The Castell del Mirall vineyards are located in the Penedès Denominació d’Origen (DO) of Catalunya, not far from the capital of the magnificent, most European of cities, Barcelona. I am interested in this winery for a few reasons: they use Braille labels, something I was to learn from David Assens, Export Manager from Castell, when he wrote a comment on my post about the subject. And earlier this Spring I was to learn of a water crisis in Barcelona. The city has begun to import water, 5 million gallons from nearby Tarragona has just arrived, later this week more will be shipped from Marseille. A fuller account may be found from Sky News. Hence a question arises as to the impact of the drought on the wine industry in nearby Penedès DO. Lluís Ferré, 2nd generation winegrower at Castell del Mirall, kindly agreed to discuss these matters, and more. David Assens translated from English to Catalan and back again. My great thanks to him for his assistance.
Admin I was originally drawn to Castell Del Mirall because yours is one of the few wineries in the world who add Braille to your wine labels. What was your motivation?
Lluís Ferré Our motivation was to be able to propose our wines to broader audience and not to forget people with this disability.
Are your Braille labels in Catalan? Do you relabel for the export market?
LF We do relabel in English. The Braille code only indicates the name of the wine and the vintage.
What has been the Spanish wine industry’s reaction to your Braille initiative?
LF People thought it was a pretty good idea; some winemakers said they will follow.
Barcelona is currently in the grip of a very serious drought. What has been the impact of the drought throughout Catalunya, especially among the local wineries?
LF We may lose 20% in terms of yields, TBD.
If the drought continues for another few years how will Castell Del Mirall respond? And the other wineries in Catalunya?
LF I think people will increase ploughing and use more cover crops in the vineyards and control even more the canopy. Of course they could choose more drought resistant varietals (Spanish), and also plant at higher elevation.
Do you believe the drought is a consequence of Global Warming? If so what are the long term consequences for Catalunya wineries and vineyards? How is the wine industry in Catalunya preparing?
LF Yes it is. We may have a drastic increase of sugar and higher pH in the future, which could lead to less ageing potential for the wines. Once again, more and more vineyards are now planted at 1500-2000 ft.
Here in Cailfornia Napa winegrowers have awakened to climate change. Do you have any advice for them?
LF Try to not force the nature: I mean they should plant varietals and rootstocks that really fit their terroir and climate.
Tell us, if you will, about the terroir of your vineyards. Where are they located? At what elevations?
LF Our vineyards are located in the Penedès region very close to Barcelona.
In Castellet i la Gornal (Baix Penedes) at 400ft, is located the “ Corral d’en Refeques” vineyard. It is the largest in size, with a total of 25.66 Hectares (55 acres), dedicated to the following grape varieties:
Cabernet Sauvignon: 19.17 Ha
Chardonnay: 4.57 Ha
Tempranillo: 2.64 Ha
Xarel.lo: 4.58 Ha
Syrah: 1.98 Ha
Merlot: 2.72 Ha
The “La Granada” vineyard, close to our village where the winery is spreads on 2.61 Ha property, at 500 ft, that includes:
Chenin Blanc: 2.08 ha
Garnatxa Negra: 0.53 ha
In the village of Guardiola de font-Rubi at 1200ft ( Alt Penedès) is located the “Cal Escudé” vineyard on 17.08 Ha (37 acres), planted to the following grape varieties:
Macabeo: 3,85 Ha
Merlot. 3.36 Ha
Syrah :3.68 Ha
Sauvignon Blanc: 1,62 Ha
Muscat d’Alexandria: 1,90 Ha
Parellada: 2,67 Ha
Our soils are composed of clays, limestone and granite. The average yield for dry wines is 3 tons/acre and 6 for Sparkling.
Castell Del Mirall produces quite a few wines! Could you tell us something of the grape varieties you grow?
LF As you can see, we grow Spanish, Catalonian and French varieties. We use the three Spanish and Catalonian varietals which are Xarel·lo, Macabeu and Parellada for our Cava Sparkling wines which are bottle fermented, (like in Champagne).
Beside this you see we mainly use Cabernet, Tempranillo, Merlot for our barrel aged wines and young wines.The Syrah usually goes into our entry level red and rosé. The Chenin Blanc goes into a white blend, and the Chardonnay is single varietal: and barrel fermented.
What is your case production? And how much is consumed in Spain? And in the balance of Europe? Great Britain?
LF We make 20.000 cases per year, 16.000 are sold in Catalonia (Northern Spain). The 4000 cases remaining are sold in the UK (200 cases), Japan, Germany, Holland, Sweden and the state of Florida in the US.
Who buys your wines? What are your target markets?
LF Our customers are generally in search of premium wines. As a result our wines are sold mainly in wine shop and restaurants and not in supermarkets.
We would love to conquer the US on a larger extend.
What ‘green’, environmentally sensitive practices does Castell Del Mirall have in place, or will begin in the future?
LF Basically, we never used herbicides in the vineyards and we spray very little. We are thinking of recuperating rain water and treat it for use in the cellar in the future.
Why can’t I find your wines in the United States?
LF Our importer in Florida is very small. Also, the sub prime crisis and the exchange rate €/$ slows down our expansion in the US for the moment.
What did you think of the film Mondovino?
LF In some ways, it is a caricature. But it is also true that influential wine critics (like Bob) can standardize the taste of fine wine.
What websites would you recommend for the American interested in Spanish wines?
LF We like this one: www.winesfromspain.com/
Thank you for your time, Lluís.
Admin
Jason Lett has been the vineyard manager and winemaker at The Eyrie Vineyards in the Willamette Valley since 2005 when his celebrated father David ‘Papa Pinot’ Lett decided to pass the torch. Jason had already achieved quite a reputation of his own for quality with Black Cap Winery, so one might think assuming responsibility for the family’s winery would be quite a task. Truth is Jason has played a fundamental part in Eyrie vintages since childhood, as you will read.
I am not one easily given to admiration but I must say Jason is quite the gentleman, generous and forthright, a dedicated family man.
Admin What are your earliest memories of winemaking with your father at The Eyrie Vineyards?
Jason Lett Starting when I was 3 or 4 I sometimes got to spend the night at the winery with Dad during harvest. At that time Dad was using a hand operated basket press that had to be taken apart and the press cake broken up in order to be pressed again. This was after a long day of picking, and pressing went into the wee hours. I would goof around, “working,” generally getting underfoot. Dad always let me feel like I was actually helping.
I would finally go to sleep on the old leather couch in the crush office, wrapped up in his sleeping bag. Dad would finish up late and drive us home in the old flatbed truck we used to haul the harvest. The sound of that straight six motor made a nice coda to the day.
As a youngster what tasks were you given in the vineyard and winery?
JL In the winery my favorite job was punching caps - this is the pigeage where you submerge the skins back into the fermenting roil. It’s still my favorite job - it is the most revealing contact with the grape, even more than drinking the wine.
In the vineyard, I did a lot of “suckering” - preserving the form of the vine by removing shoots from the trunks. The shoots are called “suckers” but I always wondered who exactly the sucker was. Still, the job goes to the short and flexible so as a kid I fit the job description. The Chardonnay was always the worst - it throws a lot of shoots and the rows are LONG, so it seems by the time you’ve come to the end of the row it’s time to do it again.
At what age did you begin to work the Crush?
JL Define “work!” Kids LOVE making wine - it’s playing with your food on a major scale. You get everything covered with juice and then spray it down with a waterhose. For a kid, what could be better?
Sometimes I had a hard time believing that I could actually get paid 25 cents an hour to play with grapes.
I still do.
Were you always interested in winemaking?
JL It was always background, and always interesting, but it was also always Dad’s thing. As a teenager I certainly put more distance between myself and the winery. Still, I worked summers in the vineyard and made enough to save up to travel to Europe.
