Vineyard Beauty

Something there is that loves a vine.

As we have traveled throughout Wine Country, around the world, we always feel a little thrill when we see vineyards.  As we’re driving closer to grape-growing areas, the first to spot some vines growing in the distance will point them out and both our hearts will expand a little in our chests.  The sight of the orderly rows of grape vines marching in orderly rows across a valley or a hillside, like an army of benevolent green soldiers.   Seeing the vineyards adds enormously, for us, to the pleasure of going wine tasting.

The beauty is even more enticing in harvest season, when the leaves are pruned back and the ripe fruit is hanging from the vines.  (Don’t tell anyone, but we have been known to sneak up on some unsuspecting vines and taken a few grapes.  There’s nothing like the sweetness of these grapes just before they are turned into wine.)  It is hard to count the number of photos we have of big, juicy clusters just hours before the crush.

img_2415Chimney Rock Cabernet Sauvignon, almost ready to pick

What is it about the vines?  We are no farmers although we have read a few books about the agricultural aspects of wine production.  Of trellises, pruning and irrigation we know virtually nothing, so we bring only the amateur’s eyes to our visits.  All we can says is that looking at the sun glistening off seemingly endless rows of vines gives us a jolt of joy.

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By way of comparison, there are times when we go wine tasting and don’t see vines at all.  In some cases, that’s because we might be visiting tasting rooms in a town.  This is mostly the case in California where wineries that cannot afford to build a palatial “visitors center” take a storefront in, say, Paso Robles, Calistoga or Healdsburg.  (See our previous article on tasting in Napa Town.)  There is a certain charm to wandering from one winery’s offerings to another and another.  There is also the advantage of not having to get behind the wheel of a car, if we are staying in that town.  And while it was once the case that only subpar wineries had in-town tasting rooms, that is not universally the case anymore.  But without the sight of vineyards just outside, there is definitely the sense that something is missing.

That sensation is certainly multiplied when the wineries are far from the fields and the tasting rooms are in the industrial buildings where trucked-in grapes are crushed and aged.  The total dissociation of wine from nature, no matter how good the wine is, leaves a rather empty feeling inside us.

And that is really the point: Wine tasting at its best combines product and place.  You just cannot really understand Burgundy, in our opinion, unless you’ve seen Burgundy.  Of course, the same applies to all of Wine Country.  Wine tasting should engage all the senses, not just taste and smell, and the emotional attachment to the land is a factor in the passion for wine that almost every winemaker speaks of.  Call it terroir, if you please, but actually seeing the soil and the sky and the vines where the stuff in the bottle actually come from adds enormously to the pleasure of the experience of wine tasting.

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