Over the past 48 hours, I began a new chapter in our lives when I planted two rows of Gamay vines ( ENTAV 565 grafted onto 3309 rootstock for the interested) at our house in Michigan. For the next 3 years I will be shadowing a local winemaker I know so that I can, in time, start making small quantities of wine at our house (conveniently fitted with a sub grade space suitable for winemaking). My goals are modest: to make a light-bodied red that tastes ok. We'll see if I can ever get there.
Mark Lipton
The Adventure Begins
- Thread starter MLipton
- Start date
Peter Creasey
Peter Creasey
Sounds ambitious. Gamay should be a wise choice. Good luck!
. . . . . . Pete
. . . . . . Pete
Florida Jim
Florida Jim
Farming is almost as bad as selling, but wine production is fun and rewarding.
Enjoy, Jim
Enjoy, Jim
Larry Stein
Larry Stein
Yeah, vineyard managing ain't so easy. I just helped my friend Rob at Sandar & Hem shoot thin Le Boeuf Vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Arguably, the easiest job in the vineyard, but you really have to think about what to remove and what to leave. He said if you fall one week behind in tasks, it quickly snowballs and you fall way behind before you know it.
He equates it to finding bugs in software. The sooner you find them, the less costly it is in the long run.
He equates it to finding bugs in software. The sooner you find them, the less costly it is in the long run.
Keith Levenberg
Keith Levenberg
Neat. I've wanted to plant a couple vines not to make wine, more for a decorative pergola with the option of having table grapes for the picking. Where does one acquire these things?
Keith. There are plenty of nurseries that will sell grafted vinifera grape vines. In my experience, the problem is finding nurseries that deal in small quantities (most would only consider orders of 100+ vines). In my case, Amberg grapevines Got me what I needed in the quantity I needed.
Mark Lipton
I agree resoundingly with ⅓ (the selling), but I find farming - far and away - the best part. Would much rather be outside on a crisp, sunny winter morning pruning a vineyard. Ok, I get that spraying is no fun, but winemaking is very hard work. Hose dragging, tank scrubbing, etc. And you are often wet much of the day. And honestly, lab work ain't all that much fun either. No thanks.
But now I think I will grow resistant hybrids so I get to do all the fun parts and none of those I don't like, plus it is much better for the environment.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
Bravo, Mark!
Can you setup a Gamay Cam so we can watch their progress?
Can you setup a Gamay Cam so we can watch their progress?
Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Congratulations x 2!
I would love to do this for the knowledge one gains, but could never do it, not only because of the hard work which I am happy to pay not to do, but because I love tasting different wines every day and would have a hard time consuming dozens of bottles of the same (though, perhaps if the bottles were my children, I might think differently).
I would love to do this for the knowledge one gains, but could never do it, not only because of the hard work which I am happy to pay not to do, but because I love tasting different wines every day and would have a hard time consuming dozens of bottles of the same (though, perhaps if the bottles were my children, I might think differently).
Steve Edmunds
Steve Edmunds
Mark, I'd be happy to chip in my 2 cents worth, from the winemaking side, when the grapes appear. How many vines, altogether? I'm excited for you!
best,
Steve Edmunds
best,
Steve Edmunds
Steve Edmunds
Steve Edmunds
Good idea to start such a small planting! You won't need much, if any, equipment for winemaking to begin with. And I'd imagine the most taxing part of managing the vines will be planning the steps you need to perform to get them in the ground, and the same sort of planning for day-to-day seasonal management (including what equipment and supplies you need to purchase). I'm not a viticulturist, nor do I know a lot of by-the-book grape-growing stuff, but I managed to plant 6 Cabernet vines and 2 Zinfandel Vines next to the house my younger daughter was born in, back in the mid-70's, and take care of them in fairly non-hospitable ground, for 3 or four years, and to make a tiny amount of wine (just a few bottles) in 1976 when I was a buyer for a wine shop in Marin County, before I got a job as a tour guide with Robert Mondavi winery, which prompted us to move to St Helena. The wine was quite good, given I'd known so little about what I was doing. I'm glad you have the ears of some pros!
Common, Jim . I can understand that you don't like farming, but for a lot of vignerons, if not the vast majority, growing vines is by far the most interesting part of the job... and the most powerful in terms of influence on the final result.
Winemaking can just be compared with very basic cooking. Not very sophisticated , quite trivial, and in the end, fun but forgettable.