As a teen you lived and worked summers in Burgundy. Can you tell us a little about the experience? What kinds of lessons did you learn?
JL Again… “work?” I went over with my folks when I was 13 and met a lot of great people for the first time. I have a great memory of tasting with the Potels. I was welcomed into the cellars with my dad and put through my paces. I was asked for my opinion more often than I deserved. I had already mastered spitting, but there was a certain floaty sensation mounting the cellar steps for lunch.
I went back to Burgundy again, alone, when I was 17. I went to work with some family friends in the cellars and in the wine trade. There were great opportunities but they were pretty much lost on me. The French education system separates kids into tracks - artisan or academic - early on. So all the kids my age in the cellars were way better trained and way more focused than I was, and the adults were so much more sophisticated than a country bumpkin like me. It was pretty intimidating, and truthfully it put me off winemaking as a career choice.
I wound up soaking up quite a bit by osmosis, fortunately. Of course, I look back now at what an incredible opportunity that was and wish I could have been less ambivalent. But I’m also glad that I gave myself the opportunities to explore different fields that I later did. If at 17 I was completely convinced I wanted to be a winemaker I’d probably be pretty bored with making wine now.
You took a degree in Botany from the University of New Mexico. You also were a research asst. at Oregon State University. What was the principle focus of your research?
JL At the University of New Mexico the lab I worked for was trying to get a handle on the incredibly intricate strategies that plants use to time the germination of their seeds. In a demanding ecosystem like the New Mexican desert these strategies can drive the dynamics of entire communities of plants.
We spent a lot of time in pristine field sites, collecting seeds, taking measurements… it was wonderful work. Exacting. Scientists have to be great craftspeople. There were aesthetic benefits as well. After a good rain, everything would explode into bloom. Made you feel very… connected, being engaged with that level of intensity.
At OSU I worked in the “small fruits” program - blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries mostly, but also Oregon quirks like Loganberries and Marionberries.
We did variety evaluation, experimental trellising and training techniques, as well as the day-to-day tractor work. I also helped survey raspberry fields in the northern Willamette Valley. This was terrific - I gained a real appreciation for the tenacity of the farmers around here and their belief in the quality of Oregon fruit.
As anyone who’s had an Oregon strawberry can attest, the Willamette Valley produces stunning flavors.
I am glad to see that consumers are wising up and reaching around the packers, straight back to the farms. The locavore movement is really fantastic.
My hope is that some day people will argue just as vehemently about the provenance and terroir expressed by what is on their plate as they do by what is in their wineglass.
Would you tell us a little about your first solo wine, the 2002 BlackCap?
JL Having grown up around winemaking I felt pretty comfortable that I knew what it was all about, and still very ambivalent about it. I had established a career in another field - what did I need to make wine for?
But I had a friend, John Davidson of Bernard Machado Wines, who had both vineyards and a winery and offered me the loan of both if I wanted to try making wine. I put him off for almost a year but he was really insistent. He offered me complete control, complete access to his vineyards, even down to picking the rows I wanted to use and the day of harvest. Same in the winery - John let me decide everything, from selecting the barrels to dictating how to wash the hoses.
It was a true act of generosity and the experience was absolutely transformative. With that first vintage of 66 cases I realized that winemaking was completely different when you are dragging the hoses in the service of your own wine.
It turned out that winemaking encapsulated everything I loved about ecology - uncovering the interaction of plants with place - just experienced in a much more direct way. As an ecologist I spent a lot of time sifting through different kinds of statistical tests, trying to find the one that separates the pattern in the data from the noise. But making wine: Bam! The pattern is evident, right there on your tongue.
Alice Feiring, author of the wine blog Veritas In Vino, has praised Black Cap. She wrote it “had the guts to let the earth (and not just the fruit) shine through”. What is your take on wine critics? Is it possible they have too great a hand in driving wine styles? I’m thinking especially of high alcoholic fruit bombs so much favored by Robert Parker.
JL Critics say nice things sometimes and cruel things sometimes. Alice said a VERY nice thing.
Either way, if you love it you will keep making wine no matter what the critics say. It helps to be driven by your vines, rather than any “style” you’re trying to achieve. If you express the vintage and express the site and keep the wines clean, then you’ve done your job.
Of course good reviews buoy your spirits and bad ones bring you down, and sales trends tend to follow what the critics say. For a lot of the larger wineries this must breed a pragmatic approach about what must be done in order to pay the bills.
I have been so incredibly fortunate to have my Dad be my role model. He is very Taoist in his approach to winemaking - do not compromise the expression of the vineyard. Above all he’s taught me, keep your ego out of it. Once you use the wine to build a monument to your ego, it goes dead, it becomes beverage.
You then went to work at Bishop Creek Vineyards. What possibilities did you see there that so excited you?
JL Bishop Creek Vineyard is a laboratory - it is a very diverse site, makes some of the most distinctive wines in the Yamhill-Carlton district, and the owners were really cool to work with. They let me immediately transition to sustainable vineyard practices and made some big investments in new equipment. It was a great place to learn more about the intricacies of growing Pinot noir and increased my appreciation for Pinot’s ability to express the nuances of site.
Here in California many vineyard managers and winemakers are sometimes instructed to produce the house ’style’ even if it is at odds with their better judgement. Decisions made for them might include the use of 100% new oak, picking at very high brix, micro-ox and reverse osmosis. Do the wineries in Oregon generally give a freer hand to winemakers they hire? Are they receptive to change?
JL Kenneth, I can’t answer this question. I don’t have enough experience to make the comparison.
It is fair to say Oregon leads the rest of the nation with respect to Green, Organic practices. Of course, your distiguished father, David Lett, was a pioneer in this respect, and in whose footsteps you follow. What is it about Oregon that has allowed eco-friendly practices to flourish?
JL Dad was deeply influenced by the writings of Rachel Carson. He came to Oregon with the goal of growing grapes without toxic chemicals - a pretty radical idea at the time. He describes his Entomology class at Davis as “here’s the bug, here’s how to kill it.”
Many of those coming after my Dad were also looking for new ways of doing things… that’s why they were coming to Oregon - so we started with a fresh sheet of paper when it came to viticulture.
All of us in Oregon were lucky to have strong ties to Europe - we weren’t exactly fumbling in the dark. We had strong relationships with the Swiss, especially two researchers from the Federal Research Station in Wadenswil, Werner Koblet and Ernst Boller.
Koblet showed us how to train the vines to maximize ripeness and minimize disease pressure in a cold climate, things that have become standard worldwide, like leaf-pulling in the fruit zone.
Boller created the grape growing standards for the International Organization for Biological Control. His guidelines form the basis for Oregon’s LIVE (Low Input Viticulture and Enology) program.
Koblet and Boller’s work and our personal friendships with them gave Oregon a strong foundation in sustainable growing.
Was it written in the stars that you would one day take over at Eyrie Vineyards?
JL Good lord, no. Dad loves making wine so much… it was impossible to imagine him wanting to pass that on while he could still run a winepress. There was a time when I thought I would have my label and he would have his, but he really surprised me when he asked me to come back as winemaker. That brought a huge, shocking realization to me that he and I were both maturing.
David ‘Papa Pinot’ Lett is quite the determined man, an iconoclast and brilliant winegrower. Despite already having proved yourself a very capable winegrower was there some trepidation when he asked you to become Eyrie’s winemaker and vineyard manager in 2005?
JL Trepidation my part, certainly. Dad’s too, probably, but he’s doing a good job of hiding it. He has continually astonished me with his approval of what I’m doing at Eyrie, and for my part I take the legacy of his winegrowing approach - honor the grape, trust nature over technology, keep your ego out of it - very seriously.
