Introduction
Why do many wineries plant roses at the end of each vine row? What does bee activity tell you about a vineyard? What does it mean for winemakers to have an “aesthetic vision”?
In this episode of the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast, I’m chatting with author Sophie Menin.
You can find the wines we discussed here.
Giveaway
Three of you will win a copy of Sophie Menin and Bob Chaplin’s terrific new book A Year In The Vineyard.
How to Win
To qualify, all you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’ve posted a review of the podcast.
It takes less than 30 seconds: On your phone, scroll to the bottom here, where the reviews are, and click on “Tap to Rate.”
After that, scroll down a tiny bit more and click on “Write a Review.” That’s it!
I’ll choose one person randomly from those who contact me.
Good luck!
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Join the live-stream video of this conversation on Wednesday at 7 pm eastern on Instagram Live Video, Facebook Live Video or YouTube Live Video.
I’ll be jumping into the comments as we watch it together so that I can answer your questions in real-time.
I want to hear from you! What’s your opinion of what we’re discussing? What takeaways or tips do you love most from this chat? What questions do you have that we didn’t answer?
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Highlights
- What was the exact moment Sophie decided she wanted to become a writer?
- What were the best and worst moments of Sophie’s writing career?
- Why would Sophie want to be a teacher if she didn’t pursue writing professionally?
- What was the inspiration behind writing A Year In The Vineyard?
- Which moments were most memorable from Sophie’s experience with the Olivier Leflaive vineyard?
- How did Sophie’s collaboration with Bob Chaplin make A Year In The Vineyard different from other books on similar topics?
- How did Sophie choose which wineries to feature in A Year In The Vineyard?
- What was the most surprising thing Sophie discovered while researching the book?
- How are some wineries changing the way they treat vineyard workers?
- What was the most impactful feedback Sophie received on the book?
- What were some of the challenges of writing A Year In The Vineyard?
- How was the visual storytelling developed?
- Which emerging trends in vineyard practices did Sophie observe in her research?
- Why is natural resilience important in vineyards?
- How did Sophie convince Hugh Johnson to write the foreword?
- Why does Sophie consider vineyards to be gardens?
- What does it mean for winemakers to hold an “aesthetic vision”?
- Why is it important to live close to the earth?
- What’s behind the recent practice of wineries planting roses at the end of each vineyard row?
- Why is biodiversity important to vine health?
Key Takeaways
- Why do many wineries plant roses at the end of each vine row?
- As Sophie explains, anything that could negatively impact the vineyard, such as mildew or pests, will affect roses first. As she says, winemakers can’t be attending to every vine all the time. But the roses are like that proverbial canary in the coal mine. In most cases, they’ll give a warning about what’s happening deeper inside the rows long before a winemaker even sees it.
- What does bee activity tell you about a vineyard?
- Well-cared-for vineyards begin to look like English gardens or even the Biblical Eden because they’re not only full of flowers and other plants, but they also have lots of bee activity. It’s a measure of their health and biodiversity. I love it when I also see lots of butterflies and other insects – a vineyard teaming with life. As Sophie adds, there’s nothing more dangerous than monoculture for the vines or the environment.
- What does it mean for winemakers to have an “aesthetic vision”?
- Every choice winemakers take considers what kind of wine they want to make, Sophie says. They consider the plot of land, the climate, their cultural heritage, and the culture and history of the place. All of this together is an aesthetic vision. They can’t control it completely, but they can shape it. For example, winter pruning is a reflective time. That’s when they think about what’s happened in the past vintages and what they want to happen in the vintages to come. They make choices about the shape of their vines based on their aesthetic vision and practical farming experience about what’s going to work.
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About Sophie Menin
Sophie Menin is an author and journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, Barron’s, Penta, Departures, Wine Spectator, Edible Communities, Saveur, Tricycle, Punch, B the Change Magazine and Opera News. She earned an MA in Cultural Reporting and Criticism from the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University and a professional degree in the Culinary Arts from the Institute of Culinary Education. Her wine writing focuses on the myriad ways that wine connects us with our senses and the rhythms of the natural world. It can be found in her online journal: lifewithwine.com. Sophie lives in New York with her husband and daughter.
