I’m planting a vineyard in San Juan Bautista; this much we know. It won’t look very much like a vineyard—rather more like an untamed, feral garden of one’s dreams that happens to grow some grapes.¹ While it would be nice if this new vineyard/garden were at least nominally remunerative, the primary motive for this project is not monetary, but rather very personal. I’m hoping to bring something of real beauty into existence, as well as express a new range of genetic possibilities while leaving the aforesaid vineyard as some sort of bequeathal to the world. I’m also wondering whether this agricultural endeavor might somehow reconnect me to Nature writ large, and also perhaps to my own nature—that person, whomever he might be, who simply is, when not publically presenting or posturing.

Indeed, the new vineyard/garden/Eden I hope to (co)-create in San Juan Bautista may be my best—and possibly only—chance to learn how to become a lot more present—which is what ultimately I most profoundly seek. This opportunity creates a real sense of anxiety, because the decisions have not been pressure-tested, grounded, and because they require real shifts within myself. I’ll no longer be able to indulge myself in simple edicts like, “Black raspberries! There must be black raspberries!”² I must now think deeply about all of the implications of any of these choices. There are a finite number of arrows in the quiver, and I must aim as truly as I can.

Still, some open issues have largely been settled since my most recent communiqué here. It’s now very clear to me that the earlier notion of collecting seeds from self-pollinating vines is probably not the greatest idea,³ but hybridizing vinifera with itself might in fact be very interesting. Plant hybridization is usually done with a very precise telos, a specific problem that needs to be solved. It’s imagined, for example, that there’s a potential market for a particular flavor or appearance in a seedless grape variety, but that grape, unfortunately, has seeds, not something that spitting-averse North Americans are really down with. Cross it with a seedless variety multiple times until you end up with something that has the flavor and appearance of the imagined grape but no seeds. Or, the grape has a marvelous aroma and a delicious flavor, but is a stingy yielder. Cross muscat of Alexandria (a relatively shy bearer) with the prolific grenache gris and Bob’s your uncle!⁴

“Greatness” in grapes is largely contextual—pinot noir is hardly great in Fresno. Moreover, there’s tremendous disparity in the presentation of so-called “great” grapes. For example, the size of the cluster and individual berry of most great grapes is generally modest—this insures proper and even ripening, resistance to such issues as bunch rot, and good flavor intensity in virtue of the skin to juice ratio. And yet, nebbiolo and grenache are both brilliant grapes, but both present a fairly large cluster (cutting off parts of aforesaid is usually most advantageous). And apart from centuries of experience with riesling, say, how would one obviously intuit that it was vastly superior to sylvaner, which is not so dissimilar in appearance? Certainly to start, you would need to see them growing side by side and likely in several different contexts. In conversation with Professor Andy Walker, geneticist and endowed chair in viticulture at UC Davis, I asked pointedly if he reckoned there were any visible characteristics that bespoke greatness in particular grape varieties. Andy posited that in his experience, a number of great grapes—both red and white—seem to share the odd property of exhibiting red striations in their canes. This artifact might well be a function of a red-clustered antecedent in the woodshed, but more relevantly, it might also be an indication of genomic complexity with a super-abundance of biochemical elaboration. Dolcetto and charbono, however, both exhibit red striations in their canes but IMHO produce wines of relative simplicity.⁵ Maybe the art of grape vine observation is a bit like phrenology, the divination of occult qualities by the observation of the more visible ones.

Wine grapes are typically bred for such traits as cold-hardiness, disease resistance, greater yield, earlier or later ripening, etc., but seldom in recent history are they bred essentially for the sheer hell of it—as an indulgence of the breeder’s aesthetic whim or a dedication to an abstract (and perhaps ephemeral) notion of wine quality. So the question remains just how feasible it might be to discover and create something new and compelling,⁶ or even find the grape that perhaps makes a wine one would most like to drink.⁷ Ultimately, if the purpose of the exercise is to find a grape or set of grapes intended to optimally express the inherent unique qualities of the site, its terroir, the question really becomes how might one identify those grapes that are optimally suited to it—that in some sense belong. As an example, it was observed long ago that pinot noir was a particularly brilliant grape and generally well suited to the Côtes de Nuits, and with centuries of iteration and observation, an individual grower could find the individual vines on his site that were slightly better suited—they were a little sweeter, a little less prone to disease, or just happened to catch the vigneron’s eye. Through sélection massale, an individual cru could progressively grow more individuated, and better adapted to a particular site. Hand, meet glove.

In the case of San Juan, by allowing such expression of so much genetic diversity through hybridization, there may well emerge a set of individual plants that appear to be utterly at home there—indeed, look as if they’ve been there for hundreds if not thousands of years. Alternatively, it may well turn out that the blooming, buzzing confusion of thousands of genetically distinct individual vines, each with its own story to tell, may itself yield an utterly unique wine, a complex tapestry with special qualities that are the result of the accretion of minute differences.

Whichever path I pursue—perhaps it will be logical to pursue them both, the microcosm and macrocosm—it’s clear that the skill I must most assiduously cultivate is that of careful observation, admixed with intuition. My job will be to thoughtfully design arrays of potential interest and then look deeply at them for the appearance of startling new patterns.

Complexity, harmony, synchrony. How to begin? It could certainly be argued that the qualities I’m seeking in this vineyard plantation are not too dissimilar from the ones I’m seeking to discover within myself. As a winemaker, I’ve worked for most of my career with the notion that it was I who was directing or at least attempting to guide the “winemaking” process. But there have been other signifiers. Just a few years ago we mounted a couple of vertical Cigare Volant tastings, sampling wines from every extant vintage (albeit in large format, so the maturation process was greatly slowed). What was most surprising was that the two most interesting wines of the tasting were the ’84 and ’85 Cigares. It could be argued that they were great simply because they were old and bottled in large format, but I’m wondering if there isn’t perhaps a deeper lesson here. When I began producing Cigare, I (along with everyone else in North America) knew very little about Rhône grapes. In retrospect, it is nothing short of miraculous that the first vintages of Cigare came out well at all. I’m not arguing that I was divinely guided to work with Rhône grapes the way that Republican presidential candidates are guided to run for office, but rather that I had at the time something closer to a “beginner’s mind;” I was far more open to the suggestions of my own intuition. I was somehow more connected to something.⁸

It’s now very clear to me that despite whatever skill I might possess as a winemaker, my wit is in fact remarkably limited, and I’ve lately wondered if there might well be other ways of enhancing my own intuition without careering off in the direction of wholesale self-delusion. I’ve always been intrigued by accounts of those who have managed to somehow communicate with—what shall we call it?—a wider, broader world beyond our ken. At the same time, being a bit of a skeptic by nature, I’ve always imagined that participation in this psychic realm was something that would be forever beyond my grasp. But in holding this attitude, I have come to understand, I may well have created a major artificial barrier to my own personal development as a winemaker and as a human being, and I’m now reasonably certain that to make a wine of great complexity, I must find a way to let go of my own need to direct matters entirely, and somehow call on Nature’s infinite intelligence to assist me.

The name we’ve just bestowed on our property in San Juan Bautista is “Popelouchum,” the Mutsun word for the village settlement around the town. (Its secondary meaning is “paradise,” which can in no way be disputed.) I recently met some Native Americans and explained to them my desired aims for the property, and the Chief suggested I consider something like a vision quest there. At first he suggested that I spend four days fasting, with no food or water, and I’m not sure anyone can actually live four days in the outdoors without any water, but obviously: no computer, no iPhone, no Twitter, Facebook, no interaction with other people—conversing only with oneself, the nature spirits, and the wildlife of San Juan. The Chief finally agreed, to my great relief, that a twenty-four hour period, with access to drinking water, might be a more appropriate way to begin. But certainly an education in the solitary must be central to the practice: the exercise of seeking the True Thing only works if it gives one true joy in the absence of the refractory lens of the Other.

Also recently, my friend Jeff gave me a most unusual book called Perelandra Garden Workbook, by Machaelle Small Wright. The basic premise is that one can cultivate one’s intuition concerning appropriate actions to take in the garden (on whatever scale or by whatever metaphoric extension one considers the term). The notion relies on the existence of nature spirits called devas who are only too happy to help guide one toward the most suitable actions that will provide balance, harmony, and order. One might ask the devas about which particular seeds to sow, for example, when and where precisely to plant them, the most appropriate planting density, desired soil amendments, etc. The method is deceptively simple. You allow yourself to enter into a slightly meditative state, thus making the membrane of your own consciousness more permeable to that of Nature’s, and then use a method called “muscle-testing,” in which you ask the devas for guidance with carefully worded yes-or-no questions. Using the reactions of your own body as response—a greater or lesser degree of muscle strength or weakness—you more clearly discern Nature’s intentions; thus you have inserted your own body into a sort of feedback circuit with Nature’s will. The main idea, if I may be utterly simplistic, is that there’s a greater consciousness within and beyond our own, and that we can allow our decisions to be guided by our own intelligence, aided by a supra-rational force within our reach.

I’ve really only just begun the work. I’m still developing my technique to establish clear signs of “strength” or “weakness” in my muscle reactions; this is very challenging to me, as I tend to overthink things and second-guess myself. I’m horribly self-conscious of what I’m doing, certain that I must appear to be utterly foolish to any outward observer,⁹ and vaguely worried that I’m on a path of self-delusion.¹⁰ And of course one can certainly get a bit caught up with positing of the mere existence of “nature spirits” in the first place, each with its own particular personality, specialty, and even sub-specialty.

But one need not visually or auditorially observe these spirits nor even initially believe in their literal existence for this methodology to be effective. What one begins by taking on faith may gradually take on a greater degree of substantive reality, and the existence of these spirits (a reality in virtually every culture apart from that of us Westerners), represents a powerful metaphor for Nature’s intelligence. One can empirically observe the results of gradually following the advice of the nature spirits, as well as the changes in oneself, as one becomes more sensitive, observant, and intuitive.

This methodology is perfectly suited to the work that must be done at San Juan.¹¹ As I’ve mentioned, there will be very different rules for this place—it won’t look like a vineyard, but rather like a garden. And yet, of all of the possible plants that can be planted, one must still choose. If you are going to hybridize vinifera vines, there are truly no extant guidelines; you only have your intuition as to what might make the most useful cross in your unique location. The whole notion of a mixed or promiscuous plantation is to find the most appropriate biotic balance for ongoing sustainability, and this is not something that a mortal human being, or at least this particular one, is likely to just accidentally hit upon.

Whatever we end up planting at Popelouchum, it will be an opportunity for me to become more present, more deliberate, and to push myself into strange and unfamiliar areas. Will I end up hearing voices only audible to myself? In some sense, I truly hope so. The greatest impediment to my growth as a winemaker has been the internalization of the voices of those I’ve wished to please. It’s time to listen to another set of voices.

1. This is sometimes piquantly referred to as “promiscuous culture.” [↩]
2. Or olives, pêche de vigne, quince, mirabelle plums, pomegranate and exotic varieties of figs and diverse citrus of every stripe and hue. If I’m not careful, the laundry list of desired produce will read a bit like the Song of Solomon or perhaps Noah’s Ark. We did in fact plant a slew of black raspberries, a plant known to be very difficult to grow and susceptible to all manner of disease—only because I know them to be the most delicious raspberry of all. We obtained the plants from a nursery in New York (maybe too late in the season) and disappointingly, had a rather poor stand. The plants that did survive, however, are looking very good (touch brambly wood). [↩]
3. If you collect the seeds of a self-pollinating vinifera grape, there will be a significant number of genetic anomalies in the offspring, depending on the variety and how genetically stable, i.e., how old a variety it is). This holds true for any species—collies or Hapsburgs—which has become too inbred, and leads to all sorts of genetic defects—hip dysplasia, idiocy, hemophilia, etc. [↩]
4. You end up with “Symphony,” a very nice grape that expresses discreet Muscat character and yields like crazy; it has not, alas, set the wine world on fire. [↩]
5. We know in fact that the pinot genome is longer than the human one—intuitively, at least, this is a partial explanation of its greatness. I have no idea how complicated it would be to measure the relative length of the grape genome, or even if this ultimately correlates to anything, but it would be an interesting avenue to pursue. [↩]
6. And indeed, by a certain logic, why would one want to or need to create new grape varieties, as there are already a dizzying profusion of grapes, many (most) of which have not been adopted commercially? It could be argued that the only real logical reason for continuing to breed vinifera grapes is to look for new strains that solve particular problems—and the biggest problem is that disease organisms themselves evolve, growing progressively more virulent over time, whereas the genetics of domesticated grapes have largely been unchanged over the last thousand years. The New York Times published a piece recently suggesting that the potential problem with domesticated (vinifera) grapes has been that they have not enjoyed a particularly active sex life over the last millennium. I am afraid that the scope of this particular exercise will probably not permit me to introduce non-vinifera species into this particular pool. Finding grapes that are most sublime when turned into wine and are also more resistant to powdery mildew, phylloxera, Pierce’s Disease, and nematodes might well be just too wide-ranging a brief to address this lifetime. [↩]
7. A writer is faced with a similar conundrum. There are certainly plenty of books—some of them great, some less so—out there to read. But only the writer knows what is the book that he most wants to read. If he can’t find such a book, he has no choice but to write it himself. [↩]
8. But how does one know if one’s connected to a higher intelligence or simply to one’s own propensity for grandiose thinking? [↩]
9. And of course worried about failure in the material realm. What if the wine that I make from the new hybrids tastes just utterly dreadful? [↩]
10. This blog post itself has been incredibly difficult for me to finish, undoubtedly due to the fact that I have my own fears of appearing to be utterly foolish. But meeting these fears is no doubt essential to one’s spiritual growth. [↩]
11. I’ve also been privileged to spend some time with several indigenous people in the area. For them, our world is utterly alive with spirits that walk along side us. [↩]

I’m a little bit nervous about characterizing my quest to produce a vin de terroir—a wine expressive of a specific place—as a “spiritual journey.”¹ Not that popular literature isn’t utterly littered with accounts of unorthodox methodologies pressed into service for this or that spirit-quest, but in some sense it’s my own disposition toward Logorrhea that has perhaps been the greatest impediment to the journey itself. I’ve been very comfortable—perhaps rather too comfortable—talking and writing about the steps leading up to the journey: the planning, the maps and the guidebooks, the conversations with sage mentors, the extraordinary lessons that the universe is patiently trying to teach me through one serendipitous encounter or another. I worry that even just now in the writing about it I’m somehow deferring to a later moment the journey itself, allowing it to infinitely recede into the future distance like the castle of Kafka’s Surveyor. Any journey must be grounded in genuine action, even cerebral action, as this writing itself might in fact be so. But a real and genuine projection of oneself into the unknown, pushing oneself well out of one’s comfort zone, is another matter altogether. The burbling, sinuous stream of sentences I observe on the scintillated screen of my MacBook are my rod and my staff; they comfort me. (This cannot be entirely good.) But the actual journey, the real boots-on-the-ground work, is of a different order altogether. The work seems to require a rather different level of attention, and perhaps something like a total personal transformation, which of course affrights me to the very core.

I am a Luftmensch—someone who has his head in the clouds. I idly dream of idealized worlds,² and my tendency to dream has historically often been a surrogate for action. Not that I haven’t been capable of taking bold action from time to time, but these actions have tended to be more of the grand gesture sort: Let’s freeze some grapes! Macerate some raspberries! Why not try our hand at those Rhône/Italian/Portugese grapes while we’re at it? I’ve been particularly good at formulating catchy slogans: A bas le bouchon! and Vive le screwcap! No, there is no real malaise due to lack of initiative. The problem is really something more basic, and has more to do with my inability to be totally present, especially with all of the fine details that truly matter.

For most of my life as a winemaker, as is the case for many “executive winemakers” in the New World,³ “winemaking” is, or at least can be, a largely weightless, almost magical exercise.⁴ The grapes (somehow) show up at your winery at an appointed day.⁵ You move (as if in a dream), through a ritualized protocol—cold soak for x number of days, punching down again and again (the cap always popping up again like the return of the repressed). At last, the anthocyanins have been extracted, wrestled into submission like Jacob’s angel. The wine has reposed in its vessel of conception for a Biblical forty days and forty nights, and you then direct your cellar crew to gently remove it to barrel. Time moves on; the pages fall off the calendar like abscised syrah leaves after the first substantive winter rain. You rack the wine a few times on propitious days;⁶ this sort of rote exercise begins to infiltrate your dreams.⁷ You sit at the tasting bench—here you are the master of your domain—enter into a semi-trance, and somehow a few short hours later you find you have composed a felicitous blend.⁸ Eventually you get around to bottling the distillation of these efforts at what you hope is le moment juste, but more likely is the moment your production manager reminds you that there’s no more room at the inn.

But is there not more to great winemaking than this? It’s not as if you’ve been a total stranger to the vineyard. You try to get the pruning right, the crop level right. You’re strident with your growers on the subject of irrigation.⁹ Perhaps you’ve made some biodynamic compost for your growers, or even caused some biodynamic preps to be sprayed on their grapes. You’ve done your best to be a squeaky wheel.

But can you really look yourself in the eye and claim to be a truly dedicated vigneron, a campagnard de terroir? For as long as I can recall, I feel as if I’ve just been going through the motions. I am not one with my vineyard;¹⁰ my own rather marginal competency as a viticulturist aside, I’m just not there nearly enough, nor do I yet truly have eyes to see.¹¹ (You can put it down in part to the essential absurdity of the Urban Jew in a rustic setting—the Woody Allen oeuvre would certainly bear this out.¹² )

And yet, I have asked both publicly and privately for the universe to give me a sign that it’s willing to cooperate in my new ambitious venture in San Juan Bautista—my effort to discover a true terroir in the New World, to bring the unseen into view. This isn’t something that will simply magically occur; it will require me to push myself to grow in a new way—that is to say, to sink my own roots into a new place and stand and survey what it is that I see. If I’m not willing to see what this place, my land, has to show me, and to learn from it, then I am nothing but a fool.