In late 2006 I was putting together blends for the 2005 Reserve Pinot. This is a wine that has to age for decades, the best barrels from the oldest vines. But within that blend there’s an opportunity to play with shading, from strawberry to wet earth. I came up with something pretty radically to the earthy side, but Dad loved it. It’s a bit different than the Reserve wines of the past but Dad saw what I was doing and told me to take it forward. That was great.
Eyrie Vineyards is not Organic certified yet has always been sustainably farmed. Why not be certified?
JL Certification is basically licensing a trademark. The trademark is supposed to do all the work for you - it’s a way to communicate to the buyer. The certifying entity is supposed to help tell your story.
Having that tag on your bottle is a short cut for talking to people directly about what you do.
There are a lot of aspects to what we do that are uncommon - no irrigation, no ripping or tilling the soil, things that are allowed under the existing certification schemes that we don’t necessarily agree with.
I’m not saying we’d never certify, just that we don’t want to be lumped into a set of practices that we may not agree with 100%.
So, if we do certify, we’d STILL have to explain what we do that makes us unique. So there’s not much point, is there?
Could you tell us a little of how Eyrie’s vineyards are maintained, how Eyrie sustains biodiversity, beneficial insect populations, the health of the soil?
JL Hmm, positivity through the word “No.” No herbicides. No insecticides. No irrigation. No synthetic chemicals. We’ve been doing it that way since year zero.
The way we treat soil is unique, born out of a lot of reverence for lowly critters.
Soil is a living thing, composed of the particles of dirt and all the living things that hold it together. It is a delicate balance of bacteria, fungus, algae, insects, plants. Mechanical manipulation of the soil upsets the balance.
Basically, once a vineyard is established (about 8 years after planting,) we don’t till. We mow the grass between and under the rows, but we don’t like to see exposed dirt.
Grapevines are very dependant on their relationships with soil fungi for nutrients. When you till the soil you change the balance of the populations, throw the balance out of wack.
I saw the point of this early on. When I came back to Eyrie I took a bunch of soil nutrient samples. The vineyards hadn’t been fertilized in years, and I was expecting to see big deficiencies.
When I got the lab results back, I was shocked: there was no problem. I took the analysis to the local organic amendment expert (who also happens to sell fertilizer) and he told me the soils were fine, no additions needed.
Where, in those decades, were the vines getting their nutrients? From the ground, from their deep relationships with soil organisms. So we tread lightly.
What changes if any have you brought to Eyrie these past few years?
JL I’m not consciously trying to bring any changes. I’m using the same pieces of equipment I grew up with, making wine from the same vines, blending in the same way.
But in spite of that, change is inevitable. Wine is the expression of many, many tiny details. How tight you clamp a hose during racking can influence how much oxygen the wine picks up during transfer and in turn how the fruit is expressed. Topping barrels every 14 days creates a different wine than topping every 10. The sum of these little decisions is inevitably a different wine. Better? Worse? Time will tell. If I make enough bad decisions the wine will cellar poorly, if I make enough good decisions I’ll be drinking 2007 Eyrie in my dotage.
Is it your hope your children will become winemakers?
JL They’re winemakers now! My 4 year old loves to help at harvest, just like I did. And my 7 year old is getting ready to bottle her first wine - 6 cases worth. We walked through on a hot afternoon in September 06 and she tasted Pinot noir grapes from every single different clone and block in the old vineyard, and she chose her favorite rows.
We picked and crushed them for her. I gave her the options, and she decided wanted to play it safe and do a yeast inoculation instead of wild yeast. But she opted for an old-school champagne yeast instead of one of the new high tech ones. That’s my girl…
She’s done all her work by smell - she doesn’t care much for the taste, as of yet. That’s fine, this wine is her 21st. birthday present to herself. Right now, I’m her designated taster. I can’t wait for her Grandpa to try it, I think he will love it.
Future projects?
JL One vintage at time. I promise to keep it interesting.
Thank you, Jason.
Admin
Nicolas Quillé is Randall Grahm’s right hand man in the Pacific NorthWest. Yet Mr. Quillé remains independent. He speaks his mind. I think that is precisely why Mr. Grahm paused when, after he put some of his Bonny Doon labels on the market, Mr. Quillé protested that the Pacific Rim line should be retained: Riesling could do great things in Washington State. Mr. Grahm listened, Mr. Quillé went to work.
Supplemental to this interview I suggest readers visit the fine geological vids on Wine Press North West, and this page. View the August 14th, 2007 entry and that of October 30th, 2007.
Admin
Born in France, what was your first exposure to American wines?
Nicolas Quillé When I was in high school and then in college, I worked for a small wine shop in Lyon and I recall selling and tasting a Zinfandel from California (I can’t remember the name but it had a hot air balloon on the label). I don’t remember liking it that much but I was only 16 at the time.
The second experience was in California itself. A good friend of mine brought a secret bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and asked me to taste it blind. He then went on to ask me how much I would pay for it. It was good and I thought this could be about $25. Well, it was a Caymus Special Selection, and when it told me the price (it was about $100 at the time) I thought that this was really a great country to make wine in!
Before you came to the US you took university degrees at Dijon, in Bourgogne & at Reims, in Champagne. Could you give us a glimpse into the French university system with respect to viticultural degrees? What was your course of study?
Nicolas France has 5 universities that deliver a 2 year degree in Enology (Bordeaux, Dijon, Reims, Montpellier and Toulouse). They recruit only students that already have a 2 year college degree in agriculture (mine was a technical degree in animal production and plant genetics). The curriculum requires students to do two harvests in a wine cellar or a wine laboratory (I worked for Antonin Rodet in Burgundy and Domaine de La Courtade in Provence). The curriculum is a broad mix of Chemistry, Biology, Viticulture, Enology, Accounting, Sensory Evaluation, Fluid Mechanics, etc… They are no elective classes in France, you have to take it all!!! I must say that I was good at Statistics, Enology, Sensory evaluation and Chemistry. I was pretty lame at Viticulture…
A peculiarity of the French system is that each school specializes in its local specialty (Dijon – Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Reims – Champagne making…). After my Master’s in Burgundy I went for another year to get a specialization in Champagne winemaking and Champagne laws as I thought I might end up in Champagne making bubbly (My father works for Laurent Perrier Champagne). Not many students go for a specialization year as it requires students to have a Master degree in hand already.
How does viticultural/enology training in France differ from UC Davis or Cornell, the US approach generally?
Nicolas France has many layers of education from certificates to 2 year technical degrees to Master degrees and the possibility to specialize beyond the Master or to acquire a Doctorate. France has also many students trained in the Enological field (they churn about 180 student with a master degree in Enology every year). Most students in this field come from the industry with parents that are in the wine trade in some fashion. In France, winemaking schools are not open during harvest and they require students to work in the industry during that time. I never went to Davis or Cornell but it is my impression that students are more academic than their French counterpart. They often are very technically correct but lack some creativity. Obviously this is a very general statement.
What initially brought you to America?
Nicolas After my military duty in the French Air Force, I was looking for an international experience to sharpen my winemaking skills. I found a harvest job (in 1997) through the Paso Robles Grower Association at J. Lohr winery in Paso Robles. It was supposed to be a 3 months assignment so I came with just a small duffle bag full of clothes. The chemistry was good at J. Lohr and I never went back to France. I ended working for J.Lohr for a year and a half.
We’ve read you took a business degree, a master’s, from the University of Washington. From your point of view how were merlot’s fortunes affected by the film Sideways? Did you enjoy the film?
Nicolas Unfortunately I did not see Sideways. I think that Merlot was in a mature phase of its growth anyway and that the movie just precipitated this. I also truly believe that wine tastes are changing in the country as our food taste evolve toward lighter, fresher foods. Merlot is too big of a wine to be your everyday red. My opinion: switch to Riesling.
