Pinots Past

I am pulling out all my Pinot noir vines. It has nothing to do with the awful vintage conditions of this 2010 year (2010 had the triple witching: started late, stayed cool and wet, and ended early with more cool and wet). I know how much each of you enjoys a good Pinot noir, and so do I. My first planting at our current house was 100% grafted PN, and even my 2010 plan was to keep my little vineyard mostly in PN, while I tried some hybrids, too. I've decided that my site is just not conducive to PN, even in a good year (and there is SO much promise in hybrids). My PN shortcomings are two: Sunlight shortfall, and late-ripening predation. OK, three: the grape is difficult to grow and make consistently good wine from.

Sunlight: PN (like all vinifera) is late-ripening compared to other grape species, and by Oct 10 the sun hours on my vineyard are so few, even on sunny days, that I don't get enough sunshine for full PN ripening (due to shadows from trees to the E, trees to the W, and even my house to the S, which is fine during the summer but by mid-Oct it shades the vineyard until almost noon). In contrast, hybrid grapes ripen about 2-4 weeks earlier, which puts the grapes in full sun for a higher percentage of their natural hang time.

Predation: But more importantly, predation pressure increases exponentially after mid-September, which causes me to lose much of my (unripe) PN fruit. To use 2010 real-life data:

a. I fully netted all my grapes this year, attaching the nets together every 3".

b. I also hung reflective tape, and kept adding to it.

c. I also spread, and renewed, a "scareaway" chemical (organic: it's putrescent bloodmeal), which should keep coons, birds, and deer away.

d. We have a feral cat, and she has been seen catching mice, and presumably she puts some perceived or actual pressure on birds.(I could have, and probably should have, put out fake owls and snakes, but that is about all one can do.)

Still, the deer got in and ate some of my grapes (and tomatoes and beans and squash). I added a chain curtain on my gate and spread some dog poop around, and that deterred the deer for a while. And the birds were getting into the fruit, somehow--perhaps pecking through the nets, perhaps worming their way inside the nets. Through good vineyard management, my clusters had avoided rot (unlike many area vineyards), and the grapes were very slowly getting riper, but the bird pressure just kept increasing. It got so bad that when I checked the vineyard after work on Tuesday, I had lost (visual guess) about 75% of my remaining fruit just on that one day. I flew into action (pardon the pun) and raised the nets and harvested. I had about 120 pounds of fruit hanging, a couple of weeks ago, and I bet I had about 60 pounds hanging on Tuesday morning--still enough to make wine, and I needed to let it hang longer, in order to reach a workable Brix level. But in the end I got only 11 pounds of grapes. 11 pounds, out of 120 pounds! It takes 16 pounds of grapes to make a gallon of wine. And of course the fruit I got wasn't ripe enough to make good Pinot. I've added Regent grapes to it, and some black currants, and it smells very good (is fermenting now; I just pitched MLF to remove the malic acid and then I will supplement with tartaric acid).

The big growers don't have the predation problem to the same percentage extent, because they grow so much fruit that the birds can't eat it all, or at least it would take longer for them to eat it all. Also, in addition to nets they use propane cannons and loud bird distress cries, which aren't exactly available to me in a suburban setting.

I'm not doing this to feed the wildlife.

So, sad to say but I'm pulling out all my PN, and will further expand my planting of hybrids. This gives me an experimental vineyard like none other in Oregon (I'm finding and planting new varieties that even Lon, my mentor in Aurora, doesn't have). I think some (particularly the whites) will make very good wine (as we've seen in my tastings of hybrids from around the country). The hybrid reds are more of a challenge (as you know from my tastings), but a legion of breeders and biochemists is working on it, and several of them have promise.

Hybrids are much more "green" than vinifera, which need regular spraying for diseases (and the tractor fuel that goes with it). And they ripen earlier than vinifera--I should be able to harvest a greater percentage of my fruit, since it will ripen more in the Sept 10-25 timeframe. Almost NO hybrid grapegrowers ever have to use nets. This could lead to a commercial enterprise, if I'm stupid enough to get seriously involved in farming. I think the green aspect will help make the effort stand out as worthy of attention, and there are plenty of wine lovers who are willing to try a new variety. It will all depend on whether the wines are good.

In that regard, all the hybrids contain (partial) vinifera ancestry; I will just slap anybody who gets all arrogant about insisting on 100% vinifera. What they don't know is that all vinifera are the result of natural crosses with other grape species. Just like we humans are all mutts, so are vinifera grapes all mutts. And, another point: PN really is the "Heartbreak Grape" (read the book of that name) for a reason. It's hard to grow and fickle in the winery and in the bottle. I prefer the predictability of, say, the W.Walla/Yakima grapes/wines (and also their quality). Bottle to bottle, you know what you'll get.

We should raise a glass to mourn the loss of my Pinot, and to hope for progress in another direction. Life is so full of perfect opportunities (perfect to our interests and talents) that even if we had a hundred lifetimes we could not begin to seize them all.

And Pinot noir, when I need it, is as close as Dundee wineries or the grocery store. At least I know, pretty much, which few makers of it have mastered the Heartbreak Grape! Sadly, it is not very many out of all those who try. It reminds of a line from Dune:

"They tried and failed, did they?"

"No. They tried and died."