The vineyard is just finishing bloom, the flowers smelling like a mix of jasmine and honeysuckle. Pitifully, the perfume is fleeting, tamped down by an untimely rain that lingered much too long. The days of rain during bloom made nature seem defiant and cruel. Somehow the vines and I will persevere, pollinate, and set fruit. The sun appeared this week along with its much needed heat, waking the vineyard up from its stoicism that it has silently slipped into. I have joined the vines in a quiet resolve to get through this moment of uncertainty, having faith that the summer solstice will be the advent of hot sweltering days of sun. I am longing to sweat, to feel sunburn, to be thirsty.

When in flower the vines are dichotomous, being in both a vegetative state and a reproductive state. Their canes grow rapidly stretching skyward while at the same time the flowers pollinate and will soon be our wine.

The vineyard looks wild, swarming with our honeybees, poppies, sweet yellow and white clover blooming, black birds zooming in and out, and ospreys (our fish hawks) lighting on the end posts and eating the fish they carried in from the Long Island Sound.

I say to the grapes, “Grow and be fruitful”.

There is a moment every spring when the vines weep. It only lasts for a day or two and it has just now begun. Warmed by the spring sun, their sap begins to flow upward from the trunk and out to the tips of the fruiting canes. Eventually as the sap arrives at a pruning cut it will drip out through the opening, catching the light of the soft spring sun and fall to the ground. The flow is so fast that as I scan a few acres of the vineyard I see hundreds of droplets falling from the canes in a dance; round sparkles of nature. It is like a gentle rain dripping from the fruiting wire falling only two feet to the ground.

When I see this beautiful moment I remember an ancient Mauri story about why the sky rains: Many of us are familiar with the Earth being referred to as Mother Earth, but if there is a Mother, where is the Father? The Father is the sky and the totality above. The rain that comes from Father Sky to Mother Earth is symbolic of the powerful love between them. Father Sky gazes down to Mother Earth and feels so lonely for her beauty that he weeps and offers his tears to Her, creating the blessing of nourishing rain.

I feel that this story is the same between the vines and the earth. At the moment the sun has assured all living creatures that spring has emerged the vines look back upon the harsh winter and the frozen earth. They weep for the four months of loneliness that they have spent silent and apart from the earth that is their mother. And they weep for joy that now they are together again teeming with life.

Right now, as I sit overlooking the vineyard at 6:00 pm, the sun is beginning to soften and drop closer to the tree line. The color of the light is a buttery spring yellow so different from the lavender and grey of the winter evening. In a few weeks time the vineyard floor will be golden with millions of dandelions reflecting the spring sun and suddenly budbreak in the vines will happen.

This past fall we made special preparations in the vineyard for our cover crop to prosper. We planted new clover and chamomile seed in the rows in anticipation of the arrival of 50,000 honey bees. David and I will begin to keep bees this May hoping to make a good home for two hives. It is pretty daunting to think that I have the know-how to take care of such a complex “nation” as a honeybee hive, but with the wise guidance of two beekeepers in New Paltz New York, Chris Harp and Grai St. Clair Rice, the bees will hopefully forgive us our lack of experience.

Last weekend David and I drove up to the Hudson River region to attend a class that Chris and Grai taught centering on their quiet gentle approach that they have towards living with their bees. Chris was careful to let us know that at times the bees will exhibit their superior knowledge of all things great and small here on the earth and beyond. He taught us so much about these gentle creatures, their incredible stamina and their importance to the nature spirits.

Looking out the window now I wonder how I will feel this time next year with my first season of beekeeping completed, the earth dormant above the soil and the bees deep in their winter cluster of warmth.

In essence, perhaps, they trust us. And in return I must earn that trust. I have learned that a part of earning this trust is to give back what I take. As I have done this over years our farm has become a peaceful place to grow and make our wine. The spring summer and fall months are easy times to present the vineyard with tidings of appreciation in the form of blooming cover crops, compost teas, and other preparations honoring the unseen in nature. But in the cold of winter the gifts seem more austere and most times consist of a meditative walk through the vines appreciating the beauty they present through the subtleness of nature.

One day this week, a fog had been softly laying over the vineyard and the surrounding farm fields all morning and well into the afternoon. To the west there was the smallest break in the sky where a glimmer of yellow sun was visible making the fog below it seem almost silver. Nothing moved. The vineyard had paused, another layer of quietude upon the steady dormancy of winter.

I took a walk in the vines and enjoyed this ephemeral moment: the sienna colored canes, the charcoal black trunks and the sound of the geese flying over hidden by the fog. As I walked down a row of vines droplets of condensed vapor clinging to the tendrils surrounded me and caught the gray light. It was as if thousands of little glowing sculptures were glistening everywhere in the vines. I then remembered what I would be doing today, January 6th.