And while we’re on cinema, what is your take on Nossiter’s Mondovino?
Nicolas I saw Mondovino twice. It is a very good, thought provoking documentary that I would recommend anyone in our industry to watch. It is obviously a very personal take on the industry but it reinforced two life guiding principles for me. 1) Wine is a beverage for everyone, there is no need to make it a complicated and elitist drink. 2) The magic of wine comes from the people and the land, in the long run this is what makes it such a fascinating drink.
When did you first learn of biodynamics? What was your impression?
Nicolas Like most people I probably read about it in some trade magazine and never paid attention to it. Randall Grahm is really the person that did the most to educate me. I always had a lot of respect for Randall, so when we discussed it I never had a doubt that this was something that I should be more aware of. I have, to this date, some reservation about certain aspects of biodynamics but I am overall in agreement with the principle that the vineyard is a part of a greater organism. I guess that I am not a biodynamic jihadist, I am more of a moderate recent convert.
And now, with respect to the Wallula vineyard, what percentage is biodynamic?
Nicolas All our Riesling is Biodynamic at Wallula. This represents 140 acres total and is without a doubt the majority of all Demeter certified vineyards in Washington State. Our acreage represents about 25% of the Wallula Vineyard and this is, to my knowledge, the only part of the vineyard that is farmed biodynamically.
Could you give us some idea of the insect complex at Wallula. What are the principle grape pests in the area?
Nicolas We are blessed with few pests overall in Eastern Washington. By far the two main concerns are leafhoppers and dust mites.
And soil-borne diseases?
Nicolas None that I know at Wallula. This is pretty much virgin ground so it has never been introduced with weird pathogens.
The last time I was in near the Tri-Cities the wind was howling at 30 mph! How does wind complicate the local viticulture? How is erosion minimized? What inter-row cover crops are used?
Nicolas The main challenges in a high wind viticultural region is evapotranspiration; the vines’ stomata let much water out of the plants which requires frequent watering. Thankfully, the water retention of our soils is quite good which alleviate the need for heavy watering like this is the case for the windy Malborough region in New Zealand. We have also decent challenges with canopy management and cordon rollover on young vines (this is when the cordon rolls and “reverse” spurs position so the shoots are pointing down on a traditional Vertical Shoot Positioning trained vine). Your point about erosion is real because our soils are wind blown deposit and they leave as fast (or faster) as they came. As a result cover crops are a necessity in Eastern Washington. At Pacific Rim we are moving slowly from seeded covercrop to native grasses which are easier to maintain and a bit more “natural”.
There can be significant differences in the depth of loess deposits on the Wallula slope. The hard pan of calcium carbonate there averages to 1 foot thick. How is terroir affected by the shallower vine rooting?
Nicolas Not sure where you got the information about the calcium hard pan or “caliche” as it is referred to (may be you are referring to the Wahluke slope that is rich in caliche in an unpredictable way). This caliche layer is the result of the accumulation of calcium carbonates at the same levels, years after years, due to weathering. We do not have that problem at Wallula because over time the site had received a fair amount of wind blown loess (we think we have 40 feet) that “renewed” the top soil regularly thus moving up the crystallization zone and avoiding a calcium “loading” at the same level year after year. Because we are sitting at 1,200 feet we also have pre-Missoula flood soils below the wind blown loess (may be another 40 feet). Our soils at Wallula are definitely deep and we have buried drips down 3 feet to promote root exploration and lower water usage.
With only 6-7 inches of rain locally, how does Wallula irrigate?
Nicolas It is all irrigated with drips (underground drips). The water is pumped straight from the mighty Columbia River.
My understanding is that 15% of Pacific Rim’s riesling is of German origin. In another interview you stressed its use in blending with Washington juice for ’stylistic’ reasons. What are those reasons?
Nicolas We only use the German fraction for the Dry Riesling and it makes up 15% of that blend. The reason for using the German component are purely stylistic as you are pointing out and it is by far the most expensive part of the Dry Riesling blend. The German component usually comes from Rheinhessen and is selected by our friend Johannes Selbach in the Mosel. We use the German wine for several reasons. First, it is generally riper at lower Brix and therefore help us maintain our alcohol levels low (toward 12.5%). Secondly, it is high in acid and reduces our overall pH while boosting the total acidity of the blend. Finally the German fraction is low in phenolics and rich in minerality bringing an extra twist to the overall blend. I would love to replace it with a Northwest sourcing but haven’t found where it could come from yet.
In addition to practicing biodynamics, what other ‘green’ initiatives does Pacific Rim currently employ or plan to employ, particularly at the Port of Kennewick winery in West Richland?
Nicolas The list of our efforts and our dreams runs long. Several themes run through the business and guide our actions; first we want to be as sustainable as possible and second we do not want to greenwash the company. Our path to sustainability so far has lead us to work on 1) growing grapes that are good for your health 2) Reducing our energy footprint at the winery and our waste impact and 3) increasing the recyclability and the use of recycled material of our packaging. Our efforts are greatly helped by the fact that we are focused at 90% on Riesling (which creates great efficiencies).
We have right now 30% of our grapes farmed under Biodynamic practices. We are working with the remaining 70% of our growers to establish an Integrated Environmental Plan where we commonly agree on improving the sustainability of our viticultural practices. We have been putting together a grading system to help us grade each block on about 25 criteria and we are working on classifying all chemicals (organic or synthetic) used in our vineyards. This will lead on some serious progress I believe.
The winery was built with many energy saving features (use of natural lights, special insulation, roof that can support solar panels) and we have very high tech equipment (cross flow filters, centrifuge, Electrodialysis) that allow us to reduce our waste stream and our energy consumption. We are moving toward zero waste rapidly as we do not use diatomee earth in our filtration and we compost 100% of our pomace waste back in the vineyard.
We have greatly simplified our package which reduces waste tremendously. We are also requiring our suppliers to outline their sustainability efforts to understand their position on this topic.
We have a few other venues that we are exploring to reduce our post bottling environmental impact such as warehouse optimization (efficient shipping route, low case good inventory…) or the use of lighter alternative packaging.
You’ve mentioned the desire to let wild fermentations run their course. Can you tell us of Pacific Rim’s success with this approach?
Nicolas Our successes are very good so far. Our single vineyards are 100% wild fermented. In 2007 our sweet Riesling was 75% wild fermented and the Dry was 20% wild fermented. We are moving toward 100% wild ferments for 2008 with the exception of the Vin De Glaciere which is made from frozen grapes (can’t keep the yeast alive on the skin when it is frozen). We have put in place an elaborate system to make sure that we prepare a “pied de cuve” or starter for each vineyard a week before we receive the grapes from that vineyard.
Would you tell us a few of your favorite Washington wineries?
Nicolas My preference is based on several factors such as the winery philosophy, how good they are at their specialty and the personality of the person in charge of QC: Cayuse for its Syrah, probably one of the most Terroir focused wine in the State – Christophe Baron. Woodward Canyon for their cabernet Sauvignon Artist Series – Rick Small. Boudreaux Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon– Rob Newsom. Chinook for their Sauvignon Blanc – Kay Simon.
Why only do Riesling?
Nicolas We believe that to do things well you have to focus. What other varietal than Riesling can provide you with such a great array of styles that allow you to focus while also having fun and diversity? Riesling can fulfill us in many ways and is so relevant to today’s food. It is crisp, very natural and untouched and works with so many different cuisines. It is the greatest grape in the world.
We focus on Riesling (90% of our production) but we also play with Chenin Blanc and Gewurztraminer. We are not against trying a few other varietal in the future, but we want to stay very focused on Riesling because we want to make the best Riesling in the country and may be one day in the world.
Thank you, Nicolas.
