Life Among the Vines
There’s been big doin’s around here the last couple of weeks, so I hope you can forgive my lack of post last week. I was back in my home state of Minnesota to officiate my oldest niece’s wedding. While I was away, the Chardonnay came in at work, and the entire place smells of the sweet aromas of fermentation - except when someone shows up wearing a ton of perfume or cologne for a tasting, which…don’t do that. I’m begging you. Tomorrow is my birthday, and I started celebrating yesterday, when the residents of my little home community gathered for birthday pie, pizza pie, and a few bottles of wine, including the Blanc de Blanc sparkling Year of the Snake from Iron Horse. Apt, since I was also born in a Year of the Snake. Also, I adore these bottles. And the wine is fresh but creamy and substantial in the mouth. Delish.
In the most exciting news of all, I’m going to be making some wine of my own this season! I have some fruit (still on the vine), I have a basic plan, and I have all the book knowledge to do it. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out the actual, practical steps to make it happen. Stay tuned, as I’m planning to record the ins and outs of this process here.
The Grape News
If this (mostly) weekly newsletter isn’t enough wine news for you, consider subscribing to The Spill, a new daily dose of wine news. I’m taking a version of the Vineyard to the Sea Roadtrip described here for my birthday, and will be posting about it when I return.
As northern hemisphere wine regions focus on harvest, I’m getting a lot of questions from visitors about why they don’t actually see much harvesting happening. Well, most of that work gets done at night! George Nordahl explains why:
Chateau Lafleur is opting out of the Pomerol AOC over concerns that the appellation restrictions will interfere with maintaining quality as climate change alters growing conditions.
I thought of this article on the psychology of identity we construct around our wine preferences yesterday as one of my guests told me firmly and proudly, “I try other wine, but I only buy Caymus.” The statement made me want to slam my head on the table for all kinds of reasons, but it does beg the question of how much of my own identity I invest in not buying Caymus. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start buying Caymus.
In the Napa Valley, we’ve all been keeping a eye on the Pickett Fire, which is largely controlled but still not out. Fortunately the damage to life, structures, vineyards, and grapes seems minimal. Since we’re not terrified of destruction, we can fix our attention on the question of whether this fire was linked to an ‘‘unauthorized wedding” at Hundred Acre Vineyards. If the idea of unauthorized weddings seems silly, well, it probably is, but Napa loves to regulate this sort of thing via the Winery Definition Ordinance, which seems mostly to make business and basic functioning difficult for small wineries.
This has nothing to do with wine at all but it is about food so that counts as adjacent, right? I love the Home Cooking Podcast with Samin Nosrat and Hrishikesh Hirway, so I just want to share it with you. They intended to do a four-part series in 2020 and be done with it, but then it kept going, with new episodes emerging sporadically and now a new season that began on August 29. They’re hilarious, and if you like to cook good things, especially without a strict recipe, Samin is full of simple, useful advice.
Vineyard Maintenance
Did you know this newsletter has now existed for three years? It’s wild to think how much has happened since I wrote my first post, Wine Nerd, on a blog that was then called “Bottles and Plates.” As it turns out, I had no idea how much more nerdy I could - and would - become. Thanks for being here for the ride, and if you are an existing subscriber, check your email for some deals on renewals to celebrate Just a Smidge’s birthday and my own. If you’re not a subscriber, why not? You can subscribe for free and get nearly all my content delivered to your inbox with relative regularity, or take another step and support my writing with a small financial commitment and get full access to the whole she-bang, including the special features below the paywall. Regardless, thank you for reading, and for engaging through likes, shares, and comments.
The Best Thing I Drank This Week
I had a lot to choose from this week after doing a tasting at Pax and celebrating my birthday with several bottles, including the Iron Horse I mentioned above.
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