This is a special day for some farmers to honor the work the land and the plants have done this past year and to acknowledge the unseen and unproved forces that work within nature. This day is when we give the vines the greatest gift that can be given: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Reminiscent of the ancient gift kings gave to other kings to honor them, these three substances are symbolic of the elements of nature we have let prosper here on this tiny 20 acres of earth. The gold reflects deep molten earth, the frankincense speaks of air, life, and the living, and the myrrh honors the otherworld we know so little about. I have ground the gold, frankincense and myrrh into a powder and as I sit here stirring it in snowmelt the perfume from the frankincense and myrrh is heady, making the whole room smell of it. At sundown as we walk the perimeter of the vineyard we will give safe haven to the elemental spirits that give form to our vines and our wine.

It is comforting to look back in time to the ancient tradition of gifting to the kings and to bring it now to the vineyard… letting Mother Nature know that she is King.

Anthony Nappa - Winemaker, Shinn Estate Nineyards

Laying on the compost pile, my back to the ground with eyes closed, I feel the warmth of the microbes working below me. It is as warm as a heating blanket, gentle and steady. The mound is only half built and hasn’t begun to release the intense heat of a fully working pile, but within a few weeks it will will heat up to 140 degrees and steam vents will erupt from the top making it look like a small volcano in the morning frost. After climbing down from the compost, I walk into the vineyard and lay in the clover. The ground is cold now, the microbes are going into hibernation for the winter and the great moment of mineralization is about to commence. The fiery yang of the compost lying to the south balances the secretive yin of the winter soil.

The feverish heat of the growing season is well past but now the fire of ripeness is working its magic in the winery. When Anthony our winemaker receives fruit from the vineyard he allows the indigenous yeast on the berries to carry out the work of fermentation instead of inoculating with laboratory yeast. Here is where the vineyard soils and our composting play an important role in the fermenting of our wines. The yeasts we need for natural fermentations live in our soils. Potentially, 150 to 200 different strains of yeast migrate from the soils into our cover crop and find their way onto our clusters during the ripening season. Cultivating the population of yeast for our wines is a matter of keeping the soil enriched with dynamic life, allowing the diverse yeast strains to flourish. Eventually, the yeast populates the cover crop which also plays home to hundreds of beneficial insect species. As the insects migrate from the cover crop into the grapevine canopy searching for their daily meal of troublesome insects, they inoculate our clusters with the yeast. By harvest the bloom of yeast is so abundant the white grapes have an opalescent gleam and the red berries look as if they were dusted with lavender baby powder. With over 150 different yeast strains working on the evolving wines, each will add its own unique personality to the fermentation.

Anthony is a patient man. Somehow he can mediate between fermentations that begin immediately and furiously upon picking and those that begin 3 or 4 days later. Some fermentations can last 7 days, and some 7 months. Right now we have a late harvest Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon that is fermenting at 38 degrees on its 60th day of ferment. This style of making wine means nothing is predetermined in the winey yet there is no chaos. Anthony stays contemplative and mind melds with the wine. Everyday, David joins him in tasting the wine and I see them in the winery discussing the evolution of the ferments. I like to go into the winery in the morning and taste and smell alone, enjoying a moment of privacy.

A sense of quietude reins as the ferments end and the new wines macerate for weeks becoming knitted and more complex. By discarding the use of additives like enzymes, laboratory yeasts and synthetic yeast food, our wines naturally become themselves and the mysterious beauty that comingles the vineyard, the winery, the wines, and the people who create them is ours.

Pomace and cluster stems from the 2010 harvest ready to become compost.

November 2010

The wine is almost finished fermenting. What was once a grape, a perfect circle of sugar and juice drinking in sunlight, is now transforming itself into another existence. Anthony Nappa, our winemaker instills a sense of calm from the time the first berry is picked, continuing through the capricious moments of fermentation and onward during pressing. He is busy with over 30 separate ferments, twelve of which are in small one ton picking bins. It is a time of gentle, quiet, beautiful and subtle change. I dip a glass into each warm ferment and taste the progression of the juice into wine. A few days after picking, the initial flavor of fresh fruit begins to metamorphose into a series of partial flavors, breaking apart and defining themselves. This stage lasts a couple of weeks and then, almost miraculously, the fractured parts pull back together and it begins to become a wine, quirky and nascent. A month later, with the skins and seeds and wine still in maceration, it has begun to knit together, the tannin and fruit cohabitating. In a couple of weeks Anthony will begin pressing to barrel and letting the fruit become its destiny in the winery.