Admin
I ventured up into the Santa Lucia Highlands AVA some weeks ago while doing research on the Mission Soledad itself located on the Salinas valley floor. The SLH AVA is one of many AVAs contained within the Central Coast AVA and borders the Monterey AVA which included the Salinas Valley and Carmel Valley on the west side of the SLH range. Established in 1991, the SLH AVA begins at 40′ above sea level and vineyards can be found as high as 1200′. Recent data indicates 4,700 acres of grapes under cultivation though I suspect more has been recently planted. I saw many new plantings along the AVA’s frontage River Road. Indeed, nested within the web site is another figure of 5,523 acres under cultivation. In any event, it is safe to say the AVA is clearly undergoing a period of considerable growth! Grapes grown include modest amounts of cab franc and syrah, even petit verdot, but far and away the lion’s share of acreage is dedicated to chardonnay and pinot noir.
And on May 17th the vintners of the Santa Lucia Highlands will be hosting the 2nd Annual SLH Winegrowers’ Gala.
Curiously, the official SLH web site does not have a sufficiently detailed map for driving instructions. They do, however, provide a link to the River Road Wine Trail which will save readers here a step.
As a side note, I strongly encourage those planning to attend to consider taking the Carmel Valley Road either from the West side of the SLH Range should you be coming down Highway 1, or travel it back over should 101 be your approach. Prepare to add more than an hour to your regional tour. Drive safely!
Admin
Phil and Peggy Crews are the owners of Pelican Ranch Winery in Santa Cruz, Ca. *Though their website is in need of a serious overhaul useful information may still be found there. They enjoy a substantial subscriber base and sell a high proportion of their wines through their tasting room which is open from 12 to 5 Friday through Sunday. An eclectic mix of people pass through their door, university students, winemakers, tourists, and wine enthusiasts, of course.
They are active members of the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association (SCMWA). I caught up with Phil at their winery located on Inglas St. in Santa Cruz.
Admin When did you become a winemaker?
Phil Crews When did I become a winemaker? Well, that’s almost a philosophical question! At this point in time I don’t consider myself a winemaker because the goal is to buy the best grapes we can, to harvest them at the correct moment, to put them in the best available cooperage, and not to have to do anything. And the result of that process would be being a wine shepherd, not being a winemaker.
So I have been making wine since the early ’70’s. We established the winery in 1997 and moved to our current spot here five years ago. So, I’ve seen a lot of grapes come and go. I’d say probably 80% to 90% of the fruit we get is really great and so all we have to do is shepherd it from the vineyard into the bottle.
Do you have long-term contracts with grape growers. How does that work?
Phil Crews I would suspect we’re like other small wineries, and that is its pretty much a gentleman’s or gentlewoman’s agreement basically. I think a good example is that since ‘97 we began getting fruit from Los Carneros and the contract comes either simultaneous to the harvest and crush, or maybe a few moments before. By and large we don’t have any long term contracts with anybody. But yet we’ve been making the same wines from the same vineyards over and over again. There are some people who would like to engineer contacts and we’re willing to do that.
Actually, there is one exception, I won’t mention the vineyard, but the ideal situation is to become partners with a particular vineyard and then sharing in the risk in terms of the harvest and how Mother Nature is going to treat the grapes. So we’ve got a situation where we own fruit in about an acre of land, and we dictate what the tons per acre will be. We’re simply paying for an acre of fruit at a certain value. I think more and more people are going to go to that arrangement. That really develops the partnership with the vineyard and the winemaker.
And to return to the earlier question, winemaking really begins in the vineyard. The winemaker doesn’t do anything, in my opinion. Its the vineyard and the grower that really does it all. Of course, the winemaker is capable of screwing it up!
How many cases do you produce a year?
Phil Crews I would appear that we produce 1000 cases. And that number gets bumped up and down as a function of last minute changes in terms of grapes coming in. Our goal, our model is very different than a lot of places. What we’re doing is making about 20 different wines, exploring terroir under the circumstances of the different regions of Monterey, the Santa Cruz Mountains and beyond. We’re going for maritime location of grapes, and were getting enough grapes to make as many as 150 cases but as little as just a barrel’s worth, which can be from 22 to 25 cases. So, let’s see, for the last four years we’ve pretty much followed that model, it’s been creeping up a bit, but usually no more than 20 wines from 20 tons of fruit. In principle that translates into about 1000 cases.
And your barrel program?
Phil Crews What we’re doing in terms of wood, and everybody is challenged at this point, the amount of euros that a dollar will buy, of course, we all know is going down. Still I feel firmly we have to use French oak. About 10% of our wood is Oregon oak and about 25% of the wood we get is brand new French oak. All the wines are barrel fermented. And we keep barrels only about 4 years. This is really what all wineries do if they’re trying to produce wine at the top of the flavor profile. So that’s what we’re doing and we’re going to keep experimenting. I’ve tried a few American oak barrels, I’ve tried Hungarian oak, I’ve tried Yugoslavian oak, but for the flavor profiles we’re going at it just doesn’t work. So French oak is the key. Oregon barrels, however, offer very unique notes, they provide a really interesting tool to produce flavors and aromas that are unmatched by French barrels, or other parts of the country.
What kinds of wines do you specialize in?
Phil Crews Our focus is wines typically found in the Burgundy and the Rhone regions, both red and white. In Burgundy the white grape chardonnay is the most renowned, pinot gris is close behind that. Another kind of obscure fact is that we make a dry gewurztraminer and in maps that I have of Burgundy going back 500-600 years ago show that Alsace was once a part of Burgundy. Recently someone asked why we don’t put our gewutrz in a hock-type bottle so I tried to remind them of this fact. Essentially we make any wine that I think will fit nicely into a Burgundy bottle by tradition.
So the reds from Burgundy are pinot noir. For other reds we look at the Rhone; the top of the list there would be syrah. All single vineyard, like the whites. Now, there are blends we make as well, two unique blends, inspired by Rhone practices. One, Trois Amis Rouge, is a red blend of three grapes, again from a single vineyard, syrah, cinsault, and actually the petit verdot is a ringer. That’s the only grape we’ve ever had in the winery that is not traditionally Burgundy or Rhone. Of course, we know the petit verdot comes from Bordeaux. We also have a white blend, Trois Amis Blanc, that is based on fruit from the Santa Cruz Mountains AVA and that’s a combination of viognier, roussanne, and marsanne. Two things that make these wines really great: firstly, the origins in the Santa Cruz Mountains, secondly, the co-fermentation, cold harvest, and barrel fermentation of all of these. And I would say that these blends are truly spectacular and something that is representative of things we’re going to continue to do.
In the past we made something we called Spectrum Rouge that illustrates our program with zinfandel, but we mixed in syrah and actually chardonnay. And there was a wonderful array of flavors and aromas that were found with the Spectrum Rouge. So zinfandel is another wine we make. And again, a question comes up, why do we bottle zinfandel in the Burgundy-type bottle? There is no short answer. The long answer is that most people… well, the short answer is that most wineries put zinfandel, for reason not at all clear to me, into a Bordeaux bottle. And given that we now know the origins of zinfandel are in Croatia it seems to me that Burgundy has a greater kinship with Croatia than does Bordeaux.
Anyway, that sort of lays out what we do here in terms of the various wines. We have about an equal mix of red and white wines, actually at this point its about 65% red, 45% white. When we started the white wines were all chardonnay but as the years have gone by we’ve expanded to these other things that really compliment the chardonnay nicely; the pinot gris, the gewurtz, viognier, roussanne, and marsanne.
One other thing to take note of, if the focus of the winery is to delve in Burgundy and Rhone style grapes then I think the ultimate expression of that is to have pinotage in the flavor mix. This coming spring we’ll release our first pinotage. Down the road we’ll add mouvedre. Assuming the wine staff can get their act together!
