your final pH? What we're finding is that some of these projects are going multi-year. We'll do a potassium project, and then another question comes out of it and so we'll do it again with another layer on it. Basically, just wine nerd stuff.
30:20.68 Patty Skinkis
Do you know if there's any other group that does something to that scale for wine research?
30:27.99 Emily Hodson
Not that I'm aware of.
30:31.00 Patty Skinkis
Yes, this pretty unique.
30:33.00 Emily Hodson
We've had a lot of fun doing it, and I'm very thankful to all my peers in the Virginia wine industry for being so open to do these studies, and to bring these wines, and to allow us all to taste through them so that when we do these sensory sessions, we get to taste through three or four experiments and really think about the effect of the experiment. Everybody has their own palate, so I may really like a certain effect of an experiment, where my peer really doesn't. But having the opportunity to taste that and not read about it is also really helpful in the grand scheme of learning what we're doing. Always trying to learn how to better do what we're doing.
31:19.20 Patty Skinkis
That hands-on learning. Absolutely.
Given what you've learned so far in the HiRes Vineyard Nutrition Project, what do you think are the most important takeaways?
31:31.56 Emily Hodson
For me, the most important takeaway is really that we have to continue working on our precision in application of nutrients in the vineyard. There's so much variability even within the sites and the varieties that we're working with. Just having that ability to accurately measure nitrogen exactly and where we're going--with what's ground truthing and what's not. We got kind sidelined a few times on the exact science of the project, but my takeaway was having the ability to, not only just in nutrient application, having the ability as an agriculture sector to go in and put things where they need to be. For me, sitting on the sidelines in all of our meetings became more and more important as a way to really reduce inputs moving forward. I can see that it is so possible, do you know what I mean?
When we're talking with our sensor scientists and we're talking with our vineyard team--all of the pieces are there and just bringing that all together and being able to tie it up with a little bow and be able to go in and do this precision application of nutrients--then, we'll be even more able to take the science and reduce it and really say, “well did this impact or did this not impact?” Because we'll have a before and an after and an application. I know that we're doing that in our study, but I'd love to be able to see that in our industry. Something I've been excited about for a really long time, that idea of being so much more specific about what we're putting out into our environment.
33:38.26 Patty Skinkis
I think you're absolutely right. A lot of times, as researchers, we can get in our silos. The sensor team or engineers, and the viticulturists who are in the field and then the enologist in the winery; it’s a struggle to get the the groups understanding different language, different goals. For me, going through the project, the most powerful thing has been having the advisory committee and circling back to you all. Because it's not just what we think as researchers. We want to come back to what we've always held on to--this “this is how we do it” versus maybe we need to redefine our target, and that's been really helpful. In the last year of the project, that's what we're really hoping to do, so thank you for your efforts. We'll keep plugging away at the group.
34:36.70 Emily Hodson
It's teamwork.
34:37.58 Patty Skinkis
Absolutely.
I want to wrap up with a fun question: You talked about this a little bit in the beginning about how you got into working with Veritas Vineyards and Winery, but can you tell us a little bit more about your background and training in viticulture and enology? I suspect that, like many people, it's a family run operation. You might have said “I don’t want anything to do with it” and jump ship, but you decided to stay. Can tell us a little bit about your entry into the world of viticulture and enology and that career pathway?
35:08.13 Emily Hodson
It was very unplanned. I was working in infectious diseases, my first career. I have a master's in public health and infectious diseases. My trajectory in the wine industry is just a little bit different. When I was in infectious diseases, I was not…I knew I needed to find a new, next job. So, I called my parents and said “I need to take a couple months off and figure out my next place in life,” and, they basically said “that's great, but we just bought this farm in Virginia, and we're starting a winery, so you're going to have to move to Virginia.” I grew up in Florida. I thought to myself, “okay, that's odd.” I basically started the winery with my parents at first, just to help out as I was trying to find out what to do next. But I knew it in the first few consultant meetings. It's the first time I had worked in ag and absolutely fell in love with the industry. I'm not sure how much of it was being out in the fields and working outside and really working in a creative role as far as, you know, making something every year. But then also all of my epidemiology work, I found it really exciting to be out in the field talking about a mite infestation versus the presence of mites. So, I use a lot of my epidemiology work. Not only out in the vineyard, but also when we're working in the winery and talking about good bacteria and bad bacteria—Brettanomyces. Really looking at having beneficials and things that could be a problem but when you have them all together, they work together.
So, long story short, after just a year of helping my parents, I fell in love with the industry and went and got my master's in fermentation science from Virginia Tech. I worked with Dr. Bruce Zoecklein, and the rest is history. Twenty-five years later, I am still learning about potassium.
37:20.35 Patty Skinkis
Never stop learning. I like your story about transferable skills. There are so many transferable skills between different sectors and into agriculture. That’s really great.
37:36.51 Emily Hodson
Really truly. I really enjoyed it. When I got my master's, it was in Food Science with a specialization in Fermentation Science. I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed food science in general. It was not an industry that I had been introduced to in my schooling. I thought to myself, “well, if this wine thing doesn't work out, I really still do like food science and this aspect of industry”.
38:01.20 Patty Skinkis
I'm glad it worked out, and I'm glad you've been serving on our advisory panel and been an active participant. So, I thank you for that as well as the rest of the HiRes Team. I want to thank you for joining us today.
If you want to learn more about the HiRes Vineyard Nutrition Project, you can go to our website at https://highresvineyardnutrition.com, and also check out the Winemakers Research Exchange -- I know I'm going to.
If you have a chance, and if you've been enjoying this podcast, please check out the podcast website to take a brief survey. Thank you!
Show notes and links
For more information about Emily Hodson
Related podcast episodes:
- Season 1, Episode 1 | How it All Started (Russ Smithyman)
- Season 1, Episode 11 | Vineyard to Winery – Looking Beyond YAN (Amanda Stewart)
- Season 2, Episode 11| Virginia Nitrogen Trials – A Tale of Two Cultivars (Dana Acimovic)
- Season 2, Episode 9 | Does Vineyard Nitrogen Impact Wine sensory? (Megan Mershon)
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Emily Hodson, winemaker at Veritas Vineyard and Winery, highlights the role of nitrogen and potassium in wine quality. She addresses challenges with high potassium in Virginia soils and promotes organic nutrients and precise vineyard management. Her involvement in Winemakers Research Exchange and the HiRes Vineyard Nutrition Project, is leading to practical, science-based solutions for viticulture and winemaking improvements in Virginia and beyond.
