Gene Sigel owns South River Vineyard in Geneva. He’s worked the land for more than three decades producing wine from the 130 acres of grape vines on the property.
But he says, for the last 12 years, he’s been keeping a close eye on an emerging, invasive threat: the spotted lanternfly.
"I spend a lot time walking around and looking at the grapes and driving through," he said.
For his vineyard and many others in Northeast Ohio’s, Sigel said this monitoring seems to be working.
"I can honestly say I've never seen a spotted lanternfly," Sigel said. "I mean, I've seen them on TV, or I've seen pictures. ... People send me pictures on their phone from Cleveland, but I haven't seen one here."
And that’s a good thing, he said, because spotted lanternflies could affect his wine production, not to mention the nearly 400 other vineyards and wineries across the state.
"The sap sucking in the vineyard isn't really a problem unless there's a real tremendous number of them," Sigel said, "but the honeydew excrement on the vines is a real problem in degrading grape quality."
Ohio is home to more than 1,200 acres of wine-producing vineyards. In a Ohio Department of Agriculture report from 2022, Ohio was the seventh largest wine-producing state in the country, generating more than $6.6 billion dollars in revenue that year.
"That includes tourism and wineries and beds and breakfasts," Ohio Wine Producers Association Executive Director Donniella Winchell said. "And the exciting thing about it is that the majority of it is in rural areas, in areas that are otherwise not necessarily noted for strong economic input."
The spotted lanternfly has been a concern for many growers since 2014, Winchell said, when it was first reported to have decimated vineyards in nearby Pennsylvania. Many of Ohio's growers, including Sigel, collaborated with local and state agencies to keep the numbers down.
"The primary growing district is in the Grand River Valley in Lake and Ashtabula counties," Winchell said. "And we've seen very, very, very little evidence of active adults in those counties. Thank goodness."
State Specialty Crop Entomologist Ashely Leach, at Ohio State University in Wooster, works with grape growers to mitigate lanternfly populations at their vineyards, by monitoring and using some form of insecticide or biopesticide to reduce the number of spotted lanternflies at a vineyard after they arrive.
"Let’s make sure we're scouting for it," Leach said, "and if we see populations start to creep up that we have some type of management practice that we've already considered and we want to implement in the farm or in the vineyard block."
They've seen success in rural areas, Leach said, but the same can’t be said for Ohio’s big cities.
"You'll notice when we look at any maps of Ohio, the strongholds of spotted lanternfly in the state are metropolitan areas," she said. "They're Cleveland, they're Columbus, they're Cincinnati. That's where we're seen them pop up."
Château Hough, a vineyard tucked away on Cleveland’s East Side has been a hot spot for spotted lanternflies in recent years. So, executive director Brenda Frazier and her team of volunteers have worked to protect their crop.
"We’ll try what we hear about and see how it works," she said. "So far, the netting, this white netting has worked."
They've seen fewer lanternflies at the vineyard this year, Frazier said.
"When they're here though, they like to hide," she said. "Is that one right there? Yeah, there's one. They like to hide under the leaves."
Frazier credits the Ohio Department of Agriculture and other vineyards in the state for spreading awareness of the spotted lanternfly and potential solutions.
Frazier said she's hopeful something will come along to get rid of spotted lanternflies all together. But researchers like Leach aren’t convinced.
"We're not going to exterminate. … we can mitigate the spread and mitigate the impacts of spotted lanternfly," Leach said. "I think mitigation will allow us to still enjoy drinking wine from Ohio vineyards."
So, the best way to protect Ohio’s booming wine industry from the spotted lanternfly?
"See it, stomp it," Leach said. "I think that works."
