Welcome to Frenchtown Field Notes

exploring wine though growing vines...

Feb 22, 2023

What is the point of growing wine?

We sometimes ask ourselves why we bother farming grapes and growing wine. Contrary to popular belief, a vineyard is not always a valuable improvement to the land or an asset that magically provides money to its owner. A vineyard is a mountain of hard work, often filled with heartbreak from frost, fires, insects and wild animals, trunk diseases, and virus. Wouldn't it just make more sense for folks like us to purchase commercially grown fruit and "make" wine rather than growing it? Do consumers even care?

The wines we love have three things in common: a great vineyard, passionate farming, and exceptional cellar work. For us, a wine that lacks one of these pillars is just a tasty beverage at best. All three must exist to create compelling wines, so the point of growing a wine simply comes down to a desire to take part in each aspect. The wines that are produced from great vineyards, if farmed thoughtfully and handled in the cellar expertly, can be a stable store of value and meaning over time. They are a proof of work and we think they can convey a truth and utility that goes far beyond mere intoxication or purification of water. For us the word “meaning” is synonymous with “truth” or “value” and this is what we are pursuing when we work. We use farming in the vineyards to pursue the meaning behind the physical, social, and spiritual world around us. Cellar work is about preserving this truth in a bottle without distorting it.

We believe that a wine can and should be grown. Long before the first grape is picked, a whole season of work has gone into each vine, and it is in the vineyard where we begin building each cuvée. The Winter tasks of pruning, tying and trellis repair, the Spring push to thin and tuck shoots, and the early Summer rush to manage succors and growth under the vines are as integral to the final wine as any decision that can be made in the cellar. Despite this, discussions of wine usually focus on everything that comes after picking the fruit. We’ve all seen Instagram posts of winemakers “checking on the vines,” often with plastic bags containing juiced berries and a refractometer in hand, but the conversation quickly turns to how many days of maceration before pressing, what vessel was used, length of time in bottle and so on. This isn't to say that any of these decisions aren't important. But what about everything before that?

We also tend to focus on the people behind the wine. How did they get started? What was their inspiration? Where did their money come from? The human experiences behind the wine making are vitally important to communicate, and we are drawn to them because we are social creatures and we love a good story, but these narratives are missing the fundamental adventure that the vines take each vintage. People and their businesses will come and go, but a vineyard is fixed in the land as time flows through it.

Should we care about how the wines we consume are grown?

We often hear wine makers talk about their relationships with the growers (read “land-owners”), usually with some sort of dual implication about trust in their agricultural practices as well as a socially conscious component of how the actual workers are treated. As wine growers, we consider the essential relationship to be with the vineyards, rather than people. The only form of payment that vines accept is attention. A deep meditative observation. When we do hire help, we are bringing in people from our community to work alongside us. We pay them to give their focus and attention to the vines. If you know what to look for you can easily see the vines responding to this energy, but we often wonder if the physical, emotional, and spiritual inputs of the farmers can find their way into your glass? Can you taste this attention to detail? Does a human connection to each vine translate in some meaningful way to the bottle?

When someone says “we built our house in ‘92,” we implicitly understand that they didn’t actually swing a hammer. What they mean is that they either hired or acted as a general contractor. When you hear a wine maker say “we have good relationships with our growers,” that can be translated as “we trust our general contractor to hire competent and trustworthy subcontractors.” This essay and those that follow are not meant to pass judgement on how involved people choose to get with the farming of the wines they make. Here we are trying to explore, and hopefully answer one core question. Does it matter whether a wine maker has any connection to the vines, and if so, should you be seeking out and supporting the growers of the wine you consume? Do the physical, emotional, and spiritual inputs of the farmers find their way into your glass? Does the wine's utility change? Is the meaning or truth or value of the wine altered by this connection?

What is the point of drinking wine?

Why do you drink wine? If you're a wine lover, really ask yourself why wine above a cocktail or a beer? We believe wine has the capacity to enhance our life experience through subtle threads and connections that aren't always obvious. The sensory memory, particularly olfactory, is extraordinarily strong. The vibrations of taste and smell connected to time and place create deep and lasting wrinkles in our brains. We suspect that as we create degrees of separation between the grower and the "maker" of a wine we abstract the connection from the vineyard to the glass, and in so doing tamp down the vibratory power that wines can have. If you think about the wines that are truly meaningful to you, that give you chills to think about, that are burned into your memory, and that changed the way you thought about the world, can you begin to detect any common threads? Were they sourced from many vineyards or from one? From a single vintage or many? From a nameless faceless “crew” of vineyard workers or a singular vigneron?

Is there a human element to terroir? If so where does it begin and end?

Does it make a difference if those who grew the grapes were happily engaged in their work? Does it affect your ability to enjoy a wine? Can you taste it? Are these things a "nice to have" or are they necessary for wines that express terroir in a profound and captivating way? What if thoughts and feelings are really things? All of us believe that sticks and stones can break bones, but are words and thoughts truly harmless? When you look someone in the eye and say "I love you," do the vibrations of your voice bounce off their body meaninglessly, or is the chemistry of the water in their body changed? What about when a farmer pays attention to a vine? Can those vibrations find their way into the wine, and ultimately conduct terroir to the body of the consumer? These are some of the questions we hope to explore and invite you to think about as we write to you about our journey through the vineyards this year.

Why should you know your winegrower? Asking for a friend…

The articles that follow will be an attempt to explore many of the questions posed in this welcome letter through the lens of various vineyard tasks throughout the season, beginning with pruning all the way until harvest. We personally find a lot of meaning in the simple tasks and feel truth about the world, and ourselves, emerge from the repetition of these vineyard rituals from one season to the next. This series of writings are a love letter to the vines that have given us so much. Hopefully they will help you to enjoy and appreciate the wines in your glass from a new perspective. We appreciate your support and encouragement.

To paraphrase the famous line from the movie Ratatouille, Anyone can Grow.