Resources
- Connect with Sophie Menin
- Book: A Year In The Vineyard
- Website: SophieMenin.com
- Instagram: @sophiemenin
- LinkedIn: Sophie Menin
- Diary of a Book Launch: An Insider Peek from Idea to Publication
- Wine Witch on Fire Free Companion Guide for Book Clubs
- My Books:
- Unreserved Wine Talk | Episode 237: New Vision for Beautiful Vineyards and Regenerative Viticulture with Mark Gudgel
- My new class The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner And How To Fix Them Forever
Tag Me on Social
Tag me on social media if you enjoyed the episode:
- @nataliemaclean and @natdecants on Facebook
- @nataliemaclean on Twitter
- @nataliemacleanwine on Instagram
- @nataliemaclean on LinkedIn
- Email Me at [email protected]
Thirsty for more?
- Sign up for my free online wine video class where I’ll walk you through The 5 Wine & Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner (and how to fix them forever!)
- You’ll find my books here, including Unquenchable: A Tipsy Quest for the World’s Best Bargain Wines and Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass.
- The new audio edition of Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass is now available on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and other country-specific Amazon sites; iTunes.ca, iTunes.com and other country-specific iTunes sites; Audible.ca and Audible.com.
Transcript
Natalie MacLean (00:00:00) – Why do many wineries plant roses at the end of each vine row? Hint it’s not about looking pretty, even though they do. What does bee activity tell you about a vineyard? Now here’s a dinner party tidbit you can drop next time. And what does it mean for winemakers to have an aesthetic vision? Are we talking Renoir or Rosé? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions in our chat with Sophie Menin, who has just published a gorgeous full colour coffee table book, A Year In The Vineyard. And yes, three of you are going to win a copy by the end of our conversation. You’ll also discover why winegrowing is a nail biter experience how vineyard work is incredibly skilled labor versus the stereotype of anyone can pick grapes. How a vineyard can be like a traditional English garden, or even the biblical Eden? And why wine brings you to your senses and makes you pay attention to life. Okay, let’s dive in. In.
Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.
Welcome to episode 293. As I mentioned, three of you are going to win a copy of Sophie Menin’s gorgeous full colour coffee table book called A Year In The Vineyard. All you have to do is email me at [email protected] and let me know that you’d like to win a copy. I’ll choose three people randomly from those who contact me.
And before we dive into our chat with Sophie, I always like to give you a personal update about what’s going on. So it’s actually true, the audiobook for Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation and Drinking Too Much will be published on July 30th. Yay! And oh my gosh, yikes, that is only a few weeks away. I really poured my heart and vocal chords into this audiobook. I wanted it to be even more open and vulnerable than the paperback and e-book versions, because I think that, like podcasts, there’s something far more intimate and revealing about an audiobook, especially when the author reads it. I know what’s meant to be funny or sarcastic or serious.
We often talk about a writer’s voice, but that usually refers to their written word and is expressed in word choice, point of view, dialogue, humor, and other narrative aspects. However, the author’s actual voice is really next level. If you want to lose yourself in a book and feel as though you are talking to the author over a glass of wine at her kitchen table like we are now, the magic of audio delivers what paper and screens cannot. Tone of voice. Emphasis. Dramatic pauses. Laughter and yeah, even tears. Or at least a few heart to heart sniffles. We are wired for stories and we’re even more deeply wired to hear them spoken to us.
Natalie MacLean (00:04:11) – If you’d like to be an early listener of the audiobook, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. I’ll also put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide, including audiobook retailers, as soon as they’re listed at nataliemaclean.com/293. Okay, on with the show. Sophie Menin is a journalist who has contributed to The New York Times, Barron’s, Wine Spectator, Saveur, and many other publications. Her wine writing focuses on the myriad ways that wine connects us with our senses and to the rhythms of the natural world. Love that. Her writing can be found in her online journal, lifewithwine.com. She and Bob Chaplin are the co-authors of the splendid new book A Year In The Vineyard. She earned a Master of Arts in cultural reporting and criticism from the Arthur L Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, and a professional degree in the culinary arts from the Institute of Culinary Education. And Sophie joins us now from her home in New York. Welcome, Sophie. We’re so glad you’re here with us.
Sophie Menin (00:05:30) -Thank you for having me. It’s really an honour.
Natalie MacLean (00:05:31) – Thank you. That’s great. All right, so let’s dive in before we get to the book. I’m curious, as a writer, what was the exact moment you decided you wanted to become a writer? Tell us about that.
