originally posted by Eden Mylunsch:
Bon chance with them vignes, Dr. Lipton! Me, I too was once a vigneron, farming grapes high in the hills of the Malibu Coast AVA. We bought a house harboring 148 Syrah and 3 Pinot Noir vines on a west-ish facing terraced hillside below the house in Corral Canyon (photo
here ). The previous owner laid the vineyard out, carved the terracing on the steep slope and planted and trellised the site about 8 years before selling it to us. He meant well, we meant well, but in a decade of being a grape grower we were able to actually harvest grapes in only two vintages.
We make no excuses for our lack of vinous success, we offer only reasons (and no, we weren’t trying to be uber-authentic and traditional in a quest to emulate the success rate of Bordeaux in the hallowed pre-phylloxera olden days). The original vigneron planted the wrong Syrah clone on the wrong rootstock. The hillside was prone to slippage and the trellising rotted away, and the ornamental magnolia tree planted in the middle of the vineyard grew to 40 feet tall and shaded a section of the vineyard. Not that this made a big difference, since Malibu is home to June gloom, meaning there wasn’t a lot of good direct sunlight until July. We’d get fog in the morning and the temperature would hit 90˚ by 6 PM. We were set upon by deer, foxes, gophers, squirrels, and birds. Lots of birds. Nets didn’t deter them, and it turns out that even the local owls liked grapes, but not like coyotes like grapes! Sometimes the birds would get caught in the nets and the coyotes would eat the birds through the nets before enjoying some grapes for dessert. I tried soft pruning and farming according to the principals of biodynamism. I’d use organic sprays instead of sulphur and used VSP and leaf pulling where it made sense to keep the canopy open and air moving through it on the few days when there was actually air blowing up from the canyon below (usually it was being blown in from Thousand Oaks was carrying embers from whatever brushfire happened to be making its way to the ocean that week).
But yes, doing the farming was tremendously satisfying, regardless of the outcome (or the lack of same). I learned a lot about growing things, I learned about spending money I didn’t have for tools I (probably) didn’t need to grow grapes that weren’t ample enough to make wine. Growing grapes under such difficult conditions is good for building one’s character even as it depletes one’s bank account. I learned a lot from having done it (but don’t ask me if I would do it again, given the chance to say ‘no goddamn way’ should there be a second chance). Were we still living there I would probably still be waging war against nature and the LA County Board of Supervisors (the assholes have decided that grapes are bad for the environment and have banned them in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreational District, which is where we lived) and probably sinking whatever disposable income that came in into replacing vines and getting better nets. (it’s the principle of the thing, right?) But we moved to Dallas and it’s difficult growing anything other than mosquito bites and right wing animosity there so we retired to the swimming pool to plot how to get back to California, which we finally did. Met some GREAT people in Dallas but man, that weather is something else!
After FWIW, I recently learned that the people who bought the house (“Hollywood industry types”) chopped down the beautiful, albeit poorly sited, Magnolia tree and subsequently yanked out the grapevines and erected topiary along the pathways. I’m sure there’s a moral or at least a lesson to be learned -- in there somewhere, but I try not to read too much into any of this stuff anymore. It’s counterproductive and besides, I’ve already amassed enough ruminative thoughts for at least TWO autobiographies (well, maybe only one, in case it turns out I’m bipolar or something).
Best of luck with the Gamay, Mark!!
-Eden (I went big this year and planted 16 tomato plants here at the house in San Luis Obispo, a residence totally lacking in ocean views and vineyards) Mylunsch
