Crafting Natural Wines

The last episode featured a 110 acre biodynamic chateau in one of Washington state’s famed AVAs. This episode features a 1 acre organic and regenerative vineyard of hybrids and vinifera with a straw bale winery and an underground house in a part of Washington that isn’t known for wine. I point out this contrast not to say that one is better than the other, but because in our dominant culture I’ve noticed that one is taken more seriously than the other. And I’m not saying that a 110 acre vineyard is really big and I’m definitely not saying it represents the same values as “Big Wine.” It’s just bigger than the vineyard we visit in this episode, and I use this comparison to look at this thought that we need to be able to scale the ideas that our wine embodies or they are dismissible, unimportant.

This is a big area of critique of the small-farm regenerative ag movement by Chris Newman, of Sylvanaqua Farms. He makes important points and we need his voice. And there are some real challenges to consider: the issues we face in regenerating our wine cultures are unavoidably systemic, and the systems we live in are massive. But I recently heard the question posed, what if we focus on spreading rather than scaling? Could we look at regenerative viticulture as a viral meme, rather than as a business plan for a million acres of vineyards? Do we need or even want scale when it comes to wine?

Right now it looks like the answer to that is “no.” Big Wine, the kind that comes with a bar code and national distribution and isn’t really wine anyway but more like a wine flavored beverage, seems to be what’s losing the most sales right now. And my guest for this episode is doing just fine. He has a loyal customer base because he makes his wine for his community. He represents his community’s highest values in his wine, even if they only care that it suits their taste and doesn’t make them feel like the wines of Big Wine do. His neighbors can tell that he cares about them and the land that they live on.

My guest for this episode is Joe Barreca of Barreca Vineyards. Joe has been making wine for 50 years and lives in North East Washington state. Joe is a self-described back to the land hippie, and in recent years regional efforts to elevate the voices and perspectives of the native people of his region have exposed him to new perspectives that inform how he thinks about and lives on the land, and clearly inspire and move him. Over years of experimentation he has come up with some of the most fascinating approaches to winemaking that I’ve heard since I spoke with Peter Schmidt of Mythopia in Switzerland. And what I think is fascinating is that out in the remote corner of a place that isn’t usually thought of in relation to wine at all, by following ecological values and a desire to make wine for his community, Joe has sort of stumbled into making zero zero wines and orange wines and co-ferments like an ideological natty winemaker in the Loire or San Francisco Bay area.

Joe grows one of his hybrid grapes, Baco Noir, with 10 foot canes… simply because he observed it and saw that that’s what it wanted, and that was the balance it needed to have the appropriate light and air to optimize the grape development. He let a baco vine grow into an old pear tree and has some really interesting observations to share about this partnership (see the photo below). Joe had never heard the term “married vine” but said he could see how that made sense.

Joe also washes and reuses all of his bottles. This is something he couldn’t do without the relationships with his customers who know to bring the bottles back to him, as well as a small scale that makes this possible. While the rest of us spin our wheels trying to come up regional bottle reuse programs and find massive hurdles related to the inertia of habit and bureaucracy as well as apathy, even among those of us who should care the most about it, Joe has meanwhile set up his own local reuse system made possible by community scale winemaking… and is actually doing it. So… maybe we shouldn’t dismiss small. Maybe small is beautiful.

Here’s a link to the foliar spray recipe that Joe mentions to treat vine health and reduce leaf hoppers:

https://barrecavineyards.com/foliar-spray/

Check out the abundance of that Baco Noir…

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