Wine as Agriculture
It is easy for us to sit at our dinner tables and enjoy a glass of wine. We can appreciate its bouquet, its color, how it works with the food, or just drink it. But rarely does the average person think about who made it or the grapes that it comes from. If we think of the maker, we tend to think of some modern-day baron living on a beautiful estate. Certainly this is the image put forth by Napa Valley vintners.But winemaking is really just a form of preserving a harvest, pickling if you will, and many winemakers are essentially just farmers. They worry about market prices. They worry about the weather. They check their crops for pests, hire pickers, and usually have just a handful of days to get all the grapes harvested and crushed.
And an act of nature can devastate a season's (or more) worth of work, at best requiring a winemaker to live off meager savings for the next year, at worst leaving them destitute.
As this year's harvest reports come in, there's been some bad news. My beloved Austrian wines look like they'll have a meager crop this year. The floods which decimated Eastern Europe this summer have taken their toll on Austria as well. Growers are worried about rot from the rain. Whole vineyards have been wiped out by floods. Even those vintners with hillside vineyards might have had their winemaking facilities in the flats, giving them a harvest but no means to do anything with it. This is a severe financial hit on the makers, and Melissa and I will cherish our 2001s when we get them, and hope that all the makers made it through. Full story here
Another sad story showed up on Wine Spectator today. A freak hailstorm wiped out most of the best Barolo sites. Barolo is one of the Piedmont region's great wines, and many vintners are throwing up their hands in defeat for salvaging the 2002 vintage. The full story can be found here
So while 2001 was a great vintage practically everywhere, 2002 might be a bit tougher for much of the world. The next time you drink some wine, don't just think about what it tastes like; think about how it got to you, and how many minor miracles had to take place for it to end up in your glass. That is what wine appreciation is about.
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