Earlier this month, May 9-10, 2023, I attended the WineAmerica National Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. The event was packed with more than 70 “Hill visits” with Congressional leaders, including for the Agriculture and Appropriations Committees of the House and Senate, skillfully arranged for conference attendees by WineAmerica Vice President Michael Kaiser. It was an […]
Projects Underway
Cornell—and Grapes—Chosen for Specialty Crop Focus for NASA Acres
By Mike Hibbard for Cornell AgriTech For more than 50 years, NASA and partner agencies have used satellite imagery to map agriculture worldwide with an eye toward global supply and food security. That technology, however, has largely focused on commodity and row crops. But with the recent launch of a new consortium, dubbed NASA Acres, the […]
Spring Cleaning
Think back to 2017. Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States. People traveled to viewing sites in the “path of totality” to witness the first total solar eclipse to cross the continent since 1918. Wildfires raged around the world, including in the western U.S. and Canada. Hurricanes ravaged Texas, Florida and the Caribbean. […]
Dialing in Water Stress Indicators to Better Reflect Holistic Stress Responses
By Abby Hammermeister Even as more and better technologies emerge to help simplify water management, knowing when, where and how much to irrigate vineyards is a complex question. Commonly, farmers rely on point measures like leaf water potential to help guide management decisions. But it’s not that simple. These measures are destructive and time- and […]
The Fruit of Research
I’ve been a member of the National Grape Research Alliance for five years, and am honored to now serve as the Board Chairwoman for an organization that personally means so much to me. Why do I believe in the importance of research as a mechanism to support the grape and wine industry? Because my family […]
Succeeding at Succession
The main event for NGRA’s Annual Meeting of the Members at the beginning of each year is our elections. Although our term of office for officers is one year, we’ve been fortunate to have low turnover among our leadership. So, officer elections have become pretty routine for NGRA for the last few years. Then 2023 […]
NGRA Elects 2023 Officer and Board Directors
Jessica Youngblood Is First Midwest Grape Grower to Serve as Board Chair SACRAMENTO, CA, February 6, 2023 — At the Annual Meeting of the Members on January 23, 2023, the members of the National Grape Research Alliance (NGRA) elected and/or re-elected officers and Board Directors for the organization. The election installed a leadership team that’s […]
Not Groundhog Day
Obviously, I’m a fan of all grape research. I enjoy attending academic conferences and listening to scientific talks, reading abstracts and sifting through industry media for the science that breaks through to the news. But what really makes my day is learning about research that takes the unexpected turn, when scientists come at a problem […]
2023 Rich Smith Award of Excellence Presented to Marty Clubb
SACRAMENTO, CA, January 25, 2023 – The seventh annual Rich Smith Award of Excellence for outstanding contributions to the American grape and wine industry was presented today to Marty Clubb, co-owner and managing winemaker of L’Ecole No 41, a premium winery in Walla Walla, Washington, and a major contributor to the Washington and American wine […]
Our North Star
In 2022, NGRA engaged a strategic planning professional, Randy Harrington of Strategic Arts & Sciences, to lead us through a process of planning for the next three to five years of growth and evolution—to NGRA 2.0, as one Board member put it. But in working on our strategic plan and revisiting the data that informed […]