Vineyards

A Salem nonprofit operating in west Salem drew a good crowd for its recent Havana Nights event.

Jessie Doneth at the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Events are back. This was confirmed when 250 guests gathered at Cubanisimo Vineyards on July 22 for the Salem Dream Center’s Havana Nights fundraiser.  The event raised approximately $50,000.

Since 2004, the Salem Dream Center has helped families overcome poverty by providing educational services, mentoring, and food. The center focuses on the Edgewater neighborhood and reports on its website that the juvenile crime rate in the area is 31% lower than in similar communities.

Cubanisimo Vineyards is owned by Dr. Maurice and Deb Collada. Collada, a neurosurgeon, was born in Havana, Cuba.  His parents left everything they had to bring Maurice and his four siblings to the U.S., and he cherishes the opportunities provided for him. 

He celebrates his heritage through  winemaking at Cubanisimo (“very Cuban”) Vineyards.  

Food was provided by Livi’s, whose operator was once one of the Dream Center kids.

It was a gorgeous , sunny yet cool evening at the West Salem winery. Son de Cuba (the Cuban sound) performed music. Skilled salsa dancers like Orlando Pacheco Acevedo and Denisse Maciel danced, but their experience didn’t discourage others from trying to keep up.  

Attendees bought tickets for auction items.  Board President Jessie Doneth made sure no one missed a chance to win some of the great prizes. A short presentation from nonprofit founders Craig and Renee’ Oviatt was interpreted in sign language by Holly Hockman.

The Salem Dream Center’s next major event will be their Christmas Tree Auction on Dec. 3  at West Salem Ace Hardware.

Learn more at  Salem Dream Center, (971) 599-3166, or [email protected]. Text to give to their organization at 503-461-9300.

Orlando Pacheco Acevedo and Denisse Maciel dance at the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Rich Shultz, Chelsea Lally, and Mary and Jim Eastridge attend the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Holly Hockman interprets for Renee’ and Craig Oviatt at the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Maurice and Deb Collada, owners of Cubanisimo, at the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Jeremy & Heidi Mackay and Scott and Krystal Norman attend the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Brad and Desiree Hilliard attend the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Guests at Cubanisimo at the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Son De Cuba plays at the Salem Dream Center Havana Nights event on Thursday, July 22. (Mary Louise VanNatta – Special to Salem Reporter)

Mary Louise VanNatta is a Salem public relations professional, writing regularly about events for Salem Reporter. 

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Germany’s interior minister has announced a SMS messaging system that will make it possible to send out emergency text alerts to all mobile network users in an emergency area after the country was hit by the worst floods in 60 years.

While such a warning service has been used by other countries for decades, Germany has resisted its use over privacy concerns. 

According to experts, Germany’s emergency SMS system will be operational in the next 12-18 months.

 

03:17

 

Clean-up operation begins

Emergency power generators, construction dryers and kids toys – those were some of the items Sebastian Frenkel, along with dozens of volunteers, unloaded from trucks and trailers full of donations for the community of Erftstadt, which was hit by catastrophic floods on July 15.

Frenkel, from Potsdam, near Berlin, always had a love for the western Eifel region of Germany, so when it was struck by the country’s worst natural disaster in decades, killing at least 180 people, he sprang into action, initiating a crowdfunding campaigning.

A few days later, that campaigned had raised $35,314. With that money, he bought machinery and other equipment to help with the mammoth clear-up efforts.

“We are still moved after the drive,” shared Frenkel, who personally drove the donations the 570 kilometers to Erftstadt. “There are no roads anymore, no bridges. We saw some harsh images in Schuld, in Ahrweiler.”

Volunteers have been coming out from everywhere to help in the relief efforts.

 

Sebastian Frenkel, along with dozens of volunteers have raised money to help with the clean-up efforts. /AFP

Sebastian Frenkel, along with dozens of volunteers have raised money to help with the clean-up efforts. /AFP

Did the government warning system fail?

The discussion over the German government’s preparedness and response is still a hot topic just months before the federal elections in September.

One of the country’s national papers recently pointed the finger straight at the government, writing that “disaster management failed to warn citizens. Barely functioning sirens, no early evacuations and data protection prevented warning text messages to all affected citizens.”

The devastating floods, which also hit neighboring Belgium and The Netherlands,  caused the deaths of more than 180 people in Germany alone and is expected to cost the country more than six billion euros ($7.06 billion) to rebuild.

Some parts of western Germany were hit by catastrophic floods on July 15. /AFP

Some parts of western Germany were hit by catastrophic floods on July 15. /AFP

 

Vineyards fearful of future

Acts of solidarity in Germany’s competitive winemaking industry has helped those who own vineyards in the Ahr valley, one of the regions most severely affected, keep spirits high says Elmar Sermann.

His family has been growing wine in the area for almost 300 years.

“It’s just incredible,” he says. “The help that we have been offered from other winemakers in the region, people saying they have a press spare, or tanks or pumps. I think that with all this goodwill we will make it again.”

Yet, others are not so optimistic.

Many of the 460 members of the Mayschoss-Altenahr wine cooperative, also near the Ahr river in western Germany, were affected by the rushing waters that flooded cellars and vineyards.

Alina Sonntag, a management assistant at the cooperative, said the disaster threatened to end what is believed to be the oldest such organization in the world at more than 150 years old.

“It is devastatingly threatening to the existence (of our business)” Sonntag admits. “The barrels that were still in the cellar, where there was actually wine in them, are probably no longer usable. We’re now trying to save what can be saved. It affects our very substance, that’s for sure.”

 

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LOCKPORT, N.Y. — Western New York has seen its fair share of stormy weather this summer, and for some it has caused immense damage.

The owners of Arrowhead Spring Vineyards are regrouping after their grapes were pummeled by hail.

What You Need To Know

• Tuesday’s storm caused serious damage to Arrowhead Spring Vineyards
• The co-owner says the crop sustained about a 70% loss
• People have shown an outpouring of support

“I grew up on a farm and I said farming was the last thing I’d do,” Arrowhead Spring Vineyards co-owner Robin Ross said. “I was a software engineer for 20 years. My husband was in IT. This was really his dream to have a winery. At one point, he was talking about waiting until we retire. But farming is a lot of hard work, so we started way before retirement.