Sophie Menin (00:05:43) – It was very young. I was in high school and I took AP Art history, and it was the first time I learned about the world through the way people express themselves instead of through wars and treaties. And I knew in some way or another I wanted to live like that. But I can’t paint, I can’t sing, I need an instrument. But I was always a very good writer, and I just stayed with that path and kept choosing that path. I think it’s something you have to keep choosing throughout your life.
Natalie MacLean (00:06:17) – That’s true. Every day it’s like oh I’ve got to keep going here. As they say, the secret to writing is AC. Ass in chair. Forgive my vulgarity, but yeah, it’s true. Very much. So take us to the worst moment of your writing career. We’ll get to the happy one next. But what was it? What would you describe as the worst moment?
Sophie Menin (00:06:35) – Oh, that’s a really good question. And probably one I don’t like to think about. Yes, I remember it well because I was a young journalist and I got an assignment from a paper I had always dreamed of writing for. But I was a stringer so I wasn’t inside the newsroom. And they changed the lead on my piece before it went to print, and they showed it to me at the 11th hour. And I was too chicken to pull it, but it wasn’t what I wanted to write. And I cried for weeks after it was published. It just did not represent what I wanted to say. And I really vowed to myself that I would never let that happen again, that I would make it their problem no matter what publication it was. I would pull my piece that you do have power and agency, and if it’s your piece, you can say no, no matter how much you want to work with someplace. If it was a dream or something like that, like you have to say no if it’s your name.
Natalie MacLean (00:07:38) – Absolutely, yeah. Your name is all you have when you’re a writer. I mean, it’s so precarious these days, but that’s a great lesson to draw from that. Yeah. Wow. Now let’s give it a happy ending. Thank you. That’s what I do. I just take us to the best moment where you live happily ever after.
Sophie Menin (00:07:54) – I have to tell you, receiving the advance copy of my book was one of the best moments. Because I’m so proud of it. It’s a complete thought. and in this case, my publisher went above. Do you mind if I show it?
Natalie MacLean (00:08:11) – Oh, please. You got to. Throughout this conversation, please. And for those listening, we’ll put a link to the book in the show notes.
Sophie Menin (00:08:17) – Above and beyond, just in the quality of the publishing in every page and just every detail. They gave us a lot of creative freedom.
Natalie MacLean (00:08:28) – Look at those pictures. Full colour pictures. My goodness.
Sophie Menin (00:08:31) – Hardcover. Colour pictures on every page. Hardcover printed in Italy. They just did the most, most beautiful job.
Natalie MacLean (00:08:42) – A beautiful coffee table book. But don’t just leave it on the coffee table, folks. Sophie is a beautiful writer, so you’re going to want to actually read this book and we’re going to get to that, but well done. That’s beautiful. What do you think you’d be doing professionally if you weren’t writing?
Sophie Menin (00:08:58) – I think I’d be a teacher.
Natalie MacLean (00:09:00) – Oh, really? Why is that?
Sophie Menin (00:09:01) – You know, I’m on the board of the Womens Media Group, and I had the scholarship committee, and I organized mentors, and I love mentoring young writers and helping people really begin to think independently. I love ghostwriting to help people get their stories down. So that process, time goes on is really important to me and something I engage in. And I think teaching is so important. You know, raising a daughter, you really realize that her teachers were our partner in raising her and cultivating her mind.
Natalie MacLean (00:09:36) – Absolutely. As the daughter of a school teacher, she taught elementary school for 32 years, I have to say Amen to that. She had profound impact and she still hears from students. I wasn’t a school teacher, but I still hear from the students I taught dancing. And I see them out in the world, and they connect on Facebook and they have children. And it’s amazing.
Sophie Menin – The ripple effect.
Natalie MacLean – Yeah, absolutely. Here’s the school teachers. So what was the moment when you decided to write A Year in the vineyard? Where were you? What triggered the idea?
Sophie Menin (00:10:08) – I had a column with The Daily Beast very early on, and it was called 100 Summer nights, and it was about summer meals all around the globe. And these kind of special meals that you have when the weather’s warm and there’s more light. And as part of that, I was tracing the activity in the vineyard at Olivier Leflaive and that was the part…
Natalie MacLean – Burgundians.
