Reign of Terroir » Technology

The Future Of Wine Writing, Walla Walla Redux

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 15:59:37 +0000

What follows is my gaze into the crystal ball of wine writing’s future. I was invited by the organizers of the Wine Bloggers Conference, this year held in Walla Walla, Washington, to offer my views along side of those of the steady Steve Heimoff and the durable Tom Wark of Fermentation. My invitation to participate, I must say, was a bit of a lark, entirely unexpected. It is one thing to go about the quiet, deliberative work of presenting important ideas and issues to the public, one’s readership; it is quite another to take to the stage with gentlemen of such considerable experience and wisdom. Though I will not dispute for a minute the insight of the Conference organizers for having thought of me, I will say that I approached the panel discussion with humility, indeed, with a haunting sense that it could all go very wrong. But it didn’t. In fact, it may turn out that our exchange will take on an after-life none of us could have predicted.
Not used to public speaking, fully aware of the shortcomings of my presentation, here I offer an enhanced, fluid reconstruction of my remarks.

So It Begins…

None of us on the panel had any idea of what the other would say. We had agreed that our point of departure would be the question of whether in the future there would be a handful of important critics, gatekeepers; whether the consumer would continue to depend upon select voices for navigating the bewildering choices. However interesting the answer may be, it was clear to me that the question did not remotely approach what I understand by wine writing. Whether there will be gatekeepers in the future is a marginal question at best. The handmaiden to mere commerce, tasting notes and scores threaten to trivialize wine, and make of wine writing little more than the penning of serviceable haikus. A sub-genre at best, tasting notes and scores might more properly be understood as the discursive equivalent of a wine additive or manipulative technology.

And the assumption of a passive consumer deepens this impression. Having worked in a winery and knowing the manipulations commonly brought to unbalanced juice, I have often encountered a deep cynicism with respect to the public. And just as it is a common feature of winemaker psychology, so too does it afflict the wine writer. Aware of winery shenanigans, to the degree that they turn a blind eye to such manipulations in their tasting notes and scores, they, too, show a lazy contempt for the consumer, more so when, as often happens, they are made fully aware of a specific winery’s procedures and practices. Critics often share an unspoken compact with a winery that some things shall go unspoken. Indeed, it is just this structural deformity, the non-equivalence between wine critic and consumer knowledge that encourages contempt for the latter and generates dependance.

Now, to be put properly on the path to being a successful wine blogger, especially one specializing in tasting notes, will often mean accumulating secrets, a knowledge of which the public is unaware. It is the effective concealment of aspects wine knowledge, rather than its elaboration, that informs credibility. How humorous is the spectacle of established wine critics slamming bloggers for their lack of expertise when what they really mean is that they don’t know where the bodies are buried! You don’t need a PhD is business to know that controversy will close more doors than it opens. So, a wine blogger’s success, their monetization, is often built upon a foundation of bad faith, the requirement that wine drinkers be reduced to passive consumers, and that some aspects of wine knowledge be strictly policed.

The principle obstacle to improving the fortunes of wine writing in a broader sense is, unsurprisingly, the digital form it is required to take. These days there is no wine-related conference one may attend at which social media does not play a commanding role. Whether it be Twitter, Facebook, or blog formats themselves, these forms can significantly limit expression. A technological fetish, the various forms of social media, endlessly promoted, are granted magical (commercial) powers. But at the expense of thought and culture. We are repeatedly told that no one reads anymore; that 500 to 1000 words is all we should write on our blogs. But that is a function of social media’s digital forms. They aggressively subvert thought, largely preferring commercial applications alone. The corrosive financial impact of multiple digital innovations on traditional wine writers exploring the complexities of wine history, culture, and the literary side of the wine world, is everywhere evident. After all, democratization has, since Plato, known another face. With respect to wine writing we might call it a variation of the tragedy of the commons.

The future of wine writing ought to include readers in the writer’s explorations. No longer relegated to a passive position, the word ‘consumer’ should be scrapped. It was just a short while ago that Oz Clarke referred to Merlot as America’s gateway wine. Following upon a series of news reports in the 1980s about the beneficial effects of moderate wine drinking, America turned to wine in a big way. Merlot was chosen because it was the least wine-like wine, by which was meant that it caused no offense and was easy to drink. A lot has changed since then. The ‘consumer’ is not longer in that place. I compare our understanding of the evolution of the ‘consumer’ to traveling by car in the south of France to the Spanish frontier. The architectural forms, the local vernacular, slowly change. To take a single snapshot at any given mileage marker tells you nothing of the subtle, on-going transformations. It is the same with our idea of the ‘consumer’. Though we may try to fix the concept, it is morphing, taking on complexities of its own. So, the first principle of future wine writing in digital formats should be this recognition. Educate readers! Invite them along. Deepen their understanding along with yours. Most importantly, make of your own developing sophistication a promise to readers that your current ignorance will become a shared future knowledge. For your journey is also theirs.

There are great opportunities for on-line wine magazines. The Palate Press and Catavino are among the best examples we currently enjoy. Though differing in intent, each offer opportunities for multiple genres and topics to be more fully explored, even if somewhat briefly. The world of wine demands the multiplication of genres the on-line mag performs. The Palate Press’ recent stories on under-valued indigenous American grape varieties amply illustrates the point.

And then is the interesting possibility of wineries themselves taking on a greater role in wine writing in the future, to help gently force the agenda. It has long been felt that a winery can only provide updates on the humdrum ‘everydayness’ of their work. Perhaps one might read on Facebook an announcement about a festival or wine sale, the comings and going of the winery dog, that is about it. And whether one is organic or biodynamic is a one-off utterance. “We are organic!” Next month they write, “Yup. We’re still organic!” What is needed is for a winery to enter into a compelling narrative, for themselves to become a generator of important news. And this, in my view, is what Parducci Wine Cellars, the whole of the Mendocino Wine Company, is fast becoming. America’s first carbon neutral winery, the 100% reuse of winery waste water, the construction of wetlands, the aggressive promotion of biodiversity on their properties, these and many other green initiatives make of the Mendocino Wine Company an on-going performance of its vision of the future. The process moves. It is the unfolding story with multiple chapters.

Their most recent chapter may well be that as the anchor for a broad-based micro-finance initiative throughout the Mendocino AVA itself. Briefly stated, micro-financing is the use of monies aggregated from multiple private sources for the purpose of peer-to-peer lending. The purpose is not only to eliminate banking hierarchies and their usurious interest rates, but to encourage an entrepreneurial spirit. And to open up opportunities for development often closed to small farmers, for example, in our troubled economic times. Were a struggling farmer wish to do the right thing, to improve the efficiency of their water recycling system or even to install one, where a bank might not see a compelling financial interest, private micro-financing dedicated to such an initiative could quickly respond.

I shall have much more to say about this matter moving forward. It is best for now to simply let the process take its course and, hopefully, to awaken the imaginations of other wineries to the idea of micro-financing.

So, there are many, many ways to approach the question of the future of wine writing. I have related here not the sum total of my speculations, just those generally consistent with my presentation at the Wine Bloggers Conference. There will be much more to come. After all, tomorrow is the future.

Admin

Parducci, Building The Future

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:07:39 +0000

“My name is Tim Thornhill. I grew up in Houston. Some 35 years ago we all took off and went to work or went to college. The family only got back together once or twice a year sorta’ only when somebody died or got married. About ten years ago my brother [Tom] and I started thinking about what we should be doing, and what we would regret not doing; and that was trying to get as much of our family back together in one location, if possible. So I looked around the country, Tom already lived in the San Francisco Bay area; we settled on Northern California as being the region. We spent three years looking through Napa, Sonoma, and Mendocino counties. While Napa and Sonoma have the geography and the climate, they really didn’t have the community that we were looking for. When your gathering family together to put down really deep roots, you have to look forward 40 or 50 years as to where you’re leaving them and how are they going to feel about it.

“What Napa had to offer, as far as all the commercialism and tourism, it just really didn’t fit for us. Also, this community is a very, very green community. There is 5 times as much organic acreage in Mendocino county as their is in Napa or Sonoma counties. So it really worked for us. When we purchased the first property [La Ribera Vineyard], it had 150 acres of vines on it. We ended up in the vineyard business. But it was really the landscape for the family estate. My parents were here right away. One of my older children has come back. In fact, I just became a grandfather three days ago [6/15]. My daughter [Kate], who runs the export and does all of our contract grower negotiations, married one of the winemakers here, and has now thrown off the next generation, probably a biodynamic baby, to be honest. Then we partnered up with Paul Dolan.”

All of this was said within the first few minutes of my revealing vineyard tour at Parducci Wine Cellars. I knew then and there I was in luck. Tim Thornhill is a rarity, in my experience. He needs no prompting to get to the heart of the matter. And he thinks big. But this has nothing to do with any Texas cliché. For he is a man of the world.

As you read what I will call a ‘lesson’, perhaps you might think money was an overwhelming factor. Not all wineries, after all, may believe they have the resources to accomplish what has been done at Parducci. But Mr. Thornhill turns the question around. Aligning yourself with the natural forces of Nature (with a big ‘N’) will save you money. And perhaps the world. After all, how much is spent on pesticides, municipal water, and electricity? How great are the monies spent resisting the natural world? Biodiversity, plant and insect succession, water filtration, oxygenation, gravity– these are biological and physical processes to be harnessed. The idea is to align your project with how the natural world expresses itself, how it goes about its business.

Life loves to live, I tell my kids. Even the lowly weed sprouting in the median along I-5 is an act of grace. Caltrans may knock it down, but there is no denying the weed’s determination to live. There is a beauty even there.

We now join a conversation already in progress.

“We take a row, I think it’s one every 14 of 16 rows, and we put in an additional drip line, sub-surface, and then we plant around 30 to 40 different plant species in our mix. We have flowers year-round. You’ll note this row [pictured] runs all the way through the block. So we get good distribution of insects all the way through. I want all the insects I can get! They will balance themselves. There’re almost 3000 species of predatory insects in Northern California. It’s really about habitat. We do the same thing time after time after time, whether it’s the insects or the owls.”

I am shown a video, recently taken by Mr. Thornhill, of the interior of one of their many owl boxes around the property. Barn owl eggs are clearly visible. In another box fledglings hiss behind a partition. A third video shows a mother owl starring at the camera.

“People ask me, ‘So, do you put owls in the box?’. I tell them no more than I put insects in that insectary. ‘Where did you get your owls?’ Well, the owls are indigenous. They just need habitat. An average owl consumes 53 pounds of rodents in a year. So I don’t need poison in my vineyard. I don’t need traps. They will balance themselves. The owls wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t food. They just need the habitat.”

Reduce The Use

“The first thing I want to do with all of my energy consumption is ‘reduce the use’. And what we find is that if you measure there is an almost immediate reduction just because people know you’re measuring. Of course, there is a push-back in the beginning for most people when you say you want to measure everything. So, in the vineyard we installed what’re called tensiometers. They measure available moisture in the soil. We used to make our decisions based more on schedule, what was convenient, or maybe what was historical, which usually was not based on data; it was based on feeling, emotion. ‘In god we trust; all others bring data’.
So we put all these tensiometers and started measuring available moisture in the ground. We found we did not need to necessarily water on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, like we were doing. We might not even water at all that week. We’ve reduced our water use by 25% in our worst case, and 37% in our best case. And we end up with better balanced vines, better fruit, and better wines in the end.

“We’ve reduced the amount of water we pull from the aquifer, the water we pull from the rivers, the amount of biodiesel burned to run the pumps, the number of hours run the pumps… yet the quality of our product has been improved. A lot of people will say being environmental is too expensive, that they can’t afford it. Being environmental means being efficient. When you’re efficient, things drop to the bottom line. So first we reduce the use. Then we get into recycling.

“Here in the winery to reduce the use, I went through and divided it up into 22 different sections. Each section has its own water meter. So when walking through the winery right after I put the meter in, the gentleman running the barrel room for 17 years said he’d seen that I had put one there in his spot. He was a little concerned that I would now how much water he was wasting. I said, no. I want to know how much water you’re saving. Well, guess what? He’s done nothing but save water. And so have all of his other guys, basically in competition. They’ve got the scoreboard right there, the water meter!”

“All of our utilities have been coming down. Our electric consumption, for example, between ‘06 and ‘08 went down by 15%, but our production actually increased by between 100-200%. So, while we’ve grown the production operation tremendously, we’ve reduced our electrical use. And you see our water use in the vineyard also declined. The period from ‘05 through ‘09 was one of the worst droughts in California history. But even while we had a tremendous drought, this means far less ambient moisture, we were still able to reduce the amount of irrigation we did, and ended up with better fruit and better balanced vines.”

Reuse and Recycling

“I try to use the water that rinses the tanks to also, at the end of the day, rinse the floors. We’re using it twice, if at all possible. Then the water is to be recycled. At that point the water is BOD. Here is a picture of what it use to look like when we first got here. It was basically purple. All designers told me back then that I needed to put four 10 hp motors in my pond, basically agitators like any sewer plant uses. But signing up for 25 years for four 10 horse motors was not in my game plan. I kept going through consultants until I found one willing to think completely outside the box. We went out and maximized existing resources.

“Here’s how we did it. In the winery I gave everyone dust pans and brooms so that they could sweep up all the debris of winemaking first before they tried to wash down the floors. It all use to just go down the drain. That use to be ok, and legally it was ok, too. But it also meant that the water was basically ruined. It had no oxygen. It’s called BOD, biological oxygen demand. It’s created mostly by sugars and solids. The sugars, in our case, comes from the fruit. So my job is to get the solids out and remove the sugars, and put the oxygen back in the water.

“So when the waste water leaves the winery (after years of bringing all the plumbing into one place), it goes up to the tanks way up on top of the hill. Up there we have repurposed old fire tanks. They now serve as anaerobic digesters. The water spends between 20 and 30 days to go through those tanks. Then, via gravity, it comes down through a series of trickle towers. The first one is near the tanks. Here’s another one [pic]. The water comes up through a pipe and runs down the trickle tower.
Now, the consultants I went to designed a trickle tower for me, but it was going to be $100,000. It was all stainless steel and plastic. Instead, what I did was take some old grape trailers. These things were in the weeds. Nobody even knew they were here. They do hold water. So I then took barrel racks, old steel barrel racks, stacked them up; welded them together; stuck it full of wood slats to act as a media; I then jammed a bunch of willows between. You’ll note what most people would call black slime coating the sides. It’s actually called filamentous fungi. What it does is consume compounds, sugar being my main compound. And as the water trickles down through here it also gets aeration. So, my settling goes on in the tanks on the hill. My de-sugaring goes on in these trickle towers.

“This one [pictured above] was built about three or four months ago. The efficiency is quite measurable. It’s an amazing thing. It has a whole lot of surface area; and the filamentous fungi, if you take it in your hand, feels kind of like wet cotton. You can squeeze it. It has texture. But lay it out on the flat rock in the sun, and by the next day it is like a piece of paper. It’s almost nothing but structure.
So the water passes through the trickle towers, the last one sitting just before the water goes into the pond. So that’s the delivery of the water from the winery to the pond. Now, in the pond is where they wanted me to put these four agitators. They would have just consumed the power of three or four houses. Instead, we built a water falls.

“Think about the two main processes in this world with respect to water. The giant water filters are the Everglades of the world. The oxygenators are all the streams and rocky creeks. That’s where the trout live because that is where is found the highest oxygen level. So we figured out that with one five hp pump all we had to do was lift the water in this pond twelve feet. That takes very little psi, very little power to move a lot of water. So I raise about 400 gallons a minute twelve feet. From that point it is gravity again. The water is raised above the pond level to the road height. From there gravity takes the water through a series of water falls. Those are my aerators. All gravity. No moving parts. Rocks. Plants. No service! And were operating at 20% of the power of the four aerators originally proposed, and we achieve a water quality 3 to 4 times what they would have ever had as a goal. We’re pretty pleased.”

We pass by a portable chicken coop with a solar door which opens at dawn and closes at dusk. It must be moved every six months when the predators in the area catch on. Guinea hens pass through. Hawks, a couple species of duck, egret, black, green, and great blue heron, common snipe, geese, sandpipers, killdeer, turkeys, bluebirds, a kingfisher, even the occasional troublesome otter, all make use of the pond, one way or another. There are muskrats.

“This pond use to be purple four or five years ago. It had a smell that people on the freeway would call and complain about. There is now no smell. Again, when the water comes out of the winery it has a BOD of about 2,500. Before I can use it on land it has to have a measurement of 80 ppm. I am now somewhere below 10 ppm. We can’t even get a reading. So I have virtually no BOD. When the water comes out of the winery there is zero oxygen. I’ll measure the oxygen down where it comes out of the wetland. We’ll probably find it is over 4 ppm. Trout require about 5 ppm.
“My minimum requirement for oxygen is 1 ppm before I can land-apply it. The BOD minimum is 80 ppm before I can land-apply it. So this water in the pond can be used anytime.” [To clarify, there are two measurements in play here. One, for BOD, is a measurement of organic material: the lower the number, the better. The second is for oxygen saturation: the higher, the better. The 'minimums' Mr. Thornhill refers to are establish either at either the state or federal level, or both. Admin]

“The water has to go back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth. It comes in via gravity, passes through the water falls, is pumped back up the twelve feet and starts all over. The plants in the pond do all kinds of things. They suck out all the excess nutrients left in the winery water; all the phosphorous, the nitrogen. They will also remove heavy metals. They also introduce oxygen. Aquatic plants pull oxygen out of the atmosphere and introduce it back into the water through their roots.
I had a neighbor call me to ask if I was interested in some concrete. He was taking out a big patio. I went and looked. There were forty of these slabs [pictured]. I said I would be right back with my truck! So I am going to put a path of these all through the wetlands so that people can see what is going on.