Ross says she definitely enjoys her work, but there are ups and downs. The latter of which occurred this week.

“The grapes were coming along quite nicely this year,” Ross explained. “We had a really good crop. Then Tuesday, we had a storm. It was just phenomenal. In less than a couple of hours, we had nearly five inches of rain. Really it was hail that did the most damage.”

She says the crop sustained about 70% loss, adding that this grape harvest would have been used for making wine two years out. She and her husband can purchase grapes from other growers. Though the damage from the storm has been a setback and a financial hit, Ross is trying to focus on the positive. ​​

“It was a bad incident,” Ross said. “But we’ve been getting support from fellow farmers and neighbors and people reaching out and asking if we’re okay.”

Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt and Assemblymen Angelo Morinello and Mike Norris have sent a letter requesting coordination between the New York State Office of Emergency Management and Lockport, Niagara Falls and Niagara County. This is in regard to the recent flash flooding in Western New York. 

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July 23: After a successful series of Top Ten Indian Winemakers under 40, delWine showcased 5 out of the 10 Top Ten Women Indian winemakers in Part-1. This concluding part recognised Ashmita Uday Pol (Sula Vineyards), Tamanna Agarwal (KRSMA), Priyanka Gupta (Zorba), Dr. Ashwini Deore (Cerana Mead) Tage Rita (Naara Aaba) and as compiled by Subhash Arora who encourages women to enter the industry to promote gender equality and wine culture in India; names are not ranked as before and include fruit and mead makers too

Ashmita Uday Pol (Sula Vineyards)

Ashmita Pol’s journey as a winemaker started at Sula Vineyards in 2012 when she did a harvest for 3 months on the recommendations of a friend. She had just completed her Masters in Life Sciences (Biotechnology) from University of Mumbai and the topics related to fermentation technology really intrigued her. By the end of the harvest she had decided to become a winemaker.

She started working as a Lab assistant at Vallonne Vineyards under the guidance of Marie Barbé and Sanket Gawand. Her main responsibility was working in the lab but being a boutique winery, she got hands-on- experience in every aspect.

In 2015, she took a break and decided to do a couple of harvests overseas- a vintage at Seifried Estate in Nelson, New Zealand, followed by another with Flowers Winery, one of the top-rated boutique wineries in California, specializing in organic and biodynamic farming. She did another harvest in Bangalore at Grover Zampa Winery.

 In 2017, she joined SULA Vineyards as Assistant Winemaker, under Neil Fernandes and also worked with Rupali Bhatnagar.  Today, she is in the Red wine making team, working mostly with rosé and reds- her primary focus being on the barrel processes and barrel aged wines.

In SULA there is a culture of equality, and women are considered on par with no gender discrimination. The cellar team is also very supportive. There are several women in the winemaking team, and every woman is treated with respect and equality, she says.

Ashmita has completed 10 harvests this year. ‘Winemaking is an addiction; you keep wanting to explore more. The journey from grape to wine is laborious and dynamic. It changes each vintage according to the climatic conditions and that is the most exciting part. The effort and patience of the transformation process is what you look out for each year, and want to make the best wine,’ she says.

Tamanna Agarwal (KRSMA)

The 27-year old Tamanna Agarwal grew up in Coimbatore. She is a B. Tech Gold medallist in Food and Process Engineering from SRM University in Chennai. In her final year, she pursued a harvest internship with Sula Vineyards in 2015. This was her big eureka moment, as she had grown up watching TV shows on wines and reading various wine books, and the reality turned out to be even better than what she had dreamt of.

After graduation she joined Sula Vineyards for a brief stint in Tastings and Marketing, based out of Goa. It was a relatively easy market, and most of the people she met were extremely knowledgeable about wines. This was an exciting phase of her life, but she knew winemaking was her calling. So she moved to Nasik the following year to start making wines.

She worked under the guidance of the Chief Winemaker Karan Vasani, and was quickly moved up to Associate Winemaker in 2018. She was predominantly focused in the red and rosé program – right from deciding when to harvest, up to making the wines, and she enjoyed every bit of the rush.

She has had the opportunity to make The Source Grenache Rosé and Rasa Zinfandel among others.  In her final year at Sula, she was given the freedom to independently manage a vintage involving both red and white grapes at an off-site winery. That experience greatly enhanced her confidence as a winemaker.

She then moved to California to do a harvest in 2019 with Opus One, the iconic winery in Oakville, Napa Valley.

She started working at KRSMA Estate from this year’s vintage. This assignment has given her a terrific platform to hone her skills in viticulture and estate management. The quality of Cabernets grown here is mind blowing. It is an absolute delight for her to wake up in the vineyards each morning, she says.

Tamanna does not have a formal degree in Oenology but she has completed her WSET level 2. The passion, hard work and her colleagues have taught her winemaking. She already has had six vintages under her belt. She wishes to study winemaking and travel more, exploring different winemaking regions, and tasting diversified wines.

Priyanka Gupta (Zorba Wines)

Priyanka Gupta is an Oenologist from Buxar, Bihar. She gives credit to her mother who has been her pillar of support and took the initiative standing firmly to educate her at a time when the education of girl child was not given importance in the traditional orthodox families in India.

When she was 10 she was sent to Nashik to study as there were no good schools where she was growing up. She ended up doing her post- graduation in wine technology after which she interned at the Deccan Plateau Winery, Pune where she was given a free hand by Nitin Shinde to work independently. This prepared her well for the first job at a Bijapur winery where she handled the 5- lakh liter capacity winery independently, she says. During this period, she made bulk wines for Alpine Winery, Heritage Wines, Bangalore Soma Wines and made wines for brands like Surya, Myra and Le Ambrose wines.

