The tipping point of environmentally going “green” seems at last to have arrived in the mass consciousness of America. On Rhinefarm we have long pursued a ‘green’ policy of farming sustainably – eliminating pesticides, planting cover crops, introducing beneficial predators, etc - all practices written about extensively in this space.
So why did the literal ‘greening’ of Rhinefarm cause me to want to pound my head against the steering wheel of my pick-up yesterday as I meandered out into the vineyards? Because the vineyard floor was green, covered with bunches of unripened grapes.
Ah, but this feigned self-inflicted pain is merely the reaction of an old viticulturist who has observed the march of knowledge produced from agriculturally-focused universities, such as U.C. Davis and Fresno State. Hundreds of experiments carried out by grape growers and wineries all concerned with how to produce a better glass of wine for you.
One of the most important discoveries, one that separates good wine from majestic wine, is that the more uniformly and simultaneously bunches ripen on the vine, the more complex and balanced the resulting wine will be, no matter what a winemaker does in the winery once the grapes are harvested.
Vines mature their berries at different rates, and a grape grower attempts to begin harvest when the majority of berries are mature. Note the emphasis is on berries, not bunches. At harvest time, if no ‘green drop’ has been done, a small percentage of berries will be under-ripe, contributing harsh tannins and green flavors to the wine; also a small percentage of the berries will be overripe, contributing a low acid flabby character to your glass.
Research has determined that grape bunches that grow on vine shoots that produce less than 18 leaves will mature more slowly; also berries that grow on the wings or shoulders of bunches will mature differently than the berries growing on the main body of the bunch. Both of these offending berry categories must be eliminated in the vineyard as early in the growing season as possible- after berry set and before veraison is ideal.
By eliminating these weak clusters and portions of clusters, we can better ensure that at harvest time, all berries will be uniformly and simultaneously ripe. It dramatically reduces the quantity of wine we produce on Rhinefarm, but increases the wine quality even more dramatically.
How is this done? Issue the vineyard crew scissors, similar to your toe nail clippers, and instruct them to take no prisoners. Cut off any bunch from a shoot with eighteen or fewer leaves, and remove the wings from each and every bunch.
Think of the number of berries ripening on Rhinefarm’s 320 acres. It is meticulous, time consuming work, taking up to five times longer to green drop the fruit than it does to harvest a block. After passing through a block, the vineyard floor is green with discarded fruit, ergo the pained response from an old time grape grower.
Young winemakers and viticulturists attempting to grow the finest wine in the world are immune to such grief and lack of compassion for us old timers, since they’ve grown up with the new research. But if you were a grape grower in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, before the scientific documentation of the truest understanding of grape maturity existed, the sight of half your production greening the vineyard floor can be very unsettling.
The tonic for this queasiness is if you WOMers were poured two glasses of wine, one produced from vines managed in this way and the other produced from vines left to mature naturally, you would know immediately which is the better wine.
