Home | The St. Innocent Story | Winemaker Notes - May 2001
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Winemaker Notes - May 2001I am dreaming once again. Not that I ever really stopped. This time I have a new dream. Of land... with grape vines... on the side of a hill... with a view. I want to make wine from grapes that I plant and grow in balance. Balance is the key: enough buds to put the plants energy to good use and just enough fruit to ripen fully. I am not a fan of either dense or wide spacing. I would probably use 7x5 spacing; they would certainly be vertically trellised. Perhaps about ten acres of Pinot noir and Pinot gris. The farming will be based on biodynamic principles. This results in maximum biodiversity to enourage healthy vines and complex soil organisms. A fully alive soil is the basis for terroir expression. Terroir is my dream. For years, at least since I started St. Innocent, grape growing was something I did not want to do. Winemaking was enough work, especially at harvest. I could not imagine getting up at 4 AM to get bins, buckets, clippers, and myself prepared for the arrival of a crew at 7 AM, then picking, hauling, and sorting fruit until 2 or 3 PM. This would be followed by getting the winery equipment ready, sorting, stemming, pressing, punching down, racking, and cleaning all the winery equipment until 11 PM (or more commonly 2 or 3 AM). Let's see that would leave one or two hours to sleep and start over again. Oh yes, I'm having fun now. What I do at St. Innocent is based on a Burgundy negociant model. This is unlike Bordeaux, where a domaine will own a hundred or more contiguous acres and produce wine only from their own vineyard. A Burgundy negociant makes wine from grapes purchased from numerous small growers and small pieces of many vineyards they own. Because of French inheritance laws, a sixty acre vineyard in Burgundy is often owned by dozens of families. The negociant buys fruit from growers with small lots. For example, the house of Louis Jadot produces dozens of village and single vineyard wines in this manner. I have searched for great Oregon vineyards and have long term contracts with seven growers. Having multiple terroirs allows me to produce a spectrum of wines that have different food compatibility, ageability, and flavor characteristics. Without this diversity of sites, I would not be able to produce such a wide variety of wines. Unlike Burgundy negociants, I have never owned any vineyard land. This is partly due to land use laws in Oregon that make it impossible to purchase small parcels of grape land in a variety of locations. I typically contract for 2 to 8 acres of a specific varietal at a specific vineyard. The total production of St. Innocent comes from about 45 acres of land. These small plantings allow me to produce a dozen wines in quantities that I can make and sell in a very personal way. The minimum size of agricultural land in Oregon is 20 acres, and in many places it is 80 acres. To own the diversity of vineyards I now produce, I would have to own hundreds of acres and grow enormously. I have no interest in becoming a corporate entity where I sit in an office and direct a staff of cellar workers and salesmen. I enjoy racking each barrel of wine myself. St. Innocent will remain small. What I am dreaming of is finding a unique piece of land with the potential for a terroir different from those I currently produce. I would plant just enough fruit to produce one new Pinot noir and one Pinot gris. The quantity would be large enough to sell in each of my markets and small enough that all the fruit could be processed in two or three days. Just enough to make it interesting. The most exciting part is that I will get to experience both the agony and the ecstacy of grapegrowing. I will get to prune in the pouring rain, worry about how to treat the grape disease that just showed up, sweat in a spraysuit in August, and get up at 4 AM to harvest. I will also get to feel the pride of pouring wine from a bottle made from fruit that I grew. Mark Vlossak, winemaker |