Allow me to restate the problem of the plantation of a vineyard in a virgin area ab ovum, as I have done in one form or another in a succession of these communiqués. I aspire to make a great wine—that is given. One must therefore begin with unusually great and distinctive grapes; you must grow them yourself if they are to arrive at the fanatical level of quality that you seek—also a given. So, as a prospective grower of brilliant and original grapes, you really have essentially two options, one more or less straightforward, the other far more arcane: you either find a grape that you love and figure out where to grow it, or find a unique place that you love and figure out what it is (Grapes? Peaches? Olives?) that might truly flourish there.

Certainly, the more straightforward option is to decide that you are hopelessly enamored with a particular grape variety—pinot noir, let’s say—and therefore your ambition/lust/compulsion is to make a great Pinot noir—or perhaps, The Great Pinot noir.¹³ You spend a number of years combing the planet, trying to find a site you imagine will be ideally suited—climate, geology, aspect, purchasability¹⁴ —to the cultivation of pinot noir. Now, you may prefer the wines of Chambertin or the wines of Musigny, or even the Pinot noirs of the Russian River. But whether or not you dare to imagine that your Pinot will ever taste even vaguely (or de Vogüély) Musignian, you likely already have a built-in model in your brain for strategies for success: “special” DRC clones, yield restriction, close-spacing, brilliant trellising, very particular winemaking techniques.¹⁵ If you are a reasonably clever person, your wine may well taste a bit like your Platonic Pinot, maybe even (drum roll, here) “Burgundian.”¹⁶ And if you present an interesting story and the wine tastes as good or better than similar wines made by similarly tortured and obsessed individuals, you may enjoy some success.

But have you really created something of original beauty? Is your Pinot, however powerful or concentrated it might be, as balanced, refined, or haunting as the humblest Burgundy from a modest appellation?¹⁷ I ask you, candidly, what have you actually accomplished, apart from gratifying your own wish to compete on the world stage and to see how you stack up against the Greats?¹⁸

I know I’m sounding a little pious and judgmental here. Everything we do is in service to our egos—and really, who am I to judge? Maybe I have it totally backward, but it seems to me that the more appropriate approach to making a wine that the world actually needs is to follow the latter course: to make the sincere effort to identify sites with a (perceived) potential to express a distinctive terroir;¹⁹ to determine what variety (or varieties) of grapes would be particularly well adapted to that site; and to do what you might to really accentuate the site’s distinguishing characteristics. Of course, whatever your approach, you’re primarily trying to show the world how clever you are. But at the same time, you may also be bringing true beauty into the world, and fostering diversity; this is to the good.

I have been giving a lot of thought, as you well know, to precisely what I should grow in San Juan—or more to the point, how I might best honor the site and at the same time do something that’s really useful. What I’m looking for, it seems, is a methodology that lets me even approach the question of what is most mete and proper. We’ve had Claude and Lydia Bourguignons, the famous French soil scientists, out to the farm.²⁰ They seemed to feel that the place had real potential and were sincerely excited by the uniqueness of most of the soil types they observed chez nous. They gave us some valuable insights as to the nature of our soils, as well as advice on what steps might be taken to optimally preserve and express their distinctiveness. And yet when I asked point-blank about what varieties might be the most suitable, they seemed to fall back on certain idées reçues, or at least upon historical precedents—cabernet in gravel, merlot in clay, that sort of thing.

“So, ruchè on this windy, gravely slope, Claude? What do you think?”

“I’m sorry, Randall, I just don’t know very much about ruchè.”

We have a wonderful northeast facing limestone hill—I mean a serious limestone hill. “Nebbiolo?” I tentatively ventured.

“Maybe,” said Claude, “but nebbiolo behaves a lot like pinot, and doesn’t want to get too stressed. And it is rather windy around here. What do you think about palomino?”

“Chopfallen” is an expression S.J. Perelman was very fond of.²¹ Yes, we know that palomino does well in chalk (in Jerez), but does the world really need more palomino on chalk? Or even more palomino on anything?

The way forward must be to look for a method that would build upon the world’s received knowledge, and to allow that knowledge to expand and evolve; one must do the most familiar work differently—smartly, but differently. One must find a method that would allow one to pose a hypothesis, test the hypothesis, iterate, and observe. But how to do this in what remains of one very, very short lifetime?

1. A Twitter follower (don’t ask) recently asked about the “helical” vineyard I’d once proposed planting in Pleasanton, CA., as a sort of recursive, Borgesian encyclopedic exercise beginning at a certain point (maybe even with grapes that began with “A” (Abrostine, Albariño, etc.) and never subtracting, but always adding, refining. It occurs to me that these essays themselves are largely recursive, maybe even helical, and that every spiritual quest is as well. [↩]
2. Specifically worlds populated by wine (and cider) bottles filled with liquids so unspeakably delicious and complex they move the imbibers to something the psychologist Maslow might characterize as a “peak-experience.” [↩]
3. Maybe there is an analogy for executive chefs. [↩]
4. The Unbearable Lightness of Being Doon. [↩]
5. In fairness, I do actually visit the vineyards any number of times before the grapes “show up,” but the farther away those vineyards are, the fewer times I visit. I confess that often these vineyard visits are primarily fly-bys; I don’t feel I really know them well from the inside out, and this is largely the problem. [↩]
6. Ideally, with a waning moon and rising barometric pressure. [↩]
7. Doing cellar work—something I haven’t done in years (topping barrels in particular)—was terribly vivid for me in the nocturnal hours: removing the bungs—did you remember to put them back? Cleaning up the wine that you had spilled around the bunghole (childhood memories of spilled juice). Wrestling with the physicality of the barrel, like a memory of scuffling with a childhood friend or sibling. You have slept fitfully of course, waking numerous times from your slumber, to taste, perchance to blend, to tweak, to rack no more—all the time imagining that your dream of this wine is mostly a sweet one. [↩]
8. You always want to check this a few times to make sure the blend remains felicitous, as wines (and tasters as well) certainly have their own ups and doons. [↩]
9. This recalls the famous Far Side cartoon about what we say to dogs, and what they hear. [↩]
10. Since most of the vineyards we work with are generally not “great”—all somewhat less than ideal in one way or another—I’m often anguishing over how much effort/expense is worth expending to extract incremental improvements in quality; e.g., how much biochar do we buy for our growers’ vineyards? Do we do this for all the vineyards? Some of the vineyards? The best ones? The worst ones? Vineyards with three-year contracts? Five-year contracts? (It is so incredibly tedious to have to think about these things: I would far rather be applying the very attenuated bandwidth I still possess to actually observing the results of field-trials, rather than squinting at trial balances on reams of spreadsheets.) These long-term investments are likely not justifiable from a strictly financial standpoint, but the effort to do one’s best within one’s financial means is truly the only viable spiritual course. [↩]
11. I’m spread pretty thin with all sorts of responsibilities these days—to my great chagrin, I’m still spending a lot of time in sales and marketing, PR, and simply playing a gracious host. But I certainly was pretty asleep at the switch with respect to our Soledad vineyard. For years I blithely imagined how virtuous we were with our biodynamic practice, perceiving not at all that our soils had become utterly compacted—most likely a function of the slightly saline irrigation water and the relatively heavy tractors we were using. Sustainable? Not by a long chalk. [↩]
12. The Ashkenazi population’s predisposition to Asperger’s Syndrome (at least according to David Mamet) is another explanatory mechanism and perhaps a particularly apt one in my own instance. Social and physical ineptness, obsessional flights of ideation, extravagance of language—check, check, check. [↩]
13. You know you love it because you have tasted it (or something like it) maybe once or twice. But how different it is to imagine that you will love something that you have never seen, heard, tasted, or touched before. Maybe it’s the great romantic in me speaking, but the love of the what-might-be seems to be the greatest love of all (at least potentially). [↩]
14. The land presumably must be for sale and not located under a shopping mall in, say, downtown Palo Alto, and of course you must have a non-trivial amount of scratch on hand to purchase said land and develop it. [↩]
15. I’m certain there’s occasionally some map/territory confusion here, whereby winemakers believe that the technique itself (or the fact that you are doing x) adds value to the wine, rather than the persuasiveness of the flavors of said wine. [↩]
16. If you can even put your finger on those elusive qualities that make Pinot noir “Burgundian,” you may have arrived at a deep understanding of the essence of Pinot. [↩]
17. Answer: I’m afraid it won’t be. It may well be impressive and delicious, but that will be a function of the scrupulous detail you have paid and the enormous capital you have expended, rather than to the absolutely perfect congruence of the site, variety, rootstock, and cultural practice. And, by the way, your wine will likely cost way more to produce than a grand cru Burgundy. [↩]
18. And of course the opportunity to have your heart broken into a million pieces. [↩]
19. This of course sounds far easier than it actually is. Apart from the need to determine whether the site has interesting geology and meteorology—sufficient water-holding capacity, adequate cation exchange capacity (important for growing red grapes), and adequate rainfall—there’s really a deeper question of whether the property really speaks to you and you alone. Is your destiny linked to that of the property? How do you know this? [↩]
20. They work with the fanciest domains in the world, advising on the most felicitous match of cépage and rootstock to soil type, as well as on agronomic strategies for amplifying the individuality of the site. [↩]
21. I knew that I was succumbing to the same fallacy of the poor and tortured pinot-obsessed; if I love the variety enough, my love will allow me to do something that no one else in these parts has been able to achieve. [↩]

I spent a recent morning at the Cornflower Nursery in Elk Grove, California, with Professor Andy Walker of UC Davis, who has been very graciously advising me on the rather ambitious (no kidding) program of growing grape vines from seeds.¹ We were there to inspect the progress of the grenache seedlings that had germinated a few weeks earlier, which now, with many having just formed their first true leaves, were ready to transplant into 3-inch pots. Andy was there to offer his judgment on the best criteria for discarding or retaining the little seedlings for further study and ultimate plantation.²

This particular set of seedlings had come from seeds we had harvested from several different grenache selections last year, but the vines themselves were all “self-crosses;” i.e., the plants were self-pollinating, and therefore could be said to be genetically less interesting than their parents—more prone to disease, weaker growth, and hidden defects. And yet it seemed (and still seems) to be an interesting experiment to see what the effect of extreme genetic diversity of a given grape variety in a vineyard might do.³

Andy has been gently urging me to hybridize vines from multiple varieties rather than simply collect the seeds from individual ones. I was originally quite keen to do this, but when I learned about the enormous hassle factor in the hybridization process—collecting pollen, emasculating the male flowers with surgical scissors (!), but most of all, the need for very intensive and precise record keeping⁴—I wimped out and went the route of simple seed collection. I have since seen the error of my ways; one undoubtedly gets healthier and potentially more interesting vines from hybridization,⁵ and I’m keen to begin the breeding, possibly in the near coming weeks if I can decide on which varieties are to be crossed.

This really gets to the very nub of what precisely am I trying to accomplish in this new project. I have had some nagging doubts about the potential brilliance of vinifera hybrids. My deepest fear is that even with the very best of intentions, and breeding two interesting, even noble varieties, I would end up with a new variety, or more accurately a range of offspring, that had few of the redeeming qualities of either parent.^{6, 7} I had read reports that both T.V. Munson, the legendary Texas grape breeder, whose efforts with American grape species had literally saved the European wine industry from the great phylloxera epidemic, as well as the late Professor Harold Olmo of UC Davis, had both mentioned how difficult it was to find a real stand-out in grape vine progeny, saying essentially that one had to kiss a lot of frogs to find a real prince.

I shared with Andy my concerns and asked him pointedly, “So, what can we say about the wine quality of vinifera hybrids? Are they really that much stupider than their parents?”

He then said the most extraordinary thing, so startling that I didn’t really grasp its significance until after we had gone our separate ways that morning.⁸ “In fact,” he said, “if the selection of parents is well done, the wine quality potential will generally be superior in the hybrid to that of its parents.”⁹

Now, I should have been listening very, very carefully at that point, and maybe even should have had a tape recorder, because (pace Andy) this did not seem to jibe with what I had heard or read before. Indeed, the case for improved vine quality or vine health for grape hybrids is totally consistent with everything that is known about “hybrid vigor,”¹⁰ the invigoration of the stock through the introduction of new genetic material to the pool.^{11, 12} But I’m quite certain that we were indeed talking about “wine quality” and not vine quality.¹³

I asked him specifically about what criteria one might look for in the grapes themselves as indicators of wine quality—perhaps smaller berries, smaller, looser clusters, greater or lesser degree of seededness (ergo more tannin), greater anthocyanin concentration, phenological appropriateness of the variety to the site (enough days of sunlight and adequate heat to ripen the grapes and bring them to a reasonable balance of potential alcohol, acidity, etc.).

“I think that Munson and Olmo were likely talking about the progeny of self crosses, and not true hybrids,” I recall him saying.

The question is stilling nagging at me: what could Andy have really meant by “wine quality?” More importantly, what should I be thinking about as desirable characteristics in these new, as yet unnamed varieties? It is now everything I can do to resist calling him up at this precise moment to grill him further. But instead, I’ll just let myself live with a certain ambiguity for a moment, and use this as an occasion to meditate on what might really be meant by “wine quality;” a vinous Gedankenexperiment, if you will. What follows are fragments of an imaginary conversation with Professor Walker:

Okay, Andy, I don’t wish to be obtuse, but why do you imagine wine quality of well-bred vinifera hybrids to be superior to the already pre-existing varieties?¹⁴ For one thing, why haven’t we seen the emergence of a slew of great new grape varieties in modern times? There may be a couple, I’ll grant you—scheurebe for one, and perhaps albarossa, a putative cross of nebbiolo x barbera.^{15, 16} I’ve only tried incrocio Manzoni 6.0.13 once (a cross of riesling and pinot blanc), but it was eminently forgettable, apart from its too cool for school, minimalist nomenclature.¹⁷

The indefatigable Dr. Olmo had a very long career traveling the world looking for exotic plant material (he was once characterized as the “Indiana Jones of grapes”).  But (with all due respect to the late plant breeder) how much has the world of wine benefited from say, symphony, ruby cabernet, or carmine?¹⁸ In Dr. Olmo’s defense, you could say his work was undoubtedly directed toward solving particular problems: the creation of an aromatic variety for a warm climate, the breeding of a table grape with characteristics that made it more commercially attractive, overcoming specific disease issues, etc. Perhaps in the era in which he worked, grape growers and winemakers in California didn’t really have deeply elaborated ideas about wine quality, and were undoubtedly primarily focused more on productivity than on the suitability of this or that variety as a vehicle for the expression of minute nuances of difference in differing sites—that is to say, the glorious articulation of terroir.

It seems intuitively obvious that certain genotypes of grapevine have greater or lesser potential for wine quality, but how to characterize these elusive criteria? Might it not perhaps be more a question of the degree of congruence of a particular variety or set of varieties to a particular site, with all of its unique challenges? Could you use hybridization to tweak what you imagined was a reasonably good fit to your site to make it even more congruent? And while we might pretend to be “empirically objective” or even “scientific” in our assessment of what might be the most appropriate grape variety to a given site, at the end of the day, there will be some wine produced by an actual vigneron. And while aforesaid vigneron—that would be moi—wants nothing more than to greatly delight his customers with the most extraordinary nectar, he also wants to personally be nothing less than out-of-his-mind crazy in love with the wine that he is producing. We all hold within us certain images of idealized Platonic forms; in some sense, this vigneron might consider those elements of a wine most compelling to him, and meditate on how he might conjoin them in a seamless way.

Can you really say that there is anything “wrong” with a specific variety that needs to be fixed/improved through the process of hybridization?^{19, 20} Is pinot problematic because it is not dark enough in color? How can it be said that pinot could be better than it is if it is already (arguably) perfect, or at the very least capable of expressing something like perfection?²¹ Pinot and nebbiolo are what they are and we love them because they are somehow just so utterly different from everything else, and in the instance of nebbiolo, just so perversely strange. Changing them would no doubt create something far less interesting, so they are clearly “superior” varieties, but in what sense?

There are so many aspects of this problem that tend to make my head hurt, and so many apparent logical paradoxes, that it seems impossible to reconcile them all. We have to slow down the discussion and really think hard about what constitutes “greatness” in wine. Cabernet, merlot, and the other bordelais cépages can produce wines capable of “greatness” because they have a lot of structure, i.e., they’re rich in tannins and anthocyanins, with good acidity, and are thus capable of long aging and the development of complexity. Further, they are not overly susceptible to vine disease. On their own, they can be relatively simple and monotonic; generally speaking, blending (in the cellar) will enhance their complexity.²²

But what if it is not the grape varieties themselves that are the repositories of greatness, but rather that they’re merely the vehicles of transmission of the greatness (or put another way, eloquence) of a given site? Intuitively this seems obvious. Cabernet sauvignon is unquestionably a “great” grape but makes a fairly miserable wine grown in overly fertile sites, and grown on its own can be overly expressive in its flavor profile, drowning out other nuances. Clearly there are other elements at work that enable a great variety to express its greatness.

Maybe the better question to ask is how one would go about looking for varieties or combinations of varieties that would potentially be the best transmitter of one’s given terroir. To answer this question, I’d like to think about what makes pinot noir and nebbiolo (and of course, riesling) so great (on the right site) and in some sense unimprovable upon. It’s not that they have more tannin and anthocyanins than anyone else, nor that these elements are particularly well balanced. (Nebbiolo has lots of tannin but is relatively low in anthocyanins; pinot noir is low in both; and of course for riesling, being a white grape, the question is moot.) It’s not that they are (riesling excepted) particularly versatile as far as site selection. For me, pinot noir and nebbiolo are unquestionably the greatest grapes because they produce wines of utterly haunting complexity. The scent of a great pinot expresses elements of wild fruit that enchant us (maybe a function of its great genetic complexity),²³ and capture elements of earth and mineral that perhaps give us a sense (maybe literally) of groundedness. Wines made from these grapes on the right sites are also exceptionally ageworthy, enabling them to develop ever more complexity. And lastly, these wines have a unique, almost feral, savory element (truffles, humus)—a quality that pinot shares with nebbiolo—in which we perhaps see, or more accurately smell, ourselves.^{24, 25}

It is beyond the purview of this little article to elucidate the mechanism of the phenomenon of “minerality” in wine.²⁶ We don’t know exactly how it comes about or even precisely what it is, but some wines seem to exhibit a strong anti-oxidative potential even (in the case of pinot noir) with the relative paucity of the usual anti-oxidative suspects.^{27, 28} I am convinced that complexity in wine—its ability to change, evolve, kaleidoscopically unfold, chameleon-like—is directly linked to the presence of minerals in the soil from which the grapes derived (and of course the presence of a salutary soil microflora able to extract aforesaid minerals). I have suggested elsewhere that even grapes that are far less genetically advantaged than, say, pinot, are capable of demonstrating great complexity if they are derived from exceptionally mineral-rich soils.

