Grape & Wine Cluster Research Updates: Update #2 - June 25
2026-06-28 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Vancouver) | Zoom
Join us to hear from several researchers working within the AgriScience Grape & Wine Research Cluster as they share updates on the first three years of their research projects! Attendees will have a chance to learn about current research from across Canada on topics like soil health, vine stress, wine flavour modification, cold hardiness, and more. We hope you will join us!
Update #2 – June 25th
Activities covered within this webinar will include:

Activity 12: Selection of superior grapevine material using traditional field evaluations and genomic/metabolic signatures for cold resilience (Dr. Jim Willwerth, Brock University)
Activity 14: Increasing climate change resilience by a better understanding of cold hardiness and with novel frost protection methods (Dr. Andréanne Hébert-Haché, Centre de recherche agroalimentaire de Mirabel)
Activity 16: Increase productivity, climate change adaptation, and resilience of northeastern Canadian vineyards through different weed, insects, fungal disease, and virus control strategies (Dr. Andréanne Hébert-Haché, Centre de recherche agroalimentaire de Mirabel)
Activity 18: Growing more resilient and hardy wine grapes in the face of climate change in an Eastern Canadian environment (Dr. Harrison Wright, AAFC Kentville)

Date: Thursday, June 25th, 2026
Time: 12:00pm to 2:00pm Eastern time
Location: Zoom webinar
The webinar is free to attend but registration is required!
Register here

The Science of Stress with Dr. Scholasch: How Water Shapes Wine Quality
2026-07-07 11:00 - 12:00 | Le Vieux Pin, 5496 Black Sage Road, Oliver, BC, V0H 1T1, Canada
Overview

Join us for a lunch with Dr. Thibaut Scholasch, co-founder of Fruition Sciences and one of the world’s leading authorities on vine water status and its relationship to fruit composition, yield, and wine quality.
Dr. Scholasch’s work is grounded in over two decades of sap flow research and applied vineyard physiology, and he has reshaped how growers and winemakers in regions from Napa to Bordeaux think about irrigation and the impacts it has on climatic adaptation and wine quality.
In this talk, Dr. Scholasch will cover:

How vine water stress (and the timing of it) drives anthocyanin, tannin, and sugar accumulation
Practical tools for measuring vine water status in real time, beyond visual cues and soil moisture alone
Yield-quality tradeoffs: when reducing yield actually improves quality, and when it’s a wasted sacrifice
How these principles apply specifically to the climatic and soil conditions of the Okanagan Valley

This is a working session for growers, vineyard managers, winemakers, and researchers who want to move past rules-of-thumb irrigation scheduling and toward a physiologically grounded, data-informed approach.
Details:
📅 Tuesday, July 7th
🕐 11:00 a.m.
📍 Le Vieux Pin
🎟️ Free with RSVP
Lunch will be served. Q&A to follow.

Register Here

BCWGC July 16, 2026 R&D Committee Meeting
2026-07-16 12:00 - 13:00 | Zoom
July 16, 2026 – 12:00 – 1:00 – Dr. Jumi Gogoi, UBC – Decision support for BC wine grapes: Cold hardiness modeling and the Canadian Vineyard Atlas
This session will introduce new predictive models being developed to forecast cold hardiness risk across BC’s diverse vineyard regions and grape varieties. We will also showcase the Canadian Vineyard Atlas – a free, interactive map app that lets growers explore vineyard locations and access daily weather and satellite data across BC. Together, these tools aim to support BC growers with timely, science-based information for vineyard risk management.
Register Here
