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CapitalPress.com
Friday, April 8, 2022
People & Places
Climatologist takes over
family vineyard and winery
Established 1928
Capital Press Managers
Joe Beach ..................... Editor & Publisher
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
ROSEBURG, Ore. —
Though he’s no longer a
full-time climatologist, Greg
Jones hasn’t stopped poring
over weather data.
Most of his research is
now focused on the 76 acres
surrounding Abacela Win-
ery near Roseburg, Ore., giv-
ing Jones a small-scale per-
spective on the global climate
phenomena he spent decades
studying as an academic.
“It’s the joy of doing field
work,” Jones said. “The day-
to-day is the most rewarding.”
As a renowned wine clima-
tologist, Jones has long been
crunching numbers to deter-
mine the climate’s effect on
vineyards and winemaking.
He most recently worked
at Linfield University in
McMinnville, Ore., after two
decades at Southern Oregon
University in Ashland.
Wealth of information
Since taking over opera-
tions at Abacela last year, he’s
been collecting and analyzing
temperature, precipitation and
soil moisture data to make
on-the-ground decisions.
“Here, I get to do all that
and actually act on that infor-
mation,” Jones said. “There’s
a wealth of information to act
on.”
The winery annually pro-
duces about 14,000 cases
from 15 grape varieties
growing on the property,
which is equipped with three
weather stations, 24 tempera-
ture sensors and 40 soil mois-
ture sensors.
“With all that, you can tell
I’m a data geek,” he said.
Jones still plans to “dab-
ble” in academic research,
focusing on the way rising
temperatures are likely to
impact various grape-grow-
ing regions around the world.
Climate impact
nuanced
While climate change
studies often deal in the cat-
astrophic effects of increased
heat and extreme weather,
the implications for viticul-
ture are more nuanced.
“It’s getting better in
many places but it’s getting
challenging in other places,”
he said. “There’s a lot of
adaptive potential in that
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Carl Sampson .................. Managing Editor
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Western
Innovator
GREG JONES
Occupation: CEO of
Abacela Winery, wine
climatologist
Age: 62
Family: Wife, Liz, and
grown twin sons, Adam
and Curtis
Hometown: Roseburg,
Ore.
Mateusz Perkowski/Capital Press
Greg Jones, CEO of Abacela Winery in Roseburg, Ore., is also a wine climatologist who
studies the global impacts of climate change on viticulture and winemaking.
framework.”
Regions that were once on
the “margin” of being able
to successfully grow wine
grapes, such as Oregon’s
Willamette Valley, have been
able to more consistently
produce quality fruit.
While Pinot noir is the
valley’s staple variety, some
grape growers are also trying
cultivars traditionally associ-
ated with warmer climates,
such as Tempranillo, Syrah
and Merlot.
“Many people in the Wil-
lamette Valley are expand-
ing beyond the cool climate
potential,” Jones said.
As time goes on, viticul-
ture is likely to expand into
new regions — for example,
British Columbia in Canada
may someday become a wine
powerhouse on the order of
West Coast states, he said.
“There will be oppor-
tunities for many people,
clearly,” Jones said.
Areas where temperatures
are already high or that are
struggling with insufficient
or unreliable irrigation water,
on the other hand, may find it
harder to economically pro-
duce wine.
Regions commonly asso-
ciated with specific wine
varieties may also run into
marketing problems if climb-
ing temperatures force grow-
ers to replace them with dif-
ferent cultivars.
“If Burgundy had to grow
something other than Pinot,
would people recognize it?
Probably not,” Jones said.
Reliable data on the tim-
ing of plant life cycles show
that bud break, flowering and
grape maturity are occurring
earlier than they did histor-
ically, ultimately resulting
in higher sugar levels and
degraded acids in the fruit.
“The plants have told us
the climate has changed,” he
said.
Grape quality has gen-
erally improved in many
regions but the effect of ris-
ing temperatures changes
some key factors, Jones
said. More sugar equates to
a higher alcohol level, while
reduced acid can render wine
less “lively” when paired
with food.
However, these impacts
can be offset by removing
alcohol and adding acid, he
said. “Wine makers can play
with that a little bit.”
Family interest
Though Jones took a cir-
cuitous route to become a
climatologist, his interest in
wine was sparked early in life
by his father, Earl Jones. As
a medical doctor in the San
Francisco Bay area, the elder
Jones took his young family
on field trips to the then-na-
scent wine regions of Napa
and Sonoma.