“So here’s our dissolved oxygen level. And I would venture to say that we are probably close to 6 or 7 ppm. We’re over 5, that’s for sure. When they first gave me an oxygen set to test, it went from zero to one, in tenths. Right? I would measure and tell them that I was getting 1. They would ask if I was getting a full 1 or a point 1 [.1]? No, I was getting a 1! And if you went to the bottom of the water fall it would be 12 ppm, off the charts. Saturated. So I got a new set. I come out to check the oxygen levels once a week, usually when I’m doing a tour, just out of curiosity. But I do have a guy who checks it in three different places every single Monday. We can see a difference from end to end of the pond and wetland.

“We check BOD once a month. That’s kind of an expensive thing or I would do it all the time. But we don’t see huge changes once we get out of harvest. There just begins this very steady decline. In fact, BOD removal is much faster now because of our trickle towers. We can go right to a trickle tower and measure the BOD in the water as it comes out of the tank. At the bottom of the tower BOD is cut in half. That is just at the first tower; and I’m going to have four.

“We recycle 100% of the winery water. After we’ve ‘reduced our use’, we reuse it more than once. It’s kind of like a wine glass. When people ask me what is the difference between ‘recycle’ and ‘reuse’, I tell them that a wine glass is reused. When it is broken, it’s recycled. So with the water, we try to use it more than once. But it does get ‘broken’. Then we have to recycle it. So this entire process here saved me about 5 million gallons of water last year that I was then able to use for irrigation. It’s high-quality water. I would have otherwise had to buy it.”

“So, number one, we recycle 100% of the water. Number two, we do it in a way that consumes very little energy, with no chemical applications. Number three, we’ve ended up with a bird sanctuary out of it; more habitat, more biodiversity, a greater contribution to the biodynamics of this property. And number four, I get to share the knowledge with people and try to teach others.

“When you want to talk about sustainability, what is true sustainability, well, first of all it means living your life and running your business so that it doesn’t adversely impact future generations. I didn’t come up with that. But I also think that it means sharing information. If you are not passing the information along, that is not sustainable. The sooner we pass it on right now, the better. It needs to be viral.

“My partners and I came to the conclusion, when we created our partnership, that if we waited for the governments around the globe to address environmental concerns, then it wouldn’t happen fast enough. However, industry can turn on a dime, with incentives. They are now incentified. They weren’t five years ago.
It’s been a struggle all my life to be an environmental person. Other people sort of laugh at it, and don’t pay any attention. It’s the same thing with organics. I remember when I kept thinking, well, there getting it now. That was 10 years ago. Maybe they’re getting it now. That was 5 years ago. Now they’re getting it. I mean, now there is a big push. A big wave. There is incentive.

“You take Walmart and Clorox. I’ve sat on boards with the environmental guys and that is the number one thing they are focused on is turning their company green. They know that if they don’t, they’re out. That company will not be around five to ten years from now. I’m convinced.

“The generation coming into play now, my kids, basically, the twenty and thirty year-olds, they are distrusting. They see what is happening. They want third-party certification. So, that’s where ‘certified organic’ or ‘certified biodynamic’ comes in. A lot of people don’t want to be measured. I do. It’s kind of like running in a race. If I’m going to run, let’s make it a race. If it’s going to be a race, then I really prefer the front. It’s just a lot more fun.” (laughs)

We then drove to the winery’s tasting room where I enjoyed a healthy lunch. I turned off my recorder. Both my intellectual and corporeal appetites were satisfied.

Admin

Clos Troteligotte, Cahors’ New Generation

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 03:34:08 +0000

Clos Troteligotte is an interesting property. Stylistically, it straddles the line between old and new Cahors, but is not part of a generational movement as such. It understands its future as one driven by an independence of spirit and a work ethic, the true patrimony of the South West. Clos Troteligotte builds upon this cultural continuity with refreshing innovation, a new perspective. I’ll explain.

Traditional Cahors AOC winemaking is difficult to grasp. Its long history has been punctuated by environmental disasters, changing international fortunes, the rise of powerful, politically astute regional rivals, the emergence of America as a winemaking power, its rechristening, if not rebirth, in the 1970s, and, most recently, Argentina’s successful marketing of the Malbec grape under Cahors’ very nose. Indeed, Cahors AOC identity today is an unsettled confluence of multiple histories and restarts. We can catch glimpses of the magnificence of the wines produced, more numerous examples in recent years, but I don’t believe the Cahors AOC has experienced sufficient continuity as a wine growing region for the rest of the world to clearly understand what it is she has done, certainly not what she now does. It was not until the 1990s, after all, that a thorough analysis of what Andrew Jefford has called the forgotten terroirs was even undertaken.

Now the Cahors AOC project becomes to expand and to deepen this new local knowledge of itself, of its terroirs and the best viticulture, for the sake of its growers, producers, and the thirsty public. For it remains true, as I was often reminded by locals themselves, that a substantial number of Cahors AOC vignerons still do not know the strengths and weaknesses of their own lands, whether their vineyards are in the right place, or where to look within the AOC at large for terroirs of great potential. This last point is important in that I strongly sense that others from outside the region are now shopping for AOC acreage. (I, myself, have more than once in the past few weeks wondered whether I might make a go of it here!) Of spectacular potential, this small AOC in the South West of France has only begun to shower the world with the soulful, expressive gifts of its terroirs. Like much of Portugal, I am convinced that the Cahors AOC is on the verge of far wider international recognition than now enjoyed. There is no downside to its fortunes.

Of Clos Troteligotte. Founded in 1987 by patriarch Christian Rybinski, it is a 10 hectare (1 of white grapes just coming in) family operation spearheaded by young son Emmanuel. They combine excellent red plateau soils, an appreciation of contemporary viticultural thinking, a relentless work ethic, internet savoir-faire, experimentation, and an abiding love of their patrimony into a range of bright wines, including a white and rosé. I had the pleasure of spending a couple of hours with Emmanuel. What follows is a blended narrative of the interview.

Troteligotte, Emmanuel explains, is the name of his grandfather’s house. It means a place where there are a lot of partridge (my effort to find an exact translation was unsuccessful). As we approached the property and drove a private dirt road through wooded land just east of the Villesèque commune, itself ten minutes west of Cahors off D653, sure enough partridge bolted in front of us. They did not fly, but ran. Emmanuel described his vineyard as atop the plateau, an iron-rich clay and limestone mix. Unobstructed sunshine is on the vines, the surrounding forest having been cleared for cereal grains and animal forage as well. Emmanuel’s father, Christian, though an agronomist, was an ingenue. He didn’t know a lot about wine when he initially planted the Clos Troteligotte’s vines in ‘87. His own father had been a farmer, had not known the vine. But Christian learned with each vintage and soon left the negociants behind with a focus on quality, a resolution made in 1998, the year of his first great effort.

In 2004 Emmanuel had returned from Australia. He had worked in Victorian Alps Winery, near the Victorian Alps in the state of Victoria. He had also put put in time in Napa as an assistant winemaker at Chateau Potelle in 2002. So, back in Villesèque in 2004, he began to make his multiple signature cuvées. Shortly was to come, with the help of his father, their first Charte de Qualité wine in 2004, the CQfd [see pic].

Diversity of wines is the key to the Clos’ success. Emmanuel has complete control over block, vine, and grape selection to do as he pleases. So why not explore the variety their current 40,000 bottle capacity allows? Eight thousand of Rosé, 4,000 of the white blend, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Viognier, and the balance of classic Cahors blends, Malbec, Merlot, and Tannat. The white blend is quite interesting, the result of an experiment with the three varieties none of which were planted in sufficient quantities to warrant a separate bottling. But next year he will plant more vines for two new whites, a Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc blend and a stand-alone Viognier.

Father and son do everything; they work the vineyards, the cellar, the barnyard, they do all the marketing, including hand-selling at markets, the labels. Control rests entirely in their hands. Their new website, too, was Emmanuel’s doing, though with the help of a friend who runs eure-k!, a new innovative web design collective, in this instance charged with creating a site which reflected Emmanuel’s electric personality. It took six months, but the results are certainly more energizing and visually arresting than any other Cahors AOC producer sites I’ve visited on the net. They also do tee-shirts, fliers offering discounts, all that modern marketing stuff (like talking to me). Though not yet on Facebook or Twitter (it takes time he does not have!), he does have a blog administered by his lovely wife, Emily. (Though not always a part of Emmanuel’s narrative, Emily is undeniably central to their success.) All of this raises his profile and that of the winery. From his work in Australia and California he learned the importance of wine tourism, something he hopes to increase to his property in the near future. Future plans call for the building of a new cellar for tastings and sales, educational talks; a showplace for local art, theater, music, and books; a comfortable place for cultural gatherings and conversation, what Emmanuel calls a Country or Rural Cultural Center. Under construction now, he hopes to open the doors in the Spring/Summer of 2012.

These kinds of initiatives, incidentally, are going on all over the Cahors AOC. Indeed, the local wine and tourism authorities have launched a five-year plan to completely revitalize the region. It is an exciting time to be a winemaker here! Yet Emmanuel’s advice may not be sought, at least in the beginning. Along with other young winemakers 30 and under, they have not yet earned the confidence of the older generation. For that distinction, a greater region recognition of one’s work is required.

Emmanuel is not particularly concerned with such matters. He really has no time to speak formally about the development of the appellation in any case. He has more than enough work to do, what with his winemaking, viticultural practice, marketing, house and out-building construction and family responsibilities. He is the father of three beautiful young children. Malbec Days, in fact, offered him an excellent opportunity to combine a number of tasks, including meeting local officials, exporters, wine writers, etc. all while pouring his wines.

We arrive at the vineyards, the house and future cellar under construction just beyond. His current cellar is simply too small for his ambitious plans. The vineyard is 9 hectares of Malbec and 1 of Merlot. The Merlot was put in his first cuvée, La Fourmi and in his bag-in-a-box wine. But no Merlot is used for his middle and high cuvées. Those wines are 100% Malbec. I should add that the white grapes are not grown on the same soil as the red. In the main vineyard heavy iron-rich stones, some appearing 100% pure, lie scattered about the ground and lurk just beneath the surface. Years ago such stones were smelted to make iron farm and martial instruments. Were it to rain the soil would turn red before my eyes.

Green harvest is the order of the day at the more progressive vineyards, as here. Emmanuel explains the maximum number of canes allowed, 4 to 5, along each cordon. Grape bunches are severely reduced to one per cane. Yields for the higher quality cuvées are around 30 hectoliters per hectare, the lowest yield is used for the CQfd. Contrast this to the easier drinking, less expensive La Fourmi, for which 45 to 50 hectoliters per hectare are harvested. As may be seen, grass and flowers are everywhere between the rows, but Clos Troteligotte is not yet biologique. La Lutte Raisonnée is practiced, essentially what we would call ’sustainable’. In two to three years they will complete the transition to biologique, or ‘organic’. Under the raisonnée regime a very small amount of ‘product’ is used, sulphur and copper, usually once a year. No insecticide is applied. But even this quantity, Emmanuel explains, has been reduced by half since 2000. As a result the vines have become more and more capable of resisting what diseases there are in this dry climate. During a typical growing season it is only the leaves, and not the grape bunches, which are occasionally attacked. Clean grapes help, of course, with the vinifications, all done with ‘wild’ yeast.

Because it is just Emmanuel and his father, the grapes are mechanically harvested. Small select parcels are harvested first, when it is coldest, between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. in the morning. The disease-free grape clusters, a feature of both climate and viticulture, do not really need hand harvesting. No post-harvest de-selecting is required. Besides, a hectare may be harvested in under two hours at an optimal temperature and have the grapes in the winery before the morning chill has fled. The whites, however, are hand harvested because of oxidative matters. Curiously, their vineyards are consistently ready for harvest a full week earlier than their closest neighbor, a vineyard property only one kilometer away. Perhaps it is the forest circling their lands that provide an extra bit of protection, perhaps a subtle microclimate subtends the difference.

We leave the red soils of the Malbec/Merlot vineyard (with a small amount of Tannat, 2 to 3 percent) to view the white clay, chalkier soils for Clos Troteligotte’s whites. The vineyard bordered the forest, but in the past few years the trees have been cleared to make room for more vines to come, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Viognier, as mentioned above. The empty field is now planted with cereal grains while they prepare for the new vineyard.

I was next introduced to a small plantation of very young oaks, what they hope will become truffle trees in no fewer than 7 years. Asked about a vegetable garden, Emmanuel very proudly said they grew for the family. “We do everything!” They don’t use conventional paper diapers for their children. Instead, they use a hemp fabric, and for their tee-shirts, not to mention for the insulation of their home. His uncle has 40 hectares of cereals under cultivation. Complete with a windmill and grinding stone, grains for the family and their chickens and pigs are produced there. The pig manure is, bien sûr, returned to the fields. Like Emmanuel says, “We do everything!”

Heating of the family home, Emmanuel and Emily’s, is provided by a large stove. After firing it up for a couple of hours it provides heat all throughout the night, important when the temperature last winter plunged from an average of zero to minus 10. With the stove they bake their own bread. They harvest meats from their own livestock. Their family life and that of their farm supports and maintains long-standing Cahors country traditions. They remind me of rural folks living in Mendocino County or in western Montana. I couldn’t help thinking I had met these people before. I’m sure I have. And like their American counterparts, they are not making much money. Emmanuel laughs, “Not yet. Not yet. We work 7 days a week. We have one short holiday a year. Me and my wife. But I am on a good path. Next year I hope to take more time off… maybe pay someone to come with me into the vineyards. That would allow me to do something else.”

I was welcomed at their family house. Emily brought out a bowl of strawberries. Their apple-cheeked children eyed me with amusement, dressed as I was in unseasonable, unreasonable black and sporting multiple electronic devices. A friendly old dog, perhaps a Bernese, went back to the shade. Emmanuel introduced me and soon had his eldest son practicing his English numbers aloud. Their youngest offered me a bottle of liquid soap and a bubble wand. The ice water infused with citron tasted good.

Though I was to spend another 45 minutes with Emmanuel touring the winery proper and other sites, and listening to his extraordinary visions that I am certain will be realized, I feel it is best to end my post here. I had seen, tasted and heard much in my week in the Cahors region. But no experience was quite so perfect, so personally fulfilling for this weary stranger than my few precious minutes here with the Rybinski family.

Admin

For further reading, a supplemental link.

A Vineyard With Soul, Laurent Rigal’s Prieure De Cenac

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 25 May 2010 12:39:12 +0000

It sometimes happens in life that you meet a person of such spiritual dedication that you think things differently, your world-view nudged in a new direction. Such was my encounter with Laurent Rigal, son of Franck Rigal, family winemakers for Château de Grezels and Prieuré de Cenac in Parnac, AOC Cahors. On the first night of Malbec Days here in Cahors, what was called the Pré-ouverture, a kind of sneak preview, I tasted only a small number of wines, a few of which immediately caught my attention, this despite the tremendous heat inside the venue (I was told air conditioning was too expensive to install, coming in at around €10,000). Of those wines, one stuck in my imagination, ‘La Vierge’, from the Prieuré de Cenac vineyard. By virtue of a personal meander appropriate to this region dominated, as it is, by the Lot River, and the generous assistance of Jean-Marie Sigaud, I was to meet father and son the following day. A winemaker discussing their work often presents two faces, one public, a visage of commercial, more formal utterances, and the other, private, far rarer. I was fortunate to listen to the latter.

The vineyard for La Vierge is situated within 39 hectares of gently sloping hills high above the Lot River. At the top of the very highest hill is a special terroir in that it contains a 50% concentration of the most desirable soil admixture in AOC Cahors, clays, principally red, and 50% limestone. Iron, a red clay element, gives minerality and adds balance and complex aromas in the wine. The vineyard was planted on Laurent’s birthday 30 years ago, in 1979, from which the first harvest was taken in 1983. That was a very good year owing to the modest yield. The vineyard for La Vierge sees no chemicals and is all hand-picked. It is, most importantly for Laurent, biodynamic, his passion.

He began working this vineyard 7 years ago after finishing school in Bordeaux. There he learned the principles of terroir, biodynamics, the influence of the ocean on weather, and especially a respect for the land and its biodiversity. For it is biodiversity that informs the success of the grape harvest. And it is the responsibility of the winemaker to give back to the land what he takes away. All of these principles represented the broader change taking place in the entirety of the AOC.

