Embracing Identity - “How to become what you already are”

As the vineyard is fully in the midst of véraison and harvest is just six weeks away, I have been reflecting on the many points of progress we’ve made this year. This season has really been another step in our progression in farming our land and soils, but most importantly in our thinking.

Now that our original plantings have fully established, we are working with more precision in when and how we cultivate, with mid row sowing of barley, peas, favas, native white clover, rye, buckwheat mid row to help preserve soil moisture levels by reducing soil evaporation as our air moisture coefficient is so low at high altitude.

We’re digging deeper into the ‘why’ behind each decision we make in the vineyard and how it impacts and is impacted by the decisions that come before and after.

Visually, the vineyard looks vastly different from years past. One tangible result of all these changes in our farming the past few years is that we’ve not had to irrigate our established vines in the past few months and even the young vines planted last year have only been watered once.

It’s clear that our vines are beginning to show observable characteristics of their interaction with our unique environment, with its very specific soil, altitude, climate, microflora and density conditions. Throughout the whole vineyard, it’s clear that our vines are adapting, mutating even, showing quite different cluster morphology, berry sizes and growth patterns from their original source material and even within the same selection planted in different blocks, and even within the same rows.

The most evident change has come in our northernmost block of Pinot. The entire eastern half of the block has produced fruit with incredibly loose clusters, tiny berries all which gives so much potential for elegance, perfume and weightless intensity.

Speaking with Cristiana Tiberio, it’s clear that there is a process of mutation, interaction and adaptation happening as our vines have become established in their new home. “The environment and terroir are taking over and becoming part of these plants”

A few people I’ve spent time with recently, notably Cristiana Tiberio, Jean-Marie Guffens and William Kelley, have helped me question conventional modes of thinking, and to realize what I want most is to celebrate and highlight these differences, to find and embrace the things that make our vineyard special. I never set out just to make another ‘new world Pinot Noir’ or attempt to mimic Burgundy in China. As Jean-Marie Guffens put it so well, we are on a path to learn “how to become what you already are”.

So how do we get there?

Pinot adaptation and mutation

For me, part of the beauty of winegrowing is that healthy grapes are not the end goal in and of themselves, but are only a point on the journey to wine.

Continued experimentation, willingness to question convention, learning from others pushing boundaries, looking to benchmarks old and new for inspiration, has been the foundation of our vineyard work to date.

Part of this will be to slowly identify and build a library of vine genetic material that has changed through its interaction with our environment, becoming new biotypes unique to our place. As we plant new sites in the future, we can then use our own selections, harnessing these biotypes to amplify that sense of place.

Our haute densité experiments have really validated closer row spacing to help create mid row and fruit zone shade, further reducing surface evaporation and the risk of sunburn. The vines have established at the same rate, if not faster than their counterparts planted at our traditional

density of 12,000 vines/ha but with even faster rates of root growth and greater root mass per square meter.

Early morning views of our ‘Haute Densité’ Pinot planted at 20-33,000 vines/hectare

All of this means that each vine has more and can give more to a fewer number of clusters and berries, which each have an increased skin to juice ratio, creating the conditions for greater intensity of flavor and earlier phenolic ripeness. This requires double the hand work and man hours, but I believe that these farming choices will allow for greater ability to transmit the character of our site, the increased intensity allowing for us to extract more carefully in order to better capture the essence of place, time and wine.

One such point of difference is the ability of our altitude, site and farming to achieve phenolic and flavor ripeness at very low sugar maturities, creating the conditions for incredible weightless intensity, lifted perfume and crystalline purity. Learning how to harness and maximize that character through fermentation, pressing and careful elevage will be our next big undertaking.

So as we approach our first vintage with a decent volume of fruit (last year’s harvest was in the kilograms, rather than tons), I am beginning to extend these ideals of precision, of asking why, of embracing and amplifying our difference, from vineyard to the cellar. I feel particularly excited to embark on this second phase of our journey.

All of this is to say, I hope to make something that is classically beautiful, with enduring value, but most of all, I hope to make wine that is truly singular, totally unique and true to our place.