At one point, they even
spoke to a man working on a
building who turned out to be
the famed winemaker Robert
Mondavi, who was construct-
ing his winery.
Initially, though, Jones was
more drawn to the restaurant
industry than to a career in
science as a young man. He
worked as a chef in California
and Colorado throughout his
teens and 20s.
“Becoming a chef, I had
to understand wine,” he said.
“That’s where my whole wine
connection started.”
Due to the late nights and
long hours, Jones eventually
“burned out” on the restau-
rant industry and started a golf
equipment company. Eco-
nomic problems in the late
1980s hurt the golf industry,
convincing him to go to col-
lege at the age of 29.
His original goal was to
study hydrology and become
a water manager but he real-
ized that there was a demand
for climatological research in
the wine industry.
His father, who was plan-
ning to invest in a winery and
vineyard, was regularly pep-
pering Jones with questions
that required delving into
such data.
After studying the effects
of climate on the Bordeaux
region of France for his doc-
torate, Jones graduated from
the University of Virginia
with a Ph.D. in the mid-1990s
— just as his father was
developing the Abacela vine-
yards and winery.
Wine and climate
“The further I got into
the data, the more it became
apparent the climate was
Education: Bachelor’s
degree in environmental
science from the Univer-
sity of Virginia in 1993,
Ph.D. in environmental
science from the Univer-
sity of Virginia in 1998.
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changing,” he said. “Climate
change had to be included in
the models for the models to
work.”
Jones took a job at South-
ern Oregon University in the
late 1990s but it was at an
international geological con-
ference in 2003 that his career
as a wine climatologist really
took off.
He was widely quoted in
articles in the mainstream and
scientific press about wine
and climate change, leading
to speaking engagements and
research assignments around
the globe.
“This is something we all
know. We all know wine to
some degree,” Jones said of
the interest in his research.
“That’s what connected me to
people all over the world.”
In 2017, Jones was hired
by Linfield University to
develop its wine education
program, which he oversaw
until 2021 when he stepped
in as Abacela’s CEO upon his
father’s retirement.
Climate change is going
to transform the global wine
industry, but in a sense, that’s
nothing new — winemakers
have always been modify-
ing and upgrading their pro-
cesses, he said.
“If you’re not adapting,
you simply wouldn’t be in
business,” Jones said.
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Public Lands Foundation honors Idaho aquifer recharge manager
The Public Lands Foun-
dation has honored Wes-
ley Hipke, recharge pro-
gram manager for the Idaho
Water Resource Board and
state Department of Water
Resources.
The foundation presented
Hipke with a Landscape
Stewardship Certificate of
Appreciation. He manages
the board’s Eastern Snake
Plain Aquifer recharge
program.
He has worked to
develop the program since
2015, when the Idaho Legis-
lature began funding devel-
opment and construction
of recharge sites across the
plain in the state’s eastern
and south-central regions.
The state aims to return
about 250,000 acre-feet of
water to the Lake Erie-sized
aquifer each year.
The aquifer was over-
drawn by about 200,0000
acre-feet annually before the
program began, according
IDWR
Wesley Hipke, recharge program manager for the Idaho
Water Resource Board and state Department of Water
Resources.
to the department. Causes
of its decline over decades
included business and res-
idential development and
usage, and improved irriga-
tion delivery systems that
leaked less.
Hipke, board staff and
irrigation districts and canal
companies have developed
about 10 recharge sites.
Many are on U.S. Bureau of
Land Management ground.
He and staff researched
and designed sites and proj-
ects, and worked with BLM
urday-Sunday. Website: https://bit.
ly/36o2wMD
stock Hall of Fame will honor its
newest inductees on April 12 at the
Turf Club during the organization’s
61st annual banquet. Those induct-
ees to be honored this year are: cat-
tle producers Guy and Sherry Colyer
of Bruneau, sheep producers Don
and Patricia Pickett of Oakley, for-
mer Idaho State Brand Inspector
Larry Hayhurst of Nampa and dairy-
man John Reitsma (posthumously)
of Jerome. The banquet will open
with social time at 6:30 p.m. fol-
lowed by dinner at 7 p.m. Tickets
for the prime rib dinner are $30 and
can be reserved by calling Eric Ben-
nett at (208) 320-5769.
and others to secure approv-
als. They also worked with
irrigation districts and canal
companies to modify sys-
tems as needed.
