The Ecology of Wine

We recently got invited to pour Centralas wines for a party hosted by an ecologically focused landscape design company here in Los Angeles named Viola Gardens. As an ecological winery, we thought it would be a great fit.

And it was. My talk garnered applause, and even some cheers. I talked about the ways we attempt to protect or benefit the environment and our community with every decision we make for Centralas, how we want our wines to showcase the unique flavors of our local region, how the wisdom of vines can help extricate us from our cultural climate crisis, and how we see ourselves as merely helping vines lure people in with booze and then re-connecting them to the earth.

Then came Andy the ecologist.

Native grapes building relationships.

Ecology, maybe I should mention, is the biological exploration and understanding of the relationships of organisms to one another and to their environment. As evening settled into a lush hollow in Topanga Canyon, Andy stood before us and immediately connected us to the relationships going on around us.

“Close your eyes and listen. What do you hear?”

He began identifying the songs of the White-Breasted Nuthatch, the Yellow-Throated Warbler, the Canyon Wren, and more – calling them out as they sang in overlapping choruses – and it was as if the forest suddenly became three-dimensional.

Why hadn’t we heard these songs before? Moments before they had been a sort of background white noise for our self-absorption. But now we not only heard birdsong, we heard individual voices.

Andy went on to explain that by paying attention to the song of the birds, we could know that nearby there would be certain kinds of trees and shrubs, or that there would be water nearby, because each type of bird had individual preferences for the kinds of habitat they like to live in, and the kinds of things they like to eat.

Birds, as Andy further elucidated, were singing about all kinds of important things. Not only the presence of food or water, but also of predators and prey, and the activities of all kinds of forest creatures whom they could see from their unique vantage points. 

With eyes closed we began to see in all directions, deep into the woods. We became aware of how the songs of birds could be the keys to unlock the secrets of an entire ecosystem.

With rapidly dawning awareness we experienced one of those rare moments, in adulthood, of real wonder.

Andy had us open our eyes then, and concluded his mind-altering talk by saying something like this (paraphrased):

The birdsongs you hear are a form of energy. The energy of the sun and earth, balanced in this just-so cosmic cycle, grows into trees and plants. That energy is eaten by insects, which are then eaten by birds, who use that energy to sing. So when you hear a birdsong, you are hearing an expression of a diverse ecosystem which is bathed in the energy of the universe and translated through innumerable deaths and lives.

We all sat silent for a moment as he finished. In the silence, we heard the singing of the birds more clearly than ever before.

I couldn’t help but think of wine, of course, and Maya’s speech* from the movie Sideways about why wine moves her:

“…I like to think about the life of wine…How it’s a living thing. I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it’s an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now.”

Wine is also a translation of cosmic energy through its relationships. “Transubstantiation” may be a more appropriate word.

Like birdsong, wine has an ecology that involves trillions of soil microbes and air and sunlight. But while we can imagine removing humans from the birds’ ecosystem without ill effects (and maybe with some beneficial effects at this point), we cannot remove wine from its relationship with humans.

Wine depends on relationships to both human and extra-human culture. It sings of the inextricable relationship between humans and the earth and the universe.

Each bottle of wine, just like a birdsong or any song, is a little cycle of life and death. The silence between each note and phrase gives beauty and meaning to them. The pause between each sip allows us to savor.

Perhaps we love to open and drink bottles of wine for the same reason we love to listen to songs. Each bottle of wine we open, and savor, and finish is like the beginning, middle, and end of a song, which echoes the cycle of our own life.

Both are cycles that we repeat, again and again - being moved, learning how to better appreciate their meaning – simultaneously rehearsals and coping mechanisms for our mortality.

“And,” to quote Maya* from Sideways again, “…it tastes so f***ing good.”
 

Veraison begins at Crenshaw Cru.

Cheers,
Adam

*I'm actually not quoting Maya. Maya was a fictional character played by Virginia Madsen. But I'm not quoting Virginia Madsen either. She's an actor who was just saying her lines well. Her lines were written by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor. Am I quoting them? Maybe, maybe not... because Sideways the movie was based on Sideways the novel written by Rex Pickett... and I haven't read the novel. As a former Writers Guild Foundation employee (Wendy and I met in the library), I am compelled by law (the ironically unwritten law of the Writer's Code) to give appropriate credit for movie quotes.