Prunings J
oe Sardinha’s contributions to the province’s tree fruit industry have earned hima posthumous
lifetime achievement award fromthe B.C. Fruit Growers’ Association. Sardinha, who was president of the association from2005 to 2011, died suddenly last summer.His wife Julie was on hand to accept the award during February’s BCFGA annual convention in Kelowna, where she announced that the Sardhina family has established a $1,000 bursary in Joe’s name. It will be administered by the BCFGA as part of its student awards program. The presentation was made by the province’s Lieut.- Governor, Judith Guichon. A life membership in the association was presented to Jim Campbell, who has spent a career as the agricultureministry’s tree fruit and grape specialist in the Okanagan Valley and has operated his own 20-acre orchard in the Osoyoos area. KenHaddrell, longtime operations manager with the Okanagan Plant Improvement Corp. (PICO) received the BCFGA Award ofMerit. The association’s Press Award went to the monthly Country Life newspaper (which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and was
Sardinha Campbell Haddrell
owned by the BCFGA during the early 1930s) and to PeterMacIntyre, of KISS FMin Vernon Mazza Innovation Ltd., a
Summerland agricultural research company, has received $300,000 fromthe federal AgriInnovation Programto bring a new chemical extractionmethod up to commercial scale. The award was announced in December. A year earlier,Mazza Innovation received $175,000 in federal funding to develop a
British Columbia FRUIT GROWER • Spring 2014 31
demonstration-scale systemthat uses pressurized water, rather than chemical solvents, to extract high- value natural products (phytochemicals) fromfruits and vegetables for use in foods and pharmaceuticals. These phytochemicals are reputed to have disease preventive properties and can help boost the nutritional value of everyday foods. The pressurized water process can be applied to by-products of the grape and wine industry. The waste products following extraction are composted easily.”It’s an elegant technology,” Joe Mazza said.”We take water andmodify it to make it behave like an organic solvent.”Mazza, a former principal food and bioscience research scientist at the Pacific Agri- FoodResearch Centre in Summerland, establishedMazza Innovation Ltd. in 2011 to develop and market innovative extraction technologies A rare second icewine harvest
in the same year occurred in the Okanagan during 2013, with both the 2012 and 2013 crops picked in the same calendar year, one in January and the other in November. For the 2013 crop year, there was also a record high volume of grapes, in part because more growers left grapes on the vine for icewine, but also because the early nature of the cold snap meant there was more fruit still hanging. In winters when growers and winemakers are still waiting for the requisite temperatures of -8 C and lower after December, the crop is much smaller, because of natural
dropping, losses to predators and dessication. Some say those freeze- and-thaw cycles experienced by later- picked fruit result in more complex flavors in the frozen grapes that are crushed, but many winemakers are just relieved to get the fruit. There have been years when growers have given up in February and picked the remaining fruit to make a late harvest wine instead, but the premium prices paid for the popular icewine aren’t there for a late harvest. It was Nov. 21 when many growers got the first of the crop off last fall, but some were either still picking, or they waited until a Dec. 7 cold snap to pick the rock-hard berries. B.C. Wine Authority general manager Steve
Berney says an estimated 1,140 tonnes of grapes were left on the vines from the fall harvest for icewine, while only 475 tonnes were held back in 2012, and 554 tonnes in 2011. Calona Vineyards got around the labor problem by using machines to pick the frozen fruit. Winemaker Howard Soon commented, “There are no frozen fingers that way.” Winemaker Eric von Krosigk at Summerhill Pyramid Winery agreed that the icewine harvest is the least fun of all, with both people and equipment stressed by the cold. He attributes the large size of this year’s harvest to the abundance of fruit this year at harvest, so leftover grapes were kept for icewine. He doesn’t expect the large quantity of icewine will impact the market, but says it’s a good opportunity for wineries to diversify their portfolios...
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