So, pinot and nebbiolo and riesling are all grapes that wear their minerals well.²⁹ Maybe (or maybe not) they are particularly well adapted to mining minerals from the soil³⁰ and particularly well suited to expressing this mineral note in the elaborated wine.³¹ I’m not an especially astute observer/student of grapevine morphology or physiology, but it strikes me (maybe more as an intuition) that grape varieties that are either particularly pulpy or possessing very small berries, i.e., with relatively little juice in comparison to rest of their mass, are the ones more likely to present this “mineral” aspect. Further, grapes grown on a limited water regimen (dry-farmed, deep-rooted) in low fertility (low nitrogen) soils will also experience this concentration effect and be far more expressive of terroir.

One further thought on the subject of the grapes that I love. As I’ve said, they all fuse several disparate elements—fruit, earth, and savoryness, as well as something like a distinctively human element.³² But also, these varieties are truly self-sufficient, i.e., they generally do not benefit from the addition of extraneous grapes—that just seems to muddy the waters. While they all possess varietal character that is easily recognizable, this character is relatively mild—transparent, you might say—to the degree that it allows for the clear expression of a strong mineral aspect in the wine. But it is the utter brilliance of these grapes when they are paired with the noblest of vineyard sites (Musigny, Bussia, Scharzhofberger, etc.) that really throws a pall on any desire I might have to produce a varietal Pinot noir, Nebbiolo, or Riesling wine. Without question, in the absence of hundreds of years of iteration and observation, one will never come close to achieving anything like the felicity of the marriage between grape variety and site that has historically been achieved. And that Platonic image of what the Grape is able to achieve (and what one’s own does not) will haunt one’s days.

So, maybe certain grapes concentrate minerals better than others, maybe it is a function of their vigorous growth (rooting) habit and relatively small berry sizes, maybe also their relative giftedness for biosynthesis.  (Maybe that’s linked with the complexity of their genome.) The real question is whether hybridization might be a strategy to enhance these attributes, or whether it’s essentially an interesting intellectual exercise with a rather unforeseeable outcome.

But if one is looking for true originality in a New World wine, it would seem that hybridization may well be the most rational way to proceed.  I’m not sure if “rational” is really the precise word to describe what it is I propose to do, but rather it seems that hybridization, even with its radical uncertainty, creates the most likely opportunity for real uniqueness in a New World vineyard, and that its pursuit is quite rational. There are still a few elements I am taking on something like faith, viz., the belief that the site in San Juan, or at least parts of it, is capable of expressing a strong sense of place if farmed appropriately. Further, I do believe that a diverse population of a coherent family of grapes will likely create a kind of complexity that could not otherwise be achieved. Lastly—and this is maybe the greatest leap into pure faith: the lack of varietal distinctiveness in this imagined vineyard will in some way allow other attributes of the wine, namely the qualities associated with the site itself, to express themselves in greater relief.

If I were to go out on a limb and imagine what Andy was thinking about wine quality, it is not unreasonable to imagine that hybrids created from varieties with the attributes of the gross signifiers of “quality”—small berries, non-juiciness, some discreet aromatic potential, seededness and a strong life-force (the primal impulse to Go Deep), could in some sense be more interesting than their forbears, especially if you were to consider them as a population. The “greatness” of these hybrid grapes might be analogous to the greatness or greater harmony that comes from blended wines, where any single varietal is just too simple and likely unbalanced. Maybe the “problem” of brilliant grapes like pinot noir is just that they are too brilliant, i.e., so particularly and well adapted to a given site that they suffer greatly when they are moved away from their home.

It is clear that hybridizing vines needs to be done with an aim to solve a particular problem or adapt to a particular set of circumstances, or perhaps even to satisfy the aesthetic whims of the hybridizer. As I’ve written elsewhere, I am not looking for the next great grape, nor even for the perfect variety or varieties for San Juan, although that would be good information for my successors. I am looking to make a wine of complexity, balance, and originality, expressive of the site on which it is grown, and a wine that will delight me—when it is not driving me insane. I am optimistic that I am on a path to achieve a plurality of these ends.

1. It is perhaps over-reaching a bit, but I feel the need to explain the joke embedded, as it were, in the title of my piece. This phrase is said to be the exhortation of last resort for overwrought Social Directors at Catskills resorts of a certain era. (My father himself served in this capacity approximately 70 years ago.) [↩]
2. Chlorotic or misshapen leaves, three cotyledons or other anomalous appearance, damping off—all to go to the slag heap of viticultural history. [↩]
3. Strictly speaking, the offspring of grenache crossed with itself is no longer grenache, but is mostly very grenache-like. [↩]
4. Historically not a great organizational strength chez nous. [↩]
5. Perhaps the lack of varietal identity can be in some sense a positive attribute for the stated aim of this vineyard, as will be discussed infra. [↩]
6. I could not seem to get the idea of pinotage (pinot noir x cinsault) out of my mind. Two exceptional and noble grape varieties gave rise to a very strange and somewhat unprepossessing offspring. [↩]
7. Andy reports that the primary “varietal” characteristics of the hybrid derive from the mother, and the growth habit and overall appearance of the vine from the father. Further, he suggested that what one achieves is sort of bell-shaped population—most of the population pretty much resembles the rest, with a few outliers possessing brilliant, desirable characteristics (but what might those be, and would one have the wit to discern them?), and a few with undesirable characteristics (sterility being the trait most likely to get one kicked out of the forward march of viticultural history). [↩]
8. Andy did seem to endorse the overall philosophical premise of this project (the economics of it another question altogether): minimally, wine quality will be good (or, all things being equal, as good as it would be from a given varietal selection, which itself is fraught). Above and beyond, there would remain the possibility of enhanced wine complexity, owing to the genetic diversity of the plant material, as well as potentially a greater degree of drought tolerance due to the (conceivably) greater degree of geotropism exhibited by seedlings relative to vines grown from cuttings. It is really a subtle shift of thinking that enables one to think of diversity of planting material, whether in the rootstock or the fruiting variety, as either a positive or negative attribute of the whole proposition. [↩]
9. The qualification is big enough to drive a Humvee through it, and really is at the nub of this meditation, which is really: What is meant to be accomplished through hybridization? [↩]
10. My own daughter, Amélie (as she now prefers to be called), is a perfectly demonstrable example of this phenomenon. [↩]
11. On a rudimentary level, wine quality might well correlate to vine health, as far as it is correlated to more consistent fruit set, looser clusters (yielding less bunch rot), lack of debilitating virus, etc.  Certainly one very interesting prospect of hybridizing grapes is that grapevine viruses do not appear to be transmitted to seedling progeny. Marvelous oddball varieties such as pignolo or ribolla gialla, which tend to be riddled with virus, might make a great contribution to a succeeding generation of hybrids, or perhaps could even be improved through self-crosses. [↩]
12. Undoubtedly, potentially a great boon to the wine industry at some future date (long after I’m gone), in virtue of the accidental expression of particularly cool and useful genes (drought tolerance, disease resistance, etc.). [↩]
13. This is a potential source of confusion if one is talking to a native German speaker about his “winyards.” [↩]
14. One might easily descend into an Escher-like or perhaps Heraclitean paradox with this question. The extant vinifera varieties, noble and less so, are themselves hybrids of pre-existing vinifera varieties, so at least at some point in history, some forward progress was made. The old “new” vinifera grapes, both “noble” and base, were likely the result of intentional breeding experiments done by monks, likely looking at criteria for retention rather different from those of the modern breeder, i.e., they were looking for grapes most likely to celebrate God’s exceptional goodness. But how might one explain the existence, at least teleologically, of the burger variety, or, say, mammolo? [↩]
15. This itself is a bit controversial, and perhaps there is a lesson somewhere. Neither the scheurebe nor albarossa likely derives from the parentage to which it was originally attributed. Recent DNA analysis confirmed that scheu is a cross between riesling and an unknown mother. Albarossa seems to be derived from barbera and nebbiolo di dronero, (a lesser variety), not nebbiolo, as originally believed. Maybe Nature is always determined to have the last word, showing Herself to be cleverer in what She can conceive than in what we can. [↩]
16. There are many growers in the Langhe who are pretty excited about albarossa. I’ve only had it on a couple of occasions and found the ones I tasted to be a tad rustic – rich in color, hence high in anythocyanins, thus quite unlike nebbiolo and lacking (or so it seemed) in the aromatic complexity of Its Nebs. Maybe it is a mental trick, but wines made from deeply pigmented grapes often strike me in some sense as “overachievers,” promising more on the palate than they can deliver on the nose, and sometimes just a bit coarse. [↩]
17. Deriving from the vineyard, row, and vine number where the particular selection was located; if a grape vine could wear designer shades it would be incrocio Manzoni 6.0.13. [↩]
18. Grenache gris x muscat of Alexandria, carignane x cabernet sauvignon, ruby cabernet x merlot, respectively. [↩]
19. Maybe barbera, with its virtual crushing acidity grown on almost any site, could be slightly ameliorated were it hybridized with a lower acid grape. [↩]
20. In fact, one might claim that it would make some sense to self-cross pinot noir for your new, untested site in the New World, not so much to find a “better” pinot noir, but something pinot noir-ish better suited to one’s particular site, i.e., with more favorable ripening characteristics, better acidity, etc. But you have to remember that if it is pinot qua pinot that you’re after, these offspring will virtually all be less interesting than the Ur-pinot, and further, riddled with all sorts of genetic defects, some overt, some latent. If one needs to somehow “fix” the pinot, it really begs the question as to whether another grape variety (a standard one or even a hybrid) might be a better match for the site. [↩]
21. The same can certainly be said for riesling, perhaps in spades. To my knowledge, no riesling hybrid (and there have been scores) has ever been shown to be superior to riesling itself. [↩]
22. Château Cheval Blanc, a wine that in some years I would consider to be more or less perfect, is a blend of merlot, cabernet franc, and malbec. (Look, Ma, no cab sauv!) But imagine what it might be like if it were composed of a population of vines made as crosses from these components. You would lose, at least for a generation or two, the received wisdom of where each “variety” might optimally flourish—merlot on clay, cabernet franc on limestone, malbec on gravel—but might this re-ordering yield a new fractal pattern of even greater complexity? My wild-ass intuition is that you could potentially build an extraordinary wine somewhere by selecting merlot as the pollinator “male” contributor for clay soils, and maybe cab sauv or malbec for gravelly soils with the conjugate bordelais cépage as the pollinee. Alternatively, if you were going to compose a “Rhône” blend, something on the order of say, Le Cigare Volant, you might choose grenache as your male parent (good drought tolerance) and syrah as your female parent (poor drought tolerance owing to minimal stomatal regulation, but brilliant flavor and aroma).  (N.B. Syrah is one of the few vinifera grapes that are identified by the feminine definite article.) Important note to self: this is something you should definitely try. [↩]
23. The pinot noir genome is said to be as long as the human genome, i.e., prodigious. [↩]
24. I am not particularly adept in biochemistry, but would lay any amount of money that there are molecules in both pinot noir and nebbiolo that are identical to those found in human sex pheromones. [↩]
25. All produce wines that one is capable of vertiginously losing oneself within; they are in a real sense soulful, due to their being such a powerful reflective lens. [↩]
26. This is perhaps wine’s central mystery. There have been some attempts to account for this phenomenon, which is generally acknowledged to exist, but the explanation for its mechanism is not at all straightforward, and for now is largely theoretical. [↩]
27. Additional note to self: go see Dr. Vernon Singleton at UC Davis absolutely ASAP.  Dr. Singleton, who studied wine phenolics for years (he is undoubtedly Dr. Phenolic), most likely has an opinion on the subject, but likely no one has asked him for it. [↩]
28. It is incontrovertible that minerals are themselves synergists to the anti-oxidative system of both plants and animals. [↩]
29. Higher acid wines are also often characterized as “mineral” wines, though it is not clear precisely what this relationship might be. Higher acid wines (like Riesling) are often capable of longer aging; possibly this has something to do with maintaining a fair bit of molecular SO₂ as with old school German Spätlesen and Auslesen, but equally likely it is a function of their mineral aspect. (Note that Txakoli, a very high acid wine, is not a particularly great ager.) [↩]
30. They all interestingly share a very vigorous growth habit, perhaps suggesting that they are at the same time very deep rooters (“As above, so below.” —Parmenides), but this is a bit conjectural. Come to think of it, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay also have a very vigorous growth habit. [↩]
31. One would definitely have to characterize chardonnay and chenin blanc in a similar way. Neither grape is particularly interesting in the absence of a strong mineral element, but grown on chalk, they absolutely sing. [↩]
32. Not riesling. Riesling is utterly otherworldly, an immortal grape. It looks down upon us mortals (with a steely gaze) from Apollonian heights. [↩]

I have spent an unseemly amount of time in the last several years obsessing about terroir.¹ The notion that a wine can also in some sense be an embodiment of a place strikes me as the most unique quality of this magical beverage, the most valuable thing that wine can teach us. For me, terroir’s self-evident truth carries with it a deep, almost elemental, psychic force and resonance, one that comforts and informs us. A wine absolutely can also be a place—in the same way a forest nymph, like Daphne, can also be a laurel tree. Just ask Ovid. One might conceive of terroir in any number of ways; I imagine it as a beautifully ordered wave-form, arising from a harmonically attuned vineyard—one wherein every element is in perfect balance.

Terroir is all about “difference”—the French, who seme to have semiology deeply embedded in their genes, are notoriously preoccupied with “difference,” and while it can certainly be said, somewhat tautologically, that all sites possess terroir in some form of another, strong or weak, the notion of a great terroir is about one that somehow manages to rise above the others in the distinctiveness of its signal. It is the difference that seems to make a difference.

A great terroir stands out; it is remarkable. In Europe, where elegance and complexity have historically been in great esteem, grapes are generally grown at the coolest, most extreme location of their possibility. A great terroir will ripen its grapes more completely more years out of ten then its neighbors; its wines will tend to be more balanced more of the time than its less fortunate contiguous confrères. But most of all, it will have a calling card, a quality of expressiveness, of distinctiveness, that will provoke a sense of recognition in the consumer, whether or not the consumer has ever tasted the wine before. Without becoming overly anthropomorphic, I would suggest that a great terroir site has something akin to intelligence, which is the ability to successfully adapt to a variety of climatic challenges.

The soil of a great terroir will have the physical characteristics that allow the vine to extract more or less the correct amount of moisture from the soil appropriate to its needs, and trigger certain physiological signals in the plant at appropriate times—again, more consistently than its neighbors. It will have a chemical make-up that provides for all of the macro-elements in more or less balanced ratios, and very critically, will possess a definitive, eclectic assortment of oligo-elements. But, it should also be noted that great terroirs are not merely an inventory of various minerals in appropriate ratios. There are also the geophysical characteristics of a particular terroir that critically mediate water availability to the plant; this is a function of both soil texture and the movement of the water-table during the growing season.² Thus, a great terroir will lead to a Goldilocks and the Three Bears-like solution for the vine, neither too much available water, creating excessive vegetative growth and flavor dilution, nor an acute water deficit, leading to jammy, vaguely Antipodean flavors at best, raisinettes at worst.

I fancy great terroirs to be a bit like wise parents of teenage children, dispensing water to their plants parsimoniously like a weekly allowance, making sure that that which is given out on Monday will last all the way to the weekend. Lastly, very significantly, it is literally the very finest detail of the soil’s structure in a great terroir, its degree of microporosity, that allows for the proliferation of beneficial soil microbes, specifically mycorrhizae, bringing minerals into the plant roots; they are thus terroir’s pre-amplifiers, if you will.

The French make a salient distinction between vins d’effort and vins de terroir—wines that are notably marked by the imprint of human efforts, as opposed to wines whose character primarily reflects their place of origin. Ultimately, vins d’effort are wines easy to like—presumably they are constructed with precisely that in mind—but difficult to love, at least truly and deeply. Vins d’effort, especially those of the New World, attempt to hit the stylistic parameters of “great” wine—concentration, check; new wood, check; soft tannins, check. And yet the net result is like a picture of a composite, computer-generated “beautiful” person; it is never as compelling as the picture of an aesthetically “flawed” but unambiguously real person. I believe that some part of us—very likely a part that doesn’t function on a conscious level—responds to the deeper order of a vin de terroir, to a level of complexity that derives only from the ordering of Nature itself, not from the order imposed by a human being.

But what of the possibilities of a vin de terroir in the New World? The sheer unlikelihood of its discovery in a short lifetime has been, for me, a kind of ongoing, ultimate buzz killer. While certainly many modern New World winemakers have protested—methinks rather too loudly—the sincerity of their intentions to achieve a vin de terroir, the reality is that so much of modern grape-growing practice, at least in the New World, is very much at odds with the systematic discovery of terroir. The problems are generally everywhere, beginning with the location of vineyards in climatically (as well as geologically) the wrong sites, thus requiring the need for gross manipulation of the must post-harvest. And of course—and this is the real root of the problem, as it were—because we New Worlders like to control most everything we can, we therefore do. We subject our vines to drip irrigation; on the face of it, this seems like a good idea, but it has the effect of growing the plants hydroponically—looks good on the outside, but not much happening on the inside. We tend to use a limited number of the “finest” clonal selections—nothing but the best for our wines—but this tends to give us wines of greater sameness, not real distinctiveness.

Historically, at least, vines were spaced widely apart and were asked to carry rather heavy yields, at least on a per vine basis. (As an aside, there is probably no better predictability of wine quality, all things being equal, than looking at the ratio of the total weight of vine roots to the volume of fruit they are producing. This, along with the vibrancy of the microbial life in the soil, is perhaps the most important factors in how one turns up the volume up on terroir.)

