RE: Five Keys to the Grower-Winemaker Relationship

Zachary Geballe — Tue, 03 Dec 2019 17:06:28 GMT

Some additional thoughts that occurred to me as I was interviewing people for this piece and doing some general research:

- There's been a shift to grape-focused agriculture companies throughout the West Coast. Tom Gamble and his family's operation are a great example of this, where they pivoted from a range of agricultural and pastoral pursuits to focus on just grapes in the 1970s. As Tom told me, in his lifetime he's seen Napa Valley transition from a place of mixed agriculture to a valley almost entirely focused on viticulture. That means that in many cases, with many plots of land, there simply isn't a huge accumulation of lived experience with grape growing, so more experimentation and measurement is necessary to close that knowledge gap.

- It's also created a fascinating (to me, at least) conversation about how vineyard owners and managers make decisions about which varieties and clones to plant. In earlier decades, choices were often extremely limited, and much less was known about how to match clones and specific regions or sites. This is evident with Chardonnay in the Willamette Valley, Riesling in Washington, and many other examples. Figuring out these awkward matches and rectifying them is one of the great projects for West Coast viticulture over the next few decades, even if it's much less sexy than planting a new vineyard.

- There's something more to be said about the explosion of vineyard-designate wine in the broader wine world, especially in newer regions. It's a mixed bag to be sure, but I do think it's something that buyers and sommeliers need to be attuned to: when someone brings you a wine from a single vineyard you've never heard of, do some research and ask some questions.