Love Among the Vines

          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. (( 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.)) 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 planting of Pinot Noir at San Juan Bautista

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? ((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.)), ((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.)) 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; (( For Nicolas Joly in the Loire, it was the cool lait de Serrant.)) 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. (( Or a hard-scrabble kid, a street urchin, looking for role models by watching old movies.))

          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, (( 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!)) 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? (( 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.)) 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. (( 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?)) 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. (( 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.)) 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, (( In the New World we don’t have a wine culture, we have the wine business.)) 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. (( 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.)) What if they suggest, indeed insist upon, pinotage? (( 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.)) Carnelian? Cynthiana? Madeleine? Angevine? Or – God forbid – Merlot? (( Yikes.))

           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. (( 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.)), ((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.))

            So I am a bit torn. I would like to respect the historical continuity (( “Historical?!” any self-respecting European would snort. “You’ve been mixing grapes from all over California for thirty years and you call that ‘historical?’”)) of Cigare, partially out of sentiment, partially out of a recognition of certain commercial realities. (( 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.)) 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? (( Love, at least in its earliest stages, is a well-known form of madness.)), (( Maybe what is really needed at this juncture is a cold shower.))

           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 ranges (( You know that you’re talking to a real geek here, with this admission.)) that absolutely push my buttons (in a pleasantly driven to distraction kind of way). For whites, it is higher acidity, minerals and citrus. (( 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)), (( This is like a tragic, irreconcilable predilection for redheads.)) 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. (( 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.)), (( 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.)) 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. (( 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.))

           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. (( I am certainly trying to have my way these days with the ubiquitous poison oak.)) 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.

    14 Responses to “Love Among the Vines”

    1. Nick Perdiew says:

      Okay Randall, you had me at “organoleptic bliss.”
      Nobody could rightly accuse you of under-thinking this. And my anticipation is radically heightened by all the appropriate gnashing of teeth over what to plant.

      Perhaps most of all, I’m with you on licorice. Best best best of luck!!

      • Thanks for your very kind words. No question that I am hooked on licorice. The other aroma that really turns me on is mint (something that I forgot to mention). Mintiness does seem to arise from a very cool growing season. If you can get both ripeness and coolness, you’ve really nailed it.

    2. I would also be terroirfied of what Claude chooses for you. It sounds like he is giving you a mantra, which must be chosen by someone else to truly work. I can also see it being something unpredictably predictable. It will be French. Malbec? Meditative Malbec? NOOOOOOO!
      What about Falanghina? It’s great (or at least was) and fun. Matilde is doing good things with it but I don’t think the project is anywhere near complete. I know of at least one (natural) importer who calls them square (drawing a Fred Flintstone dotted square in the air). Falanghina does well in a variety of soils, expressing them differently. And aren’t you a fan of this uva? It may be too contrived (toga party?) but could be great fun.
      Just a thought – it sounds like a grape project regardless of what cepage or uva you end up with.

      • Steve, I love what Matilde has done w/ Falanghina. Made in a rather unorthodox style – some non trivial hours/days of skin contact if memory serves, still preserving quite a bit of elegance. The problem may ultimately come down to: So many grapes, so little time. I do imagine a solution set of many possibilities; it is just a matter of picking a few, ideally those that have something to say to one another. Falanghina/Grenache Blanc? And why not Timorasso? I’m still meditating on this whole business, will likely end up throwing the I Ching for
        inspiration.

    3. Jim Johnson says:

      The whole concept of terroir is soooo….freakin’ French, I love it. It is specific about nothing yet explains everything that requires explanation and leaves a great many essential matters of substance to the imagination. It is truly France’s greatest contribution to the world’s body of viticultural perception.

      And best of luck with the seedling project. It is so over the top that even if it produces nothing of value it will enthrall millions in the process.

    4. Oh Randall, you have no need for angst…the new vineyard will be a success. Just know that its true expression may come long after you are part of it’s dust.
      Congrats on your new Manager of Direct to Consumer Marketing…I’m hoping that in a few years, she’ll be informing us about the fruits of San Juan Bautista…

    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? ”

      Watching you wrestle with this over the years has been a blast. Having done the same thing (and contacting Claude as well…who was to come while on a trip years ago to Laval in Quebec, but we couldn’t finalize it) I feel your pain.