In addition to winemaking you have a career outside of the winery. Could you say a little bit about that?
Phil Crews Very briefly, because the readers of you blog would be quite bored with that exercise! Winemaking involves really capturing beautiful flavors and aromas that I regard as secondary metabolites or secondary chemistry and so my ability to look at that contribution to wines comes from the research I’ve been doing over the last thirty years that looks at natural products chemistry of marine organisms. Our lab on the University of California Santa Cruz campus is a thriving entity and there are many lessons that I’ve learned from doing academic research that I try and bring back to the winery. So on a day to day basis I’m a thesis advisor to all of the students who work with us; and on a day to day basis at the winery, as I said earlier, I’m the wine shepherd. I’m watching over the barrels, trying to steer them in the right direction, and not try to introduce any artificial influences. And that is also what I am doing up at the university, trying to steer student minds toward quality.
Is their anything else you’d like to add?
Phil Crews I’m trying to bring the sense of education back to the winery. For every Passport what we do is a really fun thing: I set up a tent, I have a series of questions that I present to people and get them to participate in the answering of the questions. And generally the reward for correct answers is to be able to taste barrel samples! Its been a delightful experience that we’ll repeat four times a year. I think people have really have come to enjoy this and note that if they want to have that experience they come to us at Passport.
Something special that we’re going to do in the near future is have a series of tastings of what I call ‘mystery wines’…
Blind tastings?
Phil Crews Ah… I’ll just leave it at ‘mystery wines’. It will be three or four wines that we’ll present with questions that people will have to answer. It will be a very eye-opening. Another eye-opening thing we do on occasion is we ask the question: What would you do with a bottle of Pelican Ranch wine in the unlikely event at dinner you simply can’t consume the whole bottle? And I call that my ‘open bottle tasting trial’. We’ve explored here at the winery various regimes for preserving that wine for a twenty-four hour period or longer. The outcome has been quite surprising, based on trial and error.
One other thing for the future is an exploration of our labels, a review of all the unique information we provide.
Thank you, Phil.
Admin
*Their web site has since been updated!
It was announced April 2nd at the dinner gala ‘Cornell Celebrates New York Wines’ that Cornell University will build an on-campus teaching winery for undergraduates, a welcomed addition to their three-year-old Enology and Viticultural Program. Both Enology and Viticulture classes had long been a part of the Horticultural/Food Sciences, but only graduate students hitherto could seek degrees in either speciality. Undergrads had first to major in food science of pomology, for example. This would change when it was recognized there had emerged an acute shortage of vineyard managers and winemakers to meet the increasing demand for regional expertise in cool-climate viticulture and its associated pest complexes, a demand simply not met by West Coast university programs. New York State’s wine industry has been growing dramatically; it is currently #3 in the nation in grape and wine production. In 1976 nine wineries existed; now, 220 wineries (as of this writing!) populate the state. And over 600 vineyards. (Additional details may be found here.)
The necessary next step was to offer through Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, four-year undergraduate majors in Enology and Viticulture within the larger programs of plant and food science. (Currently 35 undergrads are enrolled in this young program, and it will be capped at about 55.) But an additional refinement is now in the works for E/V majors. Under the guidance of Professor Ian Merwin E/V will be consolidated, moving it away from the plant/food sciences major. As he wrote in an e-mail, “The initial EV majors were nested within the existing undergrad programs in Horticulture and Food Science at Cornell. The new program is independent and interdisciplinary”. And as an integral part of this move will be the construction of the winery.
The winery will provide undergrads hands-on experience in winemaking, just as Cornell’s vineyards now do for budding viticulturists. Of Cornell’s vineyards Prof. Merwin writes, “[There are] 8 acres total on two research farms near the Ithaca campus. The one in Ithaca (3 acres) has entirely hybrids such as Marchal Foch, Cayuga White, Seyval, Himrod, GR7, Chancellor, Traminette, Noiret, Corot Noir, and Concord. The one 10 miles north of campus with a milder winter climate because of its proximity to Cayuga Lake consists almost entirely of vinifera cultivars (Reisling, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris, Lemberger, Chardonnay, and Cabernet Franc, now about 5 acres planted).” And of the Geneva Experimental Research Station? Merwin writes, “Most of their vinifera plantings were winter killed in 2004, so the remainder would be mostly hybrid grapes developed by the grape breeding program and grape Genetics Unit in Geneva”.
The winery will be 2400 square feet, plenty of room for a substantial case production. In fact, I asked Merwin whether Cornell, like Cal State, Fresno, will be marketing wines they produce. He would very much like to, but not if it would mean Cornell might compete with small, family wineries, a possibility he is very sensitive to. In any event, the architectural plans remain the property of Beardsley Design Associates in Auburn so I cannot post them here.
Finally, while reading the Cornell Chronicle post I noticed a list of sponsors for the evening’s event. They were Stoutridge Vineyard, Antica Napa Valley, Channing Daughters Winery, Raphael Winery, and Constellation Wines US. I was curious as to why Constellation participated. Prof. Merwin wrote, “Constellation Brands is the corporate evolutionary successor of the original Taylor, NY and Canandaigua wine companies in the Finger Lakes region. Of course it is now a very different regionally and globally integrated corporation, but there are still some of the original links and Cornell people in that corporation, and they have been supportive of Cornell’s efforts to develop this new undergraduate major”.
Cornell’s undergraduate E/V brochure may be found here.
Admin
It is unusual to begin a book review with what is left out. But in Clive S. Michelsen’s otherwise useful guide Oregon Eco-Friendly Wine, Leading the World in “Green” Wine I found only a single line written about the Oregon wine pioneer David Lett of The Eyrie Vineyard. This is not a criticism of the book per se but, rather, it is meant to point out an odd paradox of the ‘eco-friendly’ or ‘green’ movement in the US wine industry, a movement perhaps strongest in Oregon. The paradox is that despite practicing such progressive vineyard and winery management programs a winery is effectively limited in promoting this value in its wines without certification. Eyrie Vineyards is a case in point. Mr. Lett’s practice has always been ‘green’, avant la lettre, yet you would never know it from Mr. Michelsen’s book. In fact, the book’s competent index of wineries does not even provide contact information! This is because Mr. Michelsen’s central focus is less on eco-friendly or green as the title states than on certified wineries.
And what a list of certifying organizations he provides! There is Tilth largely a USDA Organic certifier; Low Input Viticulture and Enology, Inc. 
(L.I.V.E.); VINEA, though voluntary it requires for membership observing, in Michelsen’s words, “strict environmental standards and [] high quality farming practices”; Demeter, the keeper of trademarked cosmic mysteries, so to speak; LEED, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, essentially a building and architectural certifier; 
and lastly, Carbon Neutral, an Oregon state government initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. A winery’s successful participation would be rewarded with tax breaks and carbon credits.
Each organization listed above provides their own assessment tools to a winery, of course, most require fees, on-site inspections, and exhaustive record keeping is a must for a winery to maintain its certification. In fact, it can be so demanding a regimen of paperwork that many Oregon wineries and vineyard managers, especially the smaller ones, simply choose ‘do the right thing’ anyway, practice sustainable agriculture, or continue to do so, just to avoid the hassle. Further, certification can bring associated risks of crop failure, for example. It is perhaps not quite credible that an Organic or Biodynamic etc. ‘winegrower’ (the mot du jour) would sit on his or her hands and watch disease or pests devastate their vineyard. And so it happens that some winegrowers do not seek certification precisely because they need a full ‘tool box’, as it were, owing to the multiple exigencies attending their agricultural craft. No mystery there.
