Life Among the Vines
We’re starting to see the beginnings of verasion in the vineyard - the phase of growth when the grapes shift colors from green to their ripe colors of red, gold, or the pinkish-purple known as gray/gris/grigio. The Cabernet is nowhere close, but in the midst of a block of very small and very green Cabernet, I caught a glimpse of a single, three-vine row of this:
I’m told people obtaining degrees in viticulture study how to identify grape vines by their leaves and clusters, but I confess that even after consulting the internet at length, I don’t know what this is. Syrah maybe? Petite Sirah? I’ll ask our vineyard manager next time I see him, but one of you probably know from sight and could enlighten me in the comments.
One of the most fun staff activities at a winery is barrel tasting, and we were up bright and early on Friday morning (yummm, 8am wine) to sample Chardonnay and Cabernet from barrels of different toasting levels and maturation times. It’s pretty remarkable how much difference small variances can make, and how they all get put together into a balanced final blend. I also got deeper into our cave system than I had previously, to the bore that holds the Chardonnay.
A couple of my coworkers and I blew off steam on our day off with a couple of Russian River Valley tastings, at Williams Selyem and MacRostie. No, we didn’t get to drink this 1981 Hacienda Del Rio - the first iteration of Williams Selyem - but just seeing the bottle was a treat!
Beautiful views, beautiful wines, and good company were a fabulous break from some stress I’ve been feeling lately. In addition to the housing and finance uncertainty that has been hanging over my head, I’ve had an extra dose of anxiety and its accompanying symptoms of vivid dreams, teeth grinding, back pain, and digestive distress…but wasn’t entirely sure why. Then I remembered that this week was the twenty-second anniversary of my ordination, and even though I didn’t particularly remember it on the day, the body can sometimes react subconsciously to dates that might heighten emotions. Sometimes I feel like I’m coming across rogue grapevines in a vineyard, finding something unexpected and just throwing my hands up: “What the heck is this?” And then I begin again the slow process of identifying and processing the emotions triggered by instability, distrust, and disempowerment. This is not as fun as romping around vineyards and tasting wine, let me tell you. So, on to the news.
The Grape News
The Wine Conversations debate about AI continues over at Brunello Bombshell, with Maria Banson offering a compelling argument about the first-hand knowledge, hospitality, and personality that could never come from a computer.
George Nordahl also dove in on an adjacent topic, unofficially.
ICE ups the ante and moves to deport longtime Oregon vineyard manager Moises Sotelo.
Back in Cincinnati, a children’s hospital chaplain of ten years who was an acquaintance back in my ministry days is in a jail cell, detained when he went for his scheduled check-in with ICE. Similar to Sotelo, although he is currently considered “undocumented,” he was in the process of becoming documented - or re-documented, rather, as he originally came here under asylum and was simply waiting for his status to be renewed. This is horrifying and immoral and just doesn’t even make any sense apart from the sheer cruelty and fear that does indeed seem to be the point.
In other political developments that make no sense, the wine industry prepares to deal with the painful realities of tariffs. Just Drinks predicts more localization and automation to mitigate the increased costs.
Sonoma County vintners and growers form a Wine Improvement District to confront the challenges facing the industry.
Jason Wilson recommends (possibly unpronounceable) Portuguese whites:
Tom Hewson suggests that maybe we can all stop poo-pooing new oak:
Eveline Chartier features Melon de Bourgogne, most commonly experienced as Muscadet:
Vineyard Maintenance
The Wine Conversations series on AI seems to have hit a nerve out there, and many of us have insisted in some way that wine is essentially human, and therefore the best guidance about wine comes from humans. I’ve been pondering this human connection and exactly what makes so many of us so deeply identified (and perhaps obsessed) with a beverage, and am working on a post on that topic that I hope to wrap up later this week. Stay tuned too for a dive into the frequently maligned, even more frequently misunderstood, malolactic fermentation. I so appreciate all of you for hanging in here with me, reading and also supporting this work with likes, comments, shares, and subscriptions. Some of you are literally keeping me alive out here, so - thank you! Paid subscribers will find a couple of special features below as a little gift of my gratitude.
The Best Thing I Drank This Week
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