Obviously, old vines with deep roots, and dry-farmed vines that have to search far and wide for water, will be ones that will capture a greater sense of the distinctive qualities of the site itself.

And then in the winery, we have used designer yeasts, designer enzymes, organoleptic tannins, wood chips and or 100% new oak, on wine made from grapes harvested at preternatural levels of ripeness in climates too warm to allow for proper acid balance—but don’t worry, we can fix that with a good dose of tartaric or maybe take the wine for a spin in the spinning cone. We thus tend to systematically obliterate any possible expression of terroir, should the faintest glimmer of it accidentally emerge.

Think of it this way: the qualities of a wine emerge from essentially three factors: 1) its terroir, 2) its genetic patrimony—the rootstock and grape variety or mix of varieties that have been selected, and 3) the myriad of stylistic and technical decisions made in the fermentation process and élevage of the wine. In the New World, we tend to be very good at the deployment of factors 2) and 3), but not quite so clever in expressing factor 1). There are certain soil types that are particularly marked in their unique expression of terroir; limestone soils, granitic or schisteous soils, and volcanic soils often have such a strong character that the variety itself may not even be discernible in the wine. I recently tasted an amazing Listan negro from the island of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands—these are vineyards that look as if they are grown on the moon, if the moon had palm trees.

The growing conditions there are quite extreme—warm, dry, and very windy; this is likely one of the most extreme places in the world where grapes are grown. And yet, the wine is totally brilliant. But what is also amazing is that Listan negro is a synonym for another grape—the Mission grape, believed to be the first grape brought to the New World by the Franciscan monks in the 16^th century. What is fascinating is that the Mission grape, at least in California, is arguably one of the very the worst vinifera grapes in creation—no redeeming qualities to speak of—no flavor, no color, no acid. And yet, under these special conditions in Lanzarote, it is but a carrier of terroir, and performs beautifully.³

What I would like to suggest is that the apprehension and appreciation of terroir may ultimately be a question of gestalt, i.e., instead of a focus on the more obvious charms of the wine, the fruitiness or oakiness or varietal distinctiveness, one instead brings into view those deeper elements seemingly lurking in the background. This is the mineral character that I sometimes conceive of as a sort of capacitance of the wine, its persistence or dimensionality, giving the primary flavor a sense of depth or relief; I can almost visualize this as kind of duotone, that slight shadow or sense of dimension that you can see in a printed image.

I know that grokking the notion of “minerality,” and specifically its great virtue, can be quite frustrating to many people. Personally, it took me many years to “get” Cornas. I didn’t like it because it didn’t taste like Côte-Rôtie: flowery, sexy and voluptuous. Cornas was about stones. Then one day, something shifted, and I realized that it was the austere stoniness of Cornas that in fact gave it its real interest, its soulful depth.

The most radical conclusion that may be drawn is that in the instance of a hyper-expressive terroir, perhaps the choice of variety and clone may matter very little, providing that you are more or less in the ballpark of selecting a variety that ripens at the right time with an appropriate acid balance. So, in the event that I can find a way to grow grapes with a strong mineral character, I am not going to sweat so much whether I get the grape variety and the clone or clones precisely right; it just may not matter so much.

So, returning to the idea of the discovery of terroir in the New World: I have an idea that may be utterly mad, but equally may be inspired, perhaps revolutionary, if not the most impractical viticultural practice ever contemplated. Why not grow grapes from seedlings?

The best way to do this—that is if one is not to so concerned about the insane amount of highly trained, specialized labor involved in doing it, as well as the tedium of the process itself—is to hybridize several different grape varieties with a single genetically stable vine (such as grenache or carignane)—this “stability” attribute seems to have something to do with how long the variety has historically been cultivated. One would select the varieties for the characteristics one imagines will be aptly suited for one’s site. (It’s far more convenient, though still a chore, to simply collect seeds from a single variety of grapes, and this perhaps can also be interesting, but too much interbreeding, whether in grapes or in Hapsburgs, does seem to weaken the bloodline.)

The process of hybridizing grapevines is amazingly painstaking—you have to remove the male parts of the flowers with a teensy tweezers, whilst peering through a jeweler’s loupe. (This is called “emasculating” or “castrating” the flowers—ouch). Then, shortly thereafter, you sprinkle pollen from the lucky sperimenti club on the receptive flowers, cover up the cluster with a paper bag to prevent random intruder pollen, and hope for the best.

The aim is not necessarily to identify the “best” individual selections—probably as challenging as identifying the newly reincarnated Dalai Lama in a crowded Tibetan delivery room—but rather to consider what might potentially be expressed by the totality of the vines in a given terroir. It won’t be “varietal” characteristics, that’s for certain, but if not that, then what might it be?

This is a very ambitious project, and it rests on a couple of core beliefs, the validity of which is essentially unknowable until the deed is doon. The first is the belief that the wine produced from grapes grown from a large number of genetically distinctive vines, none or few of them possessing “superior” characteristics, will in fact be more interesting and complex than a vineyard planted to relatively few genotypes, all possessing highly favorable characteristics; perhaps from this diversity of voices, a rather different set of signals will emerge; that which was formerly in “deep background” is now front and center. The second belief is that the rooting characteristics of vines grown from seeds might allow one to render a much more amplified and perhaps distinctive expression of terroir.

Vines grown from seeds exhibit a much higher degree of geotropism, or the tendency to form a vertical taproot, growing straight down to China.

You can observe this in volunteer plants that pop in the garden, which have germinated from a seed. A vine with a more downward rooting habit will root more deeply and possibly exploit a wider range of minerals; my surmise is that it will make a hardier, more drought-tolerant plant. All of this assumes of course that one is planting in an area sufficiently isolated and without a history of planting, so a vinifera vine might peaceably grow without fear of imminent phylloxera infestation.

What I find compelling about this project is the opportunity for a grower to take advantage of the stunning richness, diversity and adaptability of nature, expressed in the seed’s potential, as well as of the experience of a collection of grapevines responding to a particular set of environmental challenges.⁴ But what is also interesting is the opportunity for a human being to employ his or her intelligence to make discriminating, empirical judgments concerning the kind of vines that seem most harmonious and congruent for a particular site. I like the tremendous open-endedness of the project. In fact, you don’t really know where it’s going to go. Maybe this is the only way to invite some degree of magic into our world.

On the subject of magic, I recently met a fellow named Hans-Peter Schmidt in the Valais region of Switzerland. Peter is involved in a number of very interesting projects in Switzerland and southern France, but most notably those that think about vineyards and farms as truly sustainable, biological systems. His vineyards do not look anything like conventional ones: there are fruit and nut trees; flowering, insectary bushes; hedges and herbs embedded amongst the vines. His aim is to create optimal diversity within the system, as well as to extend the length of the season in which a greater range of biota might be able to grow and flower.

By dint of the additional organic material incorporated into the soil, as well as by the increased number of diverse species, from leaf-borne fungi and bacteria to honeybees, cohabiting the site, there is an enhancement of natural homeostasis, both hydrologically and biologically. He is also working with an extremely interesting material called bio-char, something you will all be hearing about within the next few years, if you don’t know about it already. This material will, in my humble opinion, be very tied up with the future of our plane for many, many reasons.⁵

Bio-char is essentially activated charcoal, the product of pyrolysis, or the combustion of organic matter in the relative absence of oxygen. The material that you derive looks pretty much like charcoal—crumbly, light, particulate. If you mix bio-char with some good compost and incorporate it into the soil, some wonderful things happen: at high rates of application,⁶ the soil now has up to 30% greater water holding capacity.

Secondly, partially because of the physical shape of the bio-char, and partially because of the number of interesting, reactive organic chemical groupings sticking out from its matrix, there is profound stimulation to the beneficial microflora, the aforementioned mycorrhizae that live in the soil.

So, you end up with produce that is naturally more disease resistant, and with much greater nutritional value. (Note, minerals found in a natural biological form are far more available to us than minerals that come out of a supplement bottle.) Lastly, and not at all trivially, the incorporation of bio-char into the soil sequesters atmospheric carbon for approximately 10,000 years; the production of it is non-polluting and it is profoundly carbon negative. (You can think of it as reverse coal-mining.)

So I put the question to Peter: “Obviously, the use of bio-char in vineyards is quite interesting, especially for those of us in California where there is no summer rain, and of course for those of us unregenerate seekers after terroir, lovers of wines with a strong mineral character or what you might call qi or ‘life-force.’ And, Peter, while I’d like to think of bio-char as a kind of amplifier of terroir—that suits my own personal agenda—could it not also be argued that bio-char is in some way a deformation of terroir?”

“Yes, you could say that,” said Peter, “but it is less of a deformation than say, plowing your vineyard with a disc.” At that comment, I fell into a slight swoon.

It seems that we sometimes draw the line a bit arbitrarily at what is a “natural” wine and what is not, what is a vin de terroir and what is a vin d’effort. But we terroiristes are a very earnest bunch. Certainly there is something like a continuum; some of us favor wines that are absolutely “natural,” made with no additives, no maquillage at all, including SO₂; others generally favor wines made with its very discreet use, to perhaps retain a little more digital clarity, if you will. But, it is my belief that with experience, most wine consumers gradually do migrate to a deeper appreciation of those wines reflective of nature’s vast intelligence and complexity, and at the same time become more in touch with their own bodies’ imperatives, naturally seeking wines easier to digest and to assimilate.

Terroir, you could say, represents a deep paradox. In a certain sense, it is that which is eternal, beyond the stylistic aims of one generation of vigneron or another. And yet in a very real sense, terroir cannot exist without human beings to discover it, express it, and in the end, to appreciate it. We can think of terroir as a region between the human and the natural world, a zone we can cohabit with the natural world in a gentle, minimally perturbative way. Perhaps Peter’s use of bio-char and the massing of so many species in his vineyards is a kind of manipulation of the “natural” terroir, but with his efforts, he reports the appearance of 60 different species of butterfly, multiple species of honey-bees and with every passing year, a deeper entrenchment of biological diversity and a greater independence from vineyard treatments, even in very humid Switzerland. This has to be some sort of criterion for success, and for perhaps the supposition that the land has returned to a more pristine state.

And, oh yes, the wine. He makes his wines without any sulfur dioxide whatsoever. I tasted his Pinot noir; it tasted more “Swiss,” if that makes any sense, than Burgundian, and maybe more Swiss than Pinot noirish. It is not a simple wine; it changes dramatically with time in the glass and time in the bottle. But what is interesting is that the wine does not oxidize, even without SO₂. You can leave it open for weeks. This mystery—why do some wines live and some wines die young?—should haunt every serious winemaker in the New World; I sincerely believe that if you are not obsessing about that issue, you are not really taking your job seriously.

I believe that the notion of terroir began in France at a particular moment in time, when there was enough cognitive bandwidth or at least more of a connection to the natural world—people were not distracted by the internet or by 400 television channels, and a certain culture, the monastic one, was able to focus on the identification of viticultural sites that could produce wines of a certain consistent quality and organoleptic signature year after year. I believe that as a wine-consuming culture, we have perhaps lost the ability to make the finest discriminations between subtly different terroirs. Nevertheless, there remains a deep thirst for the real, for the authentic, and for the wholesome. A great vin de terroir can provide an occasion to experience all of those things, and therefore nourishes us so deeply and on so many levels.

1. This  speech was originally delivered at the Wineries Unlimited Conference in Richmond, Virginia, on March 30, 2011. [↩]
2. In San Juan Bautista, we are not so preoccupied with the water table, as it is at a depth (600+ feet) that is most likely unattainable by the vines in their lifetime. But the world, at least the world of wine, is quite mysterious, so one never knows. [↩]
3. To some extent, this little detail appended in a footnote may well slightly invalidate the premise of the radical notion of diversity at all costs being the greatest good, at least viticulturally. The Mission grape was most likely brought over from Spain to the New World—Peru, initially, if I’m not mistaken, and then up through Mexico into California—as a seed of Listan negro, genetically very close but not exactly identical to the Mission grape. (Seeds are undoubtedly far more sea travel-worthy than grape cuttings or actual potted vines.) And seedlings of course don’t necessarily share all of the favorable characteristics of the plant. So, perhaps against my stated aversion to make selections for perhaps indeterminate quality factors in a field of seedlings, it may well be necessary. [↩]
4. In planting a vineyard de novo, even if one is not taking the radical step of planting grapes from seed, one does wonder how much complexity of varietal mix is appropriate. [↩]
5. Human beings are particularly unskilled in imagining the future, especially futures that are radically different from their presents; hence, as a group, we tend to wait until the very last minute, when the prospect of change/disaster is nothing short of imminent. For obvious reasons, this makes it particularly difficult to address the very real question of global climate change, which still to many (amazingly) seems a bit tenuous. The widespread adoption of bio-char will likely only happen when there is something like a political commitment to take real concrete action, i.e. there will be a strong economic incentive to produce the material. It is also possible that someday people will wake up to realize that the food that they are consuming, even that which is called “organic,” may largely be devoid of real nutritive value; food that actually nourishes us might become demanded. [↩]
6. To really enhance water-holding capacity, rates of approximately 20 tons/ha are required, but to effect enhancement of the microbial life of the soil, substantially less might be used. [↩]

I was given some rather vague marching orders when asked to talk to you.¹  Something something something about what was interesting to me about the Napa Valley. (Pregnant silence….)

You should probably know that I’m not really from around here, I’m from Santa Cruz—and there is no shortage of baggage that comes with that appellation. Surf’s up, dude, and just what kind of Cigare are you smoking? But for me, coming to this part of the world is a bit like traveling to another planet. Maybe Planet Wine Hollywood?

What I’d like to talk to you about, in fact, is the state of the wine industry, at least as I see it, and maybe reflect a bit on what the future might hold for us all.

I’m sure it hasn’t escaped any of you that the California wine industry is in a rather parlous state these days. There is no longer as much good-natured competition among neighboring colleagues; the discourse is dominated instead by rather grim zero-sum calculations, as we each vie for a diminuendoing slice of the pie. We are competing now with winemakers and wineries from all around the world, large and small—from sheep-loving Kiwis; with militarily-efficient Chilean operations; with the artisanal, vowel-challenged winemakers in Slovenia and other parts of Eastern Europe; and with of course the opportunistic virtual wineries or “negoce” businesses—those creatures-of-a-day brands that are predicated on sourcing wine in bulk, (well below the cost of its production) and selling it on the principle that one person’s misfortune is another’s opportunity.

Meanwhile, up on the higher end, it does appear that every high net worth individual—be he rock star, aging professional athlete, plastic surgeon or periodontist, dot.com windfall millionaire or billionaire—has simultaneously decided that he (it usually is a he, because the wine business is largely dominated by male hormones) needs to have a second life, a new avatar, as it were, as a winemaker or winery owner. Maybe this phenomenon accrues because we live too much in the cult of celebrity; most of us don’t have the chops to become great actors or great chefs, but winemaking…you buy some grapes, hire the best consultants that money can buy, and suddenly you’re a winemaker—or God forbid, a vigneron.

I submit to you that the tragic downfall of the California wine industry is largely a function of its great success in recent years. In an earlier, simpler day, people gravitated to the industry because they loved the life of a grape-grower or winemaker, and they had no illusions about making either a large or small fortune in the wine business—simply being part of the business was thrill enough. Winemakers would typically say things like, “I make wines to please myself; I really don’t care if people don’t like them. %#@* ’em, I’ll just drink ’em myself.” These days, the wine business has become a real business. There is more capital investment needed than ever before, not least because land prices, especially in these parts, are staggeringly expensive. And so as a result, essentially nobody says, “I’ll drink it myself” anymore. The wine’s just too darn expensive to drink it oneself.

What is really more troubling to me is that at least at the super-premium level, winemakers have become even more dependent on the killer wine score from Robert Parker or the Wine Spectator. As a consequence, they have become far more risk-averse, and rather tragically, many wines—especially, dare I say, some from around these parts—are beginning to taste more or less the same, seemingly all following a certain stylistic prescription.

I am acquainted with a man named Leo McCloskey—a nice enough fellow whom I used to know when he lived in Santa Cruz. He operates a company in Sonoma called Enologix, which purports to help its clients make wines that will get higher point scores. Note: not wines that are more distinctive. Not wines that are somehow more expressive of their particular terroir. Rather, using models that are reverse-engineered from Wine Spectator and Robert Parker palates, they guarantee wines that will squarely hit certain stylistic parameters and will therefore be “successful.”

This is not a happy outcome; it’s oenvil, as I’ve characterized it—and is not a sustainable model for the future of the wine business. That this particular opulent, overripe style is also essentially undrinkable—at least more than a glass of it is, for me—is also somewhat troubling.

As far as the staggering amount of competition out there, I’m sure it’s not lost on you that far more effort is needed these days to sell a bottle of wine than ever before. Whether this sort of competition is “healthy” is anyone’s guess, but for now it’s just a fact of life, like the weather, and I don’t imagine this weather is going to change any time soon. I’d venture that there are currently perhaps twice as many wineries or wine labels in the brandscape than can actually carry on a sustainable, profitable existence. The larger end of small, as well as “mid-sized” wineries—I’m not even sure what that term means anymore—are particularly vulnerable to challenges in distribution, and by extension, in sales and profitability. They’re too big to be desirable in virtue of their scarcity, and too small to have the marketing clout to make much of an impression on your lot.

For small producers, the scale that might actually work is the true no-frills, micro-model, with very few employees and, through wit and or particularly good karma, the ability to produce wines that a) are truly distinctive, and b) have the ability to communicate that true uniqueness to the end user. Alas, the combination of these two skill sets is not often found in the same set of chromosomes.

There was a famous Harvard Business Review paper published in 2004 about how one can find success in business in times of extreme competition. The postulate was that success can really only come if you are capable of finding “blue ocean,” i.e. delivering a product or service that is so utterly differentiated and superior to that of your competition, that you essentially have no competitors. In the world of wine production, it is my most tenacious belief that, despite occasional evidence to the contrary, producing a distinctive vin de terroir is the only lasting way that a wine producer will ever be able to find blue ocean—a truly sustainable niche. In other words, chasing scores by changing your winemaking practices to favor a particular à la mode style may offer short-term success, but in the end, is a fool’s game. Winemaking trix are for kids, and we must grow up.

