The wine community, which usually focuses on how wine tastes or how it is selling, has come down to earth and is talking about its roots and the place where they are planted, the vineyard.
“The property dictates what we are,” says John Falcone, winemaker at Atlas Peak Vineyards high above Napa Valley.
“The wine makes itself; I try to stay out of the way,” adds Ed Sbragia of Beringer Vineyards, a comment echoed by other winemakers.
Such modesty shouldn’t be mistaken for mute acceptance of nature’s dictates, though. Right now, winemakers from Napa to the Languedoc are lavishing attention and money on the agricultural side of the industry. In California especially, after the extensive replanting caused an epidemic of phylloxera (a boring louse that destroys vine roots), the soil, vines and their environment are in the spotlight.
“The learning curve really sped up,” says Jeff Lyon, vineyard manager for Gallo. “There’s a lot to talk about. But wine really is made in the vineyard. If the flavor isn’t in the fruit, it won’t be in the wine.”
This summer a highlight of the annual conference of the Society of Wine Educators is expected to be a panel on terroir, a somewhat metaphysical French term for a vineyard’s soil and environment. French winemakers, especially those who work the great vineyards of Burgundy, say terroir dictates the character of wines produced in each commune or even each vineyard.
Not everyone bows as deeply to terroir. The late geographer Roger Dion, for instance, wrote that soil and climate don’t determine vineyard quality but rather “just contribute to the development of vineyard operations.” But this is not sufficiently sanguine to be heard in the competitive hubbub caused by the exploding quality wine market.
“It is conventional wisdom,” writes wine encyclopedist Hugh Johnson, “that wine from slopes is better” than wine from flat land. But–and in wine there’s always a but–it is worth remembering that flat vineyards produce a goodly number of great wines as well.
Even on a slope, its steepness and relation to the sun must be reckoned with. South slopes are best in the Northern Hemisphere because they catch more sunlight. But a west slope is better if the vineyard is covered in fog during the morning and can benefit from late afternoon sun.
These days sloping vineyards often are wide and gradual enough to allow mechanical harvesting, which also influences vine spacing and height. Aren’t quite happy with the contour of your vineyard? In these mechanical times, earth-moving machinery will cut and carve to produce the slope desired.
No wine company has created new vineyards on the scale that Gallo has in Sonoma County. Lyon oversees eight sites in Sonoma, “all of them on hillside or bench land, soils that are shallow but yield small, concentrated, superior quality fruit.”
Before breaking ground, he will dig “soil pits” and examine the soil for density, depth, richness, acidity, drainage. (Among factors to consider: Dry soils warm faster than moist and deep drainage forces plants to develop long roots.)
John Falcone says that the rocky, relatively poor soil on Atlas Peak restrains the sangiovese vines, which will overproduce on rich soil. He and other enological Darwinists believe great wines come from vines that have to struggle and therefore produce low yields.
As for microclimate, the Atlas Peak vineyards, 1,450 to 1,800 feet above the Napa Valley floor, are cooler than the valley vineyards. As a result, grapes ripen more slowly and are harvested later. Falcone believes the slow ripening gives wine with more complex fruit flavors and softer tannins. (But–there’s that word again–there are other mountain vineyards that tend to produce massive, hard, slow-maturing wines.)
To monitor the climate in Sonoma, Gallo has installed 12 weather stations across the county. They provide radio reports of wind speed and direction, temperature and humidity every 15 minutes. Software warns when conditions are right for grape diseases, and “neutron probes” measure sap flow and trigger drip irrigation, all to ensure what Johnson calls the “steady march toward maturity.”
The choice of grape (or grapes) and a specific clone (or clones) depends on their suitability to the site (including timing and length of growth cycle), the spacing and the training system the vines require. Potential yield and commercial demand for the varietal are part of the projection as well. Once the vines are planted, pruning and canopy management help determine how good the grapes will be.
Root stock is chosen for its ability to anchor the vine, absorb water and store nourishment. (The widespread acceptance in California of the AXR-1 root stock is what Lyon calls the “glowing error” of the ’70s and ’80s. It succumbed to phylloxera, and the replanting has cost millions.
This machining of land and matchmaking of vines have brought wines of character into the marketplace from sites not previously held in high regard.
Sardinia, Sicily and small estates in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France are just such areas, writes Alexis Bespaloff. “But,” he warns, “you need serious people, old vines and low yields” to obtain top quality.
Such determined individuals have refused to accept the predestination stance of the champions of terroir. Emile Peynaud, the Bordeaux-based enologist, has written, “Great wines are thus born of the deliberate will of the men of wine to make the best and to use all means to achieve this.”
The Skalli family, French merchants who have been at the forefront of upgrading Languedoc’s vineyards and the region’s reputation with their Fortant de France brand, have developed three Fortant Reserve F wines to demonstrate that vineyards in new or reconfigured land can give great wine. Corvo proved it in Sicily with the award-winning red Duca Enrico.
But with all the new knowledge, technology and money available, can great wine be made in an area such as California’s San Joaquin, with its hot growing season and super-rich soil?
“It would be very tough to do,” says John Falcone. “It’s hot during the day and so is Napa, but it does not get cool at night and Napa does. That heat is OK for table grapes, but wine grapes do not mature properly. So the wine maker has to doctor the wine (by adding acid).”
“A winemaker can do more to improve white wine than red,” says Jeff Lyon, the vineyard manager. “But he can’t make first-class wine with grapes from a second-rate vineyard.”
