David and I have spent the last couple of years planning to dramatically expand our vineyard production capacity. During spring 2020 and 2021 those plans will be underway, tripling our planted area with a selection of vines that, we hope, will produce wine that expresses the full potential of our terroir.
Forest Daffs: We stumbled upon a couple of little patches of daffodils growing about 300 feet into the forest which is being cleared for our 2021 planting. We relocated then to a little spot behind the cabin.
The Diversity of Cabernet Sauvignon
In 2014 we began this adventure by planting a small block of Cabernet Sauvignon, added a test planting of Petit Verdot, and a little more Cabernet in the intervening years. For this next phase we considered many varieties: Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Nebbiolo, and Petit Manseng, to name a few. Expansion planting is serious business, as the vines we plant can be here 30 years or more. To inform that decision involves a lot of reading, consultation with experts, and a lot of tasting — and trust me when I say we threw ourselves into the task of tasting with full-throated commitment. In the end we came back to the decision to make the 2020-2021 expansion composed almost entirely of Cabernet Sauvignon.
Focus & Diversity
This strategy will mean that, of our total productive capacity, over 90% will be Cabernet, a grape considered by many to be marginal in the eastern U.S. Some might say this is a strategy that is profoundly lacking in diversity, and that it runs contrary to the practices of many successful farm winery operations in these parts. Hell, someday we might even say that ourselves! We don’t even have an opinion as to whether Cab Sauv should ultimately be the star or supporting cast of our blend. So why are we doing this? Primarily, two simple realizations of where we were in our own minds (and journey) came clear to us:
We are simply thrilled with the results of Cabernet Sauvignon on Mount Alto, we think that it can not only be “better than marginal”, we think it can excel.
We want to fully understand what is possible within this single variety given various clones, rootstocks, pruning and differing soils.
Thus, new Cab clones on new rootstocks is our gambit. The options we have selected (blocks of clones 15, 61, and 412) promise diversity in flavors, aromatics, body, tannins, acid levels, and productivity to add to our existing blocks of clones 169 and 191. From a practical standpoint, the new clones and rootstock should also provide us with a slightly staggered ripening window, which can help hedge against the varying fortunes of weather and ease harvest-time logistics.
Ambition
We hope that bringing in this diversity will help us to create, in David’s words, "a wine that keeps evolving beautifully in the glass for 3 hours or more”. Yes, we know this is ambitious! But this is the kind of wine that we want to drink, so why shouldn’t we try to grow it? We will see how far we can go with Cabernet as our backbone, blended judiciously with Petit Verdot.
In the end, when we acknowleged that simple curiosity is what drives David and myself, this narrow focus was the only choice we could make. At some point we’ll likely add some other red grapes into the mix, and we are adding a small patch of Petit Manseng for purely experimental purposes. But for the time being, the beautiful puzzle of Cabernet Sauvignon is simply irresistible to us.
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