But to the question of the real value of terroir: I’ve written before that vins de terroir are more interesting than composed or confected wines—vins d’effort—because they somehow manage to reflect the deep complexity of nature itself. Maybe we grasp their depth—if, that is, we are paying attention—similarly to how we grasp the depth, intelligence, and sensitivity of an individual we might meet. We look for affect and expression, responsiveness, some evidence that they are switched on, connected. Maybe we look for something analogous in wine—movement or change, the ability to evolve, even as we experience it; these wines have a real presence (at a minimum), and maybe even something like a rudimentary consciousness. At least that’s how it seems to me.

But you’re probably not so interested in these wooly philosophical musings, and so perhaps some concrete examples of what is lately most interesting to me these days, in my own personal quest for a vin de terroir, could be germane. I’ll get to that, but I’m also still determined to give you the larger philosophical context. Please bear with me.

I recently had dinner with my best friend from high school, a psychiatrist, as it turns out. I talked about how challenging the wine business had become, and he somewhat facetiously—though not entirely facetiously—suggested that I consider peddling my wares (presumably virtually) in the virtual world on a site called Farmville. There, participants act as if they are growing various virtual crops, bringing them to virtual market and attempting to operate a virtual profitable enterprise and so forth. (Note: this is actually more or less what I’m trying to do in real life.) The model for monetizing this business is that the site provides the opportunity for participants to “upgrade” to a better virtual tractor by spending non-virtual, i.e. “real” dollars in Farmville. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by explaining that the solution he was proposing was essentially a great part of what I see as our current problems, namely the inability to differentiate between actions with consequences in the real world, and actions that simply make us feel slightly better about what we are doing. This is a conundrum maybe worth considering here in quasi-virtual “wine country.”

The digital world is incredibly rich and powerful, as far as the opportunity it provides us to connect with people. I’ve experienced this myself. But a wholly virtual world also carries with it a certain implicit danger, which is that by participating in it, we may at a certain point lose the ability to differentiate between the really real and the virtually real. It is certainly beyond the scope of these remarks to comment on whether the formation of “virtual relationships” ultimately erodes our ability to form “real” relationships, but I do believe that the world we live in right now is beginning to offer us something like a forking path. On one fork: the opportunity to embrace the truly real (a very scary proposition, I might add). On the other: the opportunity to allow something like pernicious irreality to gradually, imperceptibly seep into our belief systems.

Granted, delusional thinking has always been with us, but it seems more prevalent than it has ever been. In the wine business, this fantasy may be something like:

“My domestic Pinot is every bit as good as Romanée-Conti—blind tasters (or critics) tell me so;” or,

“My ‘Meritage’ just smokes Cheval Blanc;” or,

“If I could just figure out how to get a certain influential wine writer to like my wine, my depletion issues will be solved;” or

“If I could just figure out how to get millennials to purchase my wine, my business will be saved;” or

“If I could just get my distributor to return my phone calls, my business will be saved;” or

“If I could just figure out how to master social media and sell all of my wine on-line, I will be poised for success.”

I’m not sure if this last delusional thought is entirely delusional, but regardless, the list goes on and on.

Which brings me to the meat of my message, and perhaps the larger lesson to be learned:

I honestly don’t believe that there are any silver bullets, any recipes for success, including the evil ones that Mr. McCloskey is peddling, and as I said, that kind of “success” is, I believe, as fleeting as a passing cloud. What I’m suggesting is that real success in the wine business simply may lie in making real wine, and of course having the ability to communicate about this real wine you have somehow achieved. In this era of the illusory, of the virtual, of the half- or three-quarters baked, the real shines as brightly as a diamond.

Now, bear in mind that for most of my career as a winemaker, I’ve lived something like a virtual existence. Yeah, I’ve done my share of cellar work, though not so much lately, and I’m of course always present at the blending bench. I do also still visit the vineyards that supply us grapes—usually to complain about some error of omission or commission, and generally too late to effect any real positive outcome. In truth, Bonny Doon wines have traditionally been created by one sort of winemaking legerdemain or another—we’ll throw some of this stuff in, and maybe some of that. I might toss in some sort of cute trick I learned kicking around southern France, where there is no shortage of cuteness in winemaking. And in truth, it has—or had—worked out reasonably well; customers couldn’t seem to get enough of the flashy, clever labels.

However, this is no longer acceptable to me. I am now possessed of a deep thirst for the real, for wine that comes from a place. And I firmly believe that to be able to express that sense of place, one needs to be thoroughly present. For me personally, this will require some non-trivial psychic and spiritual retooling, but I am up for it; it is the only path forward for me.

At Bonny Doon, we’re presently into some pretty esoteric practices—some on the drawing board, and some being implemented even as we speak. We’re growing some of our grapes from seeds, creating a vineyard of vast genetic diversity and potentially great complexity. (We can talk about why this may be a particularly brilliant idea—or not.) We’re aging some of the wines in glass demijohns, which, while strictly speaking is a form of legerdemain, is still incredibly cool. I’m very keen on experimenting with aging wine in amphorae, especially if we can fashion the vessels from clay collected at our new property in San Juan Bautista.

We’re also learning how to produce a material called bio-char, essentially a form of activated charcoal, and mixing it with compost and incorporating it into the soil. Bio-char dramatically enhances the microbial life of the soil, which is in fact the real repository of terroir. Also, and non-trivially, the use of bio-char is a carbon-negative process, taking carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it in the soil, and maybe helping to do a small part to reverse global climate change. Our new vineyard in San Juan Bautista will not look much like a conventional vineyard. I am completely dedicated to the idea of establishing true biological diversity in the vineyard through the plantation of a real polyculture—fruit and nut trees, flowering shrubs and aromatic herbs interplanted among the vines—in order to foster a balanced and truly sustainable ecosystem. I’m hopeful that with these practices we may well be able to farm our new vineyard without irrigation and produce wines filled with life and expressive of the place where they are grown.

Maybe it is a bit paradoxical, but embracing the real, as I have said, does not mean gritting one’s teeth and hoping for the best. Embracing the real requires the realization that one must look deep within oneself to find an imaginative path toward success, maybe one that has never been attempted before. It is the understanding that there is no longer any way at all to “play it safe.” There is only risk. In other words, maybe I am utterly deluding myself to imagine that we might produce something like an authentic vin de terroir by growing grapes from seeds, dry-farmed, in an area where there have never been grapes before. But, we will just have to see now, won’t we?

When I first thought about giving this talk, I wasn’t really sure what kind of good information I might offer to you, a group of wholesalers. So, I will only tell you this: hang on to the suppliers who are doing or attempting to do something real. Add real value to what they have to offer. Make your portfolios as coherent as they can possibly be; let them stand for something. Lastly, try to find the joy that is still present in this very challenging business that we share.

Thank you.

1. These remarks were delivered at the annual meeting of Ohio wine and beer distributors, held February 18, 2011, in Napa Valley. [↩]

Winter Solstice 2010

Pacific Rim on the half-shell

To HS: ¡Mira!: A Rimshot¹. By the time you read this, there will have been a significant development in der kleiner Doonwelt. Pacific Rim—you do remember Pacific Rim, the brand we quixotically produced for so many years under the aegis of Bonny Doon, schlepping grape juice down from Eastern Washington to Monterey County to ferment and ultimately get blended with the crisp and floral Mosel wine from our friend, Johannes Selbach, (sea-schlepped—the wine, that is—through the Panama Canal), then the whole business trucked back up to Santa Cruz to be bottled, back in the day; an enormous investment of time and energy (totally worth it) in service of the noblest white grape of them all?—has just been sold to the Mariani family, owners of Banfi Wine Group. The Asian woman on the front label—in the first iteration she had just placed down a weighty copy of Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung before drowsing off and dreaming of the Platonic form of Riesling, depicted on the interior side of the back label—bringing to mind how important it is to have a rich inner life (something that wine, on a very good day or night might well abet). Well, this was all before we relocated the company to the Great Northwest, entrusting it to the very capable Nicolas Quillé and crew, who have all done a magnificent job of growing the brand handsomely and making some lovely wine in the bargain.  So, now it’s been sold—oh, great joy—but what this means on a personal level, apart from the upwelling of memories, is that the sundry parlous Damoclean swords have been sheathed (the last several years had been very tough) and we now have some financial breathing room to take care of business, the first order of which is to proceed amain with the establishment of our vineyard/farm/kibbutz in San Juan Bautista.

Closely spaced pinot noir; ideal rodentine habitat

Ratiocination. “So, how is it going in San Juan?” you ask. Well, we’ve had our ups and doons, as I’m somewhat wont to say. We had planted a little more than one-half acre of pinot noir last spring very densely (in every sense of the word), and had what I’d imagined to be an enormously clever idea: the setting out of a very thick layer of straw mulch between the plants to conserve moisture and to suppress weeds. It did work brilliantly in doing that, but also had the unfortunate unintended consequence of creating the most ideal ecological niche for very, very large rats, who lost no time at all in creating a vast thoroughly integrated rat habitat: rat arterials, feeder and frontage roads; rat schools, churches and hospitals; rat industries (manufacturers of rattles and rattail files, radiator repair); service organizations—the American Rat Cross; rat condominia…  You get the picture. We had rats up the yin-yang in our young, tender planting. They chomped down to the ground maybe 40% of the plants, very careful to leave the poison oak companion plants. So we trapped the rodentine fressers,² removed the straw, and voilà, the problem abated, and mercifully, under the god Pan’s watchful encouragement, maybe 70% of the damaged vines somehow managed to grow back.

Fibonacci: The Geometric Music of the Spheres

Don’t Go Near the Water. In the John Steinbeck novel “Cannery Row,” there’s a character continuously at work building a boat, but somehow never managing to finish. As soon as he’s nearing completion, he invariably decides that the aesthetic concept or the building material or something is all terribly wrong. The real problem, as another character explains, is that the boat builder is, very simply, afraid of the water. It has been a comforting fantasy of mine over the years to daydream continually about planting a wonderful, miraculous vineyard, and this of course has excused me on some level from actually going out and planting aforesaid vineyard. This was going to be a very special, magical vineyard, after all, and whether it was to be planted in the form of a helix or on some sort of esoteric hexagonal or heptagonal grid, or grown up an olive or peach tree, or perhaps somehow arrayed as the topological projection of a Fibonacci series—I’m not quite sure how one would manage this (I’m still pondering)—this rosy fantasy is what has kept me going in times of great adversity, when fermentations have inexplicably stuck, when malos have gone when they’re not supposed to, and have not gone when they should, when I’ve failed to pick before the rain, or alternatively, pulled the trigger too soon just before the sun came out with a smile, or when, having gone to a much lower SO₂ regime (it seemed like a good idea at the time), I’ve observed the resultant spike in diverse microbial creepy-crawlies crawling out of the woodwork. In these challenging times, I’ve had a certain tendency to become transformed into a grape-growing Walter Mitty, a Walter Vitty, if you will. “Just give me a great terroir and a few (well, actually more than a few) oddball grape varieties, and I’ll show you; I’ll show you all!” But now something has changed. It is no longer the dream that is compelling, but rather the gritty work itself that beckons.

En Plein Air. The joy will come, must come in the thousand small decisions that are to be made: which rootstock, which varieties, for Godsake—or will there even be anything like distinct grape varieties in this new radically envisioned undertaking?³ And how might we make a great imaginative leap into dry-farming a parcel that (at least parts of which) we’re told is un-dry-farmable? Where will the pêches de vigne go, and where the olives and where the black raspberry patch? How can we coax supernal flavors, the second derivative of dry-farmed tomatoes, out of our produce? Time to send away for those exotic Italian seeds, radicchio as sleek and brightly carmine as a turbo-charged Maserati. And most important, will there be goats for goat’s cheese, sheep for fresh ricotta? Burrata, the fresh farm cheese that dare not speak its name? It is rather easy for me to become lost in the reverie of imagining, but the imagining will soon (if cards are played right) turn into digging post-holes and setting fence posts, and there, if things work as I envision, I’ll have ample time to day-dream whilst lost in the Zen of some real work.

Top: Claude Bourguignon in a bit of a hole (trou); bottom: a chunk of limestone; note froth, a reaction of strong mineral acid with carbonate

No Boeuf with the Bourguignons. It really is an enormous “To Do” list I’m compiling, and we are barely up to the “B”s. Foremost among the Bee’s Needs: Bourguignons, Bio-char, and Blood Peaches, aka pêches de vigne. We’ve had the Bourguignons—that is their last names: Claude and Lydia, the eminent French soil scientists—out to the place to visit, to give us their advice on how to optimize the expression of terroir.⁴ There were a couple of patches that struck them as somewhat pedestrian, but they were awfully excited by most everything they saw. “We’ve never seen such a diverse array of soils on a single property, including some globally very rare ones—limestone and volcanic (along with more common metamorphic and granitic), as well as the ultra-recherché and beautiful allophane soils.⁵) ,⁶ I am fairly certain that I was projecting my own heart-thumping sense of excitement at a particularly climactic moment of the visit. We had just hopped into a soil pit and seen the streaks of chalky white material. Could it be? Claude then expertly whipped out his vial of sulfuric acid,⁷ and, testing the material in situ, pronounced it definitively to be pure calcaire. Again, I may well have been projecting, but I imagined I saw a slight lump in his throat when he made the pronouncement. You should know that the Bourguignons have publicly been rather skeptical about the possibilities of a real expression of terroir in the New World, and maybe (this is truly all my imagination), they felt at that extraordinary moment the need for perhaps a slight—or total—revision of their worldview. The limestone patch is out on a bit of a promontory, very windy, and we’ll need to plant a very substantial windbreak. Is there any reason in the world this windbreak could not be hazelnut trees, inoculated with truffle fungus?  ((Apart from the fact that we would likely be attracting every wild boar in the Tri-County area.))

Sehr Trocken. If you have been following my slightly obsessive ideational thread for the last few years, you’ll know that part of the belief system is that the discovery of terroir is not really possible absent dry-farming. The block at San Juan we had planned to plant this coming spring (with a great selection of grenache from an unnamed source⁸ in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape appellation) is at the very top of our property, on a relatively windy mesa, with fairly shallow, rocky soils, i.e., ones with not so very great water holding capacity. Our “experts”—and we’ve heard from a few—have not agreed on much apart from the fact that this section is not likely to be farmed without supplemental irrigation.⁹ Because this issue (the need to express terroir vs. some degree of practicality) appears to be more or less intractable, I do what multiple generations of Grahms have always done,¹⁰ namely to ask the considered opinion of every single person they meet capable of making an intelligent comment on the subject.¹¹ At a farm-to-table dinner about a year ago, I saw an old friend, Greg Steltenpohl, someone I know to have a great interest in matters of sustainability, and in catching up with him, I shared my concerns about dry farming in San Juan. Greg told me about something called “biochar,” which a number of people in the sustainable community had begun to talk about in rather glowing tones.¹² Now, I have the rather off-putting habit of putting things off to the very last minute, and when a decision about how/when we were going to plant the grenache was imminent, the time to research biochar in earnest could be put off no longer. As it turns out, not only is biochar utterly relevant and congruent to my ideological bent, it is something that we should all be thinking about rather sooner than later. So, what the heck is biochar, and why should it compel our interest?

Amazon soil, before and after biochar

(Loup-garou) Garrigue’s Disease. Biochar is the product of pyrolysis, or the thermochemical transformation of organic material in the absence of oxygen; you may know it under the nom de barbecue of “charcoal.” Apart from its stellar utility at 4^th of July shindigs, why else should it be so interesting? When biochar is returned to the soil, it does some very magical things. Not only is it useful in enhancing water holding capacity (it holds six times its own weight in water), but as significantly, it seems to dramatically activate the microbial life in the soil, resulting in far greater availability of soil nutrients, and consequently producing healthier plants and more nutritious produce. From a terroirist perspective, the soil microflora are terroir’s pre-amplifier, boosting its signal. The mycorrhizae in the vine root hairs are terroir’s carny hawkers, shameless promoters and costermongers, strong-arming those reluctant Midwestern cations to give it up and live a little, join the show—step-right-up-get-yer-haunting-aroma-here. But most important, the real genius of biochar is that it seems to be the most practical strategy—perhaps truly the only strategy we have at this point—to reverse the effects of global warming. After burning fossil fuels for 200 years, we now have the opportunity to put coal back into the ground and sequester the carbon (net carbon negativity)—for, oh, say, 10,000 years—whilst making our soils more arable and filled with life. Seems like a very cool trade-off.

Swiss Char. There is a great interview from Ken Payton, of Reign of Terroir, with Hans-Peter Schmidt, a Swiss anthropologist turned viticulturist who is doing original research in the use of biochar in vineyards. Beyond thinking about biochar as a magic bullet, Peter is thinking about how one might use the vineyard as a platform to create real biodiversity and something approaching a true polyculture, even on sites that are water-limited. This has always been the great tragic flaw of the California climat—no summer rain to support flowering plants, which in turn support a balanced insect ecology.¹³ If we can create conditions to allow flowers to bloom longer into the season, the benefits to the ecology and stability of the vineyard eco-system are incalculable. But possibly more to the point, a paradise is a garden of infinite delights, not just a place where a single item is produced, as stellar and soulfully intoxicating as it might be. The nature spirits are as attention-deficit challenged as the rest of us, requiring a constantly changing kaleidoscope of sensory pleasures—sights, scents, and tastes—to keep them in a sunny mood.