At times I feel mournful as I walk through the vines after the fruit has been harvested and the leaves have fallen. I feel as though farming can be all about taking and not about giving. But as the wine ferments with the cellar doors open the smell of the fermentations must surely be wafting through the vineyard and the vines must know that their fruit is still alive and becoming itself.

Finished compost from the 2009 pomace. Black gold.

November in the vineyard is a time of transformation just as powerful as the spring. It is the beginning of a long rest for the vines and the field they grow in but for the earth below it is the advent of a magical transformation of humus into minerals. This moment of a seemingly barren vineyard is when I spread the compost, giving back what was once taken. The pile that I made from last year’s skins, seeds and pressings plus leaf mulch and grass cuttings from the Inn, and horse bedding from a friend have become a mound of black earth, alive. Before I begin loading the compost into the spreader, I dig in to my elbows, pulling out a spongy handful and take a long deep lungful. Carbon. Earth. Minerals. The compost squiggles in my hands as I feel a few worms slithering and twisting along my palms. The worms are the workhorses of the compost pile. When a worm ingests the compost, the material it excretes contains 50% more nutrients than the original compost could have provided to the plant. Thank you, worms. As I scoop the compost into the bucket loader of the tractor it practically rolls itself into the bucket. It spins out of the compost spreader peppering the vineyard with moist humus and the millions of Red Wigglers, the worms living in the compost. Now the worms will become the workhorses of the land drilling holes in the soil and excreting their nutrient rich gift.

The finished compost will begin the process of mineralizing the soil through the cold winter months. The microbes will migrate into the soil and continue to create the humus and minerals for next year’s crop. This mound of black gold made from the stems and pressings of the 2009 wines enters the vineyard now in the fall of 2010 and will nourish the fruit we will harvest in the fall of 2011. What was once a grape becomes a grape again. A perfect circle has lain itself down here on our 20 acres.

October 19, 2010

Yesterday morning Nicholle, who works at our Farmhouse Inn, came into the kitchen and said “Barbara, there are about 10 deer in the vineyard, don’t you want to keep them out?” It was a honeyed moment for me as I answered “No, they are just eating the grapes.” Actually they were eating the fallen grapes left after harvesting. The growing season is done and now is the time the deer, birds and raccoons are allowed back in the vineyard to graze the cover crop and glean the fallen fruit.

This harvest was spectacular. The majority of the sugars were between 23 and 26 brix, balanced with appropriate acid and healthy pH. In a year with such high sugars I was expecting botrytis to make its appearance at some point… especially since it rained nine out of the eighteen days we harvested the reds. This creepy grey mold is always a topic of conversation amongst growers and is something that we do not like dealing with it at harvest. I have not used chemical botrycides in 2 years and I have not gotten botrytis since, so go figure. Stop using botrycides, stop getting botrytis… hmmm. I think the healthier the “bloom” (native yeast population) is on the berries, the more natural resistance the fruit has towards molding. The only way to keep the bloom on the fruit is to use only low grade controls for fungus thereby avoiding wiping out the native yeast population. This is yet another example of the System Acquired Resistance our vineyard has attained by the methods of farming we use.

Now the vineyard is barren and it is the time of year I visit the vines and thank them for what they have given me. The elegance with which they gift to me their fruit then remain tall and noble is a lesson in the beauty within death, and the living within dying. Most of the time farming is about taking from the land. As winegrowers it is important that we recognize the magnitude of the request that we make of the vines every year. Do the vines know I am thanking them? Perhaps not exactly as a human being would, but gratitude and gifting back completes a circle that would otherwise remain open. In addition to a quiet moment of appreciation to the vines, tomorrow I will feed the soil a tasty cocktail of fish, seaweed, carbon and compost tea. In a couple of weeks I will spread last year’s compost that will mineralize the soil over the cold winter months and in the beginning of January I will treat the periphery of the vineyard with a special mix to welcome the elementals back into the vineyard for another season.

For now, I am happy drinking in the October evening sun watching some of the last of the insects dance a swarm and appreciate the beauty of the vineyard as the leaves slowly turn a bright yellow orange and red.

6:30 am, Thursday morning, September 30, 2010

I am watching the weather on radar as a gruesome tropical storm is covering the east coast from Florida all the way north to Canada. Out here on the North Fork we have had only a mist of precipitation but there is no way I can accurately predict what will happen. The peninsula (or fork) where we are situated is at the end of a 90 mile eastward reaching island that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean and the Long Island Sound. Often times this location helps us avert storms like this travelling up the coast; the rains hug the eastern shoreline, hit Manhattan then continue north into upstate New York and New England, leaving us high and dry.