Sophie Menin (00:10:38) – That was the part of the series that captured my imagination. And so before Instagram was so popular, so this really moment by moment watching the vineyard was just so fascinating to me. And I wanted to document, really, I thought just that summer period. Originally the book was called A Hundred Summer nights, but as we dug into it, you know, that’s just the most kind of spectacular moment that every season in the vineyard is equally important. That’s just when the show goes on, in a sense.
Natalie MacLean (00:11:07) – Absolutely. And what was your favourite memorable moment at Olivier Leflaive, which is like one of the top tier producers in Burgundy, Pinot noir, Chardonnay and so on.
Sophie Menin (00:11:17) – I’ve never been there. I suffer from extreme empathy, so I can interview somebody and talk to them about it but listening to him talk about standing at his vineyard and looking at the different sites and being able to see the difference between Chassagne and Mersault. And it was so particular. And then also how fragile these moments are that, you know, winegrowing is a nail biter experience when you really dig in and that. So it was June and it was about the flowering and how that can determine the whole year depending on the weather. If they want a warm, dry June for an even flowering. So you have even ripening and an even harvest if you get a lot of rain at that point, it impacts the whole growing season. And that was just fascinating that you don’t think about that moment being so fragile.
Natalie MacLean (00:12:09) – Yes. Wow. Yeah. It’s so powerful. The way again, it’ll ripple through everything that comes next. So the title is self-explanatory, A year in the vineyard, and I like that you first thought of 100 nights, but tell us what makes this book different from other books that people might think are similar? I mean, it’s gorgeous. As I say, we’ll put a link in the show notes for those who are listening. But what else makes this book different? Sophie?
Sophie Menin (00:12:33) – Well, first, I’m a wine writer, but my co-author is a really extraordinary human being. Bob Chaplin is an environmental artist.
Sophie Menin (00:12:41) – His work is in the British Museum. It’s in the Whitney, it’s in MoMA, it’s in the Victoria Albert. And he does what you call garden installations and looks at plants over time in different kinds of situations. And so he was also was for a time the wine writer for the Hartford Current. And we met at Merlot camp. It was a press trip.
Natalie MacLean (00:13:06) – That sounds tough. [laughter]
Sophie Menin – [laughter] It was really tough.
Natalie MacLean – Were you just kids [laughter] just kidding.
Sophie Menin (00:13:12) – Right. And so I had had this idea for this book, but I wanted to do it very visually and didn’t have the skill sets to do the visual piece. And then when I found out that he was also an artisanal bookmaker. First of all, our collaboration, because on every page there’s text that I write and he edits, there’s photographs that were mostly given to us by vineyards, but then some were taken by Bob, some were even taken by me. And then there were a couple of photographers who were very important to the book. Then there are these scans of background paintings from Bob’s art that he manipulated. So the story is told in photographs and in text, and then also in these the colour and texture of these background paintings. That really makes it a very sensual journey through the seasons. So that’s one thing. It’s the collaboration.
And then we’re not focused on a single vineyard or even a single region. We have included vineyards from around the globe. We have first growth Bordeaux, we have natural winemakers, and we have corporate wineries and family wineries and wineries that function like art projects. But we wanted to link them because everybody’s in this same conversation with the cycle of the vine, but then very specific to their goals and to where they’re growing the wine.
Natalie MacLean (00:14:35) – That’s fascinating. And how did you end up choosing? I mean, obviously you want a broad cross-section, but how did you actually say, okay, these are the wineries that are going to be in the book?
Sophie Menin (00:14:43) – You know, I was a journeyman wine writer for a long time, stringing for a lot of different publications. And so you collect stories and so you have the wineries where you have stories. And then I collected these kinds of stories along the way. So there was that piece. And I’m lucky enough to live in New York City, which means that winery owners come through all the time. And so you have a chance to meet and talk. And so some of it were relationships, some of it was dream like, oh, I really want to show colour pruning from Santorini, because I love the way the baskets sit close to the earth and protect the fruit from the heat and the wind on that island. And so you just write them a note. And it’s one of those things when you have a number of wineries that they admire that are their peers, they’re more likely to speak with you. And so it grew and grew. And so we’re very lucky.
Natalie MacLean (00:15:41) – Yeah, very organic project as.
Sophie Menin (00:15:43) – Well, without a doubt.
Natalie MacLean (00:15:46) – What’s the most surprising thing that you discovered while you were either researching or writing the book?
Sophie Menin (00:15:52) – One of them was that more than half of the vineyard crew at Chateau d’Yquem is over 60 years old.