Building the sites fairly
quickly helped recharge vol-
ume exceed the annual goal
four straight years, the board
said in a release issued by
the foundation and BLM.
Recharge continues to aid
the aquifer even as reduced
water supply and drought
the last two years pushed
volumes below the state’s
annual target.
The board said depart-
ment hydrologists docu-
mented the return of 1.8 mil-
lion acre-feet to the aquifer
over the program’s first five
years. Restoring it to sus-
tainable levels will require a
long-term strategic effort.
“Watching this program
develop from afar, we are
impressed with the partner-
ship between Mr. Hipke, the
water board and the BLM
for working together to cre-
ate aquifer-recharge sites
across the Eastern Snake
Plain to ensure the long-
term sustainable health of
one of the largest freshwa-
ter aquifers in the West-
ern United States,” said
Mary Jo Rugwell, Public
Lands Foundation president.
“Everyone in Idaho under-
stands the value of restor-
ing the aquifer to sustainable
levels.”
“The importance of this
effort cannot be overstated
for the future of Idaho,” said
Codie Martin, who nomi-
nated Hipke for the award
and manages the BLM Sho-
shone Field Office.
Martin said aquifer health
has “tremendous positive
implications for the BLM’s
multiple-use mission and
resources including wildlife
habitat, ecosystem health
and vigor, livestock grazing,
outdoor recreation, wildland
fire and wild horse herds.”
THURSDAY-SATURDAY
APRIL 14-16
assortment of high-quality oral and
silent auction items. Website: http://
www.owaonline.org/auction
Free Waste Pesticide Collection
Event in Roseburg: Douglas County
Fairgrounds, 2110 Frear St., Roseburg, Ore.
The Oregon Department of Agriculture
through the Pesticide Stewardship Part-
nership is sponsoring a Free Waste Pes-
ticide Collection Event. This event is an
opportunity for landowners, farmers and
other commercial pesticide users to rid
storage facilities of unwanted or unused
pesticide products. Registration for this
event is required by April 1. Contact: Kath-
ryn Rifenburg, 971-600-5073, kathryn.
rifenburg@oda.oregon.gov Website:
https://bit.ly/3AdxFgp
CALENDAR
Submit upcoming ag-related
events on www.capitalpress.com
or by email to newsroom@capital-
press.com.
THROUGH
SUNDAY MAY 1
2022 Wooden Shoe Tulip Fes-
tival: Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm,
33814 S. Meridian Road, Woodburn,
Ore. Experience the beauty of 40
acres of tulips and over 200 acres
of outdoor space and activities this
spring. We are again offering tick-
ets online only this year to minimize
crowds and allow for more time to
enjoy our fields. Hours: 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
Monday-Friday; 8 a.m.-7 p.m. Sat-
THROUGH
SATURDAY APRIL 9
2022 Idaho FFA State Conven-
tion: College of Southern Idaho,
315 Falls Ave., Twin Falls, Idaho.
More than 1,400 FFA members from
around Idaho will gather for this
year’s convention. Website: https://
bit.ly/3J2JAB1
TUESDAY APRIL 12
Southern Idaho Livestock
Hall of Fame Induction: 6:30 p.m.
Turf Club, 734 Falls Ave. Twin Falls,
Idaho. The Southern Idaho Live-
Spring Fair: Washington State
Fairgrounds, 110 9th Ave. SW, Puy-
allup,Wash. Celebrate spring at the
fair and all things agriculture. Web-
site: https://www.thefair.com
SATURDAY APRIL 16
Oregon Women for Agriculture
Auction and Dinner: 5:30 p.m. Linn
County Expo Center, 3700 Knox Butte
Road E, Albany, Ore. Oregon Women for
Agriculture is excited to host our annual
Auction and Dinner returning in-per-
son this year! Make plans to attend for
a fun-filled evening of socializing, shar-
ing delicious food and bidding on an
Mailing address:
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P.O. Box 2048
Salem, OR 97308-2048
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Letters to the Editor: Send your
comments on agriculture-related public
issues to opinions@capitalpress.com, or
mail your letter to “Opinion,” c/o Capital
Press. Letters should be limited to
300 words. Deadline: Noon Monday.
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Index
Markets .................................................12
Opinion ...................................................6
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