Grapegrowing
Inadvisable.
There is no shortage of hopefully well-meaning colleagues, regional viticulturalists, Dupont-endowed academic chairs at northeastern higher-ed programs to tell us and others that it isn’t possible to grow grapes organically in our region, our climate.
Everybody’s circumstances are different. We’re not here to tell already-struggling farmers to make their lives harder to make our community and the world a better place. (We would, though, invite them to check out our neighbors at Rodale).
Since January 2021, no synthetic chemicals or herbicides have been sprayed in our vineyard. We apply sulfur & bordeaux mixture (copper) judiciously, oils & extracts (mineral, neem, yucca, mint, clove, lavender) freely, and all manner of system-building beneficial microbes generously.
After a century or more as a cow pasture, our vineyard was planted in 1991 with Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Cabernet Franc. A small plot of Vignoles was added in 1997, with the locally celebrated Chambourcin planted in 2001.
As of 2022, all are pruned in early spring to Guyot Poussard (1 cane, 2 spurs) or something like a Double Guyot Poussard (2 canes, 4-5 spurs), depending on the vines’ past performance. At present, yields are miniscule owing to the hangover of organic conversion more than from heavy pruning or vine density.
Our home vineyard is 3.4 planted acres, at 800’ with a southern aspect at 15-25% slope. Soils are extremely rocky loam over variegated shale (mostly gray, with some blue, brown & red).
For better and for worse, it is farmed almost entirely by we who live on site.
The long-term aims of this quixotic viticulture are to foster soil health, keep as many old vines alive as conversion permits, and elevate native yeast diversity.
Working backwards, all of our favorite wines—regardless of region—ferment spontaneously from native yeast and the hands at harvest. To ensure microbial health at fermentation requires ample microbial health and diversity in the vineyard. To ensure ample microbial health and diversity in the vineyard requires abstention from synthetic fungicides (and de minimis copper applications and early cessation of sulfur sprays), and as light an agricultural touch as possible. To abstain from the trappings of monoculture requires our endless patience and labor. To ensure our endless patience and labor? Well it helps to be drinking honest wines.
“A boundary can be drawn around something: it encloses a field or a vine for the purpose of cultivation, for example. In this sense, to build is simply to watch over the growth that, of itself, ripens its fruit. At this point, there isn’t yet any fabrication on the part of man, any works produced by him: with the exception of this boundary, by means of which he will tend the flourishing of nature’s works.
And tend himself as one of these? Needing, first, an abode that allows him to remain in peace, kept from harm and threat, his existence husbanded and spared. But requiring even more that he be surrounded by protection that, from the start, leaves him within his Being, that returns him to it and sets him at peace therein: enclosed within what is akin to him. Free, therefore.”
-Luce Irigaray