She was fortunate to work under Dr. Rajesh Rasal and handle the responsibility of producing Myra Brand in the Nisarga winery in 2012. There she also made low- cost wines using grappa technique by making pressed white grapes. She also had an opportunity to work with Neil Fernandes, the winemaker at Sula, when he used to visit Elite Vintage winery where Sula used to make wines for Karnataka. She worked at Soma Bangalore Vineyards with Darby Raju where she made Sauvignon Blanc 2012 vintage.

She then moved to Rajasthan where there was no wine making policy in 2016-17 and joined Zorba, the first winery where she made Date Wine in 2016-perhaps for the first time in the world, followed by India’s first Pomegranate wine in 2017.

At present she is working as a freelancer and working on various fruit wines coming up in the near future and is currently busy experimenting making wine out of areca nut (Suparee) in Sirsi.

Dr. Ashwini Deore (Cerana Mead)

Ashwini (Tilay) Deore also finished her doctorate from the Food Engineering & Technology Department at The Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai where her partner and co-founder Yoginee, had done her PhD.  

When her partner at Cerana Meads, Yogini, who loved mead but was unable to find the drink locally and so experimented with making some herself. After her initial experiments were appreciated by friends and family she toyed with the idea of setting up a meadery. She knew just who she needed to help her achieve this and reached out to her friend and fellow Ph.D. scholar, Ashwini who was finishing her post doctorate in Canada at that time.

She has expertise in upstream and downstream processing of biologically produced substances. In addition to this, she has the basic WSET 1. She has always been enthusiastic about creating an innovative, value added product from agricultural resources. She had jumped at the idea of this exciting venture and changed maple syrup for honey and Mead.

With her love for cooking and knowledge of food science she specialised in perfecting recipes for the various meads they produce. On the rare occasions she is not working Ashwini enjoys long drives, painting and music. She is also a nature enthusiast and ensures that Cerana’s procurement and manufacturing practices are highly eco-friendly.

At Cerana Meads she has developed Jamun Melomel, Pomegranate Melomel and Chenin Blanc Pyment. All meads are essentially fermented honey and Melomels are fermented honey with fermented fruits. Many different styles are possible based on the honey or fruit used. When the infusion is of grapes, it is known as Pyment. Although comparisons are natural with similar processes in beer, if the mead has fermented fruit it falls into the category of a Melomel mead. Thus, her meadery in the Sinnar region of Nashik, Maharashtra, produces authentic meads with an emphasis on Indian flavours.  

The versatility of meads is almost infinite because several varieties of honey can be combined with various fruits, spices or grains and presented to tickle your taste buds in still, carbonated or naturally sparkling form. There are several factors that are important for the meadmaker to consider- like species of the honey bee, type of flower, flowering season etc and Ashwini is deeply immersed into many of them.

Tage Rita (Naara Aaba)                                    

If you imagined Tage (pronounced Ta-gay) as the North- Eastern name for Queen, you would be metaphorically right as Rita Tage (her family name) is really the Wine Queen of North East. She has altered the wine map of Arunachal Pradesh by making kiwi wines and changing the way one looks at the exotic fruit once cultivated only in New Zealand. Today, it grows in such abundance that it needed someone like Rita to exploit it properly by starting Naara Aaba, an Organic Kiwi fruit winery in Ziro Valley where she comes from.

The beautiful, lush green Ziro Valley has been named in the Tentative List of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.  Ziro is around 115 km from the state capital Itanagar but takes 3.5 hours by road. It is also accessible via Assam, with a distance of 150 km.

Kiwi is a nutritional fruit, full of Vitamin C. It grows in such abundance that it used to rot on the ground and was fed to the cattle, with mountains of fruit dumped in streams in Ziro as there were no buyers.

This gave Rita and her husband an idea to start a winery where the fruit could be converted in bulk. Their love for wines gave them the energy to make wine on their own. She looks after the operations in the winery- from purchasing fresh fruits from Kiwi growers of Ziro valley till the wine bottling.  A professional wine master has been employed for quality winemaking.

Rita graduated in B. Tech Agricultural Engineering from the North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, Arunachal Pradesh. During her 2nd year in college she opted for food Processing Technology as her specialised trade, where winemaking was taught as a method of food preservation and value addition.

Rita’s journey in wine making started in 2017 but planning goes back to 2013-2014 with socio-economic research about its possible impact for kiwi growers. She acquired hands-on training about handling the fruit from her own orchards. The wine was showcased at a couple of International exhibitions where it was much appreciated.

Congratulations to all the 10 women winemakers selected by delWine- 5 from Part-1 and 5 from this Article. This has been based on the information taken from them and telephonic conferences. The information given by them was presumed to be authentic-this was one factor why the ranking has not been done in the first such edition, which has been primarily to share with the readers the work being done by them. Hopefully, some of them will be a big name one day like Andrea Mullineux of South Africa, Vanya Cullen of Australia and Gina Gallo of California.  

Please read the Article in conjunction with Part-1.

Top Ten WOMEN Indian Winemakers in India (Part-1)

Subhash Arora

 

 

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Summer is in full swing here in northern Michigan and there’s plenty going on to keep you and the entire family busy.

Courtney Sheffer from the West Michigan Tourist Association has the details in this week’s What’s Happening in Northern Michigan.

Evening on River Street in Elk Rapids 

If you’re looking for some family-friendly entertainment, you can head to downtown Elk Rapids on Wednesday nights to enjoy their “Evening on River Street” series. It’s a great chance to head downtown, listen to live music, visit with friends, and pop into your favorite restaurant or shop. You can catch Evenings on River Street Wednesdays from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. now through August 18.

Boyne Valley Vineyards

Boyne Valley Vineyards in Petoskey is another great location to visit for live, outdoor music! You’ll find live music every Friday and Saturday all summer long, where you can enjoy a glass of wine on the patio or lawn as you take in the views, catch up with friends, and enjoy the live music. You can view Boyne Valley Vineyards’ full music lineup online to plan your visit.

