Driving to work I can see the dips of the valley much more clearly, almost like I'm actually seeing its outlines for the first time. It's weird how quickly we get used to seeing something and then sort of stop seeing it altogether. There are pockets of mist hanging out here and there like magic fairy dust left over from a night of enchanted secrets that humans never get to see. (hard to capture with my mini digital)
Everything looks and feels different, like a sort of bewitching from the magic rain. The grapes are so happy I swear I can hear a big long exhale all around me.
But I guess nothing lasts forever right. By mid morning, I'm grumbling about the slope, the acid/sugar juice all over my hands, the cobwebs in my hair and the pound of mud on each boot from this beguiling poetic rainfall. By afternoon it's back to hot and sweatyville for our heroine.
As I'm trekking, I can't help but think about Burgundy and its beginnings. We're on the same parallel with the same weather and the same finicky hard-to-grow and harder-to-make pinot noir grape that, when done right, is the pinnacle of wine rapture. Why so hard? Pinot is an early ripening grape that is sensitive to rot, tough when you consider the unpredictable Spring and Fall climate here. So a freak frost in March/April or rain in October (both common in these climates) could ruin an entire vintage. But it likes cooler climates so that it can ripen slower because the berries are incredibly sensitive to heat (not uncommon to see fried sun damaged pinot in WA and CA). However, it does need quite a bit of warmth to ripen (there are several years in a decade that pinot fails to fully ripen in Burgundy, and in Alsace it tastes more like a rose than a red). It's called the holy grail of winemaking for a reason! And it had a huge bearing on why I chose to learn winemaking here. The aim of pinot producers around the world is to make wines that rival Burgundy, it's the benchmark when it comes to pinot.
So Burgundy became what it is today because of monks and monasteries as far back as 900AD. They had nothing but time on their hands to develop systematic and detailed improvement of the vineyards, they considered their grueling work service to God, and most importantly, they were literate (uncommon in those days) and so were able to keep accurate records. They would meticulously chart the results of each vintage, what techniques were used, which plot produced the best and worst etc. By observing how different plots produced different wines, they discovered terroir and began to acknowledge the different crus that we know and pay $hundreds for today. Over time they amassed vineyard land from donations, and it wasn't long until they were wealthy enough to buy up surrounding land. There's something poetic about this. Rich Dukes feeling guilty attempted to buy redemption, consequently making the church wealthy beyond measure who then worked its monks in service to God to make top quality sin lubricant.
Regardless, the tireless efforts of these monks did more to uncover the secrets of winemaking than modern science has been able to do. Of course that's a sweeping statement and a hugely subjective one, but I feel pretty passionately about this topic. To oversimplify and generalize, we grow grapes in soil and climate that they would never grow naturally, then use drip irrigation and the latest technology to concoct a potion. Leaving the ecological and environmental issues aside, the podium I'm jumping on is one of craft, creating something "good". The grapes get so ripe that it's not uncommon for places in CA and WA to harvest at 30+ brix! This means there's a TON of sugar in the grapes, which in turn means really high alcohol. We hope and pray for 23 or 24! (Not that there's anything wrong with high alcoholic beverage, I like my single malt too! But it doesn't pair well with food and in most cases just overpowers rather than enhances it.) It's also standard practice in CA and WA to add water to the final wine in order to dilute its strength (they call them Jesus units), and in my opinion should be illegal. Or take a machine and do reverse osmosis which separates out the various components of the wine, then re-blend at a lower alcoholic strength. We essentially create Port, then water it down, rather than allow a wine to express what it naturally is and use our scientific knowledge to prevent things like disaster and spoilage. What about label laws? Why aren't winemakers required to list every ingredient and production method used?
Anyway what these monks discovered so many years ago is what modern science is now grappling with. The soil that the grapes come from has a huge impact on the taste of the wine. In fact in Burgundy, they say that the grape is simply the medium through which we're tasting the soil. No amount of scientific discoveries or technologic tinkering in a lab can re-create what they produce in France. To be clear, I'm not saying that New World wine is bad, just homogenous, non-expressive, striving to be predictably the same year after year, as well as overly ripe to cater to our sugared out taste buds. What we have in the new world is tipicity, in the sense that you can taste the difference between various New World wines and there are some with distinct representational characteristics. But that is the human element, or what we create, which is vastly different than terroir, or a sense of place.
Alright I'll step down from the podium and one of the hottest debates in the wine world. I do have a new respect for the Catholic Church, and I'm glad baby jesus was born. Also I'm thinking those monks has some serious buns under their robes. Trekking these slopes is no joke!
I don't have any pictures of hot monks, but here's one of my boss on his day off. The latest in French couture or true science minded fashion? This is him noticing the busy stripes in every direction only after I pointed it out!
1 comment:
LOL! Thos stripes be gettin' BUSY!
And Yo, you drink yo' brix at fo'ty!
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