Grape Expectations

Grape Expectations

By Francis X. Gilpin

Associate Editor

A drive down the dirt road on the Pruitt Ranch is a trip back into Florida's agricultural past. Cattle graze on the 3,600 acres of Pasco County pastureland, although their four-mile proximity to Interstate 75 makes eviction by real estate development always a possibility.

But J. Clayton Pruitt, who owns the Land O' Lakes spread, wasn't thinking condominiums four years ago when he invited veteran Gulf Coast vintner Earl T. Kiser to carve out a piece of the ranch for Florida Estates Winery. Pruitt was thinking Cabernet.

"We don't make a huge profit," says Pruitt, 73, a retired heart surgeon who lives in St. Petersburg, "but we do make money."

And the winery's makeshift tasting room along that dirt road may provide a window on a new frontier in Florida agriculture.

Florida winemaking goes back centuries. But it's been considered an exercise in folly by serious grape lovers who have been swept up in an American wine renaissance since the 1970s.

Baby boomers have developed a taste for European hybrid grapes that produce mostly dry wines. The muscadine and scuppernong grapes that survive the subtropical climate of Florida yield sweeter juice, which boomers might associate with the skid-row winos of their youth.

"To the rest of the world, they're not Chardonnay or Cabernet and so they are less than desirable," says Kiser, 75, of Fort Myers, who has been experimenting with and crushing Florida grapes for a generation.

But University of Florida horticulturalists are finding ways to allow what Mother Nature has heretofore forbidden.

Biology professor Dennis J. Gray and colleagues have patented a method for growing vines that are resistant to a disease that has long plagued Florida grape growers - and now causes expensive havoc for their more celebrated brethren in California. The disease is called Pierce's Disease, an insect-bred bacteria that kills vines.

Thanks to Gray's genetic engineering, Pruitt says "there's no reason we couldn't grow grapes as well as California."

Even though the process could take years, such a breakthrough could be quite profitable for the patient entrepreneur: Floridians consumed more wine last year than the residents of every other state except one, according to Adams Beverage Group, a market research firm. That state, of course, was the Golden State, California.

"A lot of retailers have targeted Florida," says Marc E. Wagner, director of marketing and sales for Florida Estates.

With new technology, Kiser says it is time for Florida wineries to lay the groundwork for the day when they can blanket their own wine-loving state with offerings for the connoisseur.

More wineries

The number of Florida wineries has doubled in the past five years, reflecting a broader trend. "It's a national story," says Bob Paulish, president of the Florida Grape Growers Association and a vineyard owner in the Hillsborough County community of Lithia. Florida boasts 14 so-called farm wineries and others are seeking certification from the state Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services.

A Florida farm winery cannot produce more than 250,000 gallons of wine a year, must maintain at least 10 acres of vineyards in the state, and has to be open for sales and tastings at least 30 hours a week. In exchange, the winery gains exposure from directional signs posted on state roads and other benefits.

Kiser operates the state's oldest farm winery. Eden Vineyards & Winery, located about 10 miles east of Fort Myers in the Lee County hamlet of Alva, produced its first wine in 1985.

Other farm wineries have sprung up along the Gulf Coast in Bradenton and St. Petersburg.

During the past 20 years, however, Kiser says Florida wineries have lived off novelty rather than reputation.

"We've enjoyed more media exposure than the size of the industry warrants," says Kiser. "The industry is insignificant, compared to other states."

The 14 farm wineries reported selling a combined 282,000 gallons of wine crushed from Florida-grown fruit during a recent 12-month period, according to state records. Almost 80% of those sales were by Seavin Inc., a family-owned operator of two north Florida wineries, San Sebastian in St. Augustine and Lakeridge in Clermont.

Paulish, whose Blue Heron Vineyard sells grapes to both of those wineries, defends the improving quality of their output. A hybrid bunch grape developed for Florida cultivation produces a crisp wine that hints of a classic Sauvignon Blanc, according to Paulish.

But some of the Florida-produced wines come from the citrus fruit more commonly found in the Sunshine State. St. Petersburg's Florida Orange Groves and Winery primarily squeezes citrus for its fermented juice.

Better wine through science

Kiser and Pruitt founded their company, Wine Estates International Inc., in 2001 on a similar quest to produce unconventional wine.

They first attempted a watermelon wine using surplus melons from a Pruitt farm in Dunnellon. "But we weren't able to make anything that tasted any good," says Pruitt.

Kiser had just upgraded Eden Vineyards & Winery, so he brought the used winemaking equipment up to Land O' Lakes. Kiser figured he could sell more wine to the public at Florida Estates because it was closer to I-75 than the Alva winery.