Great Lakes Center for the Arts

And the Great Lakes Center for the Arts in Petoskey has a full lineup of great entertainment in store for you, with everything from comedy to dance to Blues. Visit this Saturday for jazz vocalist Kurt Elling, whose performance will be accompanied by a Mammoth Distilling Takeover on the Terrace, serving craft Northern Michigan cocktails for you to enjoy on the terrace or while enjoying the show in the theatre. You can find tickets and the full schedule on the Great Lakes Center for the Arts website.

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Mexico’s north-central state of Querétaro is finally starting to get some well-deserved notice for its wines.

The state’s vineyards have usually been overshadowed by Baja California, which currently accounts for about 90% of Mexico’s wine production, but they are expanding and more Mexicans are learning to enjoy the alcoholic beverage. It also doesn’t hurt that its artisanal cheese industry is also growing.

It’s actually a little surprising that Mexico doesn’t have a major wine industry, given that it’s the oldest winemaking region in the Americas. It dates back to 1524, when conquistador Hernán Cortés ordered grapevines to be planted.

One story — probably apocryphal — claims that Cortés wanted them because in celebrating their victory over the Aztecs, he and his soldiers had drunk all the wine they’d brought from Spain. Whatever the reason, Spaniards obeyed his orders, and the resulting vineyards did so well that wine imports from Spain fell off sharply.

This miffed the Spanish king, Charles II, and in 1699, he banned winemaking in Mexico, exempting only the Catholic Church’s sacramental wine. Although the ban was lifted after the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, Mexico’s wine industry continued to lag far behind its beer, tequila and mezcal industries.

A worker tends vines at the Vinaltura vineyard in Querétaro.

But the number of wineries sprouting up in Querétaro these days is a testament to an increased interest in Mexican wines.

The first modern vineyards in the state were founded in the 1970s when the Redonda and Freixenet wineries — two of the largest in the state — planted their grapevines. They did this despite the challenges faced when trying to establish vineyards here.

For one, there’s the rain that arrives during the harvest season, which allows mildew to grow on the grapes.

“The mildew will poke through the grapes and ruin them,” said Tom Pence. He and his wife Tiffany have a total of 37 years experience in the wine industry.

They moved to Querétaro just over three years ago and have spent much of that time learning about the state’s wineries. Tiffany has her own blog in which she shares inside information about vineyards, creameries and what else Querétaro has to offer.

Some years, as much as 30% of the harvest can be lost to mildew. Hail, which also arrives during the harvest season, can destroy grapes.

To avoid such losses, Pence said, “The focus is on [growing] thick-skinned varieties — early ripening ones too.”

Another issue is the presence of large volcanic rocks, which are prevalent across the area.

“The vines struggle to grow, and the grapes will be smaller,” said Pence. However, he added that smaller grapes will lead to wines that are more what he calls “classically European” wines that are “more elegant, have nicer acidity.”

Despite the challenges, Querétaro now boasts more than 40 wineries.

Andrea Morena Durán has worked in some capacity in the wine industry for seven years and has been a manager at the Vinaltura winery for a little over a year.

Vinaltura’s first vines were planted in 2014. Its first production was in 2017, and they now turn out about 40,000 bottles of wine a year.

“We have a number of whites,” said Durán, “including sauvignon blanc, chenin blanc, and riesling. White wines and sparkling wines do the best because of the rain and the acidity of the soil.

“We do small fermentations for higher quality. We have three or four harvests of whites; we ferment them separately, then combine them.”

Doing this allows Vinaltura to produce the best white wines possible despite the challenges. “We have extreme weather and high acidity [in the soil],” she said, “and this is what gives Querétaro wines their specialness.”

Vinaltura also sells two rosés and six red wines but, like other wineries, in a more limited supply. Richard Hernández Jiménez, the sommelier at Puerta del Lobo winery for the last three years, pointed out why that’s probably the case.

For reds like cabernet, he said, “… the growing season is so long and the chance of hail is great. It has a thick skin — so that is good. But it takes too long to grow.”

Hernández sees part of his job as educating Mexicans about wine. “It is very difficult to change Mexicans’ minds,” he said. “Wines are dry, and the Mexican palate is accustomed to sweet things, to sodas or strong things like tequila.”

Workers at Queso La Biquette in Querétaro prepare goat cheese for sale.

He brings newcomers along slowly. “We start with whites, the gentlest ones like sauvignon blanc, which is quite floral. Then we’ll move to rosés made from malbec or syrah.”

Eventually, he may even be able to get them to try a red like cabernet sauvignon.

Querétaro’s artisanal cheese producers nicely complement the state’s vineyards, and they are also introducing Mexicans to something new. Cava de Quesos Bocanegro opened eight years ago and at first sold only fresh cheeses.

“Basic Mexican cheeses like quesillo, manchego, queso fresco,” said Yakoe Nicol Tablado, son of the business’s founder and manager. Then, six years ago, they built a cava (cave) and began selling aged cheeses.

“It is hard in Mexico to sell [them],” he said. “We are trying to introduce Mexicans … to the flavors that Europeans really like. I think we are being successful.”

Bocanegro offers a tasting that includes several of their cheeses, ranging from mild to strong flavors, and includes some vegetables and bread. Local wines and beer are also available.

Isabel Esteve Denaives is a veterinarian who has a soft spot for certain animals. “I like goats,” she admitted. She must because she now has a herd of 75.

She’d been selling goat milk for years but struggled to make enough money to continue. So she decided to start making and selling cheese. A person of French Mexican heritage, she spent a year in France learning how to make goat cheese.

Three years ago, she opened Queso La Biquette (biquette is French for “small goat”), introducing Mexicans to something new.

“It is not typical in Mexico to have this type of cheese,” Esteve said. “Cheese made from cows is a part of Mexican gastronomy; people cook with those cheeses. This cheese is more for the table. We try to educate Mexicans on how to eat this cheese and enjoy it.”

Although not certified as organic, Esteve said she doesn’t use antibiotics or preservatives. “Our production is all manual,” she said. “No machines.”

La Biquette also offers tastings with six types of goat cheese. The mildest, and what most people think of when they think of goat cheese, is queso fresco and the strongest is one called tomme, which has a sharp, earthy flavor.

As the wineries have expanded, so have their offerings.