Natalie MacLean (00:15:59) – Really?
Sophie Menin (00:16:00) – That they’ve worked there for their entire lives, many of them, and that they have this fantastic kind of institutional knowledge of the different patterns of grape ripeness and botrytis.
Natalie MacLean (00:16:15) – Noble rot. Just for those who may not be aware, but it infects the grapes, so to speak, but it’s also responsible for the magnificent wines of Chateau d’Yquem, the sweet dessert wines.
Sophie Menin (00:16:25) – Right. What makes is dangerous is some places very special there is that they have this very special location between two water bodies. So it’s very humid every morning so that the rot begins to develop. But then it sits on top of a hill, so the winds come in and dry it. So they only get the concentration without the degradation. So it’s very special and very unique to Sauternes in general and Chateau d’Yquem in particular. And so what you think about harvesting always being this kind of brawny thing for very young people. And that’s actually, now that I’m talking I’m thinking more clearly, vineyard work is such skilled labour throughout. It is such skilled labour. And this is one example of it being skilled labour. But time and time again, like it was really impressed upon how important vineyard workers are and what skilled labourers they really are.
Natalie MacLean (00:17:24) – That’s amazing. And they must treat them well, obviously, to keep the vineyard workers, because we also think we have biases, maybe prejudices, of vineyard workers of being unskilled and being imported from another country because the wages are so low. But these people at Chateau d’Yquem and probably many other wineries, especially your top wines, they’re coming back year after year. There has to be something keeping them there in terms of the way they’re treated and paid and valued for their skills.
Sophie Menin (00:17:52) – That’s right. And it’s not just at Chateau d’Yquem. You would be surprised about places that look like large, more corporate wineries like Esporão in Portugal, where part of their move towards organics and biodynamics and regenerative agriculture has to do with their people policy and giving their vineyard workers the same benefits as their office workers. And we’re seeing that in more and more places, you know, Frontera out in Mendocino. I mean, it’s really become a very important part, the people part and who really makes the wine. If you believe like I do that wine is made in the vineyard as much as it’s made in the cellar, it’s becoming an important part of high quality, every price point viticulture. Definitely.
Natalie MacLean (00:18:39) – Absolutely, absolutely. What’s the most interesting thing someone has said about the book so far? I know it’s just new out, but…
Sophie Menin (00:18:46) – I was very happy when I just have a couple advanced copies when I showed it to somebody who I didn’t know that she quickly leafed through it. And I think because she’s a gardener, she understood what it was about exactly, and she understood about the climate adaptations, and she just got it. And you always wonder if somebody who would be your audience is going to understand what you were trying to do. So to have somebody so new to the project just get it was really heartening for me.
Natalie MacLean (00:19:18) – It’s great. And the most difficult part about writing the book?
Sophie Menin (00:19:22) – The most difficult part about writing this book is, even though it’s so beautifully published and the photography is so magnificent, we’re very dependent on outside sources for this. We really did this on a budget, and so it was a puzzle. You have the stories you want to tell and then you’re dependent on the photographs that vineyards are giving you to tell that story, and you need one that doesn’t look like an advertisement, and you need it to be the right time of the year. And then once you have that story, it needed to work sequentially with your other stories in the book. And so we were constantly looking and editing for visual story flow along with content, story flow. And every so often we think the book was set and we’d realize, oh no there’s no leaves on the vine here. We can’t put this here, you know. And then we’d have to recalibrate. So it was just that there were so many puzzle pieces to put together.
Natalie MacLean (00:20:22) – I love that the behind the scenes of such a visual book. So how many approximately how many photos were you and Bob considering for the book, and how many ended up being in the book?
Sophie Menin (00:20:32) – Thousands of photographs.
Natalie MacLean (00:20:34) – Wow.
Sophie Menin (00:20:35) – Because sometimes vineyards were so generous and just said, okay, here’s our library. That could be thousands in and of itself. The book is 180 pages. 160 of those are, we call them spreads because they’re double page stories. And I would say in there there’s probably 200 maybe more photographs.
Natalie MacLean (00:21:01) – Well, that’s a lot of curation. Holy smokes. You know what I love, Sophie, because I’m drawn to your writing, your words. But I loved how your text always seemed nestled inside a vineyard or the picture. Like, I love that I could see still sort of transparently through the background, the picture still sort of haunting in the back of your text. It was lovely.
