Some reflections on the threshold of Harvest

Friday, we were in our vineyards in the East. There is so much that was amazing about this. I have tried to be simple, clear, and brief, but the East enchants me. This is what is amazing:

First, they are not our vineyards. We own nothing. We are guests. This imposes a reflection of humility, gratitude for the opportunity even to enter. We are so lucky to be able to work with these vineyards; one can forget this. Until you set foot in them.

Second, the vineyards are in the East. The East is almost inexpressibly special. I want to become the Poet of the East. And this ambition too is part of our work. Our little world is somehow rooted in Napa. Napa is widely understood to be both the center and acme of winemaking in the United States. This is where the Project was born. But we looked east, to Suisun Valley and to the Tenbrinks almost immediately. And soon after that, further east still—to the Delta, and then to Lodi. And now, each year, we especially treasure the early part of harvest: the buds burst here first in the Spring, the fruit ripens first here, a month before Napa, five weeks before Farina in Sonoma. And so, the beginning of harvest is inseparable for us from driving toward the horizon at dawn, into the morning Sun, and then into the interminable flatlands on the way into the Delta, and then through the oddly well-watered fields and plains of Lodi, and then further east, to Lodi's own borders, where the land begins to roll and swell, and suddenly there are bluffs, rock outcroppings, and ledges. The soil changes from bottomless loam to sandy gravel, brilliant with quartz.

Lodi for us is river-land—who would have thought that? But everywhere we work is dominated by the Mokelumne. The light, sandy, soil that we treasure is its alluvium; the contours of the land were carved and formed by its course; it offers a channel of cool air as its waters flow down from the Sierra snowmelt in July and August. And the Mokelumne empties into the Delta, where it meets the Sacramento and the San Joaquin. The Delta—is only an hour east of Napa and its "world class restaurants"—and yet is unknown, invisible, to outsiders. The Delta—where farmland depends completely on levees; towns, now below river level, that date back to the Gold Rush; canals, channels, sloughs, reeds, wetlands. The Delta is different from everything around it; its watery nature cuts it off, makes it esoteric, a kind of private club, a secret society.

What then is our work? To present this land. To look east and somehow bring the east to you. It is as if we were in some way portait artists or documentary filmmakers. Our work is not strictly preservation—though indirectly, our working with these and other vineyards can help preserve them as vineyards, and the way that we work with them can help preserve and strengthen the land and the ecology that surrounds it. But we are not the stewards of the land—this is the task and accomplishment of the owners, the farmers themselves. Our work is to take something from the vineyards and disseminate it. A piece of Kirschenmann in your hands; some of its spirit in your gut; some thought of it lodged in your mind. This is our job: to make this transubstantiation and translocation possible. But we are not magicians—our means, as Joe Carroll pointed out last night, are wholly rational, physical, comprehensible. In this profound sense: natural.

And so, how are the vineyards that we visited? Spectacular. Silent. Brilliant: the drought and the Noachic spring rains have come into a kind of vegetative equilibrium. There is lots of fruit—a plenitude. But not too much. Everything seems already in balance (Jeff Perlegos dropped fruit in Stampede, but not so much that you tread on it). The ample water in the soil and the burden of ripening a good load of fruit have slowed the vines down—for the first year since 2013, they are not in panic mode. The fruit already tastes good—solid, strong, surprisingly not green or harsh—yet is two weeks away from harvest at the soonest. Last year, we began harvesting the day after tomorrow. This year, in more than two weeks.

There is time. It is not essential to our work, but it is still a gift.