There’s a middle ground as well. Shorter canopies without laterals and more significant leaf pulling. Give you a canopy that accumulated sugar more slowly and also exposes the fruit to sunshine, which definitely helps to evolve the fruit past the herbaceous flavors.
My feeling for a number of years was that flavor was a factor of time on the vine, while sugars accumulate based upon canopy vigor and climate.
As I moved further into no till and had significant shrinking in canopy, I saw significant inprovements in acid balances(more tartaric, less malic). I was also suprised to see what I felt were physiologically ripe flavors(my preference is red flavors, rather purple though) about a week earlier than I would anticipate. Still lower Brix, but well developed and without any vegetative qualities. 2018 Chardonnays from Whistling Ridge were 12.1% abv, and the Durant is 12.6%. In 2019, the Whistling Ridge Chardonnay will be somewhere between 11.5-12.0 abv. We’re on lees for 20 months, so the wines are light bodied but textural.
We also typically ferment about 50% of Pinot Noir fruit at 100% whole cluster, and all of the remaining fruit with significant amounts(30-70%). The resulting wines are lower alcohol than average, have little excess fat, distinct tannins and acidity, but excellent red/blue fruits.
In addition to no-till practices and the resulting effect upon vine vigor, we also pull east side leaves in tye fruiting zone in May or early June, and West side leaves first of August. The additional uv exposure to the fruit helps develop skin phenolics and increases tannins, while removing a strong set of leaves from contributing to Brix ripening. We risk a bit of sunburn, but that’s easier to cull from the ferment than excess Brix.
I really need to add something to the photos for scale, but parcel number one is allowed to grow about 40cm more than parcel number two before it is hedged. Hedging low tends to promote lateral growth, and concentrate sap flow in the grapes making for larger berries. This particular site is not especially high-grade: these are deep marl soils. So vigor is naturally quite high.
It matters (even though it is amazing that almost no grapes in Burgundy seem to ripen on a Sunday…)! But, as a journalist, it isn’t a question I ask because the answer is more or less meaningless unless you’ve seen the parcel.
Interestingly, the owner of parcel number one had tried no till here a decade ago - he said that every consecutive year, yields decreased by 20%, and the canopies became just tiny - he abandoned the experiment after three years. It is definitely an interesting practice and one that I’ve been drawn to having seen the results in California and Oregon, yet anyone who attempted it this year has really, really suffered in Burgundy. I joked with one producer the other day that he was going to end up with living soils and dead vines…
In a normal year, the high canopies provide more shade! This year, the sun has tended to just burn off the leaves in the fruiting zone, and then shrivel a lot of fruit (though some selections-rootstock combinations have been much less affected by this than others). Narrower rows and higher densities would make for still more shade.
I think it’s clear that some producers who hedge lower than the grower in parcel one, and whose vines display more vegetative vigor, can make incredible wine (Coche would be an obvious example). In turn, the winemaking has to be adapted to the fruit. So there is not only one answer to these questions, and even if with these specific examples I do strongly the favor the first, there are certainly other ways to get great results. Parcel number two here, however, is over-fertilized and over-cropped, with herbaceous flavors and thin-skinned fruit. So in this case it is not so difficult to choose…
Interestingly, there is more to all of this than just the height of the canopy. Olivier Lamy has compared side by side rows this year with (1) trimmed high by machine (2) trimmed at the same height by hand and (3) rolled canopies that are not trimmed. He told me that 1 and 2 have 1% more potential alcohol but that 2 has notably more mature seeds and skins; and that 3 has just as mature seeds and skins as 2 but 1% lower potential alcohol. Vines are sensitive organisms!
William, how much of the “newer” farming techniques is just better farming that always would have worked better and how much of it is a result of changes in climate that have necessitated changes in farming techniques? Thanks as always for your fascinating posts.
Fabulous thread. Thanks again.
For growers such as Leroy, Olivier Lamy, J-M Vincent and others this has been a gradual process, going on over a decade or more, that just happens to be interestingly adapted to these warmer, earlier vintages. Higher canopies, avoiding trimming, experimenting with cover crops etc are all quite coherent developments from the perspective of plant physiology. Equally, there are vintages when having a high, untrimmed canopy harbors mildew to disastrous effect: in years like that (most recently 2016), it might not have been a bad idea to go in and hedge. Better to trim, after all, than loose all your leaves to disease! Of course, now the norm seems to be hot and sunny, some growers regret their planting decisions of a decade plus ago: devigorating rootstocks, for example, may have been adapted to the late '90s and early '2000s, but are struggling in 2020. And then there’s the question of how long-term your planning is: in fifty years, the grapes produced by the vines in parcel number three may look like those produced in parcel one; whereas parcel number one will have been replanted as its yields will have become derisory. So which generation is one planting for?
Perhaps a stupid question, but what are rolled canopies?
That’s a pretty good question.
Grossly simplified, grapes are apically dominant growers. Rolled canopy is where the grower tales the top of the shoot and rolls it 180 degrees so it would be growing back down into the trellis. The vine recognizes that the growing tip is no longer growing up, and slows growth of the shoot, and diverts growth elsewhere. It’s a very cool system as the vine does not immediately start producing lateral growth(mostly undesirable in my view) as it does after hedging.
1 Like
Interesting to hear William.
To yields: as the canopies shrink here my yields actually became more consistent but not lower. It’s good as it eases worry but keeps a bearable load for the vines.
To canopies: canopy vigor is a challenge. And there are plants where I have absolutely felt that we were stressing the wines too far. But each vintage so far, post harvest and before the following growing season the wines have been of a quality to let the process go one more year. In 2017 the House block at Whistling Ridge had me extremely worried during the growing season, and up to harvest. But the fruit still produced a fantastic wine(the Vinous and WA reviews both corroborate this). Many of the vines do seem to stabilize, and this year with excellent growing conditions in the spring green growth is still considerably less than a typical vineyard in the Willamette Valley, but all of the vines look the equal of preceding years.
It’s an experiment in progress, but so far one that is yielding the types of wines that I want. Alcohols are low, which is why I was so interested in your previous statements about typical alcohol levels 50 years ago.
Would love to hear the follow up on Lamy’s experiment through harvest and beyond. In particular it seems if healthy grapes with thick skins and lower potential alcohol (and leading to strong wines) result from rolled canopies, esp in warm vintages, it’s a potential path not only to make better wine but also to fight higher potential alcohols that have been the unfortunate trend in Burg over two decades now with global warming.
So the grapes want the human touch.
A neat, clean cut from shears over a flail or spinning blade, yes—or so it seems! Makes some sense that it would be less stressful to the plant; and stress is what stimulates vegetative growth.
He’s going to vinify them separately, so I’ll report back.
And yes, I’m more or less persuaded that going higher and rolling is the way to do - or training each vine on an individual stake. But, in a year with heavy disease pressure like 2016 one might need to pragmatically rethink things for a season. And surely we will have years like that again…
I second that.
All this is fascinating and thanks.
At what point during the growing year would a decision have to be made that this will be a year with “heavy disease pressure.” Can this decision be made say in June or July or does it have to be made earlier?
My pleasure!
I think ideally that’s pragmatic: if disease pressure soars and the weather is humid; hedge. Unfortunately, a lot of viticultural strategies (like winemaking strategies), especially innovative viticultural strategies, are often heavily theorized to the point of being ideological and therefore inherently not very pragmatic. This results in bigger differences in yield and quality from vintage to vintage than might be though necessary.
Agree one size does not fit all. And the fact there’s a growing season with variations along the way obviously complicates. What seems right under disease pressure in early summer may result in actions that have repercussions for a heat-scorched August.