Sophie Menin (00:21:23) – Every time I wrote something, and then Bob put it in the spread with the background. I had to rewrite it because it was a conversation with the picture, you know? So what was important to lead with maybe wasn’t so important to lead with once you saw it in context. So everything got rewritten. Bob calls them visual poems but because he’s really an artist and he has worked in that medium with words and images and astounding works of art. That’s how each page really had to work. It’s a fully integrated thought between the background painting the words and the picture. So thank you very much for picking up on that. That’s meaningful.
Natalie MacLean (00:22:06) – I love that. Well, it goes in parallel with a phrase, you have so many beautiful phrases in this book, but you say the vine is a dance with the natural world. Well, your text was a dance with the other elements in this book, which was just lovely. They were all sort of rotating, evolving, weaving whatever around each other, which is just marvellous. So based on writing this, what are the biggest changes in trends that are happening in the vineyard that you observed in putting this book together, especially those that might surprise us?
Sophie Menin (00:22:35) – I think the biggest trend is when I started writing about wine, the conversation was, do you move to organics? Do you move to biodynamics? I mean, at that time, the question of have a belief that the wine world is always a kind of generation behind the food world and what it’s taking on. And so organics were very important in food, but maybe not so understood in wine because people didn’t think that wine was good for you. And so but as time went on, there was an understanding that wine is farming. We’re ingesting whatever’s being put in the vineyard and larger ecological concerns. But still, the question was considered in a conventional paradigm where are you going to no longer use chemical inputs in the vineyard, but really use organic or biodynamic inputs in the vineyard. And now it’s interesting to me. If you look at other forms of conservation, there’s an understanding that a protected area doesn’t end at its borders. It’s integrated with whatever’s happening at its borders.
And a vineyard is the same thing. It’s part of an environment. And so when people start to talk about regenerative agriculture, they’re really talking about building an integrated environment. And I’ve come to prefer to use an expression natural resilience, because it’s not something that’s been codified. And I think everybody does it in their own way. But building natural resilience into vineyards where they’re taking care of themselves in connection with trees and grasses and cover crops and water sources and biodiversity, that that’s the most important change. And that’s why if you go and you listen to even top Bordeaux producers, they’ll say for the first time these former Bordeaux vineyards are beginning to look like English gardens because they need flowers and they need trees. And they can measure their health by bee activity. And this is the most important thing for vineyards right now is that there’s nothing more dangerous than a monoculture. It’s just very vulnerable.
Natalie MacLean (00:24:42) – And not good for the environment either like the soil or whatever. But nice segue, Sophie. Speaking of English gardens. Yes, absolutely. Great way to put it. The legendary British wine author Hugh Johnson writes the foreword to your book. Quite an endorsement. How did you convince him to do that? I’m asking for a friend of course [laughter].
Sophie Menin (00:25:04) – Of course [laughter] Yeah. This is tenacity. He is friendly with one of my local Burgundy specialists, John Truax, who’s been a champion of my book from the very early days. And every time he came to Flatiron Wines to promote his latest edition of The Pocket Guide to Wine, I would bring drafts of my book and show it to him. And the first time I went, I brought a copy of his gardening book and I got him to sign it. And we always wanted him to write about the vineyard as a garden, which is his favorite subject he told me. And after a while, and I think when a really wonderful publisher came on board and he knew that this was going to be done well and the story spoke to things that he cared about, he said yes. And it was a pinch myself kind of moment. And he is so generous and such a great writer. And it was an act of enormous generosity because he really doesn’t know me. He just liked the work and what the work was about and had been tracking it for a number of years.
Natalie MacLean (00:26:15) – That’s amazing. Well done and well deserved. So you’ve said he’s an avid gardener and he compares vineyards to gardens. We’ve touched on this a little bit, but in what surprising ways are vineyards like gardens?
Sophie Menin (00:26:27) – I think they are gardens.
Natalie MacLean (00:26:29) – They are gardens not like gardens. They are gardens. Good, good.
Sophie Menin (00:26:33) – They are gardens. Except that the vineyard isn’t the end point. The fruit you know you’re growing fruit to make wine. So there’s an aesthetic vision not in the look of your vineyard, but how you’re managing your vineyard to grow fruit that will make wine that expresses your vision. So that’s how it’s different. But otherwise you’re really tending the soil, you’re pruning, you’re thinking about it in four seasons. It’s very much like a garden.
