I’m sure you have all heard the saying that great wines happen in the vineyard. The way a vineyard is farmed is ultimately one of the most, if not the most, important contributing factor to producing wow-worthy wines. I have recently been reading a lot about the impact of “stressing” the vines to get the most complex and flavorful fruit. For example, placing your vines on a steep hillside, where they have to fight to flower, creates more intensity. Inhibiting dramatic growth and high yields leads to better wines.
Here is an excerpt from an article on “Stressed-Out Vines” in Business Week:
Location, location, location.
And I bet you thought that well-worn phrase referred to the world of real estate.
Well, perhaps it does, but it also applies, with equal veracity, to the world of wine, specifically to the location of the vineyard from which a particular wine comes.
Most of Napa Valley’s pioneers planted their vineyards on the valley floor, where the soil was fertile, the land easy to work, and yields high. However, while these are conditions than can produce good wine, they rarely result in the best wine.
By contrast, all over the world, you often find this wine, the very best wine, wine with what I call the WOW! factor, that ability to amaze as well as please, comes not from the flat easy plains but the more challenging hill- or mountainside elevations.
Restrained Power
Poorer, rocky soil, lower temperatures—especially cooler nighttime temperatures—longer growing seasons and lower yields all lead to wines with those elusive, hard-to-define quality that mark great wine. Call it complexity, if you like—wines with that mysterious sense of restrained power, of depth and wonder.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
0 Response to “Stressed-Out Vines”