Pêches de vigne

Red Alert or Taking Umbrage. There are blood diamonds, there are blood peaches, and then there are pêches de vigne,¹⁴ the latter two items being juicy members of the Prunus genus, possessing deeply pigmented red juice and something approaching the quintessence of peach fragrance. I first encountered pêches de vigne or “vineyard peaches” while visiting Michel Escande, a brilliant grower in Minervois, in the Midi, who for many years supplied us with syrah for our Domaine des Blagueurs brand.¹⁵ He had just a few scrawny trees, but I tasted the fruit and was utterly knocked out, to the point of obsession, such that I have always been on the Prunus persica qui vive when visiting any part of Europe where grapes are grown.¹⁶ Needless to say, whilst traveling in those parts, I am essentially always literally on Red Alert. No one really knows why these peaches have shown up in vineyards, apart from the folk knowledge that they ripen at more or less (usually a little sooner) the same time as grapes, and that they are a most cordial fruit to consume whilst harvesting, or potentially under which to find shade, though these diminutive guys provide relatively little relief in the torrid Midi midi. I’ve had the great fortune to meet two of the most knowledgeable people in the world on matters pertinent to genus Prunus.¹⁷ One is grower/plant breeder Andy Mariani of San Martin, who has a vast collection of peaches, apricots, plums, and nectarines, as well as every permutation and combination thereof, and is still looking to breed variants even wilder and more flavorful; the other is Todd Kennedy, an attorney and passionate rare fruit maven, who is undoubtedly the Final Word on any discussion anent our sappy, succulent, chin-drizzling, fuzzy, fruictiferous friends. Todd has graciously given me a number of pits of true pêches de vigne from his collection; it is my hope that they will give rise to some viable offspring ’ere long. They’re currently reposing in the refrigerator, undergoing an obligatory chill period. I will plant them out in the next few weeks, hoping for the very best.

Seeds of Change. I don’t know whether you’ve managed to follow any of the published reports of our plans to grow grapes from seeds at San Juan.  I’ve written about this a fair bit in this monthly-ish blog, and I have to say that this project is what truly gets me going every morning. I’ll spare you the goriest details as to why this is interesting to me,¹⁸ but the project seems to be incredibly resonant with everyone who learns about it. Maybe it’s just the human need for hope, for regeneration, that the image of the seed evokes. This project will not be the savior of the wine industry (or of anything else), but it may perhaps produce wines that will sing a song that has not heretofore been heard.

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1. This is a terribly inside joke (and a palindrome as well), and its intent was to surprise and delight Harmon Skurnik, brother of the eponymous Michael Skurnik, our distributor in New York. If memory serves, we put this inscription on the corks (remember those?) of Pacific Rim Riesling.  I think fondly back on the days when it seemed possible to do all sorts of goofy things with our marketing, with minimal fear of repercussions. [↩]
2. A slightly grisly footnote: I have remarked once or twice before on the enormous sense of energy or vitality the San Juan site possesses. It is a bit hard to quantify, but one thing is for certain: when an animal meets its demise on the property, there is an almost instant recycling of its relevant bits. Within 24 to 36 hours of the fatal snap of the trap, there is little left of the rat but the tail—rat-tat-tué. [↩]
3. Though if you have read the recent post on the Been Doon So Long blog on the subject of growing grapes from seeds, you will note that I’m now essentially at a point where I’m thinking the whole notion of a grape variety, or particular clone of grape variety, may well be thoroughly moot. [↩]
4. Only in France can you find “geologists to the stars,” at least in the viticultural firmament. The Bourguignons’ roster of clients is so impressive as to be known by virtually any newbie Shanghainese wine aficionado. [↩]
5. Allophane soils, at least in the New World, are exceptionally exotic, to the point where many non-French (or at least non-Bourguignon) soil scientists are even unaware of their existence, as they are often (erroneously) confused with simpler clay soils. Allophane, known as an “amorphous” mineral, perhaps the hermaphrodite of minerals, possesses both anion and cation exchange capability, a rich repository of plant nutrition, but with the tragic flaw of being very easily compacted. The Bourguignons made us solemnly promise not to rip these soils, nor to run heavy equipment over them. (We have learned that there are apparently quite a number of super-light narrow-gauge European caterpillar tractors that one might inadvertently drive over the foot of a co-worker without necessitating an immediate visit to the emergency room. [↩]
6. I am also utterly jazzed about the presence of the volcanic soils, which are perhaps the most mineral-intensive ones of all. Whether we end up planting nerello mascalese—God knows if we can find that—or something else, there’s no question that these sites will produce some extraordinary fruit. [↩]
7. Claude and Lydia, like many consultants, spend an inordinate amount of time on airplanes. But they, unlike most consultants, also travel around by air carrying a diverse array of highly reactive/volatile chemical reagents. I believe Claude explained to me his stratagem for foiling airport security regulations anent these substances, but can’t just now recall how he does it. [↩]
8. Ex Château Rayas, via a slightly circuitous route. [↩]
9. There is no absolutely definitive reason why we have chosen to plant grenache in this section, apart from the fact that we need to plant something, and grenache, especially on its own roots (non-grafted), is among the most drought tolerant varieties there are. [↩]
10. Actually, it is just my mother and very possibly her mother who employed this stratagem, but for all I know, this behavior may well be behaviorally encoded in the DNA. [↩]
11. This method also actually seems to work. [↩]
12. No, the stuff is not radioactive. [↩]
13. Companion plantings (sometimes also known as weeds) adjacent to vines protect the soil from the bright rays of the sun and support microbial flora that also nourish the vines. [↩]
14. Blood peaches, or “Indian” peaches, superficially resemble pêches de vigne in that they are both rather small in size, dun or grayish in appearance, and covered with a fuzzy down. Depending on the particular tree and where it is grown, the flesh and juice will either be a shockingly vivid, bright red or largely so. According to Todd Kennedy, the pêches de vigne (of which there are actually several variants) come from a different genetic line than the Indian bloods, but have independently arrived at a similar appearance. The true pêche de vigne is more deeply, reliably pigmented than the blood peach, and is more aromatic, but also exhibits slightly more astringency and bitterness.  Pêches de vigne are seldom seen at market (their shelf-life is not so great), but they are used in Europe to create amazing jams, eaux de vie, and fruit liqueurs (the sweetness of the liqueur or jam a device to mask the astringency). [↩]
15. Michel himself is an amazing individual, with wines that are little known in the U.S.  (He has had a somewhat tempestuous relationship with his importer, and I’m honestly not sure whether they have presently kissed and made up.) Michel is somewhat of a mystic, and presents a slightly dreamy, distracted, moody countenance to the world; however, he is very tuned-in to the subtle energetic forces in his climat. Michel does not suffer fools; I was given to understand it was somewhat miraculous that as an American I was given the warm welcome I invariably received. But the French are fabulously rigorous about their personal boundaries. I’ve eaten many, many times at the table chez Escande, and in ten or so years of visiting, have been received in his cave de accueil, but never into his proper fermenting area nor barrel cellar. [↩]
16. They are found throughout Europe from Germany to virtually all of France (Alsace, Burgundy, and the Midi). Curiously, I’ve never seen them in Italy, but I have to believe they are there. Not surprisingly, the cultivation of vineyard peaches provides an interesting glimpse into the character of das Volk, le peuple. German vineyard peaches (Weinbergpfirschen) are procured from nurseries, where they are grafted onto proper rootstock, each tree genetically true to die Mutterpflanze, and planted in organized rectilinear fashion. French pêches de vigne, on the other hand, at least in the historically dirt-poor Midi, were/are typically produced from peach pits after the peach had been sensuously savored and discarded, to randomly appear the following spring as a seedling in the vineyard. The advantage of the German method, of course, is that the desirable characteristics of the mother plant are retained; the advantage of the French method is that it just is what it is. [↩]
17. I suppose that peaches—maybe it is their highly sensual, if not vaguely sexual Platonic form—are something that can feed a sort of Nabokovian obsession. [↩]
18. Sorry, but I can’t resist here. The coolest aspects of this project—growing grapes from seedlings—are twofold: 1.) The rooting habit of seedlings is somewhat different from plants made from cuttings; the seedlings exhibit a greater degree of geotropism—i.e., they tend to root straight down—and this may well confer to them a greater degree of drought tolerance (a beautiful thing), as well as the ability to mine a larger soil volume for nutrients (and hence a more articulate expression of terroir); and 2.) When you grow grapes from seeds, you have essentially recombined the genetic information of the mother plant, resulting in subtle or not so subtle differences from the mother plant. (A red grape parent will yield red, pink, and white offspring.) While nearly every offspring may be thought of as “inferior” to the mother plant, i.e., not possessing the full expression of desirable characteristics, it is my hope/belief that in the manifestation of this extreme degree of genetic diversity in the plant material, one will end up with a wine of great nuance and complexity. The expression of varietal characteristics will recede in prominence, and perhaps other aspects (ahem—terroir), will come to the fore. [↩]

Dear DEWNstah,¹

If someone were to ask me about my “winemaking style,” I believe I should properly answer, “Taoist.” Let me unpack that slightly cryptic formulation: A Taoist is concerned with many issues, but mostly is trying to synchronize his own efforts and intentions with the general flow of energy moving through all things;^{2, 3} he is focused on preserving his own life-force, or qi, which partakes of that energetic flux.

When I started out making wine, I felt that my job was to make my wines taste as delicious as I possibly could, ideally upon release; I was less concerned about the future arc of the wine’s narrative, as it were. I wanted people to like them so that they would buy them and drink them now. To that end, I used all sorts of winemaking tricks: saigner (the bleeding of free run juice), microoxygenation (tannin management, it was called), designer yeasts, enzymes, reverse osmosis, even gum arabic(!)⁴ —in truth, none particularly trickier than those deployed by many of my winemaking colleagues.

But I have put aside these childish ploys and toys and now—indeed for quite some time—have grown to embrace the beauty of natural, unmanipulated wines. Along with a growing appreciation for wines produced sans maquillage, one quality that I have greatly come to esteem is the quality of life-force in a wine, the ability to resist oxidation.  Some people may use the term “minerality” to describe this attribute, citing a somewhat austere, stony aspect to the wine, especially in its youth, and especially manifest upon first opening. This is not to be confuted with astringency or the presence of tannin, though tannin is certainly part of the antioxidative system of a wine, that is the sum of the elements that allow the wine to live for a very long time. And a long life, both for the wine and its maker, is what this Taoist winemaker most sincerely wishes to achieve.

Which brings us to the 2007 Le Cigare Volant “en foudre” and “en demi-muid.” These so-called “variants” featured in November’s DEWN club wine shipment are quite different from Cigares d’antan, and they are somewhat different from the archetypal or at least expected Bonny Doon wine. The two variants reflect differences in the élevage, or the cellaring regime of the wine. One, the demi-muid or puncheon, was aged primarily in 500 and 600 liter⁵ barrels (this is a little more than twice the size of a conventional barrel); the other, en foudre, was aged in 10,000 liter upright wood tanks.⁶ But note: both variants are made from precisely the same wine when put down to cask; it is the élevage that has created the rather significant differences between them.

Why should this be interesting to us? When I first started making Le Cigare Volant back in 1984, we aged the wine more or less exclusively in large wood tanks, because that was simply “how it was done,” at least in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the Platonic model of Cigare. Then I went through a slightly cute phase of aging the wine in 60 gallon barrels⁷ —a supremely bad idea. Ultimately, I came to really like the result of aging approximately half of the wine in puncheon and half in large wood tank. Each seemed to reveal a different facet of the wine, and the blend of the two often seemed to create the most harmonious effect, so this has in fact pretty much been our standard wine aging protocol for the last ten or fifteen years.⁸ But I always wondered what the course of the evolution of the wine might be if we had kept these individual lots unblended.

The role of the caviste—the French wouldn’t call him a “winemaker”—is rather a bit like that of a Chinese physician: he is to trying to grasp a sense of the qualities of the qi of the individual under consideration—is it robust or fragile?—and to plot a course most appropriate to the conservation of that individual’s life-force. If the wine is quite robust, costaud, the French would say, it will want to be exposed to a fair bit of oxygen, especially in its youth. If the wine is more fragile, the wine’s exposure to oxygen will want to be far more discreet. This latter case means generally a larger aging vessel, where there is proportionately less oxygen permeation (a smaller surface area of exposure to O₂ to the overall volume of the vessel).

Now barrels, especially new ones, are something else again. On the one hand, there is far greater oxygen exchange, owing to the greater surface area exposed to air and the relative thinness of the wood staves. Oxygen tends to drive certain reactions—the condensation and softening of a wine—quite appropriate for varieties rich in both tannins (from seeds and stems) and anthocyanins (the pigmented material in the grapeskins). The oak itself also contributes wood tannins, and these act, at least in theory, as an antioxidative counterbalance to the oxygen absorbed into the wine. You see, oxygen—the softener, the polisher, the refiner of the wine—is also the hidden assassin of wine, that initiator of the tragic inversion of the hourglass, meting out the finitude of a wine’s days. So, it is all rather a bit of a dance.

About the wines, at last: I wish I could offer you very precise tidy tasting notes, but this is essentially impossible, as the wines are currently in such an enormous state of flux. On a given day they are utterly charming, filled with fruit and other vinous qualities that make us break out in song. On another they are brooding, sullen adolescents.⁹ In general, I can offer the following observations about some of the generalized distinctions between the two wines: The Cigare en foudre seems to be in some sense the younger or less evolved of the pair; one typically finds there more primary fruit aromas. The en foudre also appears to be the more umami or savory-intensive wine of the two; there is a strong suggestion of loamy earth/forest floor, with the occasional whiff of truffle.¹⁰

Now, the en demi-muid is another kettle of grenache. In the cellar, for visitors, it has almost always been the more attractive of the two wines, though in candor I would suggest that this may have more to do with the fact that its perceptual Gestalt is more familiar to most tasters.^{11, 12} What the (relatively) smaller cooperage seems to do to wine is to polish it to a high gloss. The new oak component does seem offer a bit of sweetness to the nose; the wine is slightly darker in color than the en foudre, as the oak tannin has reacted with the anthocyanins in the wine to help stabilize the color. The wine somehow seems more “classic,” more refined, sleeker and grown up; it is less “rustic” and more “modern.”  If these two wines were hairstyles, maybe the en foudre would be mildly dreadlocked and the en demi-muid would be a razor cut. I worry a bit that with the en demi-muid we are getting dangerously close here to making something in the dreaded “international style”—not precisely the outcome that I am seeking, but as a winemaking exercise, worth doing at least once.

The great sea change at Bonny Doon is that we, like good Taoists, are seeking to learn how to build wines capable of living a long time. Is longevity an absolute good?  For nuanced, complex wines, the answer is incontrovertibly, Yes.

I want to invite you to come along with us on this journey of discovery, to really grasp this other dimension of wine—its ability to change and evolve over time. Yes, I know this is a bit of a departure from what some of you may regard as the paradigmatic Bonny Doon style, and may further seem like a sales ploy to induce you to buy more wine. But the reality is that this is where we are going—hang onto your hats—and the wines really need to be tasted on multiple occasions to follow the arc of their development. They will undoubtedly live for twenty years (or more), and are nowhere near providing optimal tasting enjoyment right now¹³ (I am myself not so secretly rooting for the en foudre for the long term). But may I humbly suggest that you consider purchasing at least half a case of each, and opening the two variants side by side every few years?^{14, 15}

We are both of us on a rather exciting journey; it has been my great pleasure and privilege to have traveled with you at least this far.

With very best wishes,

Randall Grahm
Winemaker and President-for-life

1. This letter was originally sent to club members of Bonny Doon’s Distinctive Esoteric Wine Network along with their November shipment of Cigare variants. The wines, as well as the normale blend, are currently only available to wine club members, and can be purchased online at bonnydoonvineyard.com. They will be released to the general public in the fall of 2011. [↩]
2. The most important application of this practice vis-à-vis wine is the correct identification of a vineyard site, or to put it in the crude parlance of the pragmatic Westerner: “Location, location, location.” Identification of the genius site can be accomplished through geomancy, feng shui, great intuitive insight, sincere prayer and tremendously good luck. [↩]
3. The Western formulation of this dictum would be, “You can’t fight City Hall.” [↩]
4. A trick that I learned over there in France. [↩]
5. The 600 liter, thick-staved puncheons are locally called “bastardos,” because of the absolute physical difficulty of moving them around. [↩]
6. Cunningly fitted out with “lees hotels,” perforated stainless steel shelves, on which lees can deposit, the better to become easily digested into the wine. But you’ve undoubtedly heard my “Lees check in but they don’t check out” joke once or twice already. [↩]
7. 225 liters, for the metrically gifted. [↩]
8. The 2007 Le Cigare Volant “normale,” the wine released through our primary distribution channels, has been composed thusly. [↩]
9. Please further note that this variability is not in fact a defect in the wines in any sense, but rather, an indication that they are “real” wines, imbued with life, and somewhat sensitive to environmental conditions—temperature, barometric pressure, lunar cycles and God knows what else. [↩]
10. If you were/are a closet chthonophage (dirt-eater), this wine is definitely for you. [↩]
11. Robert Parker, for example, seemed to have liked this wine reasonably well (though couldn’t resist the opportunity to put the shiv in and twist it just a little bit for sport on another matter), giving the en demi-muid the slight nod to the en foudre. You have to say the man knows what he likes. [↩]
12. In general, the ’07 Cigare Volant has been rather well received by many professional wine critics, who have tasted it in its infancy.  I am just the slightest bit cranky on the subject, but I believe that they “get” the ’07 in a way that they did not some of the recent Cigare vintages, in virtue of the imminent power of the ’07. It is a great leap. [↩]
13. If you absolutely insist on tasting the wine now, you will be well advised to decant it and give it at least two hours of air. Alternatively, you can open it, drink maybe half of it tonight and try the balance over the next couple of evenings. You will note that the wine will hold up exceptionally well. You should also note—and this is likely too important a point to relegate to a footnote—that this is an utterly remarkable, atypical occurrence for most New World wines. [↩]
14. As the wine was aging in the cellar, we took the opportunity of tasting the two versions side by side over a period of almost two years.  What was absolutely extraordinary was the horserace-like quality of the wines’ respective showing. On a given day, one would be absolutely charming and expressive, a month later, absolutely nada, bupkis. And the following month, it pops out again, wearing a sunny smile, as if nothing had ever been amiss. [↩]
15. Another thought: You might consider gifting a younger person (offspring, favored nephew or niece) with a DEWN membership. [↩]

I believe that I may have found something truly original and worthwhile that might be done in the New World.¹ It’s worthwhile not just because it is novel—this is the idea of growing grapes from seeds—but because I think that it can create a real paradigm shift in how we experience wine.