When purchased this vineyard was already planted to the vine, but owing to its great age it was replanted with new vines, so low had the yields become. (Currently around 8,000-10,000 bottles come from the site.) It was formerly owned by a monk. The monk grew a large variety of cereals and vegetables during and after the Second World War, as well as maintaining a vineyard. Many monks sustained the local appetites and economies during this difficult time all throughout France.

Of the vintages from Prieuré de Cenac, Laurent has been responsible for 6, from 2003 forward. Of the difference between his first vintage and most recent he explains:

Laurent Rigal For the first vintage I was very excited. And very stressed! My father and grandfather set very high quality standards I had to meet. My first vintage was very hard work. I tried to make it perfect. But I felt I worked for nothing because it was a passion that drove me. Then I worked every day from early morning to mid-night, as late as two in the morning. Now I work more efficiently because working too hard on the vine and wine brings a negativity to the wine. I give the whole process more liberty and approach the harvest and vinification with greater respect, letting it develop on its own. Before I was pumping-over [remontage] 6 times a day; now I keep it at 2. It is better.

On the property there stands the monastery that, as Franck Rigal explains, the family hopes to renovate into a rooms for visitors, perhaps room enough for six. This he tells me as he drives our small car onto the steep slope to the vineyard hilltop. There is no road, but it is wide enough(!) Under brilliant sun, expansive sight lines in all directions above the broad and gentle slopes, we stop and I take in what they call mamelom, the ‘tit’ of La Vierge. But there is more to this name than a mere description. For Le Vierge means ‘virgin’, and the monk had cleared a place of quiet contemplation in the trees just a stone’s throw away. A spiritual topography begins to come into focus.

Laurent Rigal I will show you his place of quiet repose in a moment. But I want to say that here there is energy, a strong cosmic force and a telluric force. There is a concentration at La Vierge, and all around the statue is a reseau [network] that helps keep the vines in good health. There is another concentration of energy in the prieuré which serves the entire vineyard. This is very important for biodynamic viticulture because we use this energy to develop good health, to infuse the earth and the vine with life. The winemaker must learn to develop this force in the plant, the vine, and to so help reduce the quantity of chemicals.

We have three products in biodynamics: We use cow manure, and we prepare it according to Maria Thun – she is the person who developed biodynamie in France and Germany – we also produce mineral sprays for application on the vines. Two products are for developing the telluric force and one is to develop the cosmic force, to attract the light onto the vine. It is very important that you develop and focus the energy of the universe, the light. But this is rare. It is not easy to do.

So it is that the mamelom, the name of the hill, La Vierge, that of the vineyard, are descriptive elements of a kind of immaculate nursing (if I may put it that way) with the cosmos.
We then, midst a riot of bird-song, walked down the mamelom to Laurent’s place of contemplation and one of the vineyard’s power points. It was here that I took the picture of Laurent and his father, Franck. The picture of Laurent above shows him sitting at the precise power site initially discovered by the monk.

Laurent Rigal I was up this morning at 3 o’clock preparing and spraying, according to the calendar, the constellations, preparations for this vineyard! So I am a little tired today. In biodynamics there are four days: A fruit day, a leaf day, a root day, and a seed day. Today was a fruit day.
Here, at this quiet place, there is a concentration of telluric and cosmic force. Some people who visit this place feel this energy coursing through their fingers. And when you sit down, not to pray but to think, and if you are energy-friendly, then you may receive the energy.
And of the wine made here, the aromas and the taste of La Vierge, you can say the moon and the sun are in harmony. The wine is the expression of this union. We will be bringing a horse and cow to the vineyard soon; they bring good astral properties. This is a very special terroir for biodynamie. You have iron and orange clay.

Next I will show you the cave of the prieuré, but just for you. It was built by the monk. I do not often talk about these things, but you have an ambience. I can see it in the eyes when people do not want to listen.

In moments we are in the cave, the property’s second power point located beneath the main structure, the house to be renovated for guests in the fullness of time. Though I am a bit uncomfortable in doing so, I must stress that Laurent did give me permission to post the accompanying photo.

Laurent Rigal This was built by the monk, and it is in the form of the cross of Christ. I put my biodynamic preparations down here to bring into them the energy of the cave and the cross. Here I make the two products, preparations, described by Maria Thun. This one I put on the earth for an energy of concentration and recuperation…. This is a special place for me.

We head back to Cahors, the bridge where Laurent still faced the balance of the day pouring his wines. I was again to see him in the evening when, now nearly sleep-walking, he poured wines into the night, still cheerful, composed, radiating a great inner peace. I shall treasure my time with the gentleman and his father, among the finest moments of my time in the Cahors region.

Admin

Dr. Ron Jackson Wine Science, Perception, pt.3

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 07 May 2010 05:06:40 +0000

I am more than a little sad this is the final part of my interview with Dr. Ron S. Jackson. During the hour and a half we spoke, I found him a very generous, open individual. And I insisted that I reserved the right to write him with technical questions that will most certainly arise on a blog such as mine. Dr. Jackson readily agreed. His door is open. What greater reward for my effort is there than this?

Part 1, Principles
Part 2, Practice

Admin Perhaps you could provide us with your general take on the differences between ’sustainable’, ‘organic’, and ‘biodynamic’ viticulture with respect to the health of the soil.

Ron Jackson O.k. About biodynamic I cannot and do not want to say anything. Organic, I can talk to that more acceptably. Certainly if a winegrower is going to use organic fertilizers, then the soil will have and maintain more compost. Depending on how you treat the soil, your soil will be microbially more complex; and complexity in microbial ecosystems normally means stability. Now, does that mean the vine is going to be better nourished? That is another question. And I’m not so sure. All I can with certainty say is that the stability of the soil will be improved. The availability of nutrients to the vine, that is a much more moot point because if you have drip irrigation, for example, and you’re a savvy viticulturalist who applies nutrients at the appropriate time and in the appropriate amounts, then your vine will be super well nourished. But your soil could be as poor as pure sand. The vine would still grow very well, fully nourished; you can limit the amount of water so that you can control the growth of the vine. In some sense, with drip irrigation used sensibly under certain conditions, you can simply tell the vine what to do and when. You can dictate to the vine how and when to grow. You have much more control than under organic conditions in which case you’re basically allowing things to develop as quote nature unquote permits under the conditions of that year.

Now, if you want to have control then obviously the modern way is better because you’ll have more consistency from year to year. If you want to produce excellent wine at minimal cost, that is the way to go. I would say that it is impossible to have consistency and high quality with organic viticulture at low cost. So it depends who you’re selling to. If people want the organic, they believe in that, and are willing to pay more; they like the aspect that they may like the wine this year but may not the next year, and they buy into that whole cultural element, then that’s fine. I’ve nothing against that. People can chose what they want. They’re the ones doing the buying.

From my perspective (I look at it more from the industrial side of things), I tend to like wine more consistent in character. I know this year it’s great and that next year it will be almost the same, and equally great. I know people who really hate that philosophy. That’s fine. There is no reason there should be only one option.

It is also true to say that in organic winegrowing there is the codification, the formal legal elements of what we call ‘organic’, and then there are people who have been doing organic irrespective of the codification; I’m thinking of Rodale from 60 years ago for example. I’ve often met organic gardeners who do what they do indifferent to the official definition. Of course, they may not use the word ‘organic’ on their label, for to do so would not only commit them to a specific set of rules, but also open them up to criticism that they share the whole of the practices allowed under those rules.

In any event, I’d like to hear a bit about climate change in your part of North America. I’ve talked to Dr. Richard Smart about his expansive homoclime database, and Professor Greg Jones recently about this. Now, about the perils but also, as has been observed, the advantages for winegrowing climate change might bring. Do you have a position?

RJ All I can really say is that I’m a believer! (laughs) I would have to be nuts to say that I didn’t. The evidence is too strong, and is essentially all in one direction. When you see CO2 levels essentially going off the scale you say ‘Holy Smoke’! Something is going on here. There is no doubt about it. Now, what are going to be the consequences of this? I’m scared. Literally, I’m scared. Partially because what’s going to happen to sea levels and climate, but those are not what scare me so much. What really influences me in my nighttime fears would be political consequences. That’s where is really gets serious. If you look in past histories with significant climate change, that means big political problems.

Population disloctions…

RJ Oh! That usually comes with extremes of political philosophies. They [dislocations] are often associated with wars. And famines… it’s not nice.

As Richard Smart said ‘Growing wine will be the least of our worries”.

RJ That’s right. If there is any wine to drink. Maybe we won’t even be able to get our hands on it. That is really small fish.

Yours is a refreshing perspective. I get pretty tired of hearing about how Napa’s fortunes might be affected while the world burns.

RJ (laughs) Yeah. Don’t bother me with that! That is not important.

Another question with respect to climate change: about the higher alcohol levels, longer hang time, the race for phenolic ripeness in hotter climates. Just what is the role of climate change in what is often called, correctly I think, the Parker Palate. Is he driving winemakers to produce a certain style or is Parker merely tasting the fruit winemakers now have to work with in a warmer world?

RJ Well, I suppose he [Parker] is an influence on the consumer. The producer will look at that. But it is also driven by scientific research where they are looking at greater phenolics, greater color… color influences perception, just modify the color and people will change their perception of the wine. The wine can be exactly the same, just a slightly darker color, they can change the perception. Certainly a more fruity character is more pleasant. I like that. But you can get fruity flavors but not necessarily get the high alcohol contents. There is no absolute conjunction between the two.

But we still need somewhat better techniques to determine when to harvest based on flavor and not so much on straight phenolics. We still are not sufficiently advanced to be able to determine this. People certainly have been for the past 20 to 30 years trying to figure out what is the most important aspect of significant humanly detectable flavor in wine. We’re still not there. And until we can define what it is that really are the significant components, we will still fall back on old techniques: intensity of color, phenolic content, sugar content, acid content, all these standard things. They work really well! There is no doubt about it. There really is a good correlation between all these factors and flavor. But if we knew even more what the actual critical compounds were, we could follow them.

And depending on the climate that you’re in, the flavor development, the sugar content, and the drop in acid level do not always coincide. So, cool climates tend to have a different sequence than those in the warm climate with exactly the same grape variety. What apples in Napa, California wouldn’t work necessarily in Washington. So, if we knew what the compounds were that really influence people’s perception, or a critic’s perception (laughs), the winemaker could then select when to harvest and not get high alcohol contents that are somewhat disappointing. And I find them disappointing, too. I find that wines that are getting 14%, 15% alcohol, where I grew up with 11% and 12%, I find that their balance is different. I don’t really like them. That may be simply because of habituation. I see so much of the influence of habituation. Maybe the new wine drinkers will come to think that the higher alcohol content in their table wine is natural. And if you give them something more at 12% they’ll think the wine is not balanced (laughs).

Yeah, I wanna get my money’s worth!

RJ So, habituation is a big factor. I see that especially with wine and food. Habituation is probably the major driver.

Also it is the American diet, perhaps, that plays a role. Coca Cola, cheeseburgers… they have a certain mouthful, a satisfying heft, a sweetness. Is this not also habituation? And wouldn’t it be foolish to think that wine would be any different. Especially when you hear the ‘trust your own palate’ mantra shouted by wine gurus. And the people who have been habituated now think that if it tastes like Coke, “hey, I like Coke, therefore….”

RJ That’s right! (laughs)

So how do you persuade people to explore and to question their palates, their routinized expectations?

RJ I wish somehow that I could shake people up and say ‘Try different things.’ Just take a wine, don’t look at the label at all. Pour it out, get away, just sit down and think about what you’re perceiving. Just think! Don’t drink. Think! Swirl. Smell. Analyze what it is you’re detecting. I am not expecting people to say that it has just a hint of truffle and all of this silly talk. (Well, ok, for some people it isn’t silly. But for many people I think it is silly.) Then ask yourself if there is complexity there. Do I really like this? Is this something that I, as a human being, appreciate by itself. Is the taste something that I do in fact appreciate? If not, fine. If yes, good. Then go and look at the bottle. Was it inexpensive or more? Certainly, if I could get people to do comparative tastings, blind comparative tastings, then I’d be happy. Even better, though certainly more complex because they are not readily available, would be to use black wine glasses, so you cannot be influenced by color. The only thing that can influence is taste and smell. If you don’t know where it came from, it’s just you and the wine! That’s it. You’re having a kind of conversation, you and the wine. You don’t have anybody’s comment. No other information. That’s it. That’s where you start to get truth.

And if you do this repeatedly, then you start to find what is really your own preference, whatever it is. It can change. It may not change. I’m not insisting that people change. I would like people to try to find what really is their opinion. Later on you can read what this critic says about this wine, if you can find such a review. Do they have a perception similar to mine? If so then you can begin to trust them when they suggest things.

The local merchant as well…

RJ That’s right. And if you like Tempranillo, then they might suggest this, and this, and this. Try some, again, blind. See how you respond. You could include your favorite wine and compare two. Can you distinguish between the two? It is just the fact that you are thinking about the wine is the best means that anyone can use to find out what their real tastes are. And to find out what quality wine can have. It really can be stupendous! My best personal experiences are wines with that I had no idea what the wines were. Or I made a mistake! (laughs) I took out the wrong wine. What have I poured here? This is ambrosia from heaven! What did I just open? It can be such a shock. Wow! Wine can be stupendous. It doesn’t have to be just nice and pleasant.

When I drink I never think in terms of pleasure. I think in terms of difference. For me it is the differences I find in wines that motivates me. At the store I grab varieties I’ve never heard of just for the experience of drinking an entirely new world. Then I’m interested in reading about the grape, where it’s grown… I become engaged in a larger dialogue.

RJ Initially it is a sensory difference, and then you augment your interest in that with all this other material, rather than going from the material to the wine. I find that having the sensory difference to start the whole thing rolling is the inspiring way.

Could you tell me of your latest research?

RJ Oh, well, since I’m retired…

You’re retired? You sound all of 35!

RJ (laughs) Oh, well if you double that then you’re pretty close! I wish I were back at 35 with all I know now. Boy, now that would be inspiring.

Yeah, I know. Experience always comes too late! So you’re not doing research?

RJ Other than writing books, editing other books, writing chapters of books.

Obviously you’re retired…

RJ It is a funny type of retirement. A wholly active retirement.

The life of the mind knows no rest.

RJ Oh, boy, I don’t want to let it have any rest. I refuse to allow it to have rest. I push it to the maximum. As you get older you need to push it to the limit. No bars held. So research is basically writing now.

And a cellar? Do you have a cellar?

RJ Oh, yes. Though it is getting depleted because, regrettably, my wife passed away three months ago.

I am very sorry to hear that.

RJ So the house is now way too big. My mother lived here, then she passed away. My wife. The house is way too big for me. It’s actually up for sale. And I had this huge wine cellar full of wine that I thought I’d be drinking for the next 20 years! I haven’t been buying. When Susan became ill, I stopped buying and began to drink. So it’s going down, but I certainly have a cellar still.

And the wines? What country is mostly present?

RJ Australia is the primary occupant of the cellar. I like a lot of Spain. Italian. Portuguese. The Portuguese I like because the grape varieties are really distinctive. Italy has a huge selection of grape varieties. I’m always intrigued with those. I like German wines. The Spanish ones, I really have a particular fondness for Rioja. It was the Marqués de Murrieta Ygay blanco that was the first white wine that sent me into heaven. That old-style white Rioja, I just couldn’t get over how stunning that was. Regrettably, you can’t get it in most Provinces of Canada anymore. Why, I don’t know. Maybe not a lot is being produced and most is being consumed in Spain! But it’s not coming to Canada, anyway.

It’s many of these older styles. Amarone, the very ancient style. I loved it. And my love became even greater when I realized some of the best Amarone is Botrytis-infected. Of course, this is my fungus! Now I am even more interested. Most of the literature is in Italian, and my Italian is not great. But I will fight through Italian to understand what they are saying about that particular wine!

I like carbonic maceration. I think it is a neat technique. Sure, it’s not considered hi-tech… well, it is hi-tech in one sense. But most connoisseur’s kind of frown on it. But it is a fun wine. Why do I have to be serious all the time? Diversity is much of the spice of life. I like that.

Well, sir, it has been a distinct pleasure. Oh, one last question. Did you read the patent text from Virgilio and his group?

RJ Yes. The patent sounds quite interesting. I was quite inspired to read it. I don’t know if this is going to be the BT of fungicides. All of these things will be great for a while, but like all fungicides, if you depend on only one, you’re designed to fail. You can’t use one. You’ve got a host of microbes out there, billions of them, and they are mutating. They are going to find a solution sooner or later. If they don’t they will simply disappear off the face of the Earth.

They’ve got the numbers against you. In plant pathology the current view is to never use the same fungicide more than once. Rotate. Use only if necessary, and in the right amount. Minimize the application beyond need so that you preserve these things for generations, not just for three or four years. That’s a horrible waste.

But his seems most interesting. From an academic point of view, it will be interesting to find out what exactly it is doing to the fungi. How is it killing them? The fungi will be able to produce proteases to break it down too.

But it is something different. And we need new weapons in the arsenal, that is for sure.

Thank you for your generosity, Ron.

RJ It’s been fun, Ken.