Natalie MacLean (00:27:05) – Yeah, well, I know people call them different things like wine growers. I still find that an awkward phrase, but it’s probably closer to the truth. But viticulturists, winemakers, they are increasingly focused on smaller and smaller plots to differentiate different bottles or different wines. So it does get to be that sort of intimate garden feel as people get more specific about expressing terroir, that fancy French term of soil and climate and wine making decisions. But you note in the book that the origin of the word viticulture – to cultivate the land – and that it is like an installation à la Bob Chaplin. Do you view a well cared vineyard as kind of like Eden? Like kind of a vision of utopia or something like that?
Sophie Menin (00:27:52) – A well cared for a vineyard can be like Eden because it doesn’t need anything else, right? It’s complete. There’s no disguises, right? It’s not a state of nature because it’s cultivation. So there is man’s hand in it. And that’s different than Eden, right? There is obviously to an extent a manipulation, but when it’s at its best, the manipulation is working with nature and not dominating or changing nature. So I think there’s a yes and no to that. A vineyard is not a state of nature because it is cultivated, there is a human hand. But when the hand is light, I think there is an Eden like quality.
Natalie MacLean (00:28:39) – I like that very nuanced and especially, if the hand is not light, we can always consider expulsion from Eden. But that’s a whole other story. In the book, you observed that winemakers need to hold an aesthetic vision. What do you mean by that?
Sophie Menin (00:28:54) – We used interchangeably the French term vigneron and wine grower for that because it’s the best English equivalent we could find, even if it’s an imperfect and sometimes clunky word. But that’s what they’re doing. They’re kind of growing the kind of wine they want to produce. And so every choice they make is with what kind of wine do I want to make, you know. What would be the best kind of wine to make from this place, from this plot of land, with this climate, with my cultural heritage, with the cultural heritage of the place where I’m growing wine? So that is an aesthetic vision. You can’t control it 100%. There’s weather or vintage, but there’s always choices that are being made.
That was also another surprising story that I didn’t understand very well until writing this book. That winter pruning is a reflective time that that’s when you really think about what’s happened in the past vintages and what you want to happen in the vintages to come. And you make choices about the shape of your vine because you have an aesthetic vision and then also an experience, just a practical farming experience, about what’s going to work. And those are small changes because you don’t want to shock the vine, but these are directional choices that vigneron make every year.
Natalie MacLean (00:30:14) – That’s fascinating. It’s very meditative, almost contemplative, like the seasons in your own life. Sometimes it’s busy working, well writing a book. You kind of hibernate for a while, research, write, whatever. And now your season is to be out there in the public promoting it. So I don’t know if you want to call that harvest or whatever, but yeah, it does parallel our lives. We have different seasons.
Sophie Menin (00:30:37) – Bottled and shipped [laughter].
Natalie MacLen (00:30:37) – Yeah. That’s right [laughter]. It’s on the shelves now, folks. So yeah, pick it up. No worries about that. All right. So then you have another lovely phrase. What does it mean to live close to the earth? Is it just paying attention or what do you mean, especially in the context of the vineyard or the wine growing winemaking?
Sophie Menin (00:30:58) – I think that’s a certain amount of attentiveness that’s really important in wine growing and winemaking and I also think wine drinking. It’s I think what got me really interested in wine is just the way it brings you into your senses, makes you pay attention. You’re looking at colour and scent and taste and length. You’re very kind of sensitized when you’re really paying attention and drinking wine. And it’s the same thing in making wine in the vineyard. You’re looking at the ground in a different way. You’re aware of what’s happening and how active. Many, many times more organisms beneath the Earth than there are above the Earth. And so there is a way of being more tuned in, not just from being a wine grower, but from understanding how wine is grown. You become more aware of how things are interconnected and why.
Natalie MacLean (00:31:53) – Well, living more fully – I love again your expression – brings you into your senses. That’s a lovely way to put it. So why many wineries these days plant roses at the end of each vineyard row? They look very pretty, but they have a more important purpose, right?
Sophie Menin (00:32:08) – Roses are so sensitive and so anything that’s going to happen in the vineyard, any negative mildew or pest that appears will show up on your rows first. And so you can’t be in every vine row at every vine at every time. But they’re like that proverbial canary in the coal mine. If you plant roses at the end in most cases you’re going to be given a warning about what’s happening deeper inside the rows.
