Sample Rambles

Harvest is hanging over our heads and it's a race against time to beat the rains. Because we are on the same parallel as Burgundy with a similar climate, our challenges are the same as theirs - RAIN. The grapes have to hang long enough to reach a certain level of brix in order to make decent wine, but you CANNOT harvest when it's raining or you'll have a dilute crop. Then you have crap wine and there's no way to fix it.

The big question from everyone, from office to field, is "how are the brix?" Even in the grocery store! I struck up a random conversation the other day with a guy next to me while waiting for my short ribs to be wrapped. (There's an amazing market here called New Seasons that's all local fresh organic yumminess and it's on my way home from work). When he finds out what I do for a living, he looks over at me and asks, "how are your brix?" Apparently he has a friend in the biz. I'm covered in mud, stinky and sweaty (a theme lately), he's in clean office casual gear and he's flirting with me over my brix? I swear my life has turned into an indy movie! So all this means that I'm doing a lot of marching in the vines. And that my ability to read a map is getting better! And that I'm starting to have more respect for the "mountains" we're growing our grapes on. As I'm huffin up the precious slope, I can almost hear the dear sweet pinot laughing, "Rockies this bitch!"


BTW making sense of the plots isn't just a spatial issue. I know you're thinking that two years of studying wine should afford me the ability to tell the difference between a red and white grape... but what grape do you think this is?

If you guessed pinot noir, you were wrong. It's pinot gris. Some plots have both and it's easy to zone out and end up with a bag of the wrong thing if you're not paying attention. Pinot gris is definitely a funky little grape in its range of wardrobe color from dark purple to pinkish grey.


So in my meanderings through the vines, I took pictures of a couple of things that I found interesting.

1) COVER CROP

As you can see, it's planted in every other row. Cover crop is planted for different reasons, but simply put, it benefits the soil by increasing organic matter. This improves the soil's structure and ability to hold water. And it reduces evaporation from topsoil. Not only is it easier for me when sampling, because I don't have to march in the loose dirt aisle and breathe in the dust cloud this creates, it also happens to benefit the grapes because dust can encourage mites. (Just so we're clear on who's more important here.)

Probably its most important function is that it competes with the vine for nutrients and water, causing slight water stress and making the vines dig deeper. This makes better wine by encouraging earlier ripening. And each layer of soil adds its own molecular contribution to the plant, which translates into more complexity and subtle nuances in the wine. Kind of like the difference between a serviceable tomato that's grown in manipulated soil vs. a juicy homegrown explosion of goodness that's grown in a nutrient rich soil. Also deeper roots don't suck up rain water as easily as shallow ones, a huge problem if rains come at harvest.

Sort of off the subject but completely related to root systems is irrigation. In my humble opinion, drip irrigation is creating an ocean of uninteresting predictable sugared-up high alcoholic wines, with no real expression of soil or vintage. The vines don't have to struggle to dig their roots deep in search of water. They're addicted to the drip, staying close to the surface and getting fat and sugary in fabricated conditions that we manipulate. The final product is serviceable I suppose (if you like high octane jam with your meal). It caters to the American palate that's addicted sugar and the American way that wants instant gratification. But it lacks depth, character and personality. As with humans, digging deep makes for an interesting and rich experience that leaves you with something beyond the satisfaction, something to remember and talk about months and years afterward. Staying close to the surface gives a shallow experience with a pleasure that's missing a certain something, doesn't leave you with anything other than the instant buzz. And really, something missing can only be so interesting. *sigh* the beautiful allegory that is wine, that makes everything better, that is now my life not just my hobby...

2) GRAFTING

This has been around since Ancient Rome as a means of propagation, but its primary use in the vineyard is to resist certain soil diseases. Basically it involves connecting two separate living plants to then grow as one. To oversimplify one of viticulture's most important historical moments, grafting hit its apex around the 1860s when the famous phylloxera root louse literally devastated ALL of Europe's vineyards to the tune of $millions, riots and international committees. With all the importing between Europe and the US, the louse made its way to the vines there and destroyed everything. It took a long time to identify the problem and longer still to find a solution. No cure could be found except ripping up all the vineyards and replanting with a resistant rootstock from the US, and then grafting the local varieties onto it. Because the louse is native to our soil, our roots had developed a resistance to it. (So all of the famous vineyards of Bordeaux and Burgundy are grafted onto American rootstocks.) Interestingly, we caused the problem AND provided the solution. As in life, the solution to a problem is often found by going to it rather than resisting it. *sigh* In vino veritas!

Another use for grafting is when a vintner decides he wants acres of a different type of grape than is already planted and doesn't want a halt in production. Newly planted vines will not produce a marketable crop for 3 years, so one option is to cut down say all your chardonnay branches and graft pinot gris onto the already producing rootstock to have a harvest that same year. To me they look like a procession of wounded soldiers marching out in the field.


3) FURRY THINGS

These goats are hysterical. Every time I see them, they're indignant that I have no food for them. They baaah at me incessantly and would probably nuzzle me to the ground if they weren't fenced in!

I barely managed to get this picture. I run into huge families of them all the time just mowing down on the grapes. When they see me, they either turn into a statue or do that funky little white bottomed hop through the rows that makes me laugh out loud no matter how many times I see it. I asked Gilles if we ever do anything about Bambi stealing all our wine. He just shrugged and said that's how it is. Yeah you lose a little but they give back by pooping. It's refreshing to be around an ecosystem that's allowed to function without too much human interference.

Speaking of which, check out this house. I haven't decided if I love it for being different and daring or if I hate it for being obtrusive and obnoxious.