Admin

Dr. Ron S. Jackson, Wine Science, Practice pt.2

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 04 May 2010 02:01:53 +0000

In this second part of three, Dr. Ron S. Jackson gets down to business. Here he discusses subjects both great and small, but all with an endearing charm and wit. He possesses that great teaching skill of measuring the demands of the question for all audiences. Equally at home discussing amines, esters, nematodes, yeast and the life cycle of phylloxera, he can easily shift to marketing strategies and his favorite beer. He is an academic at home in the world. Without further ado…

Part 1 may be read here.

Admin What lives on the surface of a wine grape? I mean the microbiota, especially with respect to wild yeast populations. Just how complex is that micro-universe?

Ron Jackson It is clearly very complex. Most of the organisms that are growing there have a limited effect on the characteristics of the wine. In most instances, if it’s going to have a marked influence, it’s going to be negative. It will not be positive. At least that is how most microbiologists view it. Now, there are some other people who have a different point of view. It’s like Brettanomyces, the yeast. Certain winemakers love it. And my suspicion as to why this is so is that their nose is not particularly sensitive to the off odors. Now, there is a lot of variation between people. If you’re a winemaker with an olfactory capacity that does not detect it, or you become adapted to it, then you don’t really think your wine smells of barnyard manure. To this microbiologist it mostly smells real bad. But some winemakers think it is wonderful. What is one to say?

If the consumer doesn’t reject this odor and the winemaker can sell their wine, then they say that makes their wine distinctive. Well, so be it. Most microbiologists just find it abominable. Certain of these wild yeasts, if they start to grow in the ferment at the beginning, they can produce some pretty unpleasant odors. Now, again, does this add complexity? If the concentrations are low enough, yes, it can add an element of complexity to the wine that it wouldn’t have otherwise. If it gets much higher, if you are sensitive to it, then it simply makes the wine almost undrinkable.

Most of these organisms require oxygen. And, of course, as soon as you crush the grapes and you start getting the fermentation going then the oxygen level goes down to almost undetectable levels. These organisms then cannot grow. Or don’t grow for very long. Then the Saccharomyces cerevisiae starts to grow, produce alcohol, which is toxic to most of these yeasts, so they simply stop growing, under most circumstances. Not all! There is no absolute here.

We’ve talked about Portuguese winemaking approaches before. Whether on the Açores or elsewhere on the mainland, wild or native yeasts populations are almost exclusively used. Would you explain the differences between wild yeasts and S. cerevisiae?

RJ Saccharomyces cerevisiae is there. It definitely is already there. It probably is there as the predominant yeast in the winery. In most places the grapes may come in with very few cells of S. cerevisiae on them. But the winery equipment is covered with S. cerevisiae! Now, when we say “wild” strains, those are kinds of indigenous strains with slight modifications, but there are still the same species. They have slightly different characteristics. Some produce a little bit more ethyl acetate, some produce a little bit more glycerol, things like that; so there are slight differences. If you really select strains then you can markedly affect the character of the wine by the kind of yeast you use to inoculate. This is equally true of the wild versions of S. cerevisiae that actually are occurring in the winery, on the winery equipment, in the fermentation tanks and so on.

I’m asking because I have friends who champion wild yeast fermentations. And I recently came across an article out of Australia about a biodynamic grower who was looking for a legal remedy to stop a brewery from opening nearby because she is afraid that her vineyard would become colonized by a yeast variety that is contrary to her principles. What would be your response and advice to the grower?

RJ Oh, boy! We are really becoming paranoid, I’m afraid! (laughs) Well, I’m sure that person would not consider anything I said to be of any value whatsoever. I’m in the wrong camp. I’m in the enemy camp. So obviously I would be telling her lies! There would be no reason for me to mention anything. But the evidence at the moment is that if you take to pomace from a fermentation, take it out and use it as fertilizer in the field, most of the residual yeasts will die very quickly and you may not be able to detect it in a year’s time. It’s what survives in the winery that’s important. Not what you put out on the vineyard. Sure, it my splash up on to your vine, but S. cerevisiae does not grow well at all outside. It is a really unique organism, specialized to fermentations, and does not grow well on grapes. It does not grow at all well on grapes.

Most breweries are not going to have many yeast cells getting out into the air. At least most breweries that I know of certainly don’t have much floating outside.

So what accounts for the massive die-off of yeast?

RJ The yeast has a comparatively short lifespan. Certainly the ultraviolet radiation from the sun will damage it. Drying will kill individual cells, especially if they are by themselves. Now, if you get a big clump of them, ok, they’re protected inside.

Like something you’d buy from Lallemand.

RJ Sure. You’ve got millions inside, coated; they dried down slowly. They can survive. But once they go onto soil and you get moisture then they will break down. There are microbes in the soil, they will eat the yeast. It’s a food source. So the yeast will be consumed and die fairly quickly. It simply has no place to grow. It will die off. It’s like taking a bunch of seed and tossing them onto dry soil. Leave them there for a year or so and all the seeds are dead. If the yeast does not have a favorable environment to grow then it will die off.

The origin of Saccharomyces cerevisiae seems to be on the exudate of Oak trees. There are a few other related species, but the exudate sap of Oak seems to one of the few places where you can find the progenitor of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Also included would be acorns. It’s probably from that that the yeast got into fermenting barley and fermenting grapes.

With respect to the effect of smoke taint on grapes in the field, I’ve read some preliminary research that Pine and Eucalyptus trees and other very aromatic plants, like sage, when grown near vineyards that there may be some aromatic component that somehow infuses the grapes, and therefore helps to distinguish the unique character of one vineyard’s wines from another. What is your opinion of that line of thinking?

RJ I think it is a distinct possibility. My question is how many people are able to tell? I would say only a few in 20,000. First we have the problem of establishing that there is a difference, then of recognizing the difference, which is even more complex. Most people won’t be able to do this. So, in essence, it is a tempest in a teapot simply because the vast majority of people would never be able to tell. It is amazing how imprecise human beings are in this realm of distinguishing subtle differences. If you have two shades of color right next to one another, put them together, of course, people can tell that difference. But if you then take them away and bring one back and ask which was the lighter or darker, you’ll find that people cannot make that distinction.

It is the same with two wines. I’ve done it with 5 or 6 wines. It’s one of the most complicated tests for trainees to have any success at. You give them 5 or 6 wines, quite distinct (you don’t want to make it impossible), usually reds. Ask them to write down their comments, how that they may distinguish each wine next time they see it. So then those 6 wines go away. Now 8 wines appear. Tell me which wine is which? And which wines were not originally there? Finally, are any of the wines you tried before present here twice? (laughs) That separates the men from the boys pretty fast! People are just stunned at how poor they are at answering accurately. They then see how much work is ahead for them!

This must be why some wine critics are so leery of double blind wine tastings! Your format would be quite challenging.

RJ It is very, very challenging, and certainly very humbling.

You yourself have written a book on wine tasting and appreciation. How do you approach the subject?

RJ The book is for universities. It’s for courses in wine sensory evaluation. That’s primarily what it’s designed for. Or for industry people who want to set up tastings. For critical tastings the first thing people have to figure out and decide is what do they want to learn from a tasting. Are they looking at it from a strictly quality point of view where is used the standard terms of quality? Or at you looking at from a varietal expression? Regional expression? Stylistic? How well the wines might go with a particular food? So each one of these ways of looking at it will influence how you assess the wine.

Now, from a scientific point of view, if you want to know are wines from region ‘A’ distinguishable, on average, from those from region ‘B’ and ‘C’, then in that case you have descriptors and a ranking, say from 0 to 6, or 1 to 100, and so you have your tasters rank the wines on a set of aroma descriptors. You ask about how much pineapple do you detect, for example, in a given wine. Is it 10 out of 100? Ninety out of 100? Then you take everybody’s results, measure them, do statistical analysis to see if anybody can distinguish any difference in pineapple character in of the wine. Then you can study for consistent patterns. By extension, could you then distinguish wines from regions ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’?

Whether wines were from a cool or warm climate…

RJ That’s right. Or even the different regions of Napa. Northern Napa, central Napa, southern Napa, are there really consistent patterns? Perhaps consistent for the year, but sadly most tastings of this kind are not done over multiple years so as to see whether these patterns tend to remain. Or is it just that climactic change marks where these shifts, these differences appear.

Also relevant would be changes in winemaking style, longer hang time, new oak, various masking elements…

RJ That’s right. Which type of oak, toasting level; was it natural seasoning or was it fired… multiple things that make it terribly complicated and correspondingly very interesting.

What’s always bothered me with a lot of the wine tastings is that one never knows whether a winery uses liquid oak extract, mega purple for mouthfeel and color density, there are all kinds of additives and technological tricks currently available. Or at least they don’t talk about it. Is it possible through sufficient training to distinguish what is a ‘natural’ wine product, in quotes, one with minimal winery intervention, from one which has been so treated?

RJ I would say, humanly, no. Chemically, yes. But humanly, no. I have seen absolutely nothing that would give me any confidence that people, unless there is some hound dog out there, can do it. Certainly the majority of people can’t. It’s just one of those things: that the perception of reality and reality are often markedly different. Most people don’t realize the difference between those two. Often they are afraid to believe themselves and will follow what anybody says, just like sheep.

And the winery that might use such adulterants protects the secret. For the information to get out would significantly alter the perception, shall we say.

RJ You can pretty well tell who is doing what just by looking at the price they charge. (laughs) You simply can’t have a wine produced for about $8 a bottle that has been in French oak! Pricing is an instructive element. Of course, if you charge $50 a bottle that does not necessarily mean you used high priced oak. You could have used oak extract, too, and laughed all the way to the bank that you fooled everybody. You’d at least better have a few oak barrels there for the people who walk into your winery! (laughs)

You could rent them from Hollywood.

RJ That’s right! (laughs)

End of part 2

Admin

Mendocino County Takes The Lead

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:45:31 +0000

On April 27th I had the distinct pleasure of attending the 2nd annual Taste of Mendocino, America’s Greenest Wine Region at the Golden Gate Club in San Francisco’s Presidio. This well attended, downright crowded event, was a revelation. Living for far too long in the shadow of Napa and Sonoma, the membership of the Mendocino Winegrape and Wine Commission (MWWC), some 84 wineries and 343 winegrape growers strong, has decided enough is enough. Among their multiple initiatives is the effort to put their wines and progressive green credentials before the American public. In this time of environmental concerns, climate change, debates over ‘natural’ and biodynamic wines, of the American consumer’s evolving palate, Mendocino County has a wisdom and a vision accumulated over generations that will benefit us all to learn. From the website:

“Founded in 2006, MWWC is dedicated to sharing knowledge of the singular attributes of the winegrapes, wines and wine estates of Mendocino County with a diversity of audiences around the world.
Mendocino Winegrape & Wine Commission members benefit from research and education programs that emphasize positive relationships with winegrape and wine buyers within our own organization and extending into communities around us. Collaboratively, we place a strong emphasis on organic grape growing and specialized viticultural techniques appropriate to the dozens of grape varietals grown in our 12 diverse regions.

Mendocino County’s authentic “green” credentials are unsurpassed by any other wine region in the world. From pristine wild lands and coastline to multi-generational hands-on family farmers and winemakers, this is a region that has been at the forefront of the sustainable, organic, Biodynamic and fish friendly farming movements.

Now, whereas the county’s narrative is compelling, able to persuade drinkers to look for the region’s many and varied wines, it is the quality of what is in the glass that will keep them coming back for more. And let me tell you, the wines I tasted, only a fraction of those on display, were among the finest domestic efforts I have ever enjoyed. The acid levels were wonderfully high, the tannins firm, the oak judiciously used. The fruit was, dare I say it, pure?

Of course, these are general considerations. Mendocino County AVAs and growing regions are very different; I must confess I was somewhat perplexed at the event’s format. The differences between the Potter Valley and the Anderson Valley are enormous. And a few producers, a very few, disappointed. But with respect to varietal correctness, I was simply astonished as I moved from table to table. Expression after expression were true, soulful realizations of the their grapes. Syrahs were restrained and beautifully perfumed; Pinots, boldly fruited and transparent in the Burgundian style; the Cabernets, exquisitely balancing fruit, lower alcohol, acid and tannins; the Petite Sirahs again showcased that variety’s beguiling sensitivity to terroir; and the Zinfandels, a grape much abused these days, were tightly wound, almost abstract when compared to the awful alcoholic fruit bombs regularly detonating on our dinner tables. Perhaps most surprising were the Merlots, a grape I had largely abandoned. No longer.

These are but a handful grapes grown throughout Mendocino County. Indeed, owning to the geological complexity of the county, its boundaries seemingly drawn by a demented cartographer, it is obvious why dozens of varieties may call this region home. Yet it is also true that for this very reason that experimentation with varieties is enthusiastically embraced here. As with the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, it is very clear that California’s great learning curve of matching grape to place, vine to terroir, is being successfully realized in Mendocino County. A great many of the region’s producers are farmers, the highest compliment one may offer; true American farmers, respectful of the land, attentive to its rhythms and its greater wisdom. For they know better than most that it is only with such a disposition that honest wines may be made.

Here are a few specific producers who caught my attention. I will mention, with one exception, only the reds.

Albertina Wine Cellars. Though fruit forward and with softer tannins than I prefer, the quality of their Cabernets was quite high.

Barra of Mendocino. All organic, they offered a Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and a Sangiovese, all very good.

Bink Wines. The wines of Deb Schatzlein, present at the tasting, were among the finest of the afternoon. She makes Syrah, Pinot Noir, Merlot, and ‘Melange’, a Bordeaux-style blend. Made in small lots, I strongly recommend you sign up for her wine club. I might add that her reserved demeanor, whether from shyness or the tiresome obligation to pour her work for a room full of strangers, added to her charm. Like many of the producers in attendance, they are not your practiced ‘happy talk’ B.S.’ers, but very down to earth people, if I may put it that way.

Chiarito Vineyard. Winemaker John Chiarito offered a Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, and a transcendent Nero d’Avola. (Mr. Chiarito is the first to plant this variety in the US.) All brilliant. I was given a taste from one of the last bottles of his long sold out 2003 Negro Amaro. Out of Ukiah, he is doing superb work. Hats off!

Lolonis Winery. The moment I stood before their table, a gentleman placed a cloth Ladybug, their logo, on my shirt. After tasting their excellent Zinfandel, Merlot and Cabernet, I turned to go and ran into Petros Lolonis himself, a man of great dignity and gravitas.

Terra Savia. Winemaker Jim Milone makes a 100% Chardonnay sparkler that was equal parts finesse and play. A serious wine!

Paul Dolan Vineyards. It is hard to find the words to describe these world class wines. I won’t try. My advice? Get on the list. These were the finest domestic wines I have tasted in a very long time. And the prices for most of Dolan’s efforts are laughably low. Amazing juice.
——————-

It was at this point, only an hour into the tasting, that I was called away to the seminar The Grape Grandparents of Mendocino County. Hosted by MWWC President Dave Batt, it featured UC Davis Coop Extension advisor Glenn McGourty, winemakers Alex MacGregor, Charlie Barra, Greg Graziano, Steve Sterling, and Bob Blue. Below are accounts of three of the speakers. A full account of all remarks will be presented here at a later date.

—–Glenn McGourty, Advisor for the UC Davis Cooperative Extension

“We’re not allowed out in public very often. We dance, we sing, we drink wine, we have a good time!
Everybody knows Sonoma and Napa, but there’s a large area on top of that called Mendocino and Lake County. That’s our territory. Size wise, it’s a combination of the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island put together.”

Mr. McGourty went on to describe Mendocino County as sparsely populated, about 90,000 souls. It is 100 miles long and 60 miles wide. Most of it is in the Russian River and Navarro River watersheds, and a little bit of the Dry Creek watershed from Sonoma County. It is a very mountainous region owing to the ongoing collision of the North American and Pacific plates. The regions of the county vary widely. The Pacific Ocean is a big air conditioner with the temperature a steady 50 F. Elevation is gained as one moves inland. The relation of an area to fog affects local climate. Fog brings cooler temperatures. Areas beyond the fog are, of course, warmer, with more moderate temperatures for areas above the fog. In the Anderson Valley fog is present almost every day in the summer time. Yorkville Highlands is above the fog, where the Dry Creek headwaters are. The Mendocino Range define the westside of the Russian River to the Hopland area, where nearby lies Lake Mendocino, the headwaters of the Russian River. Also framing the region are the Mayacama Mountains, at once the westside of the Napa Valley and the eastside of the Russian River Valley where Mendocino County begins.

Italians first grew grapes in Mendocino County, but only for family consumption. Hops were the principle crop in the late 1900s. Greeks grew grapes as well, the Lolonis Family, for example. Prohibition killed the approximately 20 wineries then in existence. [Parducci survived owing to its production of sacramental wines.] It was, in any case, always a race to drink the wine before it became vinegar. Low tech was all that was used. They weren’t making wine for Robert Parker! Mendocino has kept the old that was good, and they’ve added to it. Head pruned vines, simple farming, organic by default, light shakes of sulphur twice a year was about it. Carignane emerged as popular variety. It sustained good yields, an extra ton over Zinfandel. The important point to take away is that, apart from home winemaking, commercial wines were initially grown for the bulk wine market. The region’s history of these early days is that of the evolution from bulk and jug wines to varieties. [For supplemental information please see this.]