“Wine bars, restaurants and tours of the vineyards and creameries started about four years ago,” said Tiffany Pence. They also have tastings.

• Querétaro has its official art, wine and cheese route that you can follow on your own, but there are also a number of companies that offer tours. More information about its wineries may be found at www.avq.com.mx.

Joseph Sorrentino, a writer, photographer and author of the book San Gregorio Atlapulco: Cosmvisiones and of Stinky Island Tales: Some Stories from an Italian-American Childhood, is a regular contributor to Mexico News Daily. More examples of his photographs and links to other articles may be found at www.sorrentinophotography.com  He currently lives in Chipilo, Puebla.

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Seven zero-emission tractors will be deployed at Bay Area farms, a first for California.

The tractors are the result of a $1 million grant to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District from the state’s Funding Agricultural Reduction Measures for Emission Reductions, or FARMER, program.

The shift away from diesel-powered tractors on farms is meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“The Air District is proud to take the lead in advancing clean technologies, such as zero-emission tractors, which is a significant and necessary step toward meeting our goals of reducing air quality disparities and climate impacts throughout the Bay Area,” said Jack Broadbent, executive officer of the air district. “The FARMER program is proof that clean technologies are possible in every industry.”

The air district awarded tractor companies Monarch Tractor $80,000 and Solectrac by Ideanomics $514,688 under the FARMER program to support the creation of battery-powered electric tractors, which are not yet commercially available on a large scale.

The farms where the tractors will be deployed include Old School Vineyards in Napa, Arroyo Lindo Vineyard in Sonoma, Wente Vineyards in Livermore, The Mushroom Farm in Pescadero and Crocker Estate in St. Helena.

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A headline like that? Perhaps you were expecting our friends from Germany with a dry sense of humor. Or perhaps imagined that they had taken to “dry July?” Actually, today is a mix of digressions and reminiscences, if I may be permitted. I shall return to our dry German wines next time.

German Riesling is one of the gifts from the gods as far as I am concerned. Indeed, the great vineyards of Germany were where I had some of my first ever non-Australian winery visits. In an earlier life, I had finished studying at London University and was about to join a London law firm. Time for one quick trip to the continent.

An old girlfriend at the time was also studying at London Uni, doing a masters of war studies (yes, an American). This was back shortly before the Cold War finished and deprived us of all those wonderful spy stories.

She was very keen to visit East Berlin, and I wanted to see some vineyards. We split for two days in each. East Berlin was as miserable and otherworldly as you might have imagined, but going through Checkpoint Charlie was a thrill. All very John le Carré. My lasting memory is that the place was grey. Everything a drab grey.

The vineyards were much more welcoming, although bitterly cold. The highlight was a trip to Egon Müller in the Saar region, then West Germany, owners of the Scharzhofberg vineyard, one of the world’s most famous Riesling vineyards.

Scharzhofberg riesling vineyards

This was mid-December, freezing cold, and getting dark mid-afternoon – very weird for a person from more tropical climes. We arrived not long before dark, so what felt like not long after lunch.

There were two big old oak doors. I knocked. Eventually the door opened with the butler (I assume), who had to be 95, in full butler gear, holding back the two largest Dobermans you’ve ever seen looking like they were overdue their lunch.

I’ve never felt more like Brad and Janet in Rocky Horror Picture Show. If Frankenfurter had come singing down the stairs, it would have been no surprise.

Our butler friend, desperately hanging on to the Dobermans, announced that sadly Herr Müller the 65th would not be joining us as he was unwell, but Herr Müller the 66th would be taking his place. Okay, it was not quite that, but it seemed close.

As it turned out, we were incredibly fortunate. The winery had hosted the Masters of Wine on a visit that morning and had all the wines still opened and ready for us. They were showing the 1985 vintage, a fine one in the region. I was in heaven.

These were incredible wines. A number of these are wines I’ve never tasted since – if you wonder why, check the prices of wines like Egon Müller’s Eiswein and Trockenbeerenauslese. The cheapest price for a bottle of any vintage from anywhere in the world that I can find for the Trockenbeerenauslese is close to $15,000. For the bottle. Quantities are miniscule.

It remains one of the most extraordinary tastings I’ve ever enjoyed. Afterwards, Müller invited us back to the library for a drink. My friend got extremely excited as she discovered a first edition On War by Carl von Clausewitz in the shelves – apparently that is a huge deal for war studies students.

Meanwhile, I was desperately trying to sound intelligent and to think of a clever question. I managed, “So what is the best wine that you’ve ever made?” Yes, hardly in depth. Müller looked at me and without hesitation said, “That would be our Scharzhofberger Auslese from 1971,” a famous vintage. A bottle of that these days tops $7,000.

Scharzhofberger Auslese 1971 (photo courtesy vinous.com)

Whatever we had in our glass was a bit special, I thought, so my follow-up question was to ask what we were drinking. Müller looked aghast.

“We are drinking the Scharzhofberger Auslese from 1971,” suddenly realizing what a terrible error he had made opening a bottle of this nectar for such heathens.

It was time to go.

Repeat visit

Sadly for the Müller clan, it was not the last time that a friend and I darkened their doorstep. Many years later, traveling with a good friend of mine, best known as the Colonel, we were visiting some wineries and restaurants in Champagne, Burgundy, and Germany. The Colonel’s wife is not keen on traveling so I get deputized, which is fine by me. Also, as he says, “She is not punctual, and you are.” (And yet he remains married?)

We caught up in Paris to head across to the Mosel. The Colonel would be doing the driving and navigating. After forgetting what side of the road he was supposed to be on about 18 times, and then overcorrecting about 18 times, we finally came to a large flowing body of water. “That would be the River Something,” he proudly announced. Marco Polo couldn’t have put it better.

We finally reached the winery of Egon Müller at the appointed time (or thereabouts). Müller – yes, the same Egon Müller who had hosted me so many years ago – had a group of 20-something sommeliers from all over Europe with him and they were about to climb one of the world’s steepest vineyards, Wiltinger, and drink some 20-year-old Auslese at the summit. Would we be interested?

