Never Before
Two weeks ago Wendy and I took a trip to upstate New York. We traveled all over the Finger Lakes and Catskill Mountains and visited family and some friends who do some incredible farming and make some incredible wine and cider… or at least they would if they had any fruit.
I say that because this year, following a very warm April which caused the trees to bloom and set fruit, in Mid May the entire Northeast experienced a freeze event – much worse than any “late frost” – in which the temperature was around 25 degrees F for about 5 hours one night. When it hit, it destroyed one of the biggest blooms the area had seen in years. Now many orchards are simply barren. I walked through hundreds of trees that had no fruit at all. This came after last year’s “off year” when most of the trees produced a greatly reduced crop as part of their evolved cyclical reproductive schedule. I can’t imagine trying to operate my winery in California without grapes for two years, but that’s exactly what many cider makers in the North-East face right now. And grapes have been affected as well, but it remains to be seen just how badly.
I kept hearing a phrase that has sort of haunted me. Everyone kept saying:
“Never before…”
“Never before…” That’s how the severity of this freeze event was described.
I began writing this while stranded in a hotel in Geneva NY. I say stranded because our flight back to LA was canceled and we couldn’t get another flight until three days later. And I was stranded due to the air quality. The AQI as I wrote this was close to 200. That means that there, on the verdant shores of Lake Seneca, in a quaint town surrounded by farms and forests, the air outside was the most polluted and unhealthy air on the planet because of, again, unprecedented wildfires in Canada. This too seems to be a “never before” event.
I’ve gotten used to “Never before” because of living in California. In my 26 years of living in Los Angeles, I’ve lived through multiple of the driest years on record for the western US. During that time, I also saw and breathed the smoke of fires that were the largest and most destructive ever seen in the west. And now the 2022-23 winter will go down as one of the wettest winters on record.
Extremity and severity are our future. “Never before…” is happening every year now. “Never before…” is a phrase that will become common to all of us, wherever we live.
As I sat, trapped in my hotel writing about this, I looked around and saw a lobby area full of dozens of people who seemed unperturbed by these ecological and environmental realities, visible in the extremely hazy air right outside the windows.
I began to feel discouraged. I’m sure you’ve been there. What will it take to wake us up?
But then I remembered some other ecological realities I had noticed during our visit. The farmers themselves were one of those realities. Dismayed, for sure, but undaunted. This “never before” spring was already activating deep wells of creativity and resourcefulness in everyone I spoke too. More than ever before, diversity was rising to the top of the list of paths into the future.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever lived through a terrible storm or flood or earthquake, but if you have, you’ve probably experienced that sense of community that happens when the dust settles and everyone comes out to survey the damage… and people being to spontaneously talk to each other and make sure everyone is okay, and help with anything they can. I felt this sense of community on an almost regional scale in New York. The farmers were commiserating, sharing, checking on each other, trying to learn from each other, offering help to each other.
Our car service driver was another of the ecological realities that encouraged me. When our flight was canceled, and every rental car service was sold out for 100 miles, we called a car service to be dropped at a nearby hotel to wait out our multi-day unplanned stay. But when our driver heard our story, he refused to let us be the battered victims of fate. He inspired us to call the airline and find a flight a day earlier out of another airport, and promised to get us there. He drove us an hour and a half, twice, on two separate days, picking us up the second time even though we had to stay an hour and a half from where he lived. On top of this he had an infectiously positive attitude, carried our bags, recommended hotels, and gave us receipts so that we could get reimbursed for our unexpected travel expenses.
It occurred to me that when things happen that have never happened before, we get to see people act in ways that they’ve never had the opportunity to act before. Yes, at times, we can be discouraging, but we are never always discouraging. We can be, and often are, creative, resourceful, caring, inspiring, heroic, and compassionate in ways that can change people’s lives.
As one farmer I talked to said, “Only a tiny percentage of people are crazy. The rest of us just want to pay our bills and get along.”
I’ve dedicated Centralas and the Organic Wine Podcast to promoting the knowledge and practices that reduce the number of times we have these “never before” events I've used these businesses to ask how to build a wine culture that is so diverse and adaptable that it can weather whatever comes. I’ve dedicated my time and resources to inspiring you to rise to the challenges of the future and act in ways that you never have before… in the best sense.
And I’ve reached a point where I want to do more. I want to work on projects that will extend beyond my lifetime to an unlimited number of generations from now. So I’m putting together a business plan and looking for an investor or investors who share this vision and would like to build something inspiring, hopeful, beautiful, and delicious that also regenerates the earth and builds the health of the land and the community of living creatures who are part of it.
If you have a serious interest in supporting this kind of project financially, please reach out to me, and we can schedule a call to discuss if it might be a good fit for you.
And if you aren't an investor, I'm still excited for you to be part of this project in other ways, and I'll keep you posted as it develops.
In the meantime, I'm going to show some love to a farmer... and buy some delicious wine and cider!
Cheers,
Adam