To illustrate these last two points we turn to two speakers. The first provides a thumbnail sketch of a kind of winemaking that continues Mendocino’s organic tradition, organic avant la lettre; the second speaker delves into deeply respected regional themes.

History in a glass.

—–Winemaker Alex MacGregor on the 2007 Trinafour Carignane, Niemi Vineyard, Redwood Valley

“This is of Finnish, not Italian origins, from a Finnish colony that bought property in the ‘teens and in the 1920s planted grapes, then ripped them out after World War 2 and replanted in the 1950s on St George rootstock, dry farmed. It’s never been sprayed. By default it’s farmed organically, but it has since been certified organic. These vines used to yield 7,8,9,10 tons an acre. By the time they got to 60 to 65 years old, they’re yielding 2 to 3 tons an acre. It’s definitely not a sexy clone unless you say ‘Carignane’. A neat history in a bottle. I try basically not to screw it up. It’s farmed by Alvin Tollini; his family has been farming for 3 generations. I make it with native yeast fermentation, native malolactic, there is no fining, no filtration, there’s no new wood. The only trick that I use in this wine is that it goes on top of a little bit of dried Petite Sirah skins, ripasso style, from Petite in the same vineyard, about 10%. They are not dried on mats like Amarone. I dry them in a tank, with heat, and once they’re really, really without moisture left, I’ll put the Carignane on top of those skins for 3 or 4 days and then drain to wood. It’s pretty straight forward.”

From Jug Wine to Varieties.

—–Charlie Barra [his oral presentation has been edited]

“My family migrated from the northern part of Italy, from the Piedmont district, in 1900. And they were grape growers over there, my grandfather, like my dad. And they came first through San Francisco and the earthquake, then they moved to Santa Rosa; they finally moved to Mendocino county to grow grapes because the area was very similar to from where they came. The terrain and climate was very similar. They planted small vineyards there, selling grapes to larger wineries who then made vin ordinaire and jug wine. That was their primary market. Then along came Prohibition. They had quite a difficult time; and without resources, I don’t know how they ever made it. But they did. Sometimes I have a suspicion that they converted some of their wine into alcohol, but I’m not sure about that! That all happened during the 30s. That was quite common with Italian families who moved into the Mendocino County area. (They moved into other areas, too.)

We were a very small grape growing area because we are a very cold climate. The Mendocino climate is very unique. Hardly anywhere else where they grow grapes that has a climate similar to what we have in Mendocino County. Very warm days, good for growing fruit; very, very cold nights, which is very good for preserving the balance in the fruit that determines the quality of the wine that you’re going to make. Now, as a grower, I like to take a lot of credit for what I do because I work very hard. I would point out that I just finished my 64th harvest! As a grower, you don’t miss a harvest. The reason you never miss a harvest is that you get paid once a year. You had better show up!

The climate that we have is unique, very consistent; it’s the kind of climate that you can grow many different varieties of grapes. But in the beginning, when they produced vin ordinaire, they grew Carignane, Alicante, Palomino, [unclear], all those varieties, and they sold them to large wineries for jug wine. That went on for quite a few years. And because of our very cold climate, you could not plant vineyards on the bottomlands. The most productive lands in Mendocino County were not planted to grapes. They were planted to hops, pears and prunes. That’s what we had on the bottomlands. They could withstand the frost better than the grapes. Grapes were only planted on the hillsides. Where I grew up, I was born in Calpella, just north of Ukiah, all of the vineyards were on the hillsides.

Mendocino County did not get into the varietal wine business, like those you’re drinking, until at least 75 years after Napa had already made a reputation, before we even got started in the wine business. This is why you don’t hear about Mendocino County. But you’re going to hear a lot about Mendocino County when it comes out of the bottle! It’s superior, it’s very easy to drink, and has more flavors than any wines that I have ever tasted.

I was born in 1926. I grew up in a vineyard. Ten years ago I could prune a vine as well as anyone else. In fact, when I graduated from high school they gave me a pair of pruning shears for a present! In my senior year, I was 19 years old, of course, World War 2 was going on, and grape prices were very good. I had the opportunity to lease a large Zinfandel vineyard growing on a hillside, 1945, from an Italian who was retiring. So I had to make a deal with the high school principal to go to school half a day. So I started farming in 1945; and in that year I made 3 times as much as the principal! He was making $3,300 a year. And I made over $10,000.

I had very difficult years, but I also ended up owning over 400 acres of vineyards and a pretty big winery in the county. I finally had to sell 200 acres of vineyards because it was cutting into my fishing time! Then in 1950 I decided to plant a vineyard all my own. I bought a 150 acres out in the Redwood Valley. You’ve got to remember, this was all borrowed money because my family had absolutely no resources. I planted varietal grapevines, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, some Cabernet, Petite Sirah, things like that. In doing this I made friends with Bob Mondavi. Unfortunately, when the grapes came in I had no market because nobody was buying varietals from Mendocino. So I had to sell my varietal grapes that were producing 3 to 4 tons an acre, to the larger wineries as vin ordinaire at $40 a ton, which was very difficult to do. Then about 3 years after production started Bob Mondavi and the Wente Family came up and made me a deal that they would use all the varietals I could grow if I would deliver them to Livermore and Napa. I was willing to do it, except that I didn’t know what they were going to pay me. I asked what the price would be. They asked what do you get now? I said $40 a ton. They told me that if I delivered them to their wineries they would pay me twice as much. So that got me started in the varietal wine business. That was 60 years ago. By that time Napa had already made its reputation. But we’re catching up very quickly.

I don’t have any problem withe the varietals we’re growing. In the case of Pinot Noir, we have Pinot Noir planted in lots of different locations. We’d always bring samples to wineries for selling our grapes. At one time, by the way, I was growing 600 tons of Pinot Noir, and I couldn’t give them away. We’d take these samples to a winery. And the winery, without knowing where they came from, would choose the Mendocino Pinot Noir, without exception.”

The seminar started a little late, and went over its alloted time. Regrettably, I had less than an hour left to taste through more than a dozen producers. The tasting room was now jammed. There was simply no way, especially with family obligations back in Santa Cruz, that I could intellectually engage the wines, let alone their makers. I decided to flee, but not before asking Charlie Barra one question, the answer to which might serve as a coda for Mendocino County producers as a whole.

Admin Mr. Barra, could you say a bit about your aversion to pesticide use? Were you ever visited by pesticide dealers?

Charlie Barra I could tell you all kinds of stories. I’ll tell you this. My best friend operated a pesticide warehouse and sold for large companies. He would come on the ranch and try to convince me why I had to use pesticides on my fruit. He would scare the hell out of me! He’d say he’d gone to such and such a ranch and saw what I had. He then said he went back two weeks later and it was a complete disaster! They scare you into buying pesticides. Fortunately I didn’t listen very well, until one day I told him to get his fanny off my place and don’t ever come back again. I threw my best friend off the ranch! Because it was all salesmanship. If I can grow grapes without pesticides, and I’m not an expert on pesticides, but if I can do it, anybody can do it. You just have to make up your mind. Yeah, in the beginning there was a little fingernail biting. But in the end, it’s good for everything around you, your health, your wildlife, and I feel good about what I am doing. That’s very important, to know that you’re not destroying anything. I won’t say it has anything to do about wine quality. I don’t even care about that. I care about the environment and the people around me. We need more of that in this country.
—END—

Am I raving in my enthusiasm for Mendocino County wines? Maybe just a bit. But for someone whose palate often feels a stranger in California, I have at long last found another region, in addition to the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA, my taste preferences may call home.

Admin

Dr. Ron S. Jackson, Wine Science Principles, pt.1

Admin, Ken Payton — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 20:55:48 +0000

Dr. Ron S. Jackson. Who among wine science writers, oenologists and viticulturalists do not turn to his work for assistance, remedy, and for study? A standard textbook for the wine industry, for students and professionals alike, Wine Science, Principles, Practice, Perception, now in its 3rd edition, is the distillation of a disciplined life’s work. Whenever confronted with a technical issue requiring rigorous, thoroughly vetted research, it is to his book that I turn.
Professor Jackson may be retired, but the word means different things to different people. During the course of my conversation with him, to be presented in three parts, I was to learn that the life of the mind knows no retirement. Viticulture, Oenology, and Microbiology are ongoing explorations for him. Wine science is woven into his very character. Indeed, as the reader will discover, Professor Jackson continues to work on multiple intellectually demanding tasks.

A brief note on Dr. Jackson’s academic history: He gained his doctorate from the University of Toronto. Formerly associated with Brandon University where he developed Canada’s fist wine technology course, he is now a part of Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute at Brock University.

Part 1 of the interview concentrates on biography and what might be called the politics of wine science, the often counterproductive struggle between theoretical and practical research programs for research money. No stranger to academic battles, he offers helpful insight into this predicament.
In part 2 we will turn to topics specific to microbiology.

Admin Good afternoon, Professor Jackson.

Ron Jackson You’ve called right on time.

Yes. Although justly famous for your books, not many folks know of you’re background. If you don’t mind, could you give us a sketch of how it is you came to microbiology, oenology and viticulture?

RJ Oh, gosh! Of course. There was a professor with whom I had a great degree of compatibility. He happened to be a plant pathologist, and he also liked Horticulture; that was my primary interest at the time. When it came time to look for research projects, and since we got along really well, I initially worked on a disease of Cattleya orchids. I then basically moved into diseases caused by Botrytis. Once I got into it, I really enjoyed it, and found it so inspiring that I decided to stay in plant pathology for the next ten or so years until I took my first sabbatical, which was at Cornell. While there, because of the wine associated aspects of that particular region, I took a course with Bob Pool on Viticulture, and I took other wine-related courses just for the fun of it. Because what I was really there to do was to study the genetics of Botrytis, one of the important pathogens of grapevines.

But on sabbatical you tend to have more free time than you do when you have your normal teaching load. So I thought, gee whiz, I could just have some fun and take some courses to learn a bit more about the wine side of things. I found that it became even more interesting than the pathology side of things. When I went back to the university some people I met thought it would be nice to have a wine appreciation course, and I thought maybe a wine technology course would be even more intriguing to me. And my work on the genetics of Botrytis had been having some problems…

Problems in what respect?

RJ (laughs) O.K. Technical problems. The organism is not an easy one to work with. If you’re a really smart scientist then you choose an organism that will answer the questions you want. I was more interested in the organism, having it tell me what it could about itself. But it is a really obnoxious organism to try and work with as far as its genetics. With the technical problems, two years’ work, all the Botrytis died. Two years of work all gone up in smoke, of no value. I got kind of frustrated. The university is breathing down your neck, asking ‘Where are all those nice research papers you’re supposed to be pumping out’? Well, my organisms are dead. And they say, ‘Well, that doesn’t count!’ (laughs)

So when I was reading up on wine-related things, I realized that Amerine’s book, which was my bible at the time, simply didn’t talk about certain things that for me, from my background, I found particularly interesting; like cork and oak, things of that nature. He didn’t talk about that. Neither did other authors. I started to realize that there were lots of things that were not being mentioned. Amerine was getting on in years. Another edition didn’t come out. Nobody else seemed to be putting anything out. I came to the conclusion that if I were to get my act together in time, I can get my book out before anybody else does, filling the niche of a new scientific text before anybody else! I was lucky.

I then did the same thing with wine tasting. After all, I had been working with the Manitoba Liquor Commission on training and testing their tasters. So if I could get my book out before Ann Noble does, maybe I can scoop that one too! (laughs) It’s in essence seeing a niche, a good ecological term, seeing a niche… nobody’s there… if you get in first you can establish yourself.

Funnily enough, that is the same thing Professor Gregory Jones told me about his research on climate change and viticulture. He looked around and found that there was an opportunity.

RJ That’s right. Find out what it is nobody else is doing and get in fast! You become the person. There’s no competition, well, ok, later. Then, of course, everyone has to try and up one on you. That tends to be even more difficult.

Yes. Now, I know that in Anthropology and Philosophy, subjects I studied in the university for some time, there is a great deal of competition within those departments. As you know, it is cold-blooded and heartless! Is it the same thing in wine science research?

RJ I’d have to say yes. People are people. There are only a limited amount of resources and money. You want to get the maximum for you. That means getting the maximum number of students; they can put out more research which means you can get more money. That is the direction the universities are going in these days. Researchers who get more money are very highly regarded. You can put out the best research, but if you don’t get a big research grant, well, that’s not so good. It’s not your repute or the quality of your research so much as it is how much money can you bring in to the university. What fancy equipment can you get? That’s the name of the game. It’s not necessarily what it should be, but that’s the way it is.

And there’s so much competition from the private sector as well. But I suppose the bottom line is the quality of the science…

RJ And popular. And current. As soon as a new technique comes out, everybody jumps in. Take DNA studies. Now everybody has to do a DNA study. (laughs) If you’re not doing a DNA study, then what are you doing? Are you slacking? Fooling around? Just reading newspapers? What? (laughs) I’ve been in the system sufficiently long to see trends. When I was coming in, electron microscopy was the thing. Everybody had to do studies in electron microscopy. Well, now electron microscopy is kind of old hat. DNA studies are now the thing. And gas chromatography was once the thing. Everybody had to be into that. That’s where the money is. I know it is not the way it should be, but we do not live in an ideal world. If you want to survive then you have to play by the rules.

It’s interesting. I spoke recently with Richard Smart who is also associated with your university, the Cool Climate Institute at Brock. He faulted the dependance of viticultural departments, UC Davis, etc., on genetics and the obsession with DNA when perfectly simple remedies for cool climate viticultural adaptation to climate change already exist. Plant breeding, for example. How do you balance the sexy, high prestige technology with simpler, more basic approaches to agriculture?

RJ What I’d like, in a sense, is the system that runs in Australia.

The mix of private and public.

RJ That’s right. There is a certain amount of money that comes off the sales of wines from wineries that goes to fund research. And, of course, those people are interested in really practical research.

Something like smoke taint.

RJ Exactly right. That affects our bottom line, how much money we get for our product. ‘We have a problem. Tell us what to do.’ Now that is really practical research. I love the really practical stuff. But it is not the sort of research that’s going to look great on your C.V. Because it’s practical, not theoretical. It’s not DNA. It depends on where the money comes from. If it comes from industry, like the wineries, then they will want practical research. They will put a stamp on where the money goes. But if the monies come from governments, and other researchers are the ones who tend to look at it, then they’ll be looking at it more from an academic point of view. So they will tend to shy away from the practical side and look at the theoretical side. Where the money comes from will therefore influence whether you get the grant or not.

What if the money comes from Bayer or Syngenta?

RJ Well, they’ll probably, if you’re not doing DNA genome studies, look elsewhere. You won’t get any money. Flat and simple. It’s not going to them any good. So, really, where the money comes from forces results of significance to them. If genetic engineering is where they make their money, then they want studies that relate to that. If your having problems with diseases in your vineyard, then you want the research to relate to that. It is natural that it will be that way.

Yes. So, getting back to your biography, eventually you have a textbook published. A standard. In light of constant and perpetual breakthroughs in the associated sciences, how is such a textbook updated and maintained?

RJ With constant study. There is no break. You must be looking everyday at the latest information coming out. Get the technical papers, put them away in the files, and when it comes time you simply look at all the old stuff, all the new stuff, try to integrate it all and update. It takes about 4 to 5 years for a new edition. You do not stop.

The amount of research is increasing constantly; that makes it even harder, but also more interesting. With data bases and access to data bases, you have your fingers going out into more research journals than was ever possible before. I’m finding interesting research in places I never would have even thought of looking. A journal on nuclear magnetic resonance imaging is not where I’m going to normally look for something on wine. But occasionally there is something fascinating that comes out of there. And without the data base I would have to be within a huge university and spend all my time looking at every journal, and doing almost nothing else, to try and find this stuff. The data bases help to locate diverse materials of significance to mention in the updated book.

Do you ever come across any difficulties with accessing proprietary scientific information, the work product of private companies? With privatization comes copyright, secrecy…. Has that ever proved to be a barrier to advancing your kind of research?

RJ No, because there are not really major industry players, like the genetic engineering people. That is not, at the moment, an important thing in grapevines or yeast studies. There is a bit of it, but there is such a backlash against it that little is actually being advanced at the moment in that regard. There is academic research looking into it, but on the practical side of it, it is very, very limited. Ok, fungicides… when it becomes available on the market then it becomes of interest to me. What they are doing in their research labs does not really effect what I am going to write. Because that is what might be.

You want real world results.

RJ That’s right.

END OF PT 1

Admin

Wine As Liquid Music, Chaos Theory And Culture

Admin, Ken Payton — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:30:33 +0000

The question is surprisingly simple: what is the relationship between wine and music? More accurately, what happens to the experience of tasting a specific wine, of its flavors, mouthfeel and aromas, when the sense of hearing, normally a negligible participant, is fully activated? How does a wine change when listening is given direction, a starring role? This was the question put to us at Monday’s gathering at the magnificent Hess Collection Winery. The group, assembled by Jo and Jose Diaz under the title Scoring the Scores, included Steve Heimoff, Clark Smith, Dan Berger, Laura Ness, and yours truly. All the wines, 19 in total, were Petite Sirahs. The music? All the tunes are found on Alacia Van’s superb CD Beautiful Thought. We’ll get to the music in a moment.