“Absolutely,” declared the Colonel, adding that he’d show these young whippersnappers a thing or two (yes, he does talk like that). Off we set. What seemed a very long time later, we emerged from the vines at a ledge running along the top – so we thought. Sadly, this ledge was only about a quarter of the way up.

Sir Edmund – the Colonel – threw in the towel. All too much. “Don’t have anything to prove to these young whippersnappers,” most of whom were now little more than dots on distant slopes.

I told him I’d see him later. No, he demanded, you have to help me down. Some days just keep giving.

“But not here. Too steep.”

“Where isn’t?”

“We’ll find somewhere.”

We didn’t.

So we set off down a slope that would have embarrassed a mountain goat. I kept envisioning newspaper reports declaring that one of Germany’s prized vineyards was today destroyed by two fat Aussies avalanching down it. Meanwhile, Müller had skipped back down the slopes to assist. We finally got back to earth.

Müller suggested that perhaps we’d like to drive up (seriously? We could have done that in the first place?!?!?). So we headed around and up the back roads.

By the time we got there, the sommeliers were all guzzling Auslese. Inevitably, we copped merry hell from them (deservedly so). Australia’s good name took a fearful beating that afternoon.

While I was running around trying to convince them all that the Colonel was actually a Kiwi and nothing to do with us (he is not, he is 100 percent Aussie), he took a turn for the worse and slumped against a vineyard wall. Everyone rushed over to assist (some people will do anything to be the center of attention).

He had, in truth, gone whiter than a proverbial ghost and really did not look good. He couldn’t speak (silver lining?). We carried him across to the car and laid him down. Everyone was trying to work out if we could get an ambulance up to the summit or where the nearest hospital was – well, perhaps not everyone. I was wondering if his wife knew he’d brought a suitcase of ’99 Burgundies with him and if she’d notice if they went missing.

We managed to drive him back down, along the narrowest sliver of dirt track you have ever seen and via a traffic pileup as the road back to the winery is one lane and apparently some Germans had not been told how important the Colonel was and that we therefore had an automatic right of way.

We got back to the winery, gave him a reviving drink, and within minutes he was arguing, complaining, directing everyone around, abusing the GPS machine because places were not where he believed they should be, and generally giving a critique of the shortcomings of everyone else on the road – in other words, back to his old self.

In his defense, it was extremely steep and he is old, fat, and unfit.

The Madrid incident

We put down his unexpected grumpiness to the fact that he forgot his Vegemite, and as anyone who may have witnessed the co-called Madrid incident knew, the Colonel and that black slime are not easily parted. There seems to be some sentiment that not to love Vegemite is truly un-Australian. I assure you that such a sentiment is only held by those who do love the stuff. Those of us with taste buds find it utterly appalling. Unfortunately, the Colonel will not leave home without it.

For those not in the northern hemisphere that fateful day of the incident, our hero arrived at the Madrid airport for a domestic flight dressed in his prize blue pork pie hat (who travels with a different hat for each day of the week?). In his hand luggage he had with him a tube of Vegemite. The unsuspecting woman at Spanish customs advised him that she was confiscating it (under the “no paste” rule – or possibly the “good taste” rule). She was advised, in return, that she was not. Chaos followed and within minutes a crowd of, without exaggeration, 400 bemused onlookers had gathered to witness the battle.

Our hero first regaled the poor woman with tales of the glories of the slime and hence why he should be allowed to take it with him. She had absolutely no idea what it was or what it could be used for, but she was not buying this myth that anyone would be so insane as to actually try eating it.

When that didn’t work, the Colonel tried identifying the shortcomings of Spanish customs. That worked about as well as you’d expect. He then moved on to his personal thoughts on Spain itself. As far as I could work out, Spain’s greatest crime was . . . not being France.

By now, the crowd was getting restless and offering opinions – I have no idea if they were for or against our intrepid hero but I could take a wild guess. I was calling for a strip search, but no one was listening to me.

Eventually, telling them that this wasn’t over, the Colonel abandoned his slime (to be honest, it pretty much was all over by then). For the next hour, I watched little children duck behind the legs of adults to hide when they saw him coming and I am convinced that Spanish parents now put the fear of god into their kids if they don’t behave by telling them tales of how the black slime man in the weird hat will come for them in the night.

Schartzhofberger Spätlese Riesling

On a more serious note, back in the Mosel, Müller wanted to do a comparison of one of his wines – the 2011 Schartzhofberger Spätlese – under screwcap and cork. No prizes for guessing which tasted absolutely scintillating and which tasted very reserved and a touch dull.

One or two of the sommeliers took their heads out of their bottoms long enough to declare that this meant the wine under cork was much more profound. Which was absolute tosh.

This is a real bugbear for me. It was discussed at some length. It was absolutely clear to me, and a few others, that some of the sommeliers had decided that cork would be their preference no matter what the result in the glass.

If I ran a restaurant and a sommelier did that, I couldn’t get them out of there quick enough. If they genuinely believed that the cork provided the better seal then I would be 100 percent behind that, even if I disagreed. But to make the decision simply on what they think should be the case, or because of some silly preconceived notion that corks are always superior, makes no sense.

What really got right up my nose was one of the sommeliers insisting that it was not his job to give his customers options in respect of closures. That was for them to decide. I asked if he thought it was his job to suggest new regions, exciting producers, and emerging stars to his customers to ensure that they had the best experience possible. Of course, was the response.

Why on earth is it not his job to at least offer options to his customers if the seal might improve their experience?

Leave aside the argument about whether wines age better under cork or screwcap (the trials and comparisons I have seen of aged wines under both have left me in no doubt that I would purchase wines under screwcap for aging given the choice), if Müller’s wine was to be served that evening there was no question that the customer would have had a much more enjoyable experience with the wine under screwcap.

Yet our friend believed it was not his job to give that experience to his customers. What am I missing?

But the highlight of the day came when in mid-tasting (we were outdoors), Müller fired up a big cigar. Imagine what the need-a-cause, rent-a-mouth crowd would say about anyone doing that back home.