As the storm formed yesterday, there was a frenzy of picking. We brought in 10 tons of merlot, picking and sorting from 7am to 7 pm. A couple of other winegrowers I spoke to were also furiously harvesting perfectly ripe fruit and there was excitement in their voices, like they were almost glad there was trouble brewing. I felt the adrenaline too and still feel it this morning as the 280 mile wide storm creeps by missing us by a mere 70 miles or so. I think we are all masochists here, happy only when there is impending doom.

4:30 pm, Thursday, September 30, 2010

We have had some resident crows in the vineyard for the past 10 days and right now they are skipping around the perimeter cawing loudly. I look at them as the guardians of the fruit because once the crows claim territory the starlings high-tail it out. Up to mid-September we have had to scare the starlings out of the vineyard as many as 15 to 20 times per day as they descended into the vineyard in flocks of 500 or more intent on devouring our fruit. Even with the vines netted, they still get in. Now, their absence is almost eerie.

I just finished walking through each cutting of the Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and Malbec. It is apparent that the western facing clusters, the ones that get the hot afternoon sun have surpassed the eastern facing clusters in ripeness. The berries are pulling off the stems leaving only a dark red wick attached and the seeds are getting brown and crunchy, shattering between my teeth as I chew. This may be a year where we harvest each vine twice, taking the “sun” side of the vines first, tying back down the bird netting and waiting until the eastern facing fruit finishes. We will see.

Yesterday the beautiful sun was rising at 6:30 in the morning through the group of trees to the east of the vineyard. It was like red-orange velvet fire, promising only a softness so kind you couldn’t reprove it in any way. I silently welcomed its warmth that would eventually slather itself over me as we picked our Sauvignon Bland and Semillon for our wine we call Haven.

We have had 3 picks so far this 2010 vintage, the first: our Sauvignon Blanc from 4 year old vines, the second: our Pinot Blanc, and yesterday our third: Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon for Haven, a wine named after our soils here.

I celebrate this tiny moment in time because it is the first harvest here at Shinn Estate Vineyards under the guidelines of the National Organic Program. However, we have gone much further than just meeting these standards. The practices of the Oregon Live program, the Vine Balance New York program, the Demeter Association and our own methods of biologically intensive winegrowing have all comingled in the vineyard to produce our ripest and most balanced harvest to date. The Sauvignon Blanc has just begun ferment and tastes like bright ripe pears and grapefruit. Anthony Nappa, our winemaker, soaked the Pinot Blanc on the skins overnight letting the figgyness of the raisins into the wine. Right now, the field blend of Sauvignon Blanc Musque and Semillion is soaking for 3 days on its skins before Anthony will press it and transfer it to oak barrels.

As I trekked through the rows picking and lugging my lug of fruit through sometimes knee-high cover crop, I found the time to think back about my years converting this farm to a cleaner method of farming. Comments from fellow winegrowers like “you better be careful Barbara” and “organics is a croc” flowed through mind as I picked. Other choice phrases came to light containing words like “lunacy” and “occult”. I found myself laughing out loud at one point and my vineyard crew looked at me wondering what I was thinking.

The meadow that we grow under the vines is a splendid mat of grasses and broadleafs that provide pasture for the vines. As we mow under the trellis and around the trunks, the green manure left behind decays and is transformed by soil microorganisms into plant available nutrients. I look at my vines as if they were cows and sheep grazing in a meadow…..I grow free range wine!

I shouldn’t be so bold as to say I, because my whole vineyard crew has their specific tasks to perform with this way of farming: Jose loads and drains the compost tea and runs it through the irrigation. Guadalupe loads up the fish emulsion, Carlos spreads the compost and applies the fresh herbal teas and horn silica, and Israel builds the preliminary compost piles as he helps Anthony to press off the wines. They all scout the vineyard for problems everyday they are working.

Next harvest will be the beginning of the merlot, which will be early next week….about 3 weeks before normal merlot harvest. We have a 3 acre block at over 23 Brix and it is 80 degrees today. What a year.

Shinn Estate is in the first year of their organic certification process. Barbara Shinn shares her progress with us.

August 21, 2010

Art and Intuition

I rode my bike into the vineyard today to spend some time just looking at the vines and trying to discern if two of the drier blocks needed irrigation. All-week thundershowers have been predicted, but only blue skies and 90 degree temperatures have been the result. The same thundershowers are predicted for the next three days, but I am not counting on it at this point. Since July 21 we have only gotten one-tenth of an inch.