On the other hand, clearly benefits flow from certification, and not only the obvious improvement of the environment. The consumer is directly informed with special marks and label modifications on the bottle itself that a wine is made responsibly and with care. The question becomes what impact such advertisements make, whether it informs consumer choice. Here in California there is a trend toward more informative ’shelf talkers’, little bits of supplemental info tacked alongside the omnipresent rating points of one critic or another, especially helpful when, for the smaller winery, label modifications my prove too costly. And in an increasingly competitive marketplace any idea will be explored.
In any event, Michelsen provides a good overview of Oregon’s AVAs, including very helpful geological notes, and writes clearly of the selected certified Oregon wineries, though many of his specific winery observations come from narratives already existing in their promotional materials on the web. In some cases little primary, independent research was conducted.
Featured wineries include King Estate, Beaux Freres, co-owned by Robert Parker Jr., Sokol Blosser, and 13 others. 
The book is well illustrated, most of the full color photographs taken by the author himself. But just who might work the vineyards and do the harvesting is undocumented. And surprising for a book with a copyright date of 2008 its statistical charts of Oregon’s wine industry date from 2005. Significant changes have occurred. In 2005 the total planted acreage topped 14,000, by 2006 the figure had grown to 15,600, 2007 saw yet another increase, to 17,400 total acres. Similarly has the total number of wineries grown: the 2005 figures cited report 303 (op. cit.), while by 2007 the figure climbed to 370!
The book is quite hefty, 264 pages of glossy paper (impossible to recycle!), and measures 11 1/2 x 9 1/2, not very traveller friendly for that. I would hope later editions be scaled down to a more manageable guidebook dimension. And have the pagination corrected! A bit chaotic.
All in all, Oregon can feel justly proud of their extraordinary strides forward, both with respect to the quality of their wines and ‘green’ viticulture. This book will bring a greater appreciation for what Oregon has accomplished.
Admin
If you thought you knew Hawaiian wines or haven’t thought about them at all, then you just might want to read this. An interesting experiment is underway on the island of Maui. Tedeschi Vineyards, also known as Maui’s Winery, has been working for the past six years on an ambitious program of winery and vineyard improvement, including the planting grape varieties never before tried in Hawaii, Syrah, Syrah Noir, Chenin Blanc, Pinot Gris, and two Chardonnay clones, 4 and 74. And their hard work is beginning to pay off. Under the visionary leadership of its President, Paula Hegele, Maui’s Winery has begun a new phase in its already successful history.
The vineyards are located at an elevation of 2000 feet on the historically rich ‘Ulupalakua Ranch. 
Owned since 1960 by C. Pardee Erdman, Jr., he was approached in 1974 by Emil Tedeschi, a Napa Valley vintner. He was persuaded to lease Mr. Tedeschi about 23 acres of his considerable estate for the growing of grapes. Mr. Tedeschi, after experimenting with dozens of varieties, finally settled on Carnelian. The wine would prove rewarding, as would the exotic pineapple wine, Maui Blanc, made while waiting for the Carnelian to come into maturity. The Carnelian was first harvested in 1980. Maui Brut was released in 1983, followed by a methode champenoise sparkler, Blanc de Noir, in 1984.
And so the winery motored along until the turn of this century 
when a die-off of the Carnelian vines was first noticed, eventually taking virtually all of the plantings. Only a single acre remains today. The culprit was finally diagnosed as Eutypa Dieback, a plant fungus most common in conditions of high moisture. The aggressive pruning required for Hawaiian viticulture leaves little time for the proper healing of cane wounds, as would normally happen in a drier, seasonal climate, when a vine becomes dormant. There is, in fact, no dormancy period in Hawaii.
As you might suspect on an island chain where there is but one season punctuated by frequent rains, where tomatoes live for years, finally snaking into trees, growing grapes is no easy task. Vines experience no seasonal stress. They simply grow. Left to themselves they would cease producing a harvestable quantity of grapes and be perfectly happy to live out their lives true to their nature as vines. So, after harvest, for Tedeschi typically August to September, a considerable labor-intensive intervention in the vineyard is necessary to force a kind of dormancy on the vines, a rest, as Paula Hegele called it. Hence, the vines are starved, pruning is heavy, no irrigation, no fertilizer.
And Eutypa is just one concern for the tropical viticulturist. There are also grape root borers, fruit-loving birds, smashing rains. And these problems are quite apart from the matter of grape phenolic and flavonol concentration at the greatly accelerated rate of fruit maturation as occurs in Hawaii. Indeed, from year to year Maui’s Winery may experience a variance of grape yield of anywhere from 6 to 30 tons! One thousand cases were produced this year.
But the die-off of Carnelian vines, though a disaster, proved a short term set back. 
Paula Hegele saw an opportunity. A new plan was devised: replanting with the new grape varieties listed above. In the ground: 2 acres of Syrah Noir, 2 acres of Chenin Blanc, 2 acres of Pinot Gris, 4 acres of Chard, 2 of clone 4, two of clone 74. Four acres of Syrah (clone 877) are already yielding. 2006 saw 580 cases made of Plantation Red, a 91% Syrah, 9% Carnelian blend. New vines are being added each year. A balance of only 8 acres remain to be planted. They hope to maintain a production level, when all the new vines are producing, of 2000-3000 cases of grape wines. They are serious. They’ve sought out the services of wine consultant Chris Martell. Thirty years in the business, he has been a winemaker and consultant at celebrated wineries in California, France, Chile, Australia and Tasmania, a specialist in difficult climates.
Yet, the question has to be asked: Why do it? Why the effort? Because they are simply not satisfied with providing a satisfying but souvenir wine. Because Maui’s Winery, driven by Paula Hegele, wants to make a great wine from Hawaiian-grown grapes. I wish them well
Admin
On the occasion of Rudolf Steiner’s birthday, February 27.
Biodynamics (BD) apppears on course to become the next ‘big thing’ in viticulture and wine marketing. ‘Organic’ no longer seems quite enough. Witness on the web site Fork & Bottle (F&B) which maintains perhaps the only Master List of biodynamic wine producers. F&B’s list currently numbers 425. Actually, that’s not quite true. Despite the title the list also includes wineries “practicing very sustainable agriculture”, “practicing Organic with some BD practices”, making wines “from BD grown grapes”, “a mix of Organic and BD”, “converting to BD”. Which is to say the actual number of BD producers cannot, in fact, be learned from the list. Be that as it may, it is telling of Biodynamic’s popularity that F&B, as of this writing, offers has no comparable list of Organic producers. Has Organic become irrelevant or, at the very least, a mere servant to BD? And just what is “practicing very sustainable agriculture” besides a very general orientation? The list’s ambiguities are actually the consequence of Organic and BD certification requirements (including “converting to BD”) by the USDA and Demeter-International respectively. But the list also points to a wider debate between forms of certification and, too, the practice of “very sustainable agriculture” without benefit of a trademark.
One of the odd consequences of the Biodynamic movement as shaped by Demeter-International, its proprietary arbiter, has been the fixing of a date, 1924, for the birth of any and all sustainable agricultural practices. It was in that year Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) delivered his Agricultural Lectures, Demeter-International’s founding texts. A modern reader could be forgiven in thinking agriculture before Steiner was poorly practiced, misguided, devoid of ’spirituality’. But that is far from accurate. Virtually all of Steiner’s practical ‘innovations’, in fact, precede him. (With a notable ‘exception’ I’ll get to in a moment.) Take the multi-volume Encyclopedia of Practical Farming published in 1916 under the direction of Sears, for example. We read in the chapter “How Poor Soils May Be Improved” the following advice under the heading: How to Keep the Soil Fertile
- Raise Live Stock
- Rotate the Crops
- Grow Clover, Alfafa, and other Legumes
- Save Barnyard Manure
- Pasture Rolling Lands to Prevent Washing
- Add Humus-Don’t Burn the Stocks
- Supply Needed Elements
Or review the holdings of USDA’s National Agricultural Library under the title “Tracing the Evolution of Organic/Sustainable Agriculture”. There we find American texts from the 19th century forward dedicated to composting, growing cover crops for green manuring and nitrogen fixing, soil improvement through the incorporation of cow manure, Henry David Thoreau’s, ‘Walden’ (1854), among other volumes. Not included on the library’s page, but available for the dedicated researcher, are the thousands of agriculture-related essays, pamphlets, the serial run of the Farmer’s Almanac, and so much more, all printed on behalf of the US farmer.