Now, it would be easy to dismiss this playful experiment as much ado about nothing. Music is music, wine is wine. But we, on the other hand, experience miraculous, unexpected intersections of physics and pleasure, art and science everyday. So routine are these encounters that the brilliance of the natural world, the complexity of a simple experiences, often go unnoticed. Take the run of a small stream, its flow over rocks, its eddies. A stream taken as an open system, the mathematical modeling of its movement is bewildering complex. But it does have a math. Or cloud formation, as it interacts with air pressure and temperature. There is math there, too. Better known is Johann Sebastian Bach’s prodigious mathematical play subtending many of his prodigious compositions. A particularly favorite example of mine occurs near the close of Gleik’s book, Chaos when he sits with mathematician Mitchell Feigenbaum on the floor of the latter’s empty apartment. As smoke rises from Dr. Feigenbaum’s cigarette, initially a laminar flow, it finally breaks into turbulence at precisely the point worked out by the Dr. Feigenbaum himself.

Our group’s question at Hess was essentially about missing information. To take one more illustrative example, that of weather prediction. Years ago a humble meteorologist by the name of Edward Lorenz was crunching numbers on a computer, a computer primitive by our standards. Approaching a deadline for a weather prediction, he was forced (for various reasons) to rerun his results. To speed things long, he clipped a few decimal numbers off of the very ends of his weather station data, things like wind speed, air pressure, temperature, all the inputs one normally associates with weather prediction. To his surprise, and ours, he came up with an entirely different forecast. Most puzzling was the fact that the decimal values clipped so as to shorten the numbers were seemingly insignificant, equalling the turbulent effect of a butterfly’s wings. This discovery led to the oft misunderstood ‘Butterfly Effect’, the idea that information missing from a calculation may have staggering real-world consequences.

Revolutionary ideas were soon to follow or to be loosely united under the mathematical science of Complexity Theory. Chaos, Poincare, Topology, Catastrophe Theory, Fractals, to name but a few, became the buzz words of an invigorated, visually informed math. And this latter concept is doubly important. Sight had been abandoned from math more than a century ago. It was all a matter of the brain. Every school child knows the pain of Algebra, the college student, of quadratic equations. The only bit of the world remaining before the student’s eyes was the dreaded text book and test paper. But through Fractals, the pioneering contribution of Benoit Mandelbrot, the natural world was reintroduced. The stunningly beautiful visual modelings of missing information has changed mathematics forever. The sense of sight was finally restored to the mathematical sciences, and aesthetics given its rightful seat at the banquet table of creation. Art became an expression of science. And a science may now find art as a source of primary information. For the natural world expresses both simultaneously.

So who was I to prejudge the Hess Collection Winery Petite Sirah tasting? Perhaps the sense of hearing might prove to be a treasured source, once stimulated, of something like wine’s missing information? First a word about our cast of characters. Clark Smith is arguably at the origin of the meditation on the wine/music intersection. An ebullient individual, overflowing with curiosity, crackling with the energy of a man half his age, Mr. Smith has researched this topic for some time. Dan Berger, Mr. Smith’s co-theoretician on this day, is himself a deep pool of knowledge. He, too, is an innovator of sorts, and bursts his banks with unanticipated gifts of insight. Noted wine writer Steve Heimoff played the part of the responsible skeptic, laboring to understand and explain the wines in ways everyone might appreciate. For Mr. Heimoff hyper-specialized wine knowledge can limit or interfere with what should proper be the simple pleasure of drinking. Laura Ness, champion of the Santa cruz Mountains AVA, she is up for anything! Open to the world, she was a fountain of play and inspiration. Jo and Jose Diaz, as organizers, were responsible for setting this comédie humaine in motion, though both clearly enjoyed moments of shared bliss as the afternoon proceeded. Myself? In such august company I felt it best not to speak unless spoken to. It is enough to say that watching these extremely diverse professionals in action was its own reward.

The wines:

2007 Artezin, Mendocino County
2005 Clayhouse Estate, Paso Robles
2007 Concannon, Conservancy, Livermore Valley
2006 EOS Estate, Paso Robles
2005 Langtry, Guenoc Valley, Serpentine Meadow
2005 Lava Cap, Granite Hill, El Dorado, Reserve
2007 Line 39, Lake County
2004 Mettler Family Vineyards, Lodi
2007 Miro Petite Sirah, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County
2005 True Grit from Parducci, Mendocino County
2006 Pedroncelli Dry Creek Valley, Family Vineyards
2007 Silkwood, Stanislaus County
2006 Twisted Oak, Calaveras County
2005 Ursa, Sierra Foothills
2006 Vina Robles, Paso Robles
2006 Hess, Allomi Vineyard, Napa Valley
2008 Diamond Ridge
2005 Quixote
(1 missing)

For the musical offerings please see Jo Diaz’s web site Juicy Tales for the list.

The method was simple. After an exhaustive introduction to the basics by Mr. Smith, we were first to taste the wines and then write a few notes. Next we were exposed to a variety of tunes, jazzy in the main. The task was to both pair a wine to a musical offering and, more importantly, to see whether our appreciation (or denigration) of a wine was substantially altered. An overarching question was whether we might find areas of collective agreement beyond tasting alone. By turns sultry, energetic, atonal, and novel, each tune was distinctive and rich. As we all listened, some of us perplexed, Mr. Smith and Mr. Berger went about their research with all the joy of latter day Archimedes. Exclamations not unlike that of ‘Eureka!’ rang out between the two. Mr. Heimoff offered a Mona Lisa smile as he sat listening next to the computer speakers. At one point Jo Diaz burst into laughter at his expression, and never fully recovered!

By fits and starts we next turned to lunch. Time, a sadistic task master, was moving quickly. A beautiful meal had been prepared by Executive Chef Chad Hendrickson, all the ingredients of which were sourced, with few exceptions, from local organic and sustainably farmed products. So beautiful was the food that, indeed, it crossed my mind that its preparation is itself among the highest cultural expressions of the twining of science and art. Ironically, we did not discuss the food and wine pairings before us. The designated music played over our conversations. We continued to entertain the question well into a dessert of Bitter Chocolate Terrine, Crème Fraiche Ice Cream with Banana Caramel Sauce.

What was learned? Well, that the people assembled were great intellectual adventurers. That the sympathy of music to wine demands greater research. That no miracle of everyday life should go unthought, however transitory and discrete. Such as our gathering.

Admin

Pathogenic Fungi, The Search For A Green Solution

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 06:27:46 +0000

Pathogenic fungi are among agriculture’s most durable and destructive pests. Botrytis Bunch Rot (Botrytis cinerea) in grape and strawaberry, Early Blight in tomato and potato, Powdery Mildew in grape, cucurbit, lettuce, Downy mildew, Late Blight (Phytophthora infestans), to name but a very few, have led to the development of an equally vast array of fungicides. Many are toxic, in varying degrees, to a broad spectrum of aquatic life, beneficial insects including honey bees and wasps, beneficial soil microbes, non-targeted crops and flora biodiversity in general, not to mention farm workers, their children, those with compromised immune systems, and eventually the consumer at large. Over the years the fungicide industry has become increasingly regulated with the resulting ban of a long list of formerly promising products. Hence, the search goes on for new and innovative bio-chemical fungicidal interventions to meet the ever-pressing demand for sustainable crop yields to feed a hungry world.

Indeed, it is not too much to say that the modern history of fungicidal products well outnumber the targeted fungi by factors of ten. The reason is at once both simple and bewilderingly complex. All agricultural pests, whether virus, bacteria, insect or fungi, have multiple growth stages, multiple defenses and weaknesses at each of these stages, all have a local agri-cultural ecosystems where their pestilential fortunes may rise or fall; they frequently require vectors and all have various and specific adaptive responses, importantly, genetic responses. Take a look at the University of California’s Integrated Pest Management list of fungicides for wine grapes alone (partially reproduced here). Note the variety of Chemical Classes and of Modes of Action. Each responds to some aspect or combination of aspects of the targeted fungi’s life cycle, whether systemic or by contact.

Now, to go a bit deeper into just one fungal pathogen, Botrytis cinerea, the causal agent of Bunch Rot, I turn to a truly magnificent scientific paper, Alternatives to synthetic fungicides for Botrytis cinerea management in vineyards found in a recent issue of the Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research. The paper exhaustively recounts multi-dimensional, non-synthetic approaches to this single pathogen. To begin with, there is biological control, itself subdivided into ‘classical, inundative and conservation’. To define each in turn, I quote (pg.187):

Classical: “The intentional introduction of an exotic, usually co-evolved biological control agent for permanent establishment and long term pest control.”

Inundative: “The use of living organisms to control pests when control is achieved exclusively by the released organisms themselves.”

Conservation: “Modification of the environment or existing practices to protect and enhance specific natural enemies or other organisms to reduce the effect of pests.”

We may then read about Essential and Mineral Oils, Plant Hormones, Abiotic Stimulants, and Plant Extracts, Compost Extracts, Microbial Induction, Canopy Management, and Local Environment Manipulations. The paper concludes,

“A change from current viticultural practices, heavily dependent on synthetic fungicides, is inevitable. Fungicide resistance, market and regulatory pressure regarding residues and concerns of environmental and human health are increasing, so new management techniques will need to be adopted.”

As is abundantly evident, the matter of fungus control properly becomes a creative, open-ended agricultural project of applying as many relevant biological parameters and mechanisms as possible at once. And this project is by no means limited to Botrytis. The concept of fungicide resistance is a case in point. Whether through misapplication, overuse, or the absence of an integrated pest management program, resistance is, to be sure, given a helping hand. But even under more responsible agricultural pest management regimes, resistance to fungicides is a constant threat. From the paper (though slightly outdated) Understanding fungicide resistance, by Robert Beresford

“The change in the pathogen from being sensitive to a fungicide to being resistant involves a genetic change which is passed on to successive generations of the fungus. To understand how resistance arises we must think of the pathogen in a crop as a population consisting of a mixture of strains which differ in their sensitivity to the fungicide. Some strains in the population may be so resistant that they cannot be controlled by normal application rates of the fungicide. Use of the fungicide therefore kills the sensitive strains but not the resistant ones, and over a period of time the resistant ones come to dominate.”

So, in light of all the above, and on this, the eve of Earth Day, I would like to bring to readers attention a novel research invention currently undergoing field trials. The inventors: DE SEIXAS BOAVIDA FERREIRA, Ricardo Manuel [PT/PT]; Rua Professor Reinaldo Dos Santos 12-2º D (PT). VALADAS DA SILVA MONTEIRO, Sara Alexandra [PT/PT]; Rua Professor Moisés Amzalan 16-5º B (PT). NASCIMENTO TEIXEIRA, Artur Ricardo [PT/PT]; Rua João De Barros 5-4º B (PT). BORGES LOUREIRO, Virgílio [PT/PT]. From the patent,

“This invention is related to the extraction of a protein from the seeds, cotyledons or plantlets of Lupinus genus, as well as to the way of producing it in recombinant form and of expressing it in genetically modified plants. Due to the exceptional characteristics exhibited by this protein in what concerns: its potent antifungal and anti-Oomycete activity, which confers great potential to the protein as a fungicide, (2) its strong plant growth promoter activity, particularly notorious on unhealthy or naturally weakened plants, (3) its extreme resistance to denaturation, which allows the use of the protein under field conditions, (4) its great susceptibility to proteolytic attack, which makes it harmless to the environment and nontoxic for man, and (5) its well balanced amino acid composition. It is claimed its use, or of any modification of the protein that maintains its biological properties, as a supplement in human or animal nutrition and as a fungicide, insecticide, growth promoter, fertilizer or in the preparation of genetically modified organisms.”

Currently labeled Problad, how then does this invention differ from chemical fungicides? Absent is toxicity to animals and the environment; no safety intervals are required, neither is protective clothing required; there is little likelihood of the development of fungal resistance; and it is active against a wide range of fungal pathogens. Indeed, of its wide spectrum in vitro tests reveal “It exhibits a potent anti-fungal activity towards all fungal species tested so far (>40)”. (Unpublished broadside) In vivo trials are underway on eight fungal pathogens with, I am told, great success. Fungi and plants are as follows:

Vitis vinifera (grapevine):
- Powdery mildew (Eryshiphe necator)
- Botrytis bunch rot (Botrytis cinerea)

Almond
- Brown rot/Blossum blight (Monilinia laxa)
- Shot Hole (Stigmina carpophila)

Tomato
- Powdery mildew (Leveillula taurica)
- Botrytis cinerea
- Early blight of tomatoes (Alternaria solani)
- Alternaria blight (A. alternata)

Strawberry
- Botrytis Fruit Rot (Botrytis cinerea)
- Powdery mildew (Sphaerotheca macularis)

Cucumber
- Powdery mildew (Erysiphe cichoracearum)

Olive
- Colletotrichum gloeosporioides
- Colletotrichum acutatum

Without getting overly technical, let me add that the Lupinus albus polypeptide isolate, with respect to its anti-fungal properties, binds strongly to chitin and displays chitosanase catalytic activity. Normally associated with the exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans, chitin is also the main structural component of the cell walls of fungi. The product works, therefore, by breaking down this cellular structure and destroying the fungus.

Of its other activity as a growth promoter, its in vivo success rate via field trials, details of its precise recombinant expression in selected crops, and its ability to extend the life of harvested produce, cereal grains, legumes etc., both in storage and in the market, these subjects will have to wait for elaboration in the fullness of time. I am promised, however, that I shall be provided such information. I will be sure to pass it along to my readers.

For further reading on up-to-the-minute research on resistance please visit Fungicide Resistance Action Committee (FRAC).

For an entertaining gloss on Lupins see this.

Admin

Dr. Richard Smart On Viticultural Adaptation and Climate Change

Admin, Ken Payton — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 05:29:28 +0000

Dr. Richard Smart, the ‘flying vine doctor’, is among the top viticulturalists and vineyard consultants in the world. His list of intellectual accomplishments over the 45 years of professional work include numerous publications, including the industry standard Sunlight Into Wine, innovations in trellising and canopy management, (Smart-Dyson), a wall of awards and the enduring respect of colleagues world-wide. His appropriately named vineyard consulting business, Smart Viticulture, focusses on where to situate a vineyard and what grape varieties are suitable to grow.

The basic questions he answers for prospective wine growers are: “Which viticultural region in the world most closely matches your vineyard’s climate? Which varieties can you expect to do well in your vineyard? What are the risks of botrytis? What is the risk of frost?”

It an approach heavily dependent on homoclime analysis. From his website:

A homoclime is a place with a climate similar to your region. Imagine how it could guide you in your variety choice if you knew the closest homoclimes to your property around Australia and indeed, around the world. Our homoclime analysis concentrates on temperature and rainfall. We have a massive data base of climate data available from all around the world. As well we can access information showing which varieties grow in which regions. We have developed statistical methods to search out the closest homoclimes to your region.

A final note. This interview, conducted some time ago, suffered a technical obstacle only recently overcome. I have only recently been able to recover the audio file. The resulting text, though well over 90% complete, is nevertheless missing small passages I was unable to reconstruct with complete confidence. However, owing to the importance of Dr. Smart to viticultural practice, a subject dear to my heart, and his important reflections on climate change, I felt it necessary to insist the interview finally appear. Enjoy.

Admin Good afternoon, Dr. Smart. Thank you for agreeing to speak with me.

Richard Smart Tell me a bit about yourself.

Oh. Well, I’ve worked in a small winery for a few years. I’m primarily a fiction writer. But fiction is hard to write. So I started a wine industry blog to keep my hand in the game. So I’ve gone from one form of obscurity to another!

RS To one form of fiction to another, I’d say, since wine writing is largely fictional. But don’t let my cynicism get in the way of a good conversation! (laughs) Do you make any money out of your blog?

No, I don’t monetize, as is said. It is an entirely personal love of mine. And as I’ve often wanted to speak with many important people in the wine world, I have found a wine blog to be a credible pretext. Sharing with readers is a no-brainer. But I would like to ask you a question!

RS Well, I’m pleased to help you. You might be able to help by including my contact data.

Of course. I’ve just returned from Portugal. I read on your website that you have worked there. May I ask what you think of some of the traditions of Portuguese winemaking?

RS I think they’re interesting. I don’t normally involve myself in winemaking, but I have spent a bit of time in the Douro and have seen some of the old techniques, if that’s what your thinking of.

How do you understand the concept of ‘tradition’? Does it figure into your viticultural analysis of a region?

RS Yes, very much, particularly in Europe. One of the important things in Europe is the regional use of varieties and how it differs from place to place. I think what we can learn of that is that the ones selected will do well in those regions, particularly in those climates. What we don’t know is how well those same varieties might do in different regions or climates. I’ll give the example of Albariño, which, as you know, is in northern Portugal and northwestern Spain, Galicia. It is an outstanding and exciting variety, very aromatic. One would assume it would do best in similar climates, and that they were rather cool and wet. But, in fact, I’ve seen several examples around the world where it has done well in quite hot, dry climates, which is unusual for varieties that have Terpenes, like Albariño.

