Viewpoint: Drift Damage

A common cotton industry herbicide may devastate Texas wine production.

The last two growing seasons in Texas’ High Plains AVA saw historically wretched weather that cut wine grape production by two-thirds, leaving the state’s wine business between a rock and a hard place. Now, legal claims that a chemical herbicide drift from nearby cotton fields has damaged thousands and thousands of vines may ultimately leave the local wine industry in no place at all. The High Plains accounts for as much as 80 percent of production in the fifth biggest wine producing state in the country. But if herbicide drift has damaged enough vines—something more than 100 growers and winemakers claim it has, in a lawsuit filed against the herbicide’s manufacturers last summer—then the future of Texas wine may well be in doubt. “The High Plains has to be an important part…

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Wine Enthusiast (Digital) - 1 Issue, August/September 2022

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