Natalie MacLean (00:32:37) – And then you can apply treatments or whatever that might be done to fix the situation before it takes over the vines. And you also note that many wineries plant a variety of cover crops, like clover between the rows, to increase biodiversity in the vineyard. You also have something fascinating. Each plant species can attract up to ten maybe more different types of insects and butterflies. So why is this biodiversity important to vine health?
Sophie Menin (00:33:05) – Biodiversity is important for resilience. You know when you have biodiversity, you have more different species of birds, more different species of insects so you’ll have natural predators for invasive insects. You’ll have better soil health with fixing nitrogen, which is good for amino acids, which build the cells in the plants. It just makes for a more resilient vineyard. And the person who’s quote that was the wine grower from a vineyard in Switzerland called Mythopia, and his vineyard is really like a work of installation art. And he has so much biodiversity. It’s built to be an example of biodiversity. He has tomato plants in the middle and different flower corridors. And he said that he has half the species of butterflies in Switzerland are in his vineyard. That’s a really beautiful thought.
Natalie MacLean (00:34:00) – Oh my God, that would be like walking through Eden. All these little butterflies.
Natalie MacLean (oo;34:03) Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat with Sophie. Here are my takeaways. Number one, why do many wineries plant roses at the end of each vine row? As Sophie explains, anything that could negatively impact the vineyard, such as mildew or pests, will affect roses first. As she says, winemakers can’t be attending to every vine all the time. But the roses are like that proverbial canary in the coal mine. In most cases, they’ll give a warning about what’s happening deeper inside the rows, long before a winemaker even sees it.
Number two, what does bee activity tell you about a vineyard? Well cared for vineyards begin to look like English gardens or even the biblical Eden, because they’re not only full of flowers and other plants, but they also have lots of bee activity. It’s a measure of their health and biodiversity. Personally, I love it when I also see lots of butterflies and other insects. A vineyard teeming with life. As Sophie adds, there’s nothing more dangerous than monoculture for vines or for the environment.
And finally, what does it mean for winemakers to have an aesthetic vision? Every choice winemakers take considers what kind of wine they want to make, Sophie says. They consider the plot of land, the climate, their own cultural heritage, the culture and history of the place, and all of this together creates an aesthetic vision. They can’t control it completely, but they can shape it. For example, winter pruning is a reflective time. That’s when they think about what’s happened in past vintages and what they want to happen in the vintages to come. They make choices about the shape of their vines based on their aesthetic vision and practical farming experience, about what’s going to work.
In the show notes, you’ll find the full transcript of my conversation with Sophie, links to her website and books the video versions of these conversations on Facebook and YouTube live, and where you can order my book online now, no matter where you live. You’ll also find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me, called the Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Dinner and How to Fix Them Forever at nataliemaclean.com/class. That’s all in the show notes at nataliemaclean.com/293.
Email me if you have a sip, tip, question, or would like to win one of three copies of Sophie’s new book, A Year In The vineyard. It really is stunning with all the pictures. I’d also love to hear from you if you’ve read my book or are interested in listening to it at [email protected]. If you missed episode 237, go back and take a listen. I chat with Mark Gudgel about the new vision for beautiful vineyards and regenerative viticulture. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.
Mark Gudgel (00:37:09) – Recognizing what tilling does and deliberately limiting how much tillage occurs.
Natalie MacLean (00:37:14) – Meaning there’s a tractor that’s turning over the earth. digging up the earth?
Mark Gudgel (00:37:17) – Exactly. Perhaps to grind cover crops into it, which releases carbon which we don’t want.
Natalie MacLean (00:37:24) – And it destroys the microbiome that’s there, all the microbial life.
Mark Gudgel (00:37:28) – The new vision for a beautiful vineyard is rows of well-maintained grapevines with a tremendous diversity of life, not only growing, but living within it, that it is its own little biosphere.
Natalie MacLean (00:37:46) – You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Sophie Menin. If you liked this episode or learned even one thing from it, please email or tell one friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who’d be interested in learning more about what really happens in the vineyard during each season, including the magical gardens of bees and roses. It’s easy to find my podcast. Just tell them to search for Natalie MacLean Wine on their favourite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your class this week, perhaps a wine that was saved by a rose?
You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the Secret secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at nataliemaclean.com/subscribe. Meet me here next week. Cheers.
