The Harvest Begins

I had no intention of making Pinot Noir. After playing with Merlot, Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon in recent vintages, this year my mind was running toward Zinfandel. It's the classic home winemaker's grape, said to be easy to handle, forgiving of errors—and if you're going to end up with 22 cases of wine to drink and give away, Zin's the one. Ain't a person alive who doesn't like it.

But along comes an email message from a grower friend in Mendocino saying the Pinot Noir is at 23, 24 brix—want some? My first thought was of my buddy Casey Hartlip at Eaglepoint Ranch, who told me once that Pinot is fine but personally he'd rather make and drink red wine.

Pinot is, typically, lighter in color and in body. Moreover, it is widely seen as the feminine counterpoint to the masculine Cab. Even big, powerful Pinots retain a slinky, sexy side. Think of Serena Williams in that black tights-jumper outfit: big and powerful, yes, but very much a woman. Likewise Pinot. And anyway, the probability was that my Pinot would be less than mighty: the vineyard I'd be sourcing from is a warm site and the vines are young. But, then again, with Pinot you never know. The word most often used to describe it is "mercurial," and winemakers who have worked with Pinot vintage after vintage can be counted on to profess their continuing curiosity and surprise at its behavior. So what the hell did I know? Maybe Pinot from this spot would surprise me and be delicious. Anyway, it was September. It was time to make wine. I said yes.

So on Sunday, Sept. 8, we picked 'em and squished 'em. My friend Dan, a veteran of many a battle with the dreaded rented crusher, came up from Berkeley and got his first taste of vineyard action. And this year my wife, Rebecca, and son, Niko (three weeks shy of his third birthday), along with three wonderful new friends—Dawni, Kevin and their little boy, Jacob—also joined in the fun. We tossed several food-grade plastic garbage cans into a minivan and a Subaru wagon and headed through the valleys Napa, Knights and Alexander. We regrouped in Hopland, where the Phoenix Bread Company sells an apple turnover for 5 bucks, I kid you not. (I thought it was $5 for a half-dozen. Dan thought maybe for the whole baking sheet of pastries. Nope. Each.) Then we regrouped again just a few hundred yards past Hopland, when a high school physics exam that Kevin was grading flew out the Subaru window, and they stopped to fetch it.

Greg Nelson's vineyard is a hill or two past Hopland and a hill or two before Ukiah, right off 101. He grows everything. Pinot Gris, Chard, Merlot, Cab, Merlot, Zin, the list goes on. He's a good grower, smart and always looking for ways to do better, keeping an eye out for what's hot, asking questions. He told me he would be around, but water problems on the ranch—"Always the water," said Greg's wife, Missy—had him on the road looking for parts. No matter. Missy directed us to the block and told us to pick away.

(Before I