Novices make vineyards a growth industry in North Carolina

A new crop of farmers tries to build a future in winemaking

In California, wine country means oak barrels, cavernous tasting rooms and delicate stemware.

In North Carolina, it often looks a little more like Jim Ward's place: a few acres of spindly grapevines and a garage cluttered with pesticide sprayers, grape crushers and jugs of homemade wine.

Ward is one of a new crop of Tar Heel farmers who are banking on a future in wine. Thanks to these optimistic wine lovers -- many of whom come from office jobs and had never grown anything more than a potted plant -- wineries are opening in droves and tender grape shoots are sprouting in every region of the state.

"I just drank a lot of wine," Ward, 57, said of his qualifications to start a vineyard.

Since planting grapes four years ago on a family farm in Durham County, Ward has battled deer and birds, which like to feast on his grapes. He has lost a good chunk of his vineyard to disease. He has spent more than $40,000 and nearly every free moment, when he's not working full-time at SAS. And he is still years from making any money.

This business, he is learning, isn't all about tastings on the verandah.

Gill Giese, who teaches viticulture -- a fancy word for grape growing -- at Surry Community College, is in the heart of the state's burgeoning wine industry, the Yadkin Valley. He says he constantly fields questions from novices who want to start their own wineries.

"People have their mind made up before they get here," Giese said. "They've been to France or California. They've drunk some wine with their friends, and it's very romantic."

In the past five years, the number of wineries in the state has jumped from fewer than 20 to more than 50 -- most of them selling European-style wines, not the sweet muscadine wines made from native grapes. In just the past two years, the state's grape acreage has increased by a third.

What some of these new farmers don't understand until they get into the business, Giese said, is that growing grapes, even varieties with names like Chambourcin and Vidal Blanc, is still farming. It's dirty, labor-intensive, expensive and full of risk -- especially in North Carolina's wet climate.

Hope against the odds

Agricultural experts used to say that European bunch grapes, used in wines such as Chardonnay and Merlot, were a terrible fit with North Carolina's humidity.

North Carolina gets an average of 40 to 90 inches of rain a year, depending on the region, much of it during prime grape-growing season. By comparison, California's wine country gets 25 inches, nearly all of it in winter.

Moisture makes the grapes susceptible to all kinds of diseases: black rot, bitter rot, downy mildew, powdery mildew, the experts said. And they weren't wrong.

Grape farmers struggle with all those problems. They must spray pesticides every week to keep fungi off their vines, compared with a half-dozen times a year in drier climates.

Growers also have discovered a scourge no one predicted.

Vineyards in much of the state are susceptible to Pierce's Disease, caused by untreatable bacteria that choke off a plant's nutrient supply and can kill a whole vineyard in five years. While that disease isn't specific to North Carolina -- it has caused huge problems in California -- it is harder to control in warm climates. And unlike California, this state has little money for research to help growers prevent and manage the disease.

Wine connoisseurs debate whether North Carolina can grow wines as tasty as those made from grapes grown in dry climates. Experts say the best vintages are always made after dry years.