Nothing moved me more than my first harvest on vines of Roussanne (Les Chailles) I grafted 100% myself starting from the buds of the Pergaud old vines that we had to pull out and some unrooted rootstock woods.
A much greater personal achievement than making any wine that I can remember, as good as the result was.
As far as I am concerned of course.
Cheers
Florida Jim
Florida Jim
Eric,
It pleases me to hear your thoughts on farming the fruit you made wine from. That kind of emotional involvement has given us all some wonderful wines by your hand.
My experience was different from yours; I did not farm the fruit I used to make wine but rather purchased grapes from vineyard managers. Usually, such managers were responsible for many acres of grapes and the problems associated with growing were thereby magnified. Pests, disease, weather, rot, mildew, overly picky customers/owners, staff, smoke taint, etc. For such farmers, the list went on and on.
Even for some of the smaller farmers, the amount of work involved in getting good fruit seldom was rewarded by the price they could charge in such a market.
The concept of “vigneron” was something I knew nothing of but in the winery, surrounded by almost thirty other winemakers, the common purpose and the exchange of ideas and techniques was a delight for me. The worst days in the winery were often better than any other days in the biz.
There are lots of ways wine gets made.
I think I like your way better.
Best, Jim
Steve Edmunds
Steve Edmunds
Eric, I'm so glad to see your comments, here; for me, they've always been a way to orient myself, to gauge whether my own focus is too far wide, too high or too low, too close to the edge. To remind myself to pay even closer attention to whether what I'm thinking truly makes sense. Thank you, again.
That said, it's that question of attention that, for me, has been one of my chief pleasures in working with grapes for the years I've been doing it. In the American culture in which I grew up, and the time of that growing-up, the emphasis that was the focus of child-raising was THE RESULTS. There was NO real importance given to what it felt like to produce those results. And the RESULTS included not to teach one's children much, if anything, about paying attention to how ANYTHING felt, other than maybe physical pain, and "not hurting anyone's feelings."
When I say felt, here's what I mean:
When I walk into the vineyard, what do my eyes have to tell me about what the grape-growers have done with the vines I'm looking at? How do the vines look? Has the grower done a good job? Do the vines look healthy? How much moisture is in the soil? When the vines bloom, what's the weather? Is there mildew? Is there space to permit good airflow? And so on, right to the point of ripening, and the decision of when to pick, and the picking itself.
I had to teach myself all of that, every step. The first year of Edmunds St John (1985) I didn't know how to do that, and I didn't know that I didn't know. I knew that I had a reasonably keen palate, and somehow, knowing that gave me some courage, and I knew that I would need that courage.
In the late Spring of 1985, I stumbled onto a connection to an almost legendary vineyard on Mt Veeder, roughly 380 meters above the Napa Valley floor, an old, dry-farmed vineyard that had, of all things, about a couple of tons of Mourvedre from 60+ year-old vines. The farming was entirely by hand, organic, and meticulous. The growers were the brothers Chester and Richard Brandlin. Chester, at the time, was in his early 70s, Rich in his late 60s.
It was impossible not to notice, that year during harvest, that not even the best of any of the other grapes with which I worked that year, were anything like those Mourvèdre grapes. That impression began when I first visited the vineyard, and met Chester and Rich. All the other growers I'd talked to had been eager to sell their fruit, because the market for Syrah, and for Grenache in California had not yet really come into existence, and the grapes had been planted as a kind of speculation, because someone had convinced the grower that, as for the market, "if you build it, they will come." The Brandlins' father, whose name has escaped me, at the moment, had planted Mataro (Mourvedre) because Gallo wanted some, and they were the biggest wine producer in California, as I believe they still are. Gallo would buy anything they planted.
But by 1985 Gallo had not even begun to make the Brandlin's exceptional work in the vines worth the effort required, and Chester and Richard wanted to sell the grapes to someone else, on the sly. (The Mourvedre they grew represented only 6 or 7% of the grapes they grew, and the effect on Gallo’s bottom line was statistically undetectable) But to Chester and Rich, I was quite a curiosity, because I was young, I suppose, and because I actually believed the Mourvedre grape could make beautiful wine, and because I didn't seem to care that there was no market in California for wine made from these grapes. My feeling was that if the grapes could produce a sufficiently compelling wine, a wine that was a thrill to taste, who could resist?
in 1985 those Mourvedre grapes taught me how to make wine, and it was because of how they felt to my feet and lower legs when I slowly crushed them with the weight of my body, how they smelled as they began to ferment, how alive the wine was! How, each time I smelled and tasted the wine, I could feel the nerves that transmitted information between my nose, and my brain come alive? That's not anything my culture had taught me.