Broadly speaking, the qualities that we experience in wine come from three major sources—you can almost conceive of them as radio signals of greater or lesser strength:  1) The inherent qualities of the site itself (its terroir); this is potentially the strongest signal, but it can also be quite obscured by grapegrowing and winemaking practices, drip irrigation most notably; 2) the characteristics imparted by the selection of the plant material—rootstock and scion, from the ripening properties of the vines themselves to the flavor profile of the grape varieties; 3) the overlay of winemaking technique—barrel character, diacetyl or “malolactic” character, lees autolysis, the qualities imparted by designer yeasts and designer enzymes, and so on. In principle, all of these factors can help define the character of a wine, but in the New World, we are generally focused on elements 2) and 3), and these are the obvious characters that most tasters find first in a wine: fruit, texture, flavor intensity, optical opacity—that sort of thing. But my thought is that ultimately, these qualities are really the least interesting aspects of a wine, that there is something deeper in a wine—its implicate order, if you will—which is the expression of terroir.

There are certain grape growing techniques that I think profoundly favor the amplification of terroir without its distortion, and this is what is supremely interesting to me at this point. Perhaps foremost among them is dry-farming, allowing the vines to explore a wide-ranging volume of soil; certainly, having a diverse and vibrant microflora in the soil itself is also incredibly important in the articulation of the mineral signature of the site.² When you feel terroir in a wine, it is—at least to me—a much deeper experience than the experience of a wine of more superficial charms; it is an experience of the vertiginous depth of nature itself, and it can be emotionally affecting.

Growing grapes from seeds will give you a radically high degree of genetic diversity, with each member of the population proffering a slightly different facet, a variant of the dominant thema.³ And while the characteristics of virtually all of the offspring of the mother vine will in some sense be individually less desirable than those of the parent, there is potentially something enormously valuable in the accretion of differences between the vines: every vine is genetically distinctive from every other one, but still a member of the same tribe. This would, it appears, give you a breath-taking level of complexity and polyphony (but not cacophony) that you might not otherwise experience.⁴ Further, grapes grown from seeds exhibit a very high degree of geotropism—they root straight down to China—and this is essentially what one is looking for in a vin de terroir: deep extraction of the mineral qualities of the soil, concentrated and expressed in a relatively small volume of fruit (seedling vines tend to be very small, event bonsai-ed, as it were).⁵ Perhaps the muting or blurring of the “varietal” character of a wine by the genetic randomization of grape seedlings might actually allow very different aspects of the wine’s character and beauty to emerge.

The qualities that one esteems in wine come down to a question of aesthetics, the deepest appreciation of which may ultimately involve the relative degree to which a taster truly engages with a wine, allowing himself or herself to become open to the wine’s changes and its evolution. A curious taster is more apt to allow himself to freely move through a range of perceptual lenses, or shifts in Gestalt.⁶ Instead of focusing on a particularly dominant aspect of a wine, one tries to approach the wine with the organoleptic equivalent of “soft eyes,”⁷ seeing/feeling/tasting the wine from ever-changing perspectives, allowing it to come into focus in wholly different ways.⁸ It may be the captivating scent that is one’s initial focus, then its textural element; at some point, the mineral aspect of the wine is discovered, and this is the wine’s deepest element, it’s core. The fruit—that which our New World palates so greatly esteem, and the wine’s friendliest face and signifier it will do us no harm—is, while intense and pleasant enough, suddenly apprehended no longer to be the organizing principle of the wine.

So here’s one thing that happened not long ago to somewhat radicalize my perspective and to crystallize my current thinking on the possibilities of discovering terroir in the New World. I recently had dinner at Oliveto Restaurant in Oakland, a place that is very serious about presenting wines of real personality and originality. I asked my friend Bob Klein, who owns the restaurant, to pour me something wacky and wonderful. He brought out a wine that I instantly adored. It was elegant: perhaps 12.5% alcohol, fragrant, possessing great length, and presenting a clear, strong mineral aspect. I had absolutely no idea what the wine was. I ventured to Bob that it might be a Nerello Mascalese from Mt. Etna,⁹ a wine stylistically somewhere between a Burgundy and a Barolo, but with an especially strong “gatheredness” in the mid-palate and a very persistent finish—this is how I tend to experience wines of minerality. “Good guess, but nope,” he said. “This may be a little tough.”

“So, what is it?” Bob excused himself for a moment, trotted back to his office and brought me out a printed page from the winery’s website. The wine is the 2008 Los Bermejos Red Listan Negro Tinto “Maceracion Carbonica,” grown on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands of Spain. The picture of the vineyard was absolutely startling; it was a moonscape with palm trees. The vines were planted inside of what looked like craters and around each crater was built a tiny wall made of basalt stones. The island is quite windy and also receives relatively little rainfall.  The vines’ situation inside the concave craters protects them from the drying winds; the basalt rocks, which are quite porous, trap the morning dew and refresh the humidity around the vine.

These are grapes grown under the most extreme conditions: blessed with very high mineral content in the soils, but with minimal available water, the roots are looking everywhere to catch a sustaining sip.  In the parlance of Spinal Tap, the amps that magnify the signal of terroir are set at “11.” But here is where it gets truly bizarre.

I recounted to a local wine writer, Jon Bonné, my experience of the wine, how utterly knocked out I was. Jon asked, “Do you have any idea what listan negro is? Do you know that it is also known by another name?” I confess that I am a bit of a self-styled cépage maven, or perhaps an insufferable show-off when it comes to acquaintance with esoteric grape varieties; I fancy that I have heard of most of the interesting ones, but now here was one that I didn’t know, nor did I have the faintest idea what might be its synonym. “Listan negro is also known as the mission grape,” he declared. This revelation triggered a small implosion of my world-view.

The mission grape was likely the first grape imported to California by the Spanish padres in the 16th century, and for several centuries a mainstay of California vineyards. I’ve tasted mission grapes at UC Davis, and observed the famous Winkler vine before its untimely demise due to tractor blight (and possible over-irrigation).¹⁰ I’m here to tell you that as far as grapes go, mission is quite possibly the very worst extant vinifera variety. It has an absolutely giant cluster, with no color, no flavor, no acid, no nothing.¹¹ And yet…under these bizarre growing conditions in the Canary Islands, it produces a wine of absolute genius.

The take-home message? The world of wine exists in non-Euclidean space, and certainly partakes of the quantum universe; there are great discontinuities in what we know or imagine we know. The greatest wines are often the most anomalous ones, the ones with the atypical encépagement or grown on a very different exposure or in a very different soil from their neighbors. Or they just simply stand out for reasons that no human being can fathom; the universe has just conspired to make it so. I would suggest that greatness in wine may well come from a human being’s accidentally discovering a uniquely special site and having the wit to try not to guide things overmuch, and to be strong enough to allow Nature to do Her thing. Perhaps the point may be that if terroir’s signal is strong enough, the particular grape variety or varieties grown in a vineyard—assuming they are mas o menos within range of suitability—just might not matter so much, or even at all.

I have been stressing out about which grapes to plant where in the new vineyard in San Juan Bautista. Maybe I’ve been fixating on the wrong problem, and if I can really focus on amplifying the qualities of terroir, the varietal question may turn out to be a non-question.¹² Perhaps growing grapes from seeds, with all of the unique qualities that seedlings confer, may be enough to create a sensory paradigm shift in the taste/taster of the resultant wine.

Thinking about it teleologically, I do wonder deeply why one might want to grow anything in the New World, as it seems that what we often do is such a pale imitation of the Old World paradigm; what do we in the New World really have to contribute uniquely? But what we do have going for us in the New World are fairly benign growing conditions (apart from this year’s vintage), some virgin soils, and the relative freedom viticulturally to do more or less as we please.¹³ Perhaps we are here somehow to advance our collective experience of what is vinously possible. There is already a Stag’s Leap, a Frog’s Leap, and (in Australia) a Roo’s Leap.¹⁴ Maybe it is time to consider taking a different sort of leap—one into the baroque bloom and buzz of Nature’s great depths.

1. The New World Paradox, if I may call it that, is something like this: With enough effort and an unholy deployment of financial resource, a winegrower in the New World can drive his product toward “higher quality” (though that term itself is quite fraught), and create something approaching a facsimile of a paradigmatic Old World wine. Beginning with a well-favored site and with plant material well suited for that site will give the grower a runner on base, as it were, but what is really dramatic is the effect of raw shredded Franklins, the incineration of a large fortune to engender a smaller one. The most efficient way to accomplish this sort of redistribution of wealth is achieved by insisting on a densely spaced plantation—a great expense to establish and a great expense in the upkeep—as well as rigorously maintaining economically ruinous, minimal yields (one ton-ish per acre) at harvest. But these steps will generally only enhance “quality” by improving the wine’s concentration, that one-size-fits-all kluge/proxy for excellence in the New World. And while it turns the volume up, it doesn’t necessarily render the signal any clearer or the song more melodious. At the end of the day, the New World exemplar (or homage) ends up costing far more than the paradigm upon which it is based. [↩]
2. The soil mycorrhizae are responsible for the active transport of minerals into the grape roots. Biodynamic farming also appears to be an very useful practice for the cultivation of a rich microbial environment in the soil. [↩]
3. Though the brilliant success of this experiment is still far from ensured, there are still some things that are known: Taking seedlings from “older” cépages, i.e., varieties such as grenache that have been in existence for many centuries, will yield offspring genetically more homogeneous in taste profile (and more biologically viable), than those from comparatively more recent provenance, e.g. cabernet sauvignon. How much relative homogeneity is desirable no one knows, but completely random heterogeneity will likely not yield a harmonious result. A fair bit of sauvignon blanc (recent ancestor of cabernet sauvignon) in one’s red bordelais field blend is probably not a felicitous outcome, but who is to say? [↩]
4. This may well fall into the realm of mysticism, but it seems certain to me that plants communicate with one another in myriad ways we can barely conceive. Just as there is something like a group intelligence—information not held by a single individual, but held within the group—it seems quite plausible that one particularly bright segment of a population might “teach” the others how to solve a particular problem, whether it is the extraction of potassium from the soil, or how to cope with extreme drought or fight the presence of a pathogen, such as powdery mildew. [↩]
5. What is also absolutely crucial to the program of cultivating a vin de terroir in California is to successfully confer a degree of drought tolerance to the vines. Moderate stress in vines is very good, extreme stress not so much, as it leads to dehydration, sunburn, and the consequent deformation of terroir. A small plant with a compact trunk (relatively few stored carbohydrates), not having to work against so much hydrostatic pressure and with a comparatively small-gauge vasculature, will tend to be far less prone to drought stress. [↩]
6. I would also propose a rather more radical hypothesis, which I can in no way ever publically advertise on a wine label or in other promotional material. (Burn this after reading.) Vins de terroir—being much more mineral-rich than the more ubiquitous, confected vins d’effort—are, I am certain, nutritionally a much sounder bet. There is a relatively small (but growing) population of wine drinkers who actually listen to their bodies and try to find those bottles that actually give them a greater feeling of well-being upon consumption, or at least don’t wreck them quite as badly. [↩]
7. The term “soft eyes” comes from the wisdom of baseball’s batting coaches, but could perhaps also be applied to the phenomenological methodology. [↩]
8. I know that I sound a bit like a broken record here, but my critique of much of the “important” American wine criticism is that wines are often evaluated through very restrictive, if not utterly predictable lenses. There is a reason for this, of course: a serious wine critic is not just a human being, but also a kind of brand, and he wishes, if he is clever, to remain consistently “on message.” The irony is that while a human being can try to remain consistent at least in public discourse, wines, at least the interesting ones, are by their very nature polymorphically perverse. [↩]
9. I confess to being somewhat smug with my own cleverness in this guess. The soils of Mt. Etna are, of course, volcanic, as are the soils of the Canary Islands. Volcanic soils, at least according to Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, are said to be the most mineral-rich of all, and presumably as such, are capable of emitting terroir’s most distinctive clarion call.  So, not an unreasonable guess, but maybe a bit easier than it looked. [↩]
10. The Winkler vine, named in honor of Dr. Albert Winkler, Chairman of the Department of Enology and Viticulture at UC Davis from 1935 to 1957, was an absolutely ginormous single mission vine, taking up approximately one-twelfth of an acre, and trained in the form of a pergola. [↩]
11. Mission grapes have been used successfully to make Angelica, a fairly stylized fortified wine that sits so long in barrel that ultimately it becomes interesting by dint of its age. [↩]
12. Jean-Michel Deiss, terroirist d’Alsace, has more or less come to the same conclusion with respect to his grands crus vineyards. He no longer bottles vins de cépage, but combines the classic grapes of the region into a single vineyard blend, underscoring the precedence of terroir. [↩]
13. The biggest bugaboo in the scheme to plant vines from seed or even from ungrafted rootings is the threat of phyloxera, but the San Juan property, despite being located on Mission Vineyard Road—is this a sign from the gods or what?—appears never to have been planted with grapes, nor are their any proximal vineyards. [↩]
14. I will resist mentioning Malvasia delle Lipari. [↩]

We gathered yesterday¹ to talk about the “Art of Good Grenache,” and I realized early on that there were some problems in pursuing anything approaching a consensus about what constituted “good” or “great” Grenache—rather like the language that diplomats from foreign countries must find to express the fact that they’re not imminently about to go to war with one another. It was particularly challenging to find a common vocabulary to express what is considered greatness in Grenache without the language more or less degenerating into banality or triviality. Who’s not in favor of elegance, complexity, expression of terroir, etc.?

The one thing that was really clear to me was that we are all here to talk about the virtues of Grenache, but it is really a chameleon, sort of Woody Allen’s Zelig of grape varieties. It seems to suffer a bit from the perception that it is a second class citizen, a supporting actor rather than the star cépage. In an age of the cult of personality, of the superstar chef, superstar everything, how is Grenache to comport itself?

In some sense Grenache is really on the front line of the various vinous culture wars that are always breaking out—really almost a kind of Rorschach test for how one thinks about wine. It’s interesting to consider the language and aesthetics of Grenache as sociological relics of the culture from which they derived, and for me what was most interesting in our discussion group was observing how differently the various vignerons thought about it. There are just so many different ways to parse the cultural and aesthetic boundaries that Grenache straddles. There is certainly a rather different aesthetic expressed in considering New World vs. Old World; Spanish vs. French vs. California; and Australia vs. everyone else. As far as other ways of dichotomizing it, you can also consider “traditional” vs. “modern” Grenache. (“Traditional” is of course a loaded word, and it depends on what sort of historical horizon one wishes to consider, but possibly might entail the storage of Grenache in larger vessels vs. smaller barrels, or the use of indigenous yeast vs. cultured yeast, for example.)

There are also the dichotomies of “Continental” vs. Mediterranean, and of vins de terroir—wines made with the intention of pleasing the vigneron himself or herself—vs. vins d’effort—wines made to please the imagined, idealized customer or critic. (As an aside, I made the half-hearted effort to elicit some discussion in our group about the huge gravitational effect of a certain influential Marylandian critic on winemaking styles of Grenache-based wine, but that discussion was a non-starter.)

I could talk for the whole length of this presentation about any of these dichotomies, but I think I’ll instead confine myself to considering only a couple. First: Old World vs. New World. The Old World has the benefit of centuries of experience in working out what varieties grow best where on what sites, and with what particular culture—spacing, training, rootstock, etc. There is the ancillary benefit of the phenomenon of massal selection, where there can be, at least in theory, a very fine calibration of particular selection of grapes to a particular site. So to some extent the Old World cannot help but find itself as protectors, if not defenders, of the status quo, and I can’t help but think that the more prestigious the appellation, the more defensive/protective one is.

A vocabulary develops around what the appellation is able to do best, and the attributes that are positive are representative of cultural values. I am not much of a francophone, but I am a Francophile, and indeed have the benefit of driving a great, classic Citroën DS-21, and when I think about the seats of the DS, especially the back seats, I imagine that I’m given some sort of insight about how French vignerons think about their wines. The esteeming of plushness and suppleness seem to be deeply embedded in the French winemaking DNA. For the French participants here, the aesthetic discussion involves typicity, and terroir; there is clearly a deep and abiding respect for land and its mystery, which is seldom observed to such a degree elsewhere.

Certainly, in France, wine is far more integrated into the culture of gastronomy, and it would seem that the success of Grenache on the international stage will very likely be linked to its perception as a “food wine:” fruity, with softer tannins and an affinity not just for Mediterranean food, but for a range of cuisines, inclusive of Asian. But above all, at least in France, wine seems to be about sensual pleasure, about a kind of ripeness almost verging on decadence. It was incredible to hear Michel Bettane, who sat in on our session for a little while, dilate on le moment juste of Grenache’s maturity, which, by the way, is heralded by the appearance of the aroma of licorice; this represented for me a kind of extreme attention to the details of the metaphysics of pleasure.

In the New World, meanwhile, we are essentially making it up as we go along, neither informed by nor burdened with history. One very important distinction in talking about Grenache in the New World vs. the Old is that in the New World, winemakers can, for good or bad, guide the stylistic direction of their wine by making an election to plant vines in one climat or another, to be grown with or without irrigation, harvested at whatever yield they deem appropriate; this is enormous freedom, but also a source of great angst, or at least it should be.

And we didn’t get into a discussion of this at all, but certainly many New World wines are produced within a very different financial structure from those of the Old, often in new investment that needs to be paid back rather sooner than later. These constraints undoubtedly have an effect on New World winemaking, perhaps driving the New World to produce wines that have broader commercial appeal. Even the most serious New World winemaker is almost by definition working within the realm of vins d’effort, using every ounce of ingenuity to come up with a wine that will have some degree of attractiveness in the marketplace. Australia is blessed with the patrimony of some very old grenache vineyards—a great gift—but I would suggest that no gift comes without a hidden price; those in our group who were working with old vines in Australia and Spain were quite heartbroken to observe the disappearance of precious old-vine plantations in favor of  “modern” international varieties planted for greater productivity and efficiency.