Speaking of hot climates, about the matter of climate change in, for example, Spain and Australia. You have a very expansive homoclime analysis database on your website. Could you tell me generally what climatic trends or shifts you have discovered over recent years?

RS Let’s be quite clear. I do not study climate change. The data base that I have was primarily derived world-wide from the period 1971 to 2000. Climate data is normally 30 year averages. And I do not study changes. I just use that database to seek homoclimes. However, other people who have studied such databases do find evidence of shifts over the last 30 years or so. Greg Jones in Oregon talks quite a bit about that. I suppose you know about him?

Yes. [Though conducted after this interview, please see my interview series with Greg Jones here.] Casual conversations with experienced vineyard managers and hands-on winemakers here in California make it clear that they are noticing climate change, assuming they’ve been in the business for a while. And equally I know of winegrowers in Montana who report bud break and harvest up to 2 weeks earlier.

RS Yes. I am surprised by that magnitude, but changes have been detected in many places. The study of temperatures has shown that they are going up. And, indeed, it stands to be a major issue. One of the things that the California wine business should be doing is looking for cooler wine regions. They exist. And I know where they are. Many people do who have access to the data.

Places like the Napa Valley will become less suitable for growing premium wine. One advantage that California has is to have that enormous refrigerator in the form of the sea, which is a very cold current. So, as well as a move to more northern latitudes and to higher elevations, you move toward the coast.

Have you been contacted by winegrowers in cooler weather climates further North? Jancis Robinson recently said there are vineyards now in Norway. Do you have a special expertise in cooler climates?

RS No. But I do consult in Denmark.

I’m trying to grasp your understanding of climate change. *Dan Berger, who I interviewed some months ago, is a bit of sceptic….

RS Climatologist, Dan Berger. (laughs)

If you talk to farmers, whether of wheat, vegetables or grapes, they often have stories, though anecdotal by scientific standards, of their personal experience of climate change. What accounts for this strange disconnect between what the practical grower of any agricultural product knows and what some wine critics believe?

RS Well, I compare most wine journalists to fiction writers, as I told you before. If it was a crime to purvey myths they’d all be writing from inside jails. I mean, what the hell would Dan know about climate change? There are people who are skeptical about it, and good luck to them if that’s what they want to believe. But there are many others that are convinced by it. The fact that the doubt exists I put down to the one side being uninformed, and optimistic.

Australia is a special case. Many dire scenarios have been spun about the very survival of the wine industry, that it may collapse at some future date…

RS Well, it won’t collapse. Collapse is not a term I would use. The question is whether they will adapt. In my opinion the Australian mind set is currently doing a rather poor job informing itself about what it should do. My job today is to write an article on that, to say how misdirected the research is. We’ve got decades to get these things right. And we know what to do!

You can say it very simply: Present cool-to-warm regions will be OK, but they will lose their reputations for certain varieties; and in time they may develop new reputations for varieties currently grown in regions warmer than theirs at present. For example, the Napa Valley might become known for Grenache. It most certainly will struggle to hold its reputation as a quality Cabernet producer. That much is clear. There is no doubt about that.

So it’s not just what’s happening to cool-to-warm regions; we need to find new cool regions, as I said before. But that’s alright. We can find them. The problem is the present hot regions. As you know, when you drive down the San Jaochin Valley there comes to be a point when you don’t grow wine grapes anymore. You grow table grapes and raisins. That point is going to move up the valley.

One thing we can do, and we should do, is to breed new varieties that suit hot climates. That’s my suggestion about what we should be doing. There should be an international effort involving South Africa, Australia, Spain, Portugal, France, all those countries that have hot climates so that will become untenable for wine production unless we get new varieties. And I have no doubt that we can breed them. I also have no doubt that it would be a waste of money if we look to the molecular biologists to produce them. They will promise them, of course, but they are long on promises and short on delivery. And then we need some imaginative names, and these various regions will be fine.

Like Pinotage, for example. It was bred for a warm climate.

RS Pinotage is an example of a variety that is bred with classical techniques, like Ruby Cabernet that Olmo bred. There are many examples. The Germans have been doing this very well for the last 50 years to produce varieties suitable for cool climates There are not many people doing it for warm climates. We can do it. And that’s what we should be doing.

I also have to say that some go on about clones and rootstocks; I personally don’t believe they have much impact. There is not much we can do with irrigation; there is not much we can do with canopy management. It will boil down to using varieties adapted to the new climate.

Yes. And do you think the industry is capable of making rapid progress? For example, after the fires broke out in Australia earlier this decade the scientific research on smoke taint accelerated. In a matter of a few years great progress had been made in the treatment of tainted grapes.

RS True. We certainly have the scientific means to do it. With all the other political and social problems to follow, developing wine grapes adapted to hot climates might be the least of our worries in the eyes of governments.

Genetic engineering, a very sexy science currently, has made considerable inroads into universities…

RS Yes, I know. They have all around the world. And as I’ve said, they’re long on promises, short on delivery.

But that’s where so many research dollars go. Simpler, more basic approaches don’t seem to have the same ’star power’ as genetic engineering.

RS People have been crossing plants for hundreds of years. That’s what we should be doing. I have a joke about molecular biologists breeding a new Chardonnay suitable for hot climates. So they put the genes into a cactus which is adapted to hot climates. But the Chardonnay wine tasted like Tequila! (laughs)

Thank you very much, Dr. Smart.

RS Thank you.

—–

For further reading: —Terroir Unmasked

* An important clarification from Dan Berger: “I have definite opinions about climate change (not ‘warming’), which come directly from scientists on climate change and reflect their research into this phenomenon. They have convinced me that climate change is real and a major threat to the world. I am not a scientist. I am a reporter. As such I report, and my opinions (for instance on climate change) are based more on what scientists I have interviewed say about it.”

My characterization of Mr. Berger as a ‘bit of a skeptic’ was based on a misunderstanding, since clarified, of remarks he made in the course of our March, 09 interview, which may be found here.

Admin

California Dept. of Corrections: A Celebration of Artisanal Prison Wines

Admin, Ken Payton — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 04:39:28 +0000

April 1st, 2010

In what it hopes will become an annual event, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has announced the first Cells Of Hope: A Celebration of Artisanal Prison Wines. The press release, posted just hours ago, calls upon ‘home’ winemakers currently residing in medium security penitentiaries throughout California to submit samples of their wines. A distinguished international panel of celebrity experts will then convene later this month on Alcatraz Island for an informal Lecture Series and Grand Tasting, capped by an Awards ceremony and raffle. The public is invited.

Award Categories include:

Best Fruit Wine
Best Non-Fruit Wine
Most Wine-Like Wine

Additional Technical Awards will be handed out for:

Best Label
Best Use of Clothing
Best Hiding Place
Most Creative Commissary Smuggle
Best Yeast Source

Award Winners will receive a year’s subscription to the Wine Advocate.

Lecturers will include Pancho Campo (subject to availability) on The Prison Wines of Iberia ; Gary Vaynerchuk on I KNOW Why the Caged Bird Tweets! Using Social Media To WIN Early Parole, Michel Rolland on Multi-Flush Toilet Micro-Oxygenation, and Robert Parker will close the evening with a talk on Boosting Alcohol Levels With Popular Candies.

From the official press release:

“Formerly hidden from view, ‘Pruno’, as it is affectionately known within our prison system, represents an untapped spirit of excellence that flows through the veins of nearly everyone within our walls. Cells of Hope: A Celebration of Artisanal Prison Wines aspires to promote the creativity of what may be accomplished with the simplest tools, food scraps, and lots of time.

In keeping with California’s long tradition of home winemaking, it seems only right to tap into a great and endlessly renewed pool of talent residing within our walls.”

Believed to be the first of its kind in United States history, well-known wine industry booster and program supporter Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggar said today,

“Cells of Hope will not only reaffirm California’s special place in the wine world, but it will also highlight our state’s continued commitment to innovation. If it is not being done here, it is not worth doing.”

Asked of potential criticism of the event, Gov. Schwarzenegger said,

“Have you seen my poll numbers?”

At a hastily called news conference, California Dept. of Corrections spokesperson Dusty Dubois responded to the swarm of stinging state Republican tweets that the program would cost too much.

“Not a single dollar of taxpayer money will be spent on Cells of Hope. I am pleased to announce that the entire operational budget has been underwritten by none other than California’s own Fred Franzia of the Bronco Wine Company.”

Ms. Dubois added that Mr. Franzia had also assumed the responsibilities for the writing and free distribution of a bi-lingual handbook with the amateur winemaker/inmate in mind. Copies were provided to the assembled press corps, and among the many lavishly illustrated chapters there may be found,

— Don’t Throw That Away! Harnessing the Power of Wild Yeasts
— Moisture Is My Friend
— What’s With All the Bubbles?
— Common Juice Toxins and How to Detect Them
— Paper or Plastic? The Pros and Cons of Filtration Media
— I Don’t Want to Wait! The Beneficial Effects of Aging
— Trojans Or Aluminum Foil? The Closure Debate
— How To Be Greener In the Big House
— Happy Endings. Why Parker Points Matter
— Exercise Yard Terroirs

Late Breaking Development

Perhaps still smarting from the 1976 Paris Tasting smack down, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has late today announced a tentative agreement with California to participate in the Artisanal Prison Wines’ competition next year. Said Mr. Sarkozy, “We have many more winemakers in prison than does California. Victory will be ours!”

Admin

Last year’s effort: Robert Parker Accused of Wine Boarding.

Gregory V. Jones On Pests, Pathogens, and Parker

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 05:38:44 +0000

This is the third and final part of my sterling interview with Climatologist Gregory V. Jones. Here he discusses many of the practical agricultural effects climate change ushers in. Behind general, global headlines, the noisy political debates, there are very real changes taking place that simply escape our immediate, everyday notice. However attractive as a spiritual philosophy, ‘living in the moment’ has a clear downside. For like the sailing stones of Death Valley, despite no one having seen the phenomenon, surely they do move.

On a different note, man is a pest and pathogen vector, of course. During the course of our talk the spotted wing drosophila (SWD) fly came up, one of the most recent destructive insects to invade the United States, in this instance in refrigerated containers from Asia. It is a pest about which I have written a number of times. Today an AP story crossed my desk about the wherefores and the whys of yet another invasive pest, the European Grapevine Moth. In this instance it is strongly suspected the bug was brought to Napa by a winegrower smuggling cane cuttings from France. What goes around, comes around.

Part 1 On Wine and Climate Change

Part 2 The Science and Politics of Climate Change

Admin Perhaps you could speak more about insects and new pathogens…

Gregory V. Jones This is all about environmental thresholds, but it is also tied to people. The environmental thresholds that we know basically say that a given vector or a given bacterium or disease, whatever it may be, has some kind of environmental component. It can’t exist where it is either too hot or too cold. Or where there is not enough moisture. And so, as temperature and moisture conditions change from place to place, what that does is it changes the environmental geographical patterns that any of these vectors, pests, bacterium, diseases can exist in. So it is a natural kind of consequence of changing climates. The compounding factor is when you throw in the human component, the fact that we move things around very efficiently through our vehicles and transport of material and goods. So while there might be some great geographical barriers to the movement of material, and I’ll Oregon as an example, the mountains of Northern California have been very good at keeping certain things out of our state. Some people would laugh and say it doesn’t fully keep the Californians out (laughs)…

Yeah. My family nearly moved to Oregon. We were not given a warm reception!

GJ So the idea would be that the geographical barrier there, the mountains and the cooler conditions, would keep out or hinder a lot of pest and/or diseases from potentially coming to Oregon. But because humans travel, and we carry things around with us, whether they be plant material or fruits or soils, we can take things with us and cause an issue that might not have been there otherwise. There are a lot of examples. Oregon right now is concerned about mealy bugs. Mealy bugs are known to be hitting California vineyards pretty hard right now in terms of carrying leaf-roll virus that is in some cases necessitating large re-plantings of vineyards. So Oregon is all about quarantining material. What happens when a grower goes down to visit his cousin in Lodi and grabs a bundle of cuttings and brings them up, and they’re infected, and plants them? That infected material gets moved around. And we have an issue.

This has happened very recently with the spotted wing drosophila (SWD) about which I’ve written. What began as an infestation in Washington cherries quickly spread through out the United States. Actually, it had already spread, having initially been imported from Asia to Florida. The speed of the fruit fly’s life cycle is subject to temperature. So if you import a fruit in refrigerated containers and distribute it to markets around the country, the degree to which the damaging effects of the new pest are unknown, the ruined fruit is simply discarded into dumpsters and landfills. Now you have SWD everywhere. So widespread has the pest become in so short time, that the USDA has decided that a quarantine would be of no practical use.

GJ Exactly. People are talking about it big time in Oregon right now as an issue for many of the berry crops we have up here. So if you think about it, people are part of the problem. But yet there are these environmental limits: if the climate becomes warmer, dryer, moister, whatever those requirements are, and it meets that insect’s or disease’s needs, it is going proliferate. We shouldn’t expect it to be this ideal world, that we’re never going to see movement and change of that kind of thing. It’s going to happen.

Many of these other consequences when one discusses climate change, insects, disease vectors, new epidemiological patterns, these don’t often enter into the debate. Talk centers on temperature almost exclusively.

GJ And you’re right. This goes back the perception based thing as I told you. The idea that we’re in the immediate here and now, human-based mental framework. If you say to somebody temperature have warmed 2 degrees over the last 20 years they’ll say ‘Well, that’s great! I’m really enjoying it!’ What they don’t understand are the underlying things that happen to us within our environment, with things like insects and/or pests, and/or water availability, soil erosion, soil salinity, all that kind of stuff. I think that there is a real issue there: The magnitude of that number [2 degrees], I’ve even been quoted about saying this, we have a number problem. We all talk about how temperatures have gone up by whatever it is, 1, 2, 3 degrees regionally, but it is that number that humans take to mean it’s no big deal. But they don’t understand the entire environmental ramifications of it.

Yes. In one of your co-authored articles there is an interesting detail mentioned in passing about wine styles. The Parker palate has often been cited as driving winemakers to produce higher alcohol, more fruit forward wines. But in one of your papers you refer to an author who states that as much a 50% of the high alcohol wines could potentially be attributed to climate change. Could you talk about this?

GJ This is kind of a statistical relationship. If you throw data variables into a pot and you try to find out what describes what amount of variability, that’s pretty much what falls out. But let me tell you what I think is the background, and I would tell Parker to his face the same thing. I’ve even seen him write somewhere that climate change hasn’t changed these styles, so to speak, but the issue comes down to this, and it’s pretty damn straight forward: In 1960, 1970, you couldn’t produce the same styles of wines in Napa that you produce today. Period. End of sentence. You just couldn’t do it! The climate was too cool, you couldn’t have extended hang time because the climate wouldn’t let you. Period. So, while Parker, the Parker palate has driven wine styles to be different today than they were in the ’70s, you can’t say that the climate and maybe some other factors didn’t come into play with it. If you tried to do the hang time that they’re doing today back in 1970, it would not happen. You look at the issue of methoxypyrozines [See pgs.87-88 of R. Jackson's Wine Science Admin], well, we’ve been able to kind of manage that, the green flavors, through a lot of different characteristics, but the reason methoxypyrozines were also more prevalent back in the ’70s and ’80s is because the climate didn’t ripen the damn fruit! I can’t believe that there are that many people out there that think that climate doesn’t mean anything in this puzzle. But yet they are willing to say that climate is very important for how they produce this delicate style, or whatever it may be.

On a slightly different tack, for many wine drinkers just to become acquainted with the broad strokes of a concept like terroir passes for a kind of knowledge. They are comfortable with knowing just that, and going no deeper. Most people believe that terroir is the agricultural equivalent of some horrid neo-romantic landscape, terroir as painted by Thomas Kinkade. That is as far as perception is willing to go.

GJ Here’s another thing I think about the nature of climate in parts of California, and I’ll use Napa as an example because I think it’s really played out there. So the fruit is being left out on the vine for a long time. What people are trying to do is get this ideal flavor profile relative to it. Well, the issue there is that if the grape was being grown in its ideal climate then sugar ripeness and flavor ripeness would happen at the same time. Arguably, most people would agree that would be the case. Most years sugar and flavor ripeness would happen at the same time. In some years a little variability might cause it to be a bit disconnected, but not disconnected to the point that you’ve got to ripen something to 28 degree brix while you’re waiting for this ideal flavor profile. That’s just overdone!
And part of what I think is producing some of this is the fact that the growing seasons are just quite different today than they were before. Minimum temperature have gone up tremendously. This causes a major difference in respiration and metabolism in the vine and in the fruit. I think that because minimum temperatures have gone up we’re seeing less and less green flavors than we ever have. But I also think what that does is that when nighttime temperatures… put it this way, when the diurnal temperature range is sufficient, cool nighttime temperatures sets in flavor development. That is the final cue for the vine and the berries to do their thing. And if you have a place where you’re growing grapes and the nighttime temperatures are elevated, and that cue to get sugar and flavor in line, if it doesn’t happen? Then you have to hang the fruit. You have to hang it for a long time.

