Through the Grapevine #56
Wine media and just a smidge of commentary for April 17, 2025
Life Among the Vines
The vineyards are coming alive a bit more every day, most of them significantly more leafy at this point than these older Cabernet Sauvignon vines, as Cabernet is a late-budding variety and takes a while to get going.
The long habits of a preacher are still ingrained in me, and I’m always looking for a metaphor to frame the patterns of life. The Cabernet has been an apt one for some aspects of my life this last year, which have been similarly rather slow to bloom and slow to ripen. Feeling settled here has been a challenge, as it’s taking some time for the shoots of housing, health care, car, finances, and social life to reach upward and take a firm hold on the trellises.
But much of what Cab is doing is below the surface: in rocky soil like ours, it has to put down roots very deep into the earth to reach water and nutrients. Cabernet excels when it has to struggle, and where I work, our best Cabernet comes from volcanic soils that don’t look like they should qualify as “soil,” let alone grow anything. In these challenging conditions, the vines grow more resilient, the fruit more intense and concentrated. I may have left ministry and structured religious life behind, but I do believe I’ll keep the habit of remaining attentive to the roots and all that is happening beneath the surface, despite some disappointingly slow growth on the visible part of the vine. And while it may take longer than one might hope, every day more buds break and more leaves begin to develop, and on their own time, these vines will look as robust as any in the vineyard.
The Grape News
Want to read more about roots in a non-metaphorical way? George Nordahl has a great deep dive on rootstocks:
The Wine Conversations series continues, this month with a discussion of wine service in restaurants and beyond. My own post went up earlier this week, and you can check out Maria Banson’s lead off as well as stay tuned for the coming perspectives of other writers. I got swept up in writing and entirely forgot about a major point I intended to make, which is the role of the wine professional as a translator of highly technical wine terminology into the common parlance of wine drinkers. Maria touched on this as well, and there’s a good chance one of the other contributors will go into more detail. If not, there’s always the comments sections!
Tariffs remain at the forefront of many conversations in the wine industry, and I am frequently asked by winery guests about the effects they will have. Let me tell you, that is a sticky wicket! Staying out of politics and religion is one of the cardinal rules of the hospitality industry, but I’m not sure that is possible (or desirable) given the current conditions. I remain cautious about addressing it at work, but here I can say freely that tariffs will be difficult at best for the wine industry, disastrous at worst. Tariff supporters claim they will make people buy more American products, but it’s not that simple. Charlie Brown at The Sauce addressed some of the complexities here:
One thing she points out that I think is crucial is that wine is a connection to the global community. Unfortunately, I think the true intention of tariffs and other hostile foreign policy is to isolate us from our connections with the rest of the world.
Constellation’s CEO also weighed in on some of the tariff implications, while Tom Wark has some suggestions for states attempting to mitigate the effects of tariffs.
Another question that has come up a lot recently is about ICE raids and deportations, and how they may affect vineyard labor. There’s no breaking news about this at the moment, but I do think it’s important to be aware of the issue, and at work I don’t get to say much other than, “It’s making things difficult,” but here I have no such limits.
Of course, detainment and deportation are issues that are much more far ranging and serious than wine, but sometimes I think it may help to address the practical ramifications that may hit close to home for those who would normally support these policies, rather than yelling about human rights violations or the constitutional crisis of discarding due process, which they clearly don’t give a fig about. ANYWAY. A large proportion of workers in this area are immigrants or children of immigrants, mostly from Mexico and Central and South America. I’m not just talking about undocumented people or migrant workers or vineyard workers. They are working in all sectors and have a wide variety of legal statuses. Some are citizens, by birth or naturalization. Some have permanent visas. The current situation of people being snatched up and deported without due process because of where they’re from or what their name is or what language they speak or the color of their skin is a tremendous threat to everyone. That includes those of us who might think we’re safe because we’re white Christians with unquestioned U.S. citizenship, because if one person can be incriminated and made stateless without due process, it can happen to any of us.
And in the meantime, while some of us may not be directly impacted by the terror of these policies, we will be affected by increasing prices and decreasing availability of food and wine when we don’t have the labor to harvest or process them. Meanwhile, targeted farm workers are fighting back.Let’s just say that we don’t really need the U.S. government throwing additional challenges into the industry, given that we’re facing a 3.3% decrease in global wine consumption, and the lowest production and consumption of wine in fifty years. Check out the full State of the World Vine and Wine Sector 2024 report here.
On a lighter note, two of the wine writers I follow had some things to say about whether wine writers should have wine education. I found this discussion particularly interesting as someone who got into wine writing because I was getting a wine education by way of the WSET, and writing was both something I had always done in other realms of my life, and an outlet to process and share what I was learning.
As with most “wine people,” their opinions on qualifications differ somewhat, but there’s an obvious need for people who write about wine to know things about the broader wine context. My formal studies have been useful for me to systematize my wine knowledge and point out gaps in my understanding, and the qualifications have helped me gain credibility more quickly as someone who came into the industry relatively late in life. That said, there are plenty of people out there who know as much or more without spending a moment on the WSET or Court of Master Sommeliers, and many pathways to understanding wine.
More Chenin Blanc in the Napa Valley? Yes, please. Eveline Chartier also wrote about the versatility and potential of this grape.
Constellation Brands is going through a major repositioning of their wine portfolio.
Vineyard Maintenance
Sadly there is no Best Thing I Drank or food and wine pairing in this issue. I’ve been having a small health issue that has necessitated the world’s most boring diet and a radical reduction to my wine drinking, both of which I hope will be temporary. Pouring and talking about wine all day when you can’t drink it is a real killjoy, but here we are. Despite the slow budding of some aspects of my life here, I’m looking ahead to fruit set and hoping to continue the last units of my WSET Diploma within this year. Paid subscriptions here are being directed toward those efforts, so I’m deeply grateful to those of you who are helping support my wine education, as well as those of you who are here and engaging by simply reading, liking, sharing, and commenting. One of my favorite things about wine is the community that forms around it, and I appreciate all of you who are part of my community. Cheers!