      Prescription: (Taken with large pinch of artisan coastal salt)

      If you are entirely in LOVE with the corner of the world you live, you will make better wine. You know the soil, the growing season, and the varieties that turn your crank that JUST ripen in that space. If you have a variety(ies) that gooses your licorice jonesing, than you know what you want to plant anyway.

      New world… it’s a tripartite dance of hunches, observation, and, and you always note, irrational, driving passion that narrows it down to what you think in your bones will work.

      It might.

      It might need tweeking.

      But I think it’ll work.

      (Or, well, you’re going to have to emigrate.)

    6. Dear, dear Randall,

      Reading your piece along with its footnotes (double ones to boot!) is like listening to you speaking – so many parts of your brain involved and churning.

      I do not see you as “seeking terroir”, YOU are terroir.

      I’ve never thought of you to be anything less than “crazy, silly, absolutely besmitten, head-over-empurpled-heels-and-toes in love with” the wines you have made… There’s a purity to your wines that is truly uni-que and unforgettable.

      If anyone in the New World could grow Merlot with Terroir, it would be you! Although I sincerely do not wish this fate on you…

      Cigare is a bloody good “vin d’effort”.

      Your “romantic-grape-partner(s)” is/are seeking you as much as you seek it/them. That is clear. I am eagerly waiting to see what the union(s) will bring forth – No doubt exciting for yourself and for everyone else in this world (I fully agree with Todd).

      On the subject of licorice: fennel.

      Control is altogether overrated.

      I have no doubt, you will achieve your dreams… and I can hardly wait for the day I can taste them.

      One last thing: I am immensely happy for Meg Maker to come on board. This is a soulful, wine union that should bear many terroir-loaded fruits.

    7. Hi Randall,

      We just got back from the Colli Tortonese and had our first real (remembered) taste of Timorasso – fantastic stuff, a real connoisseur’s grape, no obvious fruit but amazing depth and complexity. A Felliesque tasting with Walter Massa was lots of fun – Japanese chefs, assorted women (one a double of Anita Ekberg), grandmothers, oodles of children, barking dogs, an American importer and Walter at the center. The only difficulty is that most Timorassos (including Vignetti Massa) were at an ass-kicking 14.5% alcohol. I don’t know if this was always the case. It’s hard to get a straight answer sometimes in Italy. There was an amazing example from Valli Unite, completely natural – natural yeast, no sulfates, etc – that was at a more comfortable 13%.

      I don’t mean to sound harsh about Villa Matilde – I love their wines. I guess I was taken aback in all self-consciousness by a Frenchman calling them square. He was probably just calling me square by association especially since I also admitted liking Alain Graillot, which may well be the vinous equivalent of Foghat or Smashing Pumpkins.

      Falanghina/Grenache Blanc? The idea of grapes having something to say to each other sounds fascinating and beyond the surrealist gambit of impossible combinations. Obviously, very interested in seeing how this all develops!

      Does the Bettane licorice/perfect ripeness thing also apply to white wines?

    8. As you noted before, the real challenge for grape-growing in CA’s climate – due to hugely long growing seasons and extremely high solar radiation levels – is to synchronize the development of enological components (sugars, acids and tannins) during the ripening process, to achieve naturally balanced, i.e. structured, grapes.
      In CA’s warm viticultural areas (A&W; Region III and above), sugars come too early, hindering the development of mature tannins; since extended “hang time” (exponentially) increases the risk of depleting the grape’s (tartaric) acid and water reserves.
      Apart from California’s benchmarks/battle-horses, Zinfandel and Petite Sirah (which survived decades of complete economic neglect, and are fully adapted to Central & North Coast environments), intuitively speaking, the safest alternatives for Central Coast’s cool-to-warm areas would be European late ripening varieties, like Mourvèdre, Grenache, Nebbiolo, Tannat, and other less important Mediterranean grapes like Cinsault, Carignan, Alicante Bouschet, etc…
      Coincidentally, when you apply simple statistical models (Correlation, Chi-Square, PCA…) to climate, and solar radiation, data from San Benito County stations like Ridgemark, San Juan Bautista, Hollister, Paicines…, the results are the same; with the addition of Sangiovese.
      Lastly, structured (more water-retentive) soils should also play an important role in CA’s “optimization problem”; delaying the ripening process, and allowing, when possible, for dry farming and the development of vines with deep root systems.

    9. Jeff Sinnott says:

      Come to New Zealand Randall, there’s more liquorice here than you can eat.

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