We had a few more wineries to visit in the Mosel but fortunately the Colonel assured me he had given up alpine ascents.

Never dull.

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ST. HELENA, Calif. — Last September, a wildfire tore through one of Dario Sattui’s Napa Valley wineries, destroying millions of dollars in property and equipment, along with 9,000 cases of wine.

November brought a second disaster: Mr. Sattui realized the precious crop of cabernet grapes that survived the fire had been ruined by the smoke. There would be no 2020 vintage.

A freakishly dry winter led to a third calamity: By spring, the reservoir at another of Mr. Sattui’s vineyards was all but empty, meaning little water to irrigate the new crop.

Finally, in March, came a fourth blow: Mr. Sattui’s insurers said they would no longer cover the winery that had burned down. Neither would any other company. In the patois of insurance, the winery will go bare into this year’s burning season, which experts predict to be especially fierce.

“We got hit every which way we could,” Mr. Sattui said. “We can’t keep going like this.”

In Napa Valley, the lush heartland of America’s high-end wine industry, climate change is spelling calamity. Not outwardly: On the main road running through the small town of St. Helena, tourists still stream into wineries with exquisitely appointed tasting rooms. At the Goose & Gander, where the lamb chops are $63, the line for a table still tumbles out onto the sidewalk.

But drive off the main road, and the vineyards that made this valley famous — where the mix of soil, temperature patterns and rainfall used to be just right — are now surrounded by burned-out landscapes, dwindling water supplies and increasingly nervous winemakers, bracing for things to get worse.

Desperation has pushed some growers to spray sunscreen on grapes, to try to prevent roasting, while others are irrigating with treated wastewater from toilets and sinks because reservoirs are dry.

Their fate matters even for those who can’t tell a merlot from a malbec. Napa boasts some of the country’s most expensive farmland, selling for as much as $1 million per acre; a ton of grapes fetches two to four times as much as anywhere else in California. If there is any nook of American agriculture with both the means and incentive to outwit climate change, it is here.

But so far, the experience of winemakers here demonstrates the limits of adapting to a warming planet.

If the heat and drought trends worsen, “we’re probably out of business,” said Cyril Chappellet, president of Chappellet Winery, which has been operating for more than half a century. “All of us are out business.”

‘I don’t like the way the reds are tasting’

Stu Smith’s winery is at the end of a two-lane road that winds up the side of Spring Mountain, west of St. Helena. The drive requires some concentration: The 2020 Glass Fire incinerated the wooden posts that held up the guardrails, which now lie like discarded ribbons at the edge of the cliff.

In 1971, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Smith bought 165 acres of land here. He named his winery Smith-Madrone, after the orange-red hardwoods with waxy leaves that surround the vineyards he planted. For almost three decades, those vineyards — 14 acres of cabernet, seven acres each of chardonnay and riesling, plus a smattering of cabernet franc, merlot and petit verdot — were untouched by wildfires.

Then, in 2008, smoke from nearby fires reached his grapes for the first time. The harvest went on as usual. Months later, after the wine had aged but before it was bottled, Mr. Smith’s brother, Charlie, noticed something was wrong. “He said, ‘I just don’t like the way the reds are tasting,’” Stu Smith said.

At first, Mr. Smith resisted the idea anything was amiss, but eventually brought the wine to a laboratory in Sonoma County, which determined that smoke had penetrated the skin of the grapes to affect the taste.

What winemakers came to call “smoke taint” now menaces Napa’s wine industry.

“The problem with the fires is that it doesn’t have be anywhere near us,” Mr. Smith said. Smoke from distant fires can waft long distances, and there is no way a grower can prevent it.

Smoke is a threat primarily to reds, whose skins provide the wine’s color. (The skins of white grapes, by contrast, are discarded, and with them the smoke residue.) Reds must also stay on the vine longer, often into October, leaving them more exposed to fires that usually peak in early fall.

Vintners could switch from red grapes to white but that solution collides with the demands of the market. White grapes from Napa typically sell for around $2,750 per ton, on average. Reds, by contrast, fetch an average of about $5,000 per ton in the valley, and more for cabernet sauvignon. In Napa, there is a saying: cabernet is king.

The damage in 2008 turned out to be a precursor of far worse to come. Haze from the Glass Fire filled the valley; so many wine growers sought to test their grapes for smoke taint that the turnaround time at the nearest laboratory, once three days, became two months.

The losses have been stunning. In 2019, growers in the county sold $829 million worth of red grapes. In 2020, that figure plummeted to $384 million.

Among the casualties were Mr. Smith, whose entire crop was affected. Now, the most visible legacy of the fire is the trees: The flames scorched not just the madrones that gave Mr. Smith’s winery its name, but also the Douglas firs, the tan oaks and the bay trees.

Trees burned by wildfires don’t die immediately; some linger for years. One afternoon in June, Mr. Smith surveyed the damage to his forest, stopping at a madrone he especially liked but whose odds weren’t good. “It’s dead,” Mr. Smith said. “It just doesn’t know it yet.”

Sunscreen for Grapes

Across the valley, Aaron Whitlatch, the head of winemaking at Green & Red Vineyards, climbed into a dust-colored jeep for a trip up the mountain to demonstrate what heat does to grapes.

After navigating steep switchbacks, Mr. Whitlatch reached a row of vines growing petite sirah grapes that were coated with a thin layer of white.

The week before, temperatures had topped 100 degrees and staff sprayed the vines with sunscreen.

“Keeps them from burning,” Mr. Whitlatch said.

The strategy hadn’t worked perfectly. He pointed to a bunch of grapes at the very top of the peak exposed to sun during the hottest hours of the day. Some of the fruit had turned black and shrunken — becoming, effectively, absurdly high-cost raisins.

“The temperature of this cluster probably reached 120,” Mr. Whitlatch said. “We got torched.”

As the days get hotter and the sun more dangerous in Napa, wine growers are trying to adjust. A more expensive option than sunscreen is to cover the vines with shade cloth, Mr. Whitlatch said. Another tactic, even more costly, is to replant rows of vines so they’re parallel to the sun in the warmest part of the day, catching less of its heat.