I really think that is part of the puzzle. It’s probably a bigger issue for some varieties than for others. For example, Pinot Noir and Tempranillo are two varieties that just would not do very well in a high nighttime temperature environment, while Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot do a little bit better.

Yes. As I move toward a kind of finish, I was curious about your own drinking preferences.

GJ Honestly, I try everything. I don’t necessarily have the best palate in the world. Maybe I just haven’t figured out yet how to train it. But I think it’s pretty good. What I really, truly enjoy is the marriage of wine and food. I enjoy the fact that there many different styles and varieties of wine that contribute to that enjoyment. What I don’t like is wine that doesn’t go with food, that doesn’t have some kind of balance of alcohol relative to acidity. It just doesn’t work.

Of course, that is one of the difficulties with tasting notes and certainly scoring wines. It is just plain silly when one Cabernet after another requires that you essentially have a burned charcoaled steak every night. Wine is today often understood as a free-standing food in its own right. Many tasting notes would seem to suggest you’re eating bacon, raspberries…

GJ I buy a lot of local wine. I support the Oregon wine industry where I can. But when I go to the store I love playing the varietal game, finding something I’ve never seen; or maybe it’s a variety I have seen before, but from a different area. So I play that varietal game to try and get a broader palate and to understand the variety. I don’t specifically look at the alcohol content and say I’m not going to buy that. However, there are some varieties that a higher alcohol content typically means that I just won’t buy it. And Cabernet Sauvignon is one, Zinfandel is another. They just don’t work for me. So, even though I’m not looking specifically for a high alcohol level on a wine, there are some varieties that I do.

But the bigger thing is that I just love to try different varieties. I had a bottle of wine the other night, I don’t even know how to say the variety, B-o-n-a-r-d-a. It’s grown in Argentina. I’ve never had this variety before. It wasn’t necessarily the cleanest and best wine I’ve ever had, but it was unique, it was different. That’s what I appreciated about it.

Yeah, I understand. I’m baffled by folks who stick to the same variety. I don’t get it. The point is to drink as widely as is possible, not only for understanding but for pleasure. The obsession with variety labeling as well has always been puzzling to me.

GJ Yes, appreciate the surprise and anticipation component of it. If I buy a wine that is something I have never seen or had before and it’s not good, if I have to use it to cook with (or dump it out if it’s really not good), that’s OK. That’s part of the experience. But, boy, it is the gems that stand out that make you say, “Yeah, this is what it’s all about!”

Exactly right. That’s one of the reasons I’m doing the film on Portuguese wines with Virgilio. There are so many flavors completely unknown to most folks here in the states. Perhaps people can be persuaded to ask for them.
Well, it has been an extraordinary pleasure to speak with you. Is there anything you’d care to add? What about your father’s wines? How is his work coming along?

GJ In my personal opinion? His wines are very good. We came to Oregon wanting to grow Iberian varietals and so we produce mostly Tempranillo, Grenache, Albariño, Tinta Cão, and Tinta Amarela. We make some very traditional Iberian wines from them. And I think one of the interesting things is that across everything we make I don’t know that I’ve ever seen one place able to produce that wide of a range of wines with that kind of typicity. Maybe I should chalk it up to my dad, how he grows the grapes, his attention to winemaking, but I’ve had other people say the same thing. I’ve heard them out of context that they were just amazed.

And to do that in Oregon, a place that’s known for Pinot Noir, is something special. I tasted our 2009 Albariño last night. It had only been in bottle for few hours, but it is liquid gold. That’s the best thing I can say. It’s liquid gold.
END

For further reading

Oregon Wine Press

Climate and Wine: Quality Issues in a Warmer World

Admin

Examples of Private Label Art, Terceira Island, Azores

Admin, Ken Payton — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:52:42 +0000

The volcanic islands of Graciosa, Pico, and Terceira, specifically the parish of Biscoitos, are the demarcated wine regions of the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago just over 900 miles from the mainland. Legally recognized in 1994, each area has, nevertheless, been producing wine for hundreds of years. The vines are grown in the near complete absence of soil and sheltered from the wind and salt water by walls of broken basalt painstakingly built over the centuries. The ’soils’, slowly in the process of creation (globally, depending upon a series of site-specific geo-physical processes, the generation of an inch of soil requires many thousands of years), may be broadly divided into two types: shattered, heavily fissured basalt and a slightly looser, sandy version, its additional material largely water runoff and wind transported. This is most strikingly revealed on Pico where the vineyards come within yards of the open Atlantic. Coaxing vines into healthy production in either matrix is nothing short of miraculous.

I will have much to say on another occasion about all of the above. For now I want only to touch on the narrow dimension of Biscoitos’ private bottle label art, this after a few preliminaries.

The agricultural center of Terceira, this small town is home to S.D.A.T., the Adega do Servico de Desenvolvimento Agrario de Terceira (the cellar of Agrarian Development Service), the wine-making cooperative where, upon deplaning at Lajes Airport, we were taken by winery representative, António Espínola.
Producing over 40,000 liters of wine per annum off of 60 hectares, the local economy of Biscoitos, the wine sector, took a severe hit in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of 9/11. All the islands did. With new international airline regulations banning all liquid containers with volumes in excess of 4 oz. from being carried onto airplanes, the many thousands of tourists visiting Terceira each year went from purchasing multiple bottles of wine to buying just one now secured in checked baggage. Wine sales plummeted 50% throughout the archipelago and the sector has still not recovered. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the wines’ price points, as our soulless business language puts it. Indeed, given the extraordinary labor required to work with all the elements of the archipelago’s harsh terroir, it is stunning to see any Azores wine sold locally for as little as €10. With sinew and muscle, the farmer’s near indestructible will to go on restores to respectability the idea of hand-crafted, a notion rather limply exploited in American wine marketing, for example. Further, the oft-repeated promotional concept of how inexpensive are Portugal’s wines in general, fails miserably to grasp that it is rather a question of a sustainable price. No better example of this critical distinction may be found than on the Azores.

It has become more urgent than ever, especially in light of reduced tourist numbers in these sour economic times, to find a way to lessen the great downward pricing pressure and get the many fascinating wines of the Azores into the international market at a fair, sustainable price.

Like all the demarcated regions of the Azores, grape growing on Biscoitos is suffering from a generational shift. No longer willing to struggle for a living in the same way as their parents and grandparents have, the young are increasingly drawn to cities. To be sure, it is a pattern repeated in all agricultural sectors throughout the world. But in the Azores it is painfully evident, the abandoned vineyards immediately visible as overrun thatches of tangled flora. The disruption of traditional family practice is a very real threat to the long-term survival of this viticulture unique in all the world.

While at the cooperative, we were given precious insight into Biscoitos’ recent vinous history. Located within an older portion of the adega, António showed us what qualifies as their ‘wine library, a wall of honeycombed masonry (situated at the right in the photo). From the rough, abrasive chambers, an echo of the vineyards’ basaltic walls just outside, he pulled bottle after intriguing bottle of private wines, some made before the existence of the cooperative. As a tribute to the farmers and vintners of these mysterious verdelhos, the dominant white grape throughout the Azores, I will close this post with their simple, mute images.

(File size varies.)

Admin

Synthetic Nitrogen and Soil Degradation

Admin, Ken Payton — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:08:57 +0000

Soil science is a very complex, elegant discipline. And having everything to do with the feeding of the world’s hungry populations, it can also be highly contentious. Though not overtly political, rival research programs within soil science nevertheless often butt heads against one another. Witness, for example, the heated debates, still underway, over the consequences of the Green Revolution, a massive post-war transformation of agricultural technological practice that led to very significant, if short-term gains in the ability of developing nations to feed their populations. Though initially successful in Mexico and subsequently exported throughout the world, a look at the remains of that model today reveals a Mexico teetering on the edge of collapse, its agricultural sector further strained under NAFTA’s relentless weight.
Now, of course the reasons for Mexico’s economic and social troubles are as multiple as they are tangled, but it is undeniably true that the soil science, as understood mid-century, played a significant role in the optimism energizing the Green Revolution.

All will agree that the ’success’ of the Green Revolution relied a host of social and scientific technologies formerly limited to industrialized nations: the zealous use of broad spectrum pesticides, often without significant independent scientific review; the insistence on monoculture at the expense of indigenous polyculture, and biodiversity generally; a structural necessity of greater petrochemical inputs; irrigation projects resulting in both reallocation and massive new drafts on local water reserves; displacement of underperforming farming populations in favor of mechanization; the planting of hybrids at the expense of traditional varieties, hybrids the farmer needed to purchase each year. These were but a few of the technological requirements imposed upon developing nations in the post war era. The upshot is that food production, its promise, would eventually become an instrument of foreign policy. I will pass over in silence the profound environmental consequences.

More narrowly, on the matter of new hybrids, they were selected because of their higher yields. Higher yields require greater amounts of Nitrogen (N). In this way did heavy applications of synthetic N become the order of the day. I will limit the balance of my post to this topic alone.

Formerly farmers were limited in how much they could grow by the need to replace the N their crops removed from the soil. Even the gardener knows how important it is to grow cover crop, to hustle up manure from a local ranch, at the very least to turn the soil so as to incorporate seasonal plant waste. The basic tenant of organic farming is ‘feed the soil’. It is no different for the large scale operation, at least it wasn’t until the rise of the synthetic fertilizer industry many years ago. With the mass production of synthetic N it became possible to use this to supplement the seasonal reduction of N reserves, but now in a more limited combination with plant waste, green and other manures. Further, it has long been believed that with these appropriate Carbon, Potassium, Phosphorus etc. additions along with judicious applications of synthetic N, soil health, including ‘relevant’ microbial populations, could be maintained for the long haul. As Ron Jackson puts it in his industry standard text book, Wine Science,

“Until the use of inorganic nitrogen fertilizers, vineyard nitrogen supply was dependent primarily on the activity of free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil, nitrogen fixed by endosymbiotic bacteria in the nodules of legumes, and the addition of manure. Unlike other soil nutrients, nitrogen is not a component of the mineral makeup of the soil. Its availability, unlike that of potassium, phosphorus, and magnesium, is particularly dependent on the effect of seasonal factors, such as soil moisture, aeration, and temperature, and on how these factors affect the activity of soil microorganisms and cover crops. [....] The lower cost of urea and ammonia salts, combined with ammonia’s ready sorption to soil particles, generally makes it the preferred form of nitrogen fertilizer.”

And this approach is consistent with the broad research program of established soil science since the post-war era. But there is another parallel research program of similar historical pedigree. Often called organic, though well developed before its eviscerating codification in our era, it is properly explained, with an updated lexicon, by Peter Schmidt of the Delinat Institute.

“Just one cubic meter of good soil is home to nearly 60,000 species of microorganisms. They are all interconnected in the so called soil-food-web. All have different functions and maintain through their functional biodiversity the stability of the soil-plant-system. Each plant is symbiotically integrated in this very complex system. The plant offers to the microorganisms carbohydrates through their roots exudates and gets phosphates, nitrate, oligo-elements and water in exchange. The whole process is in an ingenious balance between give and take, fixating and releasing. If we intervene into this process with mineral fertilizers, the whole system gets out of balance as we favour some few species over others. It’s in fact a negative selection. As the plant gets easy fast food through the fertilizers it has no need to maintain the symbiosis with the microorganisms and it stops nourishing those microbes that usually fix nitrogen, carbon, phosphates and all the other aliments for the soil-food-web.

“And there is another point. Mineral fertilizers are salty which means that the most of the 1 billion microorganisms that one can find in 1 gram of good upper-soil dry up and die. Those that survive feed on the nitrate and ammonium of the fertilizers and on the carbon of the soil organic matter. The function of soil-food-web is surely as complex as the function of the brain, but it does not need magic to explain why nitrogen-fertilizers provoke the diminishing of soil carbon and the increase of greenhouse gases.

“To increase the functional biodiversity of agricultural systems is the most efficient and cheapest method for sustainable agriculture and resistance to climate change.”

It is by design that I select these two comments centering, as they do, on the question of synthetic N. There are other pressing distinctions between organic and industrial farming, and Mr. Jackson cannot fairly be said to be squarely in the latter camp. The point is that the organic community, broadly understood, has been historically critical of synthetic N; the industrial community broadly supportive. And for the past three score years this is where things have stood. Until now. Very important new research has recently appeared, research from within the university establishment itself. In a paper, titled Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizers Deplete Soil Nitrogen: A Global Dilemma For Sustainable Cereal Production [click on right sidebar link for free download] by R.L. Mulvaney, S.A. Khan, and T.R. Ellsworth of the University of Illinois, the evidence from a decades-long project shows, according to the fine gloss of the paper by Tom Phillpott writing for Grist:

“[T]he net effect of synthetic nitrogen use is to reduce soil’s organic matter content. Why? Because, they posit, nitrogen fertilizer stimulates soil microbes, which feast on organic matter. Over time, the impact of this enhanced microbial appetite outweighs the benefits of more crop residues.

“And their analysis gets more alarming. Synthetic nitrogen use, they argue, creates a kind of treadmill effect. As organic matter dissipates, soil’s ability to store organic nitrogen declines. A large amount of nitrogen then leaches away, fouling ground water in the form of nitrates, and entering the atmosphere as nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas with some 300 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide. In turn, with its ability to store organic nitrogen compromised, only one thing can help heavily fertilized farmland keep cranking out monster yields: more additions of synthetic N.

“The loss of organic matter has other ill effects, the researchers say. Injured soil becomes prone to compaction, which makes it vulnerable to runoff and erosion and limits the growth of stabilizing plant roots. Worse yet, soil has a harder time holding water, making it ever more reliant on irrigation. As water becomes scarcer, this consequence of widespread synthetic N use will become more and more challenging.”

I contacted the lead author, Prof. R.L Mulvaney, with supplemental questions specifically related to viticultural practice.

Admin Does the long-term degradation of soils with the use of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer also lead to other mineral deficiencies? I’m thinking of phosphorous, potassium, calcium, boron and manganese in particular.

Richard Mulvaney Yes, organic matter depletion will adversely affect numerous soil functions that impact nutrient availability. The most obvious effect is on the supply of mineralizable N, P, and S from organic sources, but most of the other nutrients are also affected. Because of its high cation-exchange capacity, organic matter plays an important role in holding Ca, Mg, and K in exchangeable forms that are protected against leaching, and has a similar effect in stabilizing the supply of micronutrients. There are important effects on the soil’s physical properties, such as water-holding capacity, aeration and drainage, structural stability, and resistance to erosion and compaction. Soils with ample organic matter provide a good rooting medium that promotes plant uptake of immobile nutrients such as P and K, and of course also water. Not surprisingly, the world’s most productive soils in such areas as the U.S. Corn Belt and the Ukraine are known for having a high organic matter content.

Would the accelerated loss of organic material associated with synthetic nitrogen play any role in increasing levels of salt in soils? I’m thinking of the Salinas Valley in California. Another question following upon the first: Would changing the soil profile exacerbate problems associated with salt water intrusion? And would additions of organic matter help slow the destructive effects of salt on crops?

RM By impeding drainage, a loss of organic matter would exacerbate salt accumulation through evapotranspiration. Depending on irrigation water quality, the salt buildup could reduce productivity and restrict cropping plans.

Do irrigation methods make a difference? Perhaps an obvious question, but I’m thinking of a perennial crop, such as wine grapes. Does drip irrigation, often the synthetic nitrogen delivery tech of choice for large and small scale grape growers, ultimately have a deleterious effect? With drip irrigation the vine root system is encouraged to remain near the soil surface. So I’m wondering for established vines, whether synthetic nitrogen fertilizer applications would, over the life of the vine, result in the selective degradation of it’s immediate soil, the few square feet the vine inhabits.

RM Drip irrigation is the most efficient option for supplying water, and would also increase nutrient uptake efficiency with lower fertilizer rates in close proximity to the rooting zone. Under these conditions, C depletion should be minimized by synthetic N fertilization. Without long-term data on drip irrigation, any further comment would be speculative.

What are your recommendations for the rehabilitation of degraded soils? I realize it varies from crop to crop. Corn is a heavy nitrogen feeder; wine grapes. less so. But given the recognition by a grower of a degraded farm soil, what steps might be taken to begin to re-establish soil health?

RM The Morrow Plots and other long-term experiments have shown that mixed legume rotations and the use of manure are conducive to soil C sequestration, as opposed to synthetic N fertilization for continuous grain production. The damage in the latter case will escalate if residues are harvested for ethanol production.

What is you opinion of biochar as a method of carbon sequestration in agricultural soils?

RM Biochar can be a valuable amendment for soils that are very low in organic matter, and has been particularly useful in managing tropical soils subject to deforestation and shifting agriculture. Soil C will be sequestered, and plant growth will benefit from deeper root penetration with improved soil structure, higher water-holding capacity, etc.

Thank you, Professor Mulvaney.

RM Thanks for your interest in our work on this topic. I hope these comments will be helpful.

—–

Apologies to the reader for the breezy, rapid presentation of such a complex issue. I will post additional remarks on this important topic in the coming weeks.

Admin