Mysterious Disease Is Stalking Vineyards

Here in wine country, harvest time is just past. The grapes have come and been crushed. The first pungent smells of fermentation seem everywhere.

And at some vineyards, a bit of fear also wafts in the air.

With the destructive zeal of a 1950s horror film monster, a fungus dubbed “black goo” has become the latest menace to hit the state’s wine industry.

The disease has choked life out of newly planted vines in scattered patches around the state, pushed some small vineyards to the brink of bankruptcy and spawned lawsuits by a few angry growers.

And there is plenty of finger-pointing: Afflicted growers blame the nurseries. Nursery owners say that growers are probably at fault. Few seem to agree on how widespread the problem is or how serious a threat it poses.

“There’s a lot of animosity, a lot of bad blood for people who feel they’ve been burned,” said Michael Porter, a vineyard consultant in Sonoma County.

Everyone is frustrated with the slow pace of efforts to arrest the fungus, which first appeared in the mid-1990s. Black goo tends to stalk young vines, choke off the flow of nutrients and cause them to wither from the inside out. The disease leaves behind a sickly black ooze below the bark.

Joe Martin, a vineyard owner for three decades, planted 35 new acres a few years ago around his sprawling Spanish-style estate south of Windsor. Now most of his plants are infected.

“I think a lot of people are in denial about this,” he said on a recent day as he squeezed his sport utility vehicle among the sagging vines. “It’s one of those dirty little problems everyone wants to sweep under the rug.”

Black goo, also known as young vine decline, is just the latest problem for an industry hit hard for a decade by the darker moods of Mother Nature. In the mid-1980s, the root-munching, microscopic bug called Phylloxera began laying waste to huge swaths of the North Coast wine country. More recently, an insect-spread affliction known as Pierce’s disease has plagued growers around the state, hitting particularly hard in Temecula.

Many in the industry suspect that the recent surge in black goo cases may be an unintended consequence of the fight against those earlier problems and the astonishing growth of California’s wine industry.

Growers spent, by some estimates, more than $300 million replanting vines destroyed by Phylloxera. Combined with the spread of the industry into new terrain in the Central Valley, nurseries have faced unprecedented demand to produce grape wood. To meet the demand, some nurseries turned to selling twiggy young plants that in more sedate times might have ended up on the burn pile.

The weaker plants, most experts agree, have been more susceptible to black goo. In addition, some plant pathologists say the new Phylloxera-resistant vines now being planted may be less resistant to the fungus.

That is probably what happened to Tom Simoneau’s vineyard.

Simoneau is known in Sonoma County as “the wine guy” for the spots he does on talk radio station KSRO-AM. He owns 10 acres of cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay vineyards on the western edge of Alexander Valley, just north of Healdsburg.

Seven years ago, he planted a swath of new vines after his plants were hit by Phylloxera. Many of the 2,500 new vines were thin and stalky. Looking back, Simoneau concludes, “I should have rejected half of them.”

The vines were underachievers, sickly looking runts. Many seemed to be sliding toward death. Simoneau has yanked about a third with his tractor and put in fresh plants. But more will almost certainly have to be replaced, he said.

“That’s seven years of watering, seven years of fertilizing, seven years of care,” he said. “The plants can be replaced, but how can you replace the time?”

Some growers are turning to the courts. The owner of a boutique vineyard sued Sonoma Grapevines Inc. in late August, charging that the nursery sold vines it knew were diseased. Sonoma Grapevines turned around and countersued for slander.

As the blame game rages, many vineyard owners have accused state agriculture officials and UC Davis, birthplace of about 95% of the vines planted in the nation, of failing to quickly tackle black goo. Some allege that the university’s Foundation Plant Materials Service unwittingly spread the disease by shipping infected cuttings from its mother vines to nurseries around the state.

Deborah Golino, the service’s director, is deeply disturbed by the criticism. She acknowledges that spores of the fungus are probably present among the 80 acres of grapes at the agriculture center but says that does not mean any of the plants are infected by the disease.

“We’re shipping out only canes of plants that are in extremely good health,” she said. “We have not sent out material that is diseased.”

She and many nursery owners have suggested that some of the afflicted vineyard owners may have hastened the advance of the disease. Many growers are planting far more vines per acre these days than in the past and pushing to harvest grapes before the plants have properly matured, piling on stress that can open the door for disease.

Other experts at UC Davis suggest that the problem hardly qualifies as rampant, estimating that only about 1% of the state’s 900,000 vineyard acres have been hit by black goo.

Lucie Morton, a Virginia-based vineyard consultant and author who first raised concerns about the disease, suspects that such estimates are a gross undercount. Many growers won’t even reveal if they have been hit by the disease, fearful that they might alarm financial backers, she said. She believes that the state should conduct a confidential survey.

Morton and others say the disease could eventually affect not only the quantity of grapes produced, pushing up prices on premium wines, but also the quality. Vines hit with black goo have to be babied, watered hard and fertilized heavily. Such practices run counter to the art of stressing vines to produce the best-tasting wines.

“I’m not saying the sky is falling, but I think this is going to be a chronic problem,” she said. “I don’t see it getting easily corrected.”

Some experts say afflicted vines can be coaxed back to health with proper care. But many growers, faced with big bills to pay, end up yanking them out and starting over.

Martin figures that he will give his grapes one more season. If signs of real improvement don’t show up, he’ll bring in the bulldozer.

“I’m afraid to add up what I’d be out--it’s a big chunk of money,” he said. “And if we rip them out, that day will not be easy. It will not be a nice sight.”