08/09/2024
It is interesting how two seemingly disparate things can happen simultaneously, with no foreknowledge by another involved, and yet those things end up being intricately tied together.
Yesterday morning, Morét woke up early to go work in her Lakeview Vineyard. Those of you who know Morét know that she firmly believes that “waking up early” and “Morét” should never go together. But she knew she needed to go, so she did (we can discuss the different meanings “early” holds for the two of us at another time). Thus far, this hasn’t been a vintage that requires a lot of extra work in the vineyards. With a somewhat warmer than normal summer, mildew pressure has been low. Set was quick and successful so the cluster counts might be down slightly, but the clusters are full. Thus, you have some weight but not a lot of areas of congestion where clusters are on top of clusters.
The regular vineyard crew has just passed through the Lakeview Vineyard removing any green clusters to help assure an evenness of ripening and, as usual, they did a fine job.
But for Morét, a fine job isn’t enough. She diligently follows behind the crew herself, a one-woman viticulture team. She removes “wings” (the part of some clusters that hangs off to the side of the main cluster and can slow ripening). She looks at shoot length and diameter and determines if the shoot is truly strong enough to carry two clusters. If not, one of the clusters finds its way onto the ground. Most of all, she talks to the vines – incessantly. “Look at you little shoot. What are you doing trying to ripen two clusters. I’m sorry but I am going to have to remove one of those.” By the time the grapes are harvested, in about 45 days, there isn’t a vine and perhaps not even a cluster that Morét hasn’t personally touched (or talked to).
At the same time as Morét was conversing with her vines, wine writer Aaron Menenberg was releasing the new issue of his Good Vitis publication. This issue was an aberration from most of his previous issues as no wines were being scored. Instead, Aaron had a point to make. Aaron is a very cerebral fellow, and he has been contemplating the interaction between terroir (the French concept of place) and humanity in the making of fine wine. And so, he wrote a somewhat lengthy treatise on that subject. I won’t try to summarize it in full (but I will provide you a link so you can read it for yourself: (https://goodvitis.com/california-grapes-a-new-better-definition-of-terroir/) but one of his main points can be found in what he wrote here: “Over the years I’ve come to realize that there is more to wine than vineyards and crush pads and tanks and cellars. It may seem obvious, but those sacred places and things, left to themselves, don’t complete the personality on a wine - it is how people animate them that ultimately determines how people experience the wine.”
At one point in his composition, Aaron brings up a particular example of how human influence animates and elevates the sacred places of wine.
“To appropriate a James Blunt quote from his Top Gear appearance, winemakers “are like arseholes, everyone has one.” There’s a small vineyard in Sonoma County called Lakeview. A number of wineries source from it, but only Morét Brealynn is using it to make a vineyard designate wine. The inaugural release in 2021 came ripping out of the gates, but in 2022 Morét produced something truly special, one of the best American pinots I’ve ever had. Unlike the Gary’s and Rosella’s, it has no comparison because, as I said, Morét is the only one doing a vineyard designate. And that, in its own way, is a statement about human terroir: While rows and blocks within a vineyard can differ, with a vineyard as small as Lakeview, it still takes the attention and dedication of the people working it to turn it into a wine worthy of its own bottling. If I’m Jeff Mangahas at Williams-Selyem, and I’m looking for a new vineyard, and I’m tasting Morét’s Lakeview, I’m inquiring about getting my own rows.”
It is easy shorthand, and a habit I fall into far too often, to rely on ratings or lofty adjectives to sell a wine. “96 Points with dark chocolate covered cherry flavors” are easily copied and pasted into an email, followed by a price and then the special pricing that you receive as a Clarice Member. And I am not promising you that I am going to abandon that entirely as sometimes life overwhelms and that is all that can be said. But today, I found myself wanting to share with you all something more – something that Aaron tried to capture and that I am trying to capture here – but it is elusive. In a great wine, like Morét’s Lakeview Vineyard Pinot Noir, there’s more than terroir and more than winemaking and tanks and barrels. Somewhere in each bottle, there’s the effect of a cluster or a wing that was dropped to the ground, and the care of a winemaker who has held each cluster in her hands, and there’s the words of encouragement that Morét shared with the plant.
https://moretbrealynnwines.com/wines/ols/products/2022-lakeview-vineyard-pinot-noir