There was a question that haunted me, that first harvest, and for awhile afterward: What role had I really played, in the production of that wine? It stayed with me for years. But gradually, as I began to integrate the way that my endeavor had begun to unfold, and the feelings aroused in that process, the answer began to emerge in my mind; I had relinquished any thought of being in command of the production of wines from the grapes I would work with. The wine I bottled would be a collaboration: with the vines, with the growers, with the elements, with Fate.
That said, it's that question of attention that, for me, has been one of my chief pleasures in working with grapes for the years I've been doing it. In the American culture in which I grew up, and the time of that growing-up, the emphasis that was the focus of child-raising was THE RESULTS. There was NO real importance given to what it felt like to produce those results. And the RESULTS included not to teach one's children much, if anything, about paying attention to how ANYTHING felt, other than maybe physical pain, and "not hurting anyone's feelings."
When I say felt, here's what I mean:
When I walk into the vineyard, what do my eyes have to tell me about what the grape-growers have done with the vines I'm looking at? How do the vines look? Has the grower done a good job? Do the vines look healthy? How much moisture is in the soil? When the vines bloom, what's the weather? Is there mildew? Is there space to permit good airflow? And so on, right to the point of ripening, and the decision of when to pick, and the picking itself.
I had to teach myself all of that, every step. The first year of Edmunds St John (1985) I didn't know how to do that, and I didn't know that I didn't know. I knew that I had a reasonably keen palate, and somehow, knowing that gave me some courage, and I knew that I would need that courage.
In the late Spring of 1985, I stumbled onto a connection to an almost legendary vineyard on Mt Veeder, roughly 380 meters above the Napa Valley floor, an old, dry-farmed vineyard that had, of all things, about a couple of tons of Mourvedre from 60+ year-old vines. The farming was entirely by hand, organic, and meticulous. The growers were the brothers Chester and Richard Brandlin. Chester, at the time, was in his early 70s, Rich in his late 60s.
It was impossible not to notice, that year during harvest, that not even the best of any of the other grapes with which I worked that year, were anything like those Mourvèdre grapes. That impression began when I first visited the vineyard, and met Chester and Rich. All the other growers I'd talked to had been eager to sell their fruit, because the market for Syrah, and for Grenache in California had not yet really come into existence, and the grapes had been planted as a kind of speculation, because someone had convinced the grower that, as for the market, "if you build it, they will come." The Brandlins' father, whose name has escaped me, at the moment, had planted Mataro (Mourvedre) because Gallo wanted some, and they were the biggest wine producer in California, as I believe they still are. Gallo would buy anything they planted.
But by 1985 Gallo had not even begun to make the Brandlin's exceptional work in the vines worth the effort required, and Chester and Richard wanted to sell the grapes to someone else, on the sly. (The Mourvedre they grew represented only 6 or 7% of the grapes they grew, and the effect on Gallo’s bottom line was statistically undetectable) But to Chester and Rich, I was quite a curiosity, because I was young, I suppose, and because I actually believed the Mourvedre grape could make beautiful wine, and because I didn't seem to care that there was no market in California for wine made from these grapes. My feeling was that if the grapes could produce a sufficiently compelling wine, a wine that was a thrill to taste, who could resist?
in 1985 those Mourvedre grapes taught me how to make wine, and it was because of how they felt to my feet and lower legs when I slowly crushed them with the weight of my body, how they smelled as they began to ferment, how alive the wine was! How, each time I smelled and tasted the wine, I could feel the nerves that transmitted information between my nose, and my brain come alive? That's not anything my culture had taught me.
There was a question that haunted me, that first harvest, and for awhile afterward: What role had I really played, in the production of that wine? It stayed with me for years. But gradually, as I began to integrate the way that my endeavor had begun to unfold, and the feelings aroused in that process, the answer began to emerge in my mind; I had relinquished any thought of being in command of the production of wines from the grapes I would work with. The wine I bottled would be a collaboration: with the vines, with the growers, with the elements, with Fate.
Jim Hanlon
Jim Hanlon
Steve, thanks for your reflections. And thanks also to Eric. We're lucky to have you both on this bored, and your wines in our cellars.