Hello and welcome to the vast
array of Spring toiling that is Amalie Robert Estate. While this Spring missive
typically deals entirely with subterranean diurnal activities, we will be
delving deep into the breadth and depth of toiling required to keep diesel in
the tractors. Please be aware, there may very well be some meandering and not
everything is as it appears, certainly not linear. Specious is a fairly well
befitted adjective to describe the fully vertically-integrated wine industry,
such that it is an industry.
Well, you reap what you sow, and
in the world of wine, that means planting grafted vines that you ordered (and
paid for) the previous year. Sometimes, you can get “lucky” and there are grafted
vines available on the “spot market” the same year you want to plant them (please
refer to the law of “supply and demand” for pricing.) These are typically
over-runs of vines when a nursery happened to have fewer “exceptions” in the grafting
process than they anticipated. On the rare occasion, as is one equal to the
frequency of winning the lottery, a nursery will have available the exact wine
variety and clone grafted onto the exact rootstock that you are looking for. Planting
on principle is a costly and time intensive endeavor.
This is why Ernie has his own
rootstock block – nobody ever has any extra of what he is looking
for because nobody else seems to grow it. The road less travelled is an
altruistic concept, and a befitting one, but Dena simply says, “When I first
met Ernie it was clear right off the bat, he didn’t run with the traffic. It
almost got him killed in Ireland
until he learned how to look on the “left” side of the road for the oncoming
bus.” Of course their idea of a highway is called the “Dual Carriageway” and
that should also tell you something.
Once you have placed your order,
paid your money and waited about a year, your vines (or a portion of them) may,
or may not, be ready. Some of you reading this may recall sending in two box tops
and a dollar to cover postage and handling. Ordering vines is the adult, agrarian
version of this toil. You pay your money and you take your chances.
When the much anticipated nursery
truck shows up, you take their manifest and compare it to your order, or at
Amalie Robert Estate we use the ubiquitous “Control Sheet.” Despite your best
laid plans, this is when you find out what in fact you will be planting on that
wonderfully manicured, perfectly positioned “Last Best Place to Grow Pinot Noir
™” hillside.
You point out to the driver the
fact that the manifest of vines does not match your order. By the look he gives
you, it is clear he has been in this position before. “Ah yeah, so you want for
me to put these vines back in the truck, or do you want to go and plant that
hillside?” So Ernie took those vines, along with the invaluable lesson he just
learned, and planted his own rootstock block so that he was never again put in
that unenviable position.
The hardest part about planting
vines is everything, like preparing that old cherry orchard to accept vines and
then getting the aforementioned correct vines. Then there is layout. This is
the never-ending process of getting straight AND parallel lines over the top of
a surface that more resembles the topography of your fist than a flat plane. You
rely on a 400’ aircraft cable pulled as tight as you can muster and popsicle
sticks placed in the uneven soil every 4’ apart. Yeah, Ernie packs them in
tight. Then we move over 7.5’ and do it again – 1,452 vines per 43,560 square
feet (that’s an acre, folks.) The vineyard is currently 129 rows wide, and
still going… Sometimes we can see each other at the end of the rows, and
sometimes there is a rise between us. If you wonder where the complexity in our
wines comes from, we can tell you it literally starts in the field.
Ernie performs QC with the
tractor. That first run through all the rows will reveal just how straight and
parallel they are. The tractor rows are 90” wide and the widest tractor Ernie
drives is on tracks - at 68” wide. In the “epic fail” scenario, the rows
hourglass to the point where the tractor will not pass. Double, double toil and
trouble…
But in the ground those plants go,
usually during the wind and the rain. This makes for a nice day of toiling. As
a dry farmed Estate, we have learned how to plant water with our vines. We use
a substance that absorbs water during the rainy season and then releases it to
the vines throughout the dry growing season. Watering vines is simply a toil we
cannot stand in the least.
Once the wine has rested
comfortably on its cork through the bottle shock phase Dena will order labels.
While not as arduous and time consuming of a process as ordering vines, the art
department can, and often does, see things differently than you would like. The
result is toiling over seemingly endless revisions. You can’t sell a wine
without a label, and that is when Fedex “Same Day” service can help, aka Fedex
EMERGENCY.
Another seemingly endless toil is
labeling and foiling. With the help of a small air compressor and a 220 volt
motor, Ernie can apply labels and foils at a rate of about 35 cases per hour.
Note: He does not differentiate between
red and white wine. Stack them on a pallet 14 cases per layer and 4 layers
later, well that’s a 56 case pallet of wine. Whew, time for a Dog-nose beer!
(Cold and wet.)
And then there are wine sales.
While we do our best to present a professional image in the marketplace, by the
third afternoon things can get a little loose. As is the case in this brief exchange
- picture this:
Ernie was sitting at a restaurant
bar counter with a tall glass of ice water. The restaurant’s wine buyer had not
yet come down from a meeting and the distribution representative who was
selling our wine that day (let’s just call him Mike) had run off to the restroom.
When Mike returned, the barman asked Mike if wanted anything to drink while we
waited.
Mike said “Sure, I’ll just have
what Ernie is having.”
“Well Mike,” Ernie informed him,
“That’s an awful lot of vodka for someone your size.”
Blending is by far and away the most
engaging toil we perform. It is not nearly as cerebral as people might think.
We believe wine is a luxury product that should provide you pleasure, and we
approach it as such both personally and professionally.
I could toil away the hours,
conferrin' with the flowers
Consultin' with the
rain.
And my head I'd be
scratchin' while
my thoughts were busy
hatchin'
If I only had a brain.
Why just last month we had two
Pommard Clone blends we were evaluating. At just two barrels each, not only
were they hard to find among the 500 barrels of pure magic we have lurking in
the cellar, but both blends were equally stunning. They both displayed the
three halves of Pinot Noir, and were great on their own and with dinner, but which
blend to choose? After that first blending trial it was clear, we were in for a
considerable and extended toil.
We finally chose a blend, albeit
after significant toiling. Note: Dena is a whole lot better at
“rock-paper-scissors” than she lets on. Typically, a two barrel blend will
produce about 50 cases of wine. Well, let’s just say for this blend we will be
saving a couple of bucks on glass and corks.
And that leads us right into the
growing season. Ernie is just about to strap on a tractor, he has three of
them, and get to farmin’! Once again this year, the FLOG will keep you up to
date and in good stead with the growing season. As you are enjoying your FLOG,
we suggest you “drink ‘em if you got ‘em.” And if you need some, we can help.
Just click your red heels together three times and say “Send me some wine,
Fedex Emergency!”
If you are not getting FLOG’d, please sign up. If
you are getting flogged and would like to receive our FLOG, you can do that
too. And be sure to FLOG a friend!
Toiling, we remain, Factotums ad Infinitum,
Dena & Ernie
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