And such historical farming bibliographies exist in the libraries of other nations, of course. The French periodical Annals comes to mind. 
And on the British list must be included the work of Sir Albert Howard (1873-1947). Howard was raised on a farm in England, was a mycologist, taught agricultural science before leaving for India where from 1905 to 1931 he conducted ag research. Though he is generally credited with founding organic farming, he did not coin the word. He called his approach Nature’s farming: “Mother earth never attempts to farm without livestock; she always raises mixed crops; great pains are taken to preserve the soil and prevent erosion; the mixed vegetable and animal wastes are converted into humus; there is no waste; the processes of growth and the processes of decay balance one another; ample provision is made to maintain large reserves of fertility; the greatest care is taken to store the rainfall; both plants and animals are left to protect themselves from disease.” From his An Agricultural Testament, 1940.
The term ‘organic’ was coined in 1940 by Walter Northbourne, and he meant it in its philosophical sense, “Having a complex but necessary interrelationship of parts, similar to that in living things”. Look to the Land, 1940. So, strictly speaking, we cannot really say the greater part of the history of agriculture before the modern era, before the environmental calamities of the Green Revolution or Intensive farming, was ‘organic’. (Or even ’sustainable’ for the word is ‘post-modern’, a shuffling of past and future without a decidable present.) Perhaps we can call it ‘custodial’ agriculture: the exercise of the principle ‘farm today so that you may farm tomorrow’. In any event, the most successful historical agricultural practices, from China and India, and from a host of researchers preceding Howard, all were gathered together, enriched by Howard’s own work, but only later placed by others under the concept ‘organic’, and with a small ‘o’. The point here is that Howard situated himself in an ongoing, informal world-wide research program. Any new development would be welcomed.
With Steiner, as read by Demeter, it is a bit different. Unlike Howard, Steiner himself knew little of farming. He admitted as much in the Discussions of June 11th in the essays. “I myself planted potatoes, and though I did not breed horses, at any rate I helped to breed pigs. And in the farmyard of our immediate neighbourhood I lent a hand with the cattle.” That’s about it. Yet, throughout his prolific body of writings he will often return again and again to the same few bucolic farming visions of his childhood. Of his younger brother, Gustav (1866-1941), born deaf, or his sister, Leopoldine (1864-1927), a seamstress, both with whom he gardened as a child, we read virtually nothing. Rarely has the potato been so fixed in a mind.
Of course its true, Steiner wrote and delivered his 1924 essays (at the insistence of others) as a response to the perceptible decline of soil and livestock vitality brought about by the increasing use of technology, of chemical fertilizers, and especially by what we might popularly call the ’scientific/materialist’ mindset. Still, his concerns, it is clear, were already shared by farmers, philosophers, and agricultural researchers decades earlier. Work on the subject was already well under way by the time he stepped into the matter.
So how, then, does Biodynamics differ from the centuries of farming that has gone before, whether custodial, sustainable, or organic? We shall never know from Demeter for they do research solely from 1924 forward. However rich and creative historical agricultural practices world-wide may have been, whatever instruction they might provide us, they are of limited interest to Demeter for a very simple reason: recognition of historical precedence would erode the centrality of Rudolf Steiner.
Demeter has its origins in the ‘Experimental Circle’, a group inspired by Steiner and ratified by his presentation of the Agricultural Lectures before them. They were largely gentlemen farmers of a decidedly aristocratic bent, hence, their ‘natural’ inclination was high-minded, exclusive. Of the peasantry they had little to say. Indeed, Steiner was aware, to his lasting credit, not only of the limits of his own farming background but, more importantly, of the danger the Experimental Circle posed to the preservation of what we might call ‘peasant memory’. Steiner, following the discussion of June 11th, 1924 (op.cit.) made very clear that he was of both the ‘high-minded’ and of the peasantry, however remote. He cautioned his host, Count Keyserlingk, that one must never forget what was called by the circle “peasant stupidity”. Steiner insisted we must draw from their agricultural efforts: “Then this stupidity will become — “wisdom before God.” Demeter and their trademarked Biodynamics, however, neglects this implied research program. Instead, after assuming organic agricultural principles, they take as their start and end point Steiner’s sole practical innovation: The Preparations.
The Preparations, numbered 500-507, are as follows: for spraying, 500-Horn manure, cow manure that has been fermented in the soil over winter inside a cow horn, and 501-Horn silica, finely ground quartz meal that spends the summer in the soil inside a cow horn. For the compost, preparations 502-507, yarrow, chamomile, stinging nettle, oak bark, dandelion and valerian. Specific formulations described in Steiner’s words may be found by clicking the Preparations link above. More modern expressions, with a few supplemental preps created since Steiner, may be found on the Josephine Porter Institute web site and that of The Biodynamic Agricultural Association, respectively Demeter’s US and UK distributors.
The Preparations are meant for any and all manner of agriculture. But of Viticulture, do they work? I mean, above and beyond organic methods? Here are three voices: The first from Red White and Green, an Australian web site dedicated to biodynamic viticulture. The second is a video testimonial from grower/producer Steve Beckman out of Santa Barbara. And the third is of special interest. Jennifer Reeve is a scientist from Washington State University, yet also well-versed in Rudolf Steiner. She grew up on a biodynamic farm, attended a Waldorf school and worked at the above-referenced Josephine Porter Institute. She has perhaps done the most detailed research on the actual benefits BD might bring to the vineyard. Now, if you think you already know what she would write you would be wrong. Here is her report, first published in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, 2005. She later published an addendum of sorts wherein she writes, “I have to be blunt because it was a shock to me when I first started reading the small amount of scientific literature on biodynamics and conducting my own experiments: the dramatic results I had heard about simply were not there. Statistically significant effects in flavour [sic] of the preparations can be seen some of the time but not all of the time, and perhaps most telling is that the differences are very small.” Wisdom before God, perhaps.
[see comment #1 above for a correction. Admin]
Rudolf Steiner needs better readers. That is not to say I have done much here. The blog format has a significant weakness: brevity! The point is that Steiner wrote hundreds of books, thousands of essays, lectured daily for years, most have been recorded. He was afflicted with the dreadful German impulse to build a philosophical system to swallow the world. His work is as demanding as it is inconsistent and contradictory. But you’d never know from the texts of his acolytes and defenders. Similarly is his biography fraught with discontinuities and omissions. He forgets his siblings. Though married twice he had no children. Whenever ‘women’ were under discussion they quickly vanished, buried under a ton of ‘cosmic’ elocution. I read in vain the Ag Lectures for a single comparison of soil fertility to women, a pregnancy motif. Nope, not there. But it is to his childhood, even in the Agricultural Lectures, delivered a year before his death in 1925, that he returns to…potatoes.
Johann Steiner, Rudolf’s father, worked for the Southern Austrian Railway. He was the telegraph operator. Little Rudolf, maybe six, was in the train station with him one day. While his father sat in another room a few feet away, indifferent to the boy, silently transcribing electronic pulses into language, Rudolf had his first clairvoyant experience. Father and son, together they pluck messages out of thin air.
Happy Birthday, Mr.Steiner.
Admin