At 43, Mr. Whitlatch is a veteran of the wine fires. In 2017, he was an assistant winemaker at Mayacamas Vineyards, another Napa winery, when it was burned by a series of wildfires. This is his first season at Green & Red, which lost its entire crop of reds to smoke from the Glass Fire.

After that fire, the winery’s insurer wrote to the owners, Raymond Hannigan and Tobin Heminway, listing the changes needed to reduce its fire risk, including updating circuit breaker panels and adding fire extinguishers. “We spent thousands and thousands of dollars upgrading the property,” Mr. Hannigan said.

A month later, Philadelphia Insurance Companies sent the couple another letter, canceling their insurance anyway. The explanation was brief: “Ineligible risk — wildfire exposure does not meet current underwriting guidelines.” The company did not respond to a request for comment.

Ms. Heminway and Mr. Hannigan have been unable to find coverage from any other carrier. The California legislature is considering a bill that would allow wineries to get insurance through a state-run high-risk pool.

But even if that passes, Mr. Hannigan said, “it’s not going to help us during this harvest season.”

Half the Insurance, Five Times the Cost

Just south of Green & Red, Mr. Chappellet stood amid the bustle of wine being bottled and trucks unloading. Chappellet Winery is the picture of commercial-scale efficiency, producing some 70,000 cases of wine a year. The main building, which his parents built after buying the property in 1967, resembles a cathedral: gargantuan wooden beams soar upward, sheltering row after row of oak barrels aging a fortune’s worth of cabernet.

After the Glass Fire, Mr. Chappellet is one of the lucky ones — he still has insurance. It just costs five times as much as it did last year.

His winery now pays more than $1 million a year, up from $200,000 before the fire. At the same time, his insurers cut by half the amount of coverage they were willing to provide.

“It’s insane,” Mr. Chappellet said. “It’s not something that we can withstand for the long term.”

There are other problems. Mr. Chappellet pointed to his vineyards, where workers were cutting grapes from the vines — not because they were ready to harvest, but because there wasn’t enough water to keep them growing. He estimated it would reduce his crop this year by a third.

“We don’t have the luxury of giving them the normal amount that it would take them to be really healthy,” Mr. Chappellet said.

To demonstrate why, he drove up a dirt road, stopping at what used to be the pair of reservoirs that fed his vineyards. The first was one-third-full; the other, just above it, had become a barren pit. A pipe that once pumped out water instead lay on the dusty lake bed.

“This is the disaster,” Mr. Chappellet said.

Water by the Truckload

When spring came this year, and the reservoir on Dario Sattui’s vineyard was empty, his colleague Tom Davies, president of V. Sattui Winery, crafted a backup plan. Mr. Davies found Joe Brown.

Eight times a day, Mr. Brown pulls into a loading dock at the City of Napa’s sanitation department, fills a tanker truck with 3,500 gallons of treated wastewater and drives 10 miles to the vineyard, then turns around and does it again.

The water, which comes from household toilets and drains and is sifted, filtered and disinfected, is a bargain, at $6.76 a truckload. The problem is transportation: Each load costs Mr. Davies about $140, which he guesses will add $60,000 or more to the cost of running the vineyard this season.

And that’s assuming Napa officials keep selling wastewater, which in theory could be made potable. As the drought worsens, the city may decide its residents need it more. “We’re nervous that at some point, Napa sanitation says no more water,” Mr. Davies said.

After driving past the empty reservoir, Mr. Davies stopped at a hilltop overlooking the vineyard.

If Napa can go another year or two without major wildfires, Mr. Davies thinks insurers will return. Harder to solve are the smoke taint and water shortages.

“It’s still kind of early on to talk about the demise of our industry,” Mr. Davies said, looking out across the valley. “But it’s certainly a concern.”

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VeloNews and Peloton contributor James Startt, the winner of the 2021 World Sports Photography Awards, is covering his 32nd Tour de France. For this year’s Tour de France he will provide a regular feature explaining how he gets his favorite shots of the day and also what equipment he uses.

With the final time trial of this year’s Tour de France held in Saint-Emilion, one thing was certain — wine vineyards were the stage for today’s photo.

Driving out of the start in Libourne vineyards were seemingly everywhere. Some residents here even had grapevines in the backyard. And as we left town the expanse of vineyards was simply endless. But so were the crowds.

Just after leaving the world-renowned village of Pomerol, we entered some of the most legendary vineyards in the world. I learned that Château Petrus and Château Cheval Blanc were virtual neighbors. Unfortunately, both were closed — although such news was undoubtedly a big relief for my pocketbook!

Parking in front of Château Petrus, I understood that I had found my spot as the narrow road cutting through adjacent vineyards provided the perfect frame.

As one rider after the next sped by, I shot away. Sometimes I shot a larger frame, one where you could see Pomerol in the distance.

But as the favorites arrived I closed in, often framing them tighter against the backdrop of green.

As the yellow jersey approached I admit to being nervous. After all, when French rider Guillaume Martin passed just a few minutes earlier, my camera somehow failed to focus! But while it was easy to blame my camera rather than my eyes, if the same situation happened with the yellow jersey, it would be nothing short of a disaster.

As the television helicopter approached overhead I could chart Tadej Pogačar approach. And I readied, as I had for much of the day. Speeding by, I panned him, firing several shots. Looking into my camera screen I was relieved, as I could tell that most of the images were clean.

There was one with the church spire in the background that I liked but in the end, it was this close-up shot that I found to be the most resolved. I managed to capture him here in a slight opening of the vines. And the vines behind him have a hint of yellow that allowed Pogacar’s jersey to virtually melt into them.

There were shots of other riders that I also really loved, and my images of Kasper Asgreen and Wout van Aert were both satisfying. But at the end of the day, the yellow jersey trumps all.

Wout van Aert on the stage 20 time trial of the 2021 Tour de France. Photo: James StarttKasper Asgreen on the stage 20 time trial of the 2021 Tour de France.

Call it a study of yellow and green.

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