Wagner, the marketing director at Florida Estates, says annual sales at the winery have increased by 20%.

Kiser has planted vines supplied by UF's Dennis Gray, but it will be another two to three years before they bear usable grapes. In the meantime, Wine Estates International hauls part of the Alva harvest north to make blush, red, spice and white wines.

"Obviously, Florida isn't known for its high-quality wine. But we try to be unique by offering something that someone else can't offer," says Wagner. "We've blended our wines for the Florida lifestyle, a little sweeter."

The Plantation Red, for example, tastes like a Beaujolais Nouveau. In promotional material, Florida Estates recommends using the Plantation Red as an ingredient for making Sangria.

For the refined palate, Wine Estates International contracts with a Chilean winery to bottle and label Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Merlot for Florida Estates.

During a recent 12-month period, Florida Estates reported selling about 340 cases of Florida wine.

Between his two wineries, Kiser says they produce a combined total of about 10,000 cases a year.

Wagner sells to tourists and a few regulars who bound down Pruitt's dirt road to the tasting room, which used to be the ranch's bunkhouse where cowhands ate and slept.

But Kiser would like to see Florida wineries show more ambition. He's not content merely to dispense saccharine varietals to charmed vacationers as roadside amusement.

"You can only drink so much sweet," says Kiser. "Unless the wineries compete for the wines that the public wants to drink, it's insignificant."

With Dennis Gray's new breed of vine cuttings, Kiser is convinced some vintner with money and energy will someday make Florida grapes as coveted as the West Coast grown.

It just won't be him. "I'm [almost] 76 years old," he says. "I'm not running the race like I did."

Trendy Industry Needs Long-Term Cures

In May 2001, the University of Florida and the U.S. Department of Agriculture received a patent for a new method of combating Pierce's Disease, a scourge of state grape growers for years.

Pierce's Disease kills vines bearing grapes used to produce some of our most popular wines. The disease, caused by bacteria from an insect known as the glassy-winged sharpshooter, used to besiege primarily growers in the southeastern United States. But, in the 1990s, it resurfaced in Southern California after more than a century. Pierce's Disease has since spread to Mendocino, Napa and Sonoma counties, the Wine Country north of San Francisco.

UF scientist Dennis J. Gray and his research team developed a technique that involves adding a synthetic version of a gene that silkworm larvae use to kill bacteria and fungi to grapes.

Gray told the Napa Register newspaper shortly after the 2001 patent approval that it will take years to graft vines and roots together to make disease-resistant grapes for every wine.

The genetic tinkering faces opposition in environmental strongholds such as California. Plus, the process might alter the taste of wine along with the plant genes.

Whether wine will still be as popular with Americans by then is another question.

U.S. wine consumption has historically lagged Europe's and the fondness of baby boomers for the drink hasn't changed that. In 2000, the U.S. was 34th in terms of global per-capita consumption, according to the Wine Institute.

The explosion in American wine sales in the 1970s peaked in the early 1980s, when the oldest of the boomers reached their heavy social drinking years. Sales dropped in the early 1990s before picking up again due to higher boomer incomes, according to Sonoma State University economist Steven C. Cuellar and Kendall Jackson Winery analyst Aaron Lucey in Santa Rosa, Calif. Cuellar and Lucey argue that America is likely to lose its fascination with wine again, as the martini-slurping twentysomethings of 2005 mature.

"Today's young wine consumers can be expected to consume less wine as they age than previous generations, especially that of the first generation baby boomers," Cuellar and Lucey wrote in a research paper last year.

"Much of the increase in wine consumption that did occur throughout the 1990s was due to the fact that existing wine drinkers increased their consumption of wine rather than new consumers being introduced to wine consumption. Because the rise in consumption is not driven by the entry of new consumers, future wine consumption will be negatively affected."

Florida farm wineries

Wine produced in state and sold by winery, August 2004 to July 2005

Winery Location Gallons

Lakeridge Winery and Vineyards Clermont 121,243

San Sebastian Winery St. Augustine 84,536

Florida Orange Groves and Winery St. Petersburg 38,154

Chautauqua Vineyard DeFuniak Springs 18,344

Dakotah Vineyards and Winery Chiefland 6,586

SeaBreeze Winery Panama City Beach 4,959

Eden Vineyards and Winery Alva 2,297

Rosa Fiorelli Winery Bradenton 2,105

Three Oaks Winery Vernon 1,313

Henscratch Farms Vineyards and Winery Lake Placid 1,130

Florida Estates Winery Land O' Lakes 808

Schnebly Redland's Winery Homestead 450

Monticello Vineyards and Winery Monticello 42

Emerald Coast Wine Cellars Destin 0

Source: Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco