Terroirs are important.

If you've bounced around wines for awhile the term 'terroirs' has probably come up. Last Christmas my daughter gave me a beautiful book titled Great Wine Terroirs. As I flipped through the book a photo caught my eye. It was a vineyard in the Rhone Terraces. The vines, untrellised, were growing out of a bed of rocks.

What I learned later is that the rocks slowly give off their warmth at night keeping the roots warm. OK that's positive for what looked like an impossible condition.

But the idea with terroirs is to understand how the soils, terrain, orientation of slopes, contributes to the quality of the grape and subsequently the wine.

A nice proof of this value is described on page 155 of this book discussing Cabernet Sauvignon.

"Regardless of the terrain or climate, most Cabernet Sauvignon wines have an unmistakable aroma of bell peppers that may be more or less marked. This aroma, known to botanists as aristolochia and to chemists as pyrazine, is comon to all grapes in this family (the Merlot, Cabernet Franc, etc.) but it is always pronounced in the Cabernet Sauvignon."

But this pepper aroma changes to "ripe black currants, cedar spices and sometimes licorice" when grown in the gravel terraces of Gironde and Medoc.



So when selecting grapes to be grown in a particular region it is very important to understand what effect the 'terroir' will have.

Is there value to cute wines?

My wife used to collect recipes from the newspaper. There are still a lot that we've used and still more that we are still trying out even though some are many, many years old. Of course now, new recipes come from the internet. It's more convenient since one can match inhouse ingredients with existing recipes.

On one that she showed me had a wine review on the other side. It talked about a recent trend (2005) of cute wines. You know, ones with crazy labels.

This article was clipped just when it was getting interesting. "Putting aside personal, tomboy distaste, wines designed by focus group tend toward lowest common denominator blandness. They lose all relation to the living, ever-changing mystery in a bottle, and then wine ceases to be the most interesting of all drinks and becomes ..........." That's where it ends, but I'm sure you can fill in the rest.

I keep trying different wines paying attention to the labels as well as their age and where they come from. More and more that "ever-changing mystery in a bottle" comes from those less than faddish labels.

Looking for an inexpensive wine? Maybe 'fifth growth"?

Here's a bit of divergence.

While reading an article in a recent issue of Wine Spectator I came across the term 'fifth growth'. It was new to me so I hunted around the internet and found how Napolean III rated Bordeaux's about 150 years ago. Fifth growth refers to the lowest quality of Bordeaux. Obviously first growth, Château Mouton Rothschild, is among the best.


The article, about Chateau Lynch-Bages, a classic Pauillac (check the map) estate is a fifth growth. It's wines are well regarded and often obtain very high ratings. High enough to command an auction price of a 1961 vintage of more than 1,900 a bottle.

Although dollar value in not always a predictor of quality wines it is nice to be appreciated.

There's Numbers in the Vineyard

Sometimes numbers are comforting. They get kicked around lot but I've been able to settle on a few for the typical vineyard.

Iowa State University Extension has good information about vineyards.

link

545 vines will cover an acre very nicely. There can of course be more or less depending on spacing of vines and row width. It costs about $10,000 and 3+ years to get one acre of vines to produce a good crop.

Then there's about 4000 bottles of wine in an acre of grapes.

link

This site shows 400 vines per acre and the Benzinger site show 1089 vines per acre. I'm comfortable with 545.

Incidentals

The discussions went from spa, to restaurant, to pet care for visitors, to art gallery and yes, well there was also ...................... well maybe not yet. That's a discussion for another time.

It's a little like wine tasting. You can talk about wines as being good and bad but the appreciation comes from the subtleties of aroma, color and taste.

And what might seem like typical components of a nice vineyard/winery, the quality comes in the details.

Conversations about the vineyard.

Considering the diversity of interests in the family it was a surprise listening to how each person was interested in participating.

Maybe it was the excitement of the holiday gathering, the good food and drink.

Certainly it was vines and wines. I guess that's my basic interest. A chance to work outside, everyday. To get familiar with the land and the vines and all the interactions of life around them.

But there were other interests: art, music, food, craft and other, rather unusual incidentals that could nicely compliment a vineyard.

Everything seems to start with a crazy idea.

This is about family. And attempt to keep it together, close.

Over the years this family has learned how important each of us is to one another. Sometimes in small ways and sometimes in very big ways.

And it seems that one of our characteristics is that no one is ever abandoned.

We've invited others into this family with various degrees of success. It's hoped that anyone who experienced some time with us enjoyed it.

So an idea arrives at one of our large gatherings. Sort of a crazy idea and sort of interesting.

A family vineyard.