Harry Haddon’s Incomplete And Unofficial Guide To The Hedonistic Pleasures Of The Grape
Chapter Five: NATURE vs. NURTURE. Part 1: Nature
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The life of a wine from plant to glass is a complex story. Hugh Johnson, one of the greatest wine writers, puts it best:
The plot starts with vines insinuating their roots into the soils of a thousand different fields, feeding on what they encounter in the ground, rock, or sand, wet or dry, lean and hungry, or fat enough to grow marrows. It ends with the air in a glass rising to meet your nostrils and your mouth to leave an impression on your mind. The two are intimately, directly, inevitably linked –via a chain of events that can go this way or that in numberless, ceaseless variations. On some nano-scale of infinite variety everything is recorded. Like the wings of a butterfly in the rain-forest, a passing shower or a spore of fungus can tip a balance that eventually makes you decide to order another bottle – or not.
For winemakers wanting to create quality wines, wines that you order another bottle of, they don’t want just any grapes. They long, come harvest time, for perfectly ripe, small berries. To achieve this perfection (which of course, this being wine, is not universally agreed upon, and will also depend on what type of wine is being made), the right varieties must be planted; the climate, and soils must be suitable for that variety; the vines must be managed correctly; and, each year the, ideal growing conditions met.
If all goes to plan (and it hardly ever does), the winemaker must take these precious, beautiful berries, and not screw up all these years of work with bad decisions in the cellar. Remember this winemaker’s saying, “you can make a shit wine from great grapes, but never a great wine from shit grapes.” Think of it as nature vs. nurture. Where nature is what happens in the vineyard, and nurture what goes on in the cellar. In this and the next chapter we are going to dip our little toes into these waters of nature and nurture, starting with nature.
The question we can try and limit ourselves to here is what is this perfect grape? It is, as usual, not entirely straight forward.
The berries of the grapevine contain pretty much everything needed to make wine: the sugars needed for fermentation, the acidity for balance and longevity, the pigments for colour, the tannins for structure and long-life, and the chemical compounds for complexity of flavour. Everything that happens to the vine will have an effect on these components, and as a result effect the wine.
The species of vine we get our grapes from is called vitis vinifera, and each of the hundreds of different varieties of this species has its own quirks and traits. Some ripen earlier than others, some are more resistant to certain pests and so on, but for each of them the winemaker is hoping for optimally ripe grapes, and not too many of them
We all know what ripeness is. We know that a banana is ripe when it’s yellow, and unripe when it’s green. But is a little bit of green OK? What about when black spots start appearing, when is it too ripe? I have no idea; I hate bananas. The point is there is not an exact point of perfect ripeness. As grapes develop on a vine in summer and ripen into autumn, sugar levels increase. If it is too hot, for example, the sugar levels can rise to a point where the wine will end up having head banging levels of alcohol, but the grapes have not yet fully ripened, and – hat tip to Captain Obvious – have unripe flavours.
Many factors will contribute to the ripening of grapes, most obviously, climate. What vines need is a mild, wet winter, an early spring, a warm, dry summer without drought, and a late autumn, with even not-too-hot temperatures that allow for longer ‘hang-time’ on the vine, and more time for the grapes, stalks and seeds to ripen properly. Essentially you need the right balance of sugar and acidity, and no unripe flavours in the grapes.
Also important is how many grapes the vine produces. Think of a vine as having a limited capacity of flavour. If you have too many grapes on a vine, that amount of flavour will be split between all the grapes resulting in less intensity in the finished wine. However, our imagined ‘flavour capacity’ can be managed with modern viticultural techniques to allow for larger yields without compromising on quality.
One of the factors that influence the yields of a vine is the soil. Most agree that what is of greatest importance when it comes to soil is how much water it can hold. Vines, you see, need to struggle, but just a bit. Like people. Too much struggle and a person is want to give up, no hardship at all, and a person has a rather lopsided view of reality.
If vines have access to too much water they’ll drink and drink producing too many grapes, essentially diluting the wine. If there is too little water the vine will say, “no thanks, I’m off” and shut down, with photosynthesis and the ripening process coming to a halt.
Ideally, vines need well-drained soils that have just the right supply of water for whichever variety is planted in whatever climatic conditions. For example, areas with higher rainfall need soils with better drainage, and areas with lower rainfall need soils with better water retention. Irrigation is used to make up for a lack of water, but that presents another host of techniques, decisions and problems that we do not have space for today.
We have barely scratched the surface of – in fact we have merely stroked – what happens in the vineyard. How a vine is pruned in winter, the altitude of a vineyard, how the leaves or canopy are managed to foster or reduce photosynthesis, the density of plantings in a vineyard, and how pests and diseases are managed all contribute, to the ripeness and condition of the grapes, and logically to the final product in your glass. Each factor affects the others, meaning that every vineyard faces its own unique set of challenges. Making truly great wine is then, some sort of treacherous balancing act with the gods trying to trip you up at every turn. This is why there is more crap wine than good wine, really.
But just like we want balanced wine in our glass, the vineyard needs to be balanced and happy. Too much sun, too much rain, soil that is overly fertile, too many grapes, not enough grapes, all suggest imbalance, and as such, unbalanced wines.
This chapter was never going to make you a viticulturalist, or ensure that you pick better wines of the shelf, but rather to show the myriad of factors that inevitably contribute to that all important phrase, “waiter, another bottle please.”
Next week we will do the same, but this time fondle gently the topic of winemaking, and hopefully it will help make a little more sense of what was touched on in this chapter. You see, just like people, it is very difficult to separate nature and nurture.
Harry.
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