A34-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 15,2001
Kingsville Branch Serves Grapes , Growing Industry
KINGSVILLE, Ohio
There’s more than one way to eat
a Concord grape. You can suck
out the juice, chew up the pulp,
then spit out what’s left of the
pulp, seeds and skin. Or, simply,
you can wolf it down whole.
Children discover these meth
ods and more at the Grape Re
search Branch in Ashtabula
County. The 25-acre facility, an
outlying branch of Ohio State
University’s Ohio Agricultural
Research and Development Cen
ter, hosts an estimated 600 visi
tors a year, most of them stu
dents. They walk the vineyards,
taste the grapes and take home
samples of freshly squeezed juice.
“The kids get a lot of senses
excited,” said Greg Johns, branch
manager. “The tastes, the sights,
the smell of the ripening grapes.
The parents I run into say their
kids talk all about it.”
Including how to chomp a
Concord. It’s not like eating a
Thompson Seedless.
“A lot of kids don’t have a clue
that grapes are grown in Ohio,”
Johns said. “They’ve never eaten
a Concord grape. It’s one of the
things I bring up: How do you eat
it? It’s got seeds, the slip skin (the
skin comes off like a bag), the in
sides are gooey and juicy, and be
tween myself, the kids and the
teachers, we talk about the differ
ent ways we’ve learned to eat
them: whether you suck the juice
out and spit the slimy part on the
ground or eat the whole thing or
what.”
Concord is the most widely
grown grape in Ohio. It’s used
mainly for jelly and juice. But its
acreage has fallen because of low
prices: $250 a ton versus $2,000 a
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ton for Pinot noir. Some Concord
vines have been abandoned or
have been replaced by higher
value wine grapes.
That’s mostly the case at the
Kingsville branch, where Con
cords serve as teaching tools but
aren’t used much for research.
Wine grapes, instead, are the
focus. Studies look at pest, weed
and disease control, the effects of
compost, and the performance of
a wide range of cultivars, clones,
rootstocks, spacings and training
systems. The grapes, picked in
fall, are trucked to OARDC’s
Wooster campus, where they’re
analyzed and made into wine.
Why focus on wine grapes?
Demand. Only about 30 percent
of Ohio grapes are used for wine
production, and Ohio wine mak
ers, who import about half of
what they need, are eager for
more.
As a result, more Ohio grape
growers are
getting into
wine grapes.
And more
Ohio wine
makers are
growing
their own,
too, to re
duce reli
ance on im
ports and to
better con
trol quality.
>sxu
The
branch was
established
in 1984
when
OAR D C
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acres on state route 84 from the
Ashtabula County Commission
ers. Planting began the next year.
The site was chosen for its
closeness to Lake Erie and to
grape growers. Lake Erie moder
ates the climate for grape grow
ing; Ashtabula is Ohio’s top
grape-growing county.
The branch has four acres of
wine grapes, among them Char
donnay, Riesling and Cabernet
franc; a half acre of Concords; a
shop/office/storage building; a re
cycling tunnel sprayer that
slashes pesticide use and drift; a
trickle-irrigation system for some
of the rows; and a cold-storage
unit. A new storage building is
planned.
Johns is the branch’s sole full
time employee. He coordinates
the research, cares for the vines,
and, as needed, hires part-time
and harvest help. He also gives
dozens of tours “We really hear
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good things about them after
ward,” he said and works with
industry people.
“Grape growers and wine
makers in Ohio are different than
any other fruit growers,” he said.
“There doesn’t seem to be the
competition, the keeping of se
crets, that I’ve seen among grow
ers of other commodities. You
can be starting a vineyard and a
winery right next door to another
vineyard and winery, and (the
owners) will be helping you all
along the way. They’ll loan you
their tractors and their sprayers,
and they’ll tell you how they did
something.
“They’re very friendly people,”
he said. “They share everything.
They don’t hold anything back. I
love working with them.”
Johns and colleagues respond
in kind. They conduct research,
tell what they learn, and save
grape growers the cost and risk of
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doing the experiments them
selves. Articles, bulletins and
newsletters are published. Educa
tional events including Ohio
Grape and Wine Day, Winter
Grape School and the Grape
Twilight Tow are held.
“We provide the industry with
a baseline of information, said
OARDC Director Steve Slack on
a recent visit to the branch. “The
studies done here help form the
foundation for a lot of what’s
done in the industry.”
Details about OARDC’s grape
research program are at http://
www.oardc.ohiostate.edu/
grapeweb/.
For more information on proj
ects and tours at the branch, con
tact Johns at (440) 224-0273 or
Johns, l@osu.edu.
OARDC is the research arm of
Ohio State’s College of Food, Ag
ricultural, and Environmental
Sciences.
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