We talked a bit about technically what might be done to improve grenache grapes wherever they are grown, and one notion that kept recurring was the need to negotiate a fine balance between inducing a discreet amount of hydrologic stress to hasten phenolic maturity without pushing the vines to the limit of acute deprivation, which of course results in dehydration and loss of finesse. Old vine grenache will typically have a deeper rooting system that helps mitigate water stress, and can also mine minerals from a greater rooting area, yielding a wine with much greater complexity and ageing potential. Any practice favoring mineralization in the soil, such as avoiding excessive nitrogen fertilization, or the use of biodynamic preparations or other organic practices, all work to help the vines keep their cool, as it were.

Grenache is a grape that has the potential to greatly overproduce as well as to achieve a very high alcoholic degree, which may result in disequilibrium. This brings us to one of the fundamental issues of Grenache, one that I wasn’t sure we were able to really meet head-on in our group.  In a certain sense, Grenache really walks a fine line with between elegance and rusticity. There are certainly some who would hold that higher alcohol wines are by definition somewhat rustic. Notionally, it could be argued that grenache grapes grown in cooler areas or north-facing slopes might yield wines of more finesse, minimally better acidity, and possibly greater phenological maturity with respect to alcoholic potential. I will gently suggest to my French colleagues that they may have become slightly habituated to the Mediterranean grenache that they know and love.  Grenache from a more continental climate at high altitude, such as we tasted from Calatayud, as well as Grenache from grapes grown in places with an ultra-long growing season, such as in parts of California, for example, represent a different style that I believe can compete successfully with more “classical” expressions of the grape.

I come from California, where we are perhaps a little “sensitive” or overly sensitive, but I would like to suggest to my colleagues that the issue of high alcohol in Grenache is not something that one may easily will away by simply stating that the “wine is balanced” and that one doesn’t necessarily feel the higher alcohol. There is a certain social peril of presenting wines with higher alcohol, and we need to continue to stress the importance of enjoying grenache-based wines with food, and also perhaps become more proactive with blending options with other grapes in the interest of bringing alcohol levels down to more acceptable levels. Note: this is simply my opinion, and you were foolish enough to entrust me to speak on your collective behalf.

Let me conclude with some of the take-away action items that we discussed. Again, grenache-based wines should be promoted for their gastronomic brilliance, and some education as far as the proper service of Grenache—serving it at a cooler temperature to temper some of the alcoholic impression, for example—may also be useful. Developing a descriptive language to capture Grenache’s special qualities: its extraordinary silky texture, its powerful aromatics—which can be ethereal, floral or just plain spicy, with licorice, menthol, strawberry and cherry—would also be helpful. But at the end of the day, showing is far more useful than telling. I think the most powerful idea we derived yesterday was the notion of presenting Grenache in the global forum, as a sort of touring road-show, with examples of very great Grenache from diverse regions made in diverse styles, wines that might rival any other category. Obviously there would need to be a bit of logistical organization to make this work, and some sort of organizing body. But certainly, the time is right for the worldwide discovery of Grenache.

1. These remarks were delivered at the conclusion of the first international Grenache Symposium, held June 5 and 6, 2010, in Crestet, Rhône Valley, France. [↩]

          Lately, in thinking long and hard about what grape varieties (and anything else) we might plant at the new estate in San Juan Bautista, I am facing yet another variant of the New World Conundrum.¹ I’ve publically proclaimed myself to be a “terroirist,” i.e. someone committed to “expressing the unique individuality of the site.” All well and good, and while this sounds quite noble when declaimed from the mountaintop, what exactly does it really mean? What precisely have I signed up for? I’m standing at the altar, and suddenly, momentarily, feeling a bit weak at the knees.

          Implicit in the commitment to seek terroir is the notion of honoring the site by growing the grapes most appropriate to the site, those most capable of expressing its unique character. The New World focuses on climatic appropriateness, the Old World on the felicity of the soil/grape variety union. Growing pinot noir in Fresno is an obvious example of what one absolutely mustn’t do; cabernet sauvignon on the extreme Sonoma Coast is also clearly contraindicated.  Merlot is said to love clay (but not too much of it); cabernet, gravel; gamay and syrah, granite; riesling, slate; carignane, schist; pinot noir, a limestone/clay mix. In the Old World, your path is generally bright and clearly delineated. In the New World, you know where you should definitely not go, but it is far less evident how you will be delivered into the light of perfect vitrimonial bliss.

March 2010 Pinot Noir planting at San Juan Bautista

If you have found a wonderful site for grapes, with a longish growing season and bright but temperate days, you can well imagine that there are many varieties you might grow in your vineyard that will do well. But what will do best? What will, as they say, sing? Which grape or admixture of grapes will produce a wine of such distinction, that this nectar – still in largely eidetic imaginary form – will mount the world stage as a “classic” of its genre?²,³ Yes, there is likely to be an immense satisfaction in producing a wine that will universally (or nearly so) be regarded as “great,” and sincere wine lovers admire all great wines. At the same time, it seems that if you are going to the trouble to try to make great wine, simply admiring that wine is not quite enough. You want to be crazy, silly, absolutely besmitten, head-over-empurpled-heels-and-toes in love with it.

           So how do you know if your match is really right, if it is a love that is truly meant 2B, as rhapsodized about in old-time pop ditties? This is the question that star-crossed pairs have been asking themselves since the age of Courtly Love. In the Old World, the love of a particular grape or wine literally comes with mother’s milk;⁴ if you are a Burgundian in the Côte de Nuits, you could not possibly fashion loving another grape more than pinot. If you are Jean-Louis Chave, the thought of growing anything other than syrah would strike you as being a non sequitur. But planting a vineyard in the New World de novo is a bit like being an orphan, a dogie. No mother, no mother’s milk. Like an “ugly duckling,” you are just trying to figure out where you fit in in the Grape Order of Being.⁵

          Returning to the question in a slightly different form: In the New World, how do you know that you will love the wine that you plan to make before you make it? Can you learn to love the wine that is the product of your terroir, presumably if you have a deep love of the place, before it has even shown itself as a great terroir? If the wine that you produce is mostly or entirely a projection of your own aesthetic bent, despite the fact that you haven’t irrigated, you’ve massally selected, yield restricted, eschewed over-ripeness, maybe even laboriously found the recherché knife that allows you to cut surface roots,⁶ in other words, performed all of the outward obeisances that known terroirists are known to perform, are you still not, in the end, producing something more akin to what might be called a vin d’effort?⁷ How do you ultimately find a harmonious, felicitous blend of your own aesthetics with the deep qualities of the inchoate Stranger?

           The question raised is a little bit like the one implicit in Shaw’s Pygmalion. Can you truly be said to love something or someone that is essentially a reflection of yourself? If your wine is so solipsistic as to be simply a refashioning of your own aesthetic, are you truly honoring terroir? It would seem that there is something of a false – or at least incomplete – joy in merely building a wine rather than in discovering a true terroir.⁸ Without a very gradual unfolding of the mystery of the Other, the exercise of producing a “great” wine would appear to be a rather sterile one. And yet, I am as nervous as a bridegroom on the eve of his wedding night, that I will, even after deep contemplation and in deepest consideration and respect for the terroir of our site, have somehow made a great miscalculation, that we will end up with a wine from our San Juan Estate that is technically proficient, impeccable even, but somehow doesn’t touch my soul.⁹ I yearn on a daily basis to find my soul/soil-mate in a wine, a product of something utterly beyond and outside myself, and yet something with which I have been terribly intimate and of which I am inordinately proud. Will pinot always be my fantasy-grape, the girl in the T-Bird, who winked at the stop light and motored off into the night?

           Claude Bourguignon and his wife Lydia, the famous soil scientists and possibly terroir’s greatest advocates and interpreters, are coming in the next few weeks to our new San Juan Bautista property to consult. I need to understand a lot more about how they work – their work is almost all in France, and not much of their published work shows up here. I understand that Claude has famously pronounced that he has yet to observe a vrai terroir in the New World. Perhaps this is because we do not have a co-evolving wine culture – of human and vine – in the New World, nor anything like a cultural esteem for terroir,¹⁰ or simply because we have not yet had enough grape growing history for terroir to truly disclose itself. Claude and Lydia apparently make recommendations to their clients about what kinds of grape varieties and rootstocks they might best plant where on their property, as well as what sort of cultural practices they might deploy to best express their respective terroirs. So I am, of course, tremendously curious to know what they will say, and slightly fearful that they might throw up their hands as to the suitability of the property for terroir’s expression – too much clay or not enough – or perhaps they will recommend a number of grape varieties in which I have no interest whatsoever – some terminally rustic cépagesi.¹¹ What if they suggest, indeed insist upon, pinotage?¹² Carnelian? Cynthiana? Madeleine? Angevine? Or – God forbid – Merlot?¹³

           There are some wine styles that we have worked on for quite a number of years, and for which I have some deep sentimental attachment – Le Cigare Volant, for one. This wine has worked for me as a vin d’effort, sometimes brilliantly, sometimes when I’ve been too clever by half, a tad less well, but it has been enormously fun and stimulating to produce. However, in the end, making the wine largely turns out to be somewhat of a purely technical challenge, a bit like those chefs on food reality television shows being given a market basket of ingredients and charged with producing a tasty/showy dish that will wow the etiolated, jaded critics. I end up with wines that I greatly enjoy, because that was my intention in how they were produced.¹⁴,¹⁵

            So I am a bit torn. I would like to respect the historical continuity¹⁶ of Cigare, partially out of sentiment, partially out of a recognition of certain commercial realities.¹⁷ On the other hand, this new estate is the opportunity to create potentially a different paradigm and to think about the wines we produce in a very different way. Dare I introduce an Italian uvaggio into the Rhône blend? Does this road not lead to madness? How important is it to color within the lines – to plant a suite of grapes that have some sort of history of relationship with one another?¹⁸,¹⁹

           Here’s the gist of it: It truly doesn’t matter to me (apart from wishing to avoid economically ruinous decisions) what grape varieties we end up growing at San Juan. But like finding an appropriate romantic partner, there are certain minimal criteria that just must obtain. You don’t want to be shacked up with an ax-murderer or someone heavily into Ozzie Osborne – for me, this would be the equivalent of having a site that absolutely demanded its grapes attain 14.5% potential alcohol to be interesting. I know that there are certain flavor characteristics and even certain pH ranges²⁰ that absolutely push my buttons (in a pleasantly driven to distraction kind of way). For whites, it is higher acidity, minerals and citrus.²¹,²² For reds, there is a certain complex of flavors and a particular kind of way in which they are organized, that at least for me, signify absolute organoleptic bliss.²³,²⁴ Then there is the phenomenon of “licorice.” God only knows why this should be the case, but virtually every red wine that really knocks me out has, to some degree or another, a slight (or not so slight) suggestion of licorice.²⁵

           Maybe I’m just worrying too much about doing it right. The relationship I have with this land and the grapes and wines it will produce is certain to be an ever-changing one, a dance, a true give and take. I will try to exert my will, my aesthetic, with the land and the vines at times, taking the lead, treading on more than a few toes.²⁶ Of course it is largely up to me and my colleagues to give this great estate real form and definition, but this will require me to personally dig deep and find attributes in myself that are sometimes elusive – patience and the ability to listen and to observe, to trust. In the end, all of this discussion about whether I will direct the vines or the vines will guide me may likely be moot. The male (in this relationship) imagines that he has some control, but this is merely his fantasy. I fancy that it was I who has chosen the site for my grand polycultural dreams, but it really is the site that has chosen me, and it will have its way with me. I will do my best to hang on for the ride.

1. Not to be confused with the off-dry blended white wine produced in Napa Valley. I have already faced that particular Conundrum, and managed to emerge bruised, but not broken. [↩]
2. This seemingly innocuous question is itself rather fraught. Isn’t the notion of a genre somewhat riddled with a raft of assumptions and presumptions? (I always think of Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, with its distinction between “karass” and “granfalloon” – an association of members of a particular order or class of things that are either deeply linked to one another (albeit in an esoteric fashion) or those that on the surface appear to have something in common, but in fact do not. The emergence of a wine sui generis is perhaps the most difficult thing to fashion. Like any new emerging art form, it would likely take at least a generation for a radically different concept of “wine” to be fully comprehended, if not grudgingly accepted. The highly conservative world of wine is as accepting of new vinous styles as Prince Charles is of modern architecture. [↩]
3. I’m not even mentioning the need for a vine to acquire a number of years of age before it “settles down” and produces a balanced product – grapevines, like teenagers, are notoriously unhinged in their adolescence – nor the time involved in making the wine and allowing it to mature for an appropriate period of time before release. [↩]
4. For Nicolas Joly in the Loire, it was the cool lait de Serrant. [↩]
5. Or a hard-scrabble kid, a street urchin, looking for role models by watching old movies. [↩]
6. I’ve been looking, unsuccessfully, for years for this knife, throughout Europe, and it appears that they are no longer being manufactured. (The closest thing I was able to find was in Spain and it was a tool for cutting white asparagus.) You will need to find some sort of antiquarian metalsmith in a small traditional village to fabricate this antique tool. Bonne chance! [↩]
7. Bent is certainly the operative word. If the vines or wines are bent too much, they break from their own true originality, and become lesser for that. In the example of human relationships, if one partner’s personality is so dominant or controlling, even if brilliant, the other will likely fail to find herself (or himself) truly expressing her (or his) fullest potential. [↩]
8. It has always been a bit of poser to me that a vigneron whose family has lived in an area for countless centuries, talks about “discovering his terroir,” a process that seems to need to be renewed in every generation. Would the family have not already found it, passed it down with the china, cutlery and furniture? [↩]
9. I recently had the opportunity to taste a few wines made by an old colleague of mine, who left the Central Coast to make pinot noir in the exciting new area of _______.  My colleague is among the most serious terroirists I have ever met. He is very methodical, farms Biodynamically, intensively, and doesn’t irrigate; by all reckoning he is doing virtually everything right, or at least everything I could conceive to do under comparable circumstances. The soil on his site is clay and limestone, and it’s climatically cool – way cool.  And yet, the wines seem to be a bit messed up. The pH of the finished wine is totally whacked – my friend doesn’t want to add tartaric acid, as he feels that would deform the terroir; there’s little color (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but these wines just seem, well, slightly muddy, lacking in focus and precision – I’m sure that the pH is what is wreaking havoc. I do not know what lessons to draw, or even if there are any lessons. He is pursuing his passion, pinot noir, and has worked as diligently as he possibly could to find an appropriate site for it. I have looked for what I imagined was a great site and am now trying to figure out what to grow there. And yet, we might both, despite best intentions and a certain amount of skill, be just slightly off in our trajectories, with a slightly heart-breaking outcome. [↩]
10. In the New World we don’t have a wine culture, we have the wine business. [↩]
11. It’s kind of like being party to an arranged marriage, where you end up saddled with a clock-stoppingly ugly partner, said to sew well, be a good housekeeper, or to have a sunny personality. [↩]
12. I realize that lately I’ve gotten into the habit of using pinotage as a bit of a straw man (though not vin de paille), indicating what can possibly go terribly wrong in the hybridization of a new grape variety. With the possible exceptions of scheurebe and incrocio manzoni, commercial “modern” grape crosses have generally proved to be somewhat lame, at least as far as the ultra-violaceous end of the spectrum that vibrates with my resonant frequencies. Maybe in the 20th century we have just attained a certain threshold level of hubris that precludes the accurate perception of real value in many things, grapes being a somewhat trivial example. (Grape breeders have mostly been focused on the solution to practical problems like disease resistance, early ripening, more productive yields, and have not particularly zeroed in on originality of flavor/phenolic profile or other aspects of vitaceous genius.) As a footnote to a footnote, scheurebe, long believed to be a silvaner/riesling cross, has recently, through DNA testing, been shown to be an unknown x riesling cross. But what is most bizarre is that it was not the Grape of Unknown Parentage that was the pollinator, but rather it was the riesling that was the dad. This meant that Dr. Scheu’s lab techs were not paying particularly close attention in spreading the magic fairy dust, nor when they came back to harvest the fruit from this dangerous liaison. The lesson here is that Nature will surprise us in ways that we cannot conceive, and She is infinitely cleverer than we are. [↩]
13. Yikes. [↩]
14. Maybe I’m belaboring the point here, but to continue the cooking metaphor, you can use all sorts of really snazzy ingredients – caviar, truffle oil, or any umami-intensive condiment and you can make the humblest raw foodstuffs pretty tasty. But it is a rather different proposition to make a dish of maybe just one or two ingredients with the simplest of preparations and have it create the most exquisite aesthetic bliss. [↩]
15. Note that I have eschewed the more vulgar tricks – designer yeasts, enzymes, spinning cones and the like for more subtle ones – lees infusion, tricky sorts of élevage in demijohns. [↩]
16. “Historical?!” any self-respecting European would snort. “You’ve been mixing grapes from all over California for thirty years and you call that ‘historical?’” [↩]
17. I have worked more than twenty-five years in establishing the brand, and despite the modern world’s fascination with the latest and shiniest, new brands are not exactly created overnight. [↩]
18. Love, at least in its earliest stages, is a well-known form of madness. [↩]
19. Maybe what is really needed at this juncture is a cold shower. [↩]
20. You know that you’re talking to a real geek here, with this admission. [↩]
21. Please disregard everything that I have written up till now. I secretly want to just replicate Clos St. Hune in the New World. Or on the moon, if need be. And the pH (for whites), for those who just absolutely have to know is somewhere in the 3.25–3.3 range [↩]
22. This is like a tragic, irreconcilable predilection for redheads. [↩]
23. Flavors that are capable of unfolding, that seem to be arrayed around a mineral core, such as one finds in great (old-vine) Burgundies, Baroli, and certain northern Rhônes – especially Cornas – I find particularly compelling. [↩]
24. I am also a sucker for a certain amount of umami or savoriness in the wine, all the time knowing that this may represent a still slightly unevolved palate. For reds – not that this is really anyone’s business – I am particularly turned on in the pH range of 3.55-3.65. [↩]
25. Michel Bettane has himself postulated (personal communication) that this flavor seems to emerge at certain inflexion points of perfect ripeness, independent of the grape variety. [↩]
26. I am certainly trying to have my way these days with the ubiquitous poison oak. [↩]