As I ride up the path into the middle of the vines I thought about a story Butch Rowehl told me some years back. Butch was the last person to farm this land before me and he planted corn and rye for grain. In 2002 David and I had planted about half the vineyard and Butch still farmed the other half. That spring he had planned on letting the cover crop of winter rye continue to grow into a harvestable crop. On the day he plowed a small one acre piece for us that was to be planted with Cabernet Franc he ended up plowing the entire field of his rye under too. When I asked him about it he looked down and smiled to himself and said “Barbara, I got in the tractor and when my plow started to turn the soil, it turned better than it had in years so I couldn’t stop myself. It was the best spring plowing I can ever remember having” He planted the corn instead and that was that. That was the moment I understood the art and intuition of farming.

So, as I rode my bike up into the vineyard I thought about Butch and knew that my decision would be based more on smaller signals from the vines, the soil, the sound of the crickets, the way the heat hit my face. I had to listen to the vines, not calculate the odds.

September 1, 2010

Question 1: Why is it that the Organic Trial in Chardonnay at a local experimental vineyard did not work? Why can’t 25 vines be managed organically in a 2.5 acre vineyard where agricultural chemical experiments are taking place simultaneously on the surrounding vines? Why did the 25 vines fail in the 2.5 acre vineyard situated on a 68 acre farm where even more agricultural chemical experiments are taking place on other crops?

Perhaps I just answer the question by simply asking it?

Question 2: 10 years ago I was told it was impossible to successfully farm wine organically here on the North Fork. Now it is said “well, I guess you can do it on 20 acres.”

If we can do it on 20 acres why can’t it be done on 25 vines?

This is not a criticism of the experimental vineyard and the people who farm it. The trials that are conducted here are valuable to all of us growing wine. The people who conduct the trials are well educated in agriculture and plant science and selflessly come to the aid of all of us growing wine here. The Organic Trial simply raised questions that perhaps were not intended upon the outset of the experiment…and they are very important questions indeed.

Question 3: Are we looking at a situation where the farmer must treat her farm as a whole and allow for instinctive agricultural wisdom to play a role? Could it be that successfully farming organically is not just simply substituting an organic input for a non-organic input?

Is it highly improbable to be able to convert land to a more holistic method of farming by simply going “cold turkey” instead of slowly transitioning the land over?

Rudolph Steiner gave us solace in these questions by his kind words:

“A farmer who senses the existence of a certain inevitable relationship between human beings and the kingdoms of nature – the interaction and interpenetration of the forces of the earth, sun, stars, elementals and all other nature spirits – and who sees these interactions and interpenetrations giving rise to the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms, feels a host of questions assailing him at every turn in his daily work to which his current knowledge can supply no answers, and which therefore greatly trouble him as unresolved questions. He senses the fact of these forces and their interworking, yet knows nothing of the way they do so, nor of their essential nature.”

September 3, 2010

Today I looked at a picture I took of the vines back in June. Sometimes their beauty pulls me into the vineyard and I just need to go quietly and be there.
The spring sun was so gentle that day, the vines were reaching up to the sky and the tendrils were quietly twirling in the air.

Now it is September and it is raining torrentially thanks to the hurricane named Earl. The vines are strong and wise, yet still vulnerable…it seems like they are always vulnerable. I thought about going deep into the vineyard today to a favorite spot hoping to somehow warn of the approaching weather situation. But I decided not to go. They had to go through this alone.

Now I regret it, the rain is hard and the fruit is soft.

I wish the tender beauty of June that is shown in this picture was with me now in September.

September 4, 2010

2 inches of rain yesterday and a dry wind is blowing, drying everything. The fruit is unscathed. We made it.

September 10, 2010

The harvest is swirling about us and it seems like everyone is picking. But for me it is not time to pick. All of the fruit has an indication of high sugar levels because we are 2 to 3 weeks ahead of average harvest time. But if the fruit does not yet please me or David or Anthony on the palate, why harvest 2 to 3 weeks early…only to pick at average ripeness? The ascending moon* will commence on September 16 when the sap in the vines will again begin to rise, bringing nutrition to the berries.

That is when we will begin harvest.

*ascending moon: the moon has 4 cycles one of which is ascending and descending. The arc of the moon in the sky is higher during an ascending moon and lower during the descending moon. During the ascending moon the sap of plants rises and this is when I prefer to harvest. The sap, as a carrier of nutrients, will send nourishment to the fruit making for healthier fermentations and therefore better extraction, more fruit character, and optimal tannin structure in the wines.

September 13, 2010

Carlos and Gaudalupe just walked out to the vineyard to lower the deer fence. We are going to reseed the north block with alsike and sweet yellow clover today. I am envisioning the vineyard floor next June vibrantly blooming in yellow and white.