I want to pre-face this by saying I’m not a farmer at all and know very little about farming practices. This is more of an attempt at an intellectual or philosophical discussion.
I was listening to a few of Levi Dalton’s podcasts with the Italian winemakers, both Gaja and Lorenzo Accomasso. They mentioned how in the old times the vines and their fruit were considered gifts from god, and to cut that fruit off and just dump it, would be not only be a sin, but complete heresy. So they did it in secrecy - Lorenzo mentioned how he collected the cut off fruit, smuggled it away and dumped it somewhere where nobody in the village would find out.
Today, this practice is commonplace and almost all vineyards do it. I can’t tell you how much fruit dropped in the rows I’ve had to step on in just my short 3 harvests. And as I was listening to this, I couldn’t help but think, perhaps the old timers are actually right? It is slightly mad.
Firstly, let’s look at it from an evolutionary standpoint: if the vine finds enough sunshine, enough water, and enough nutrients that year, it will produce more fruit. There’s this notion that if they produce more fruit, each bundle must be somehow less concentrated. But is that really the case? Isn’t it a bit like economic theory - in a rising sea, don’t all boats rise? Haven’t we proven that if someone creates value, it doesn’t mean someone else had to lose value? If it’s a good year the vine can sustain more crop without degrading the quality. Think about it - it doesn’t make sense that the vine would overcrop itself and have lesser sweet or concentrated fruit, because that would result in birds not eating them it and the vine not propagating. Obviously, from the vines standpoint, each cluster must be as enticing as the other for successful propagation.
Secondly, this approach was made in a time in Europe when weather patterns were different than today. It was colder, more rain, more lost harvests. Lorenzo mentioned that 3-4 out of 10 vintages were bad in those days. Since the late 90’s, he said there hasn’t been a single truly bad one. With global warming (or whatever theory we subscribe to), the crops are much more ripe and consistent. And here in California, where we’ve never struggled to get ripeness, why was this practice adopted? Our problem here is not ripeness, it’s actually over-ripeness and low acid levels. So why was this European practice adopted here?
Thirdly, isn’t the pruning of the vines the pre-crop reduction already? Left to it’s own devices, the vine would produce endless canes, all carrying shoots of fruit. Which tells me it has much more capacity to sustain fruit than we give it credit for.
Sustainably, I just think that if we can produce good wine from vines that some years crop heavily (as they have done for centuries before us), then it’s our moral obligation to do so, no? It makes no sense to be organic, biodynamic, sustainable and go through all that earth friendly stuff, only to then cut half of the crop and dump it on the ground. That’s not sustainability in my book. We talk about expression of the vine, the soil and all that winemaker BS talk. Guess what, however many ripe clusters it produces, that is the expression of the vine.
I think this year, I’ll have my growers not drop any fruit on my blocks. It’s just wrong. But I’m happy to be convinced otherwise.