ROCHESTER, N.Y. — New York state vineyards have been challenged by the weather for years. Last year, the mid-May frost took a toll on grapes' post-bud break. The year before that, a drought impacted the vineyards. And, in 2021, excess rain effected the years crop.

After 17 years of business, Bruce Murphy, owner of Boundary Breaks Vineyard, is looking forward to catching a break in 2024.

“You can see if you look at these shoots here, there’s just a lot. I mean, this is, they’re going to be a lot of grapes right here,” Murphy showed.

However, this year, a Cornell University study is raising concerns over sour rot, a disease that lowers vineyard yields and wine quality.

“This is an example of sour rot and basically this occurs when the skins very fragile like think of a banana that’s very ripe. The skin is now subject to falling apart. What happens here is you can get an injury to the berry, or you can get an insect that will puncture that berry,” Murphy displayed. “The fruit flies in particular, what not only established the breakage or the damage, the juice seeps out. Other fruit flies come along. They carry bacteria, they fly around, they transmit bacteria, and suddenly you have grapes that are beginning to smell like vinegar out there. And that’s again, not what you want your wine to taste like, like vinegar.”

Murphy says the skins become more fragile when they’re exposed to too much moisture.

“If there are loose clusters, that's much less likely to fill up with moisture and split. We retain types of grapes known for tighter clusters. Pinot noir is a tight cluster to grape,” he explained. “We can get a lot of moisture and rain in September. The vine picks up all that moisture from the ground, transmits it into these clusters. They will split. The insects - bees and fruit flies, they’ll arrive and start to spread that disease throughout the vineyards.”

This time of year, sour rot is less of a concern compared to other weather risks.

“We’re actually most concerned around here about mold or mildew. We talked about that, but what we saw there was a very brief, very hot, still and humid night. And then we saw just a touch of mildew occurring here,” he said, “So, this kind of thing here, that little bit of damage is, it’s inconsequential, but it’s evidence that you can get a type of mildew taking place on your vines.”

There are ways around preventing disease in the vineyard. For Murphy, it’s been a bit of trial and error, but it’s a mixed approach that’s been most successful.

“In a really well-managed vineyard, you will come through and you’ll see in this area where you see all the clusters of grapes, you’ll see the leaves removed,” Murphy showed.

About every two days, he and his team take a walk through the vineyard to see how progress is coming along. In doing so, they take off any extra leaves to increase airflow and minimize the risk of moisture overload in the grapes. Murphy also uses bird netting to avoid other pests breaking the skins of the grapes. Plus, he’s tried multiple different forms of fungicide sprays, which have proved most efficient in his experience, although they are still an investment.

“It’s probably between $70,000 - $80,000 a year in spray for the 50 acres that we manage every year. And that’s a combination of the equipment, the personnel, the materials and the time,” he said.

All this strategy is helping the vineyard expand an extra ‘seven block’ as farmers say, indicating a handful of more grape varietals. In about three years time, the 12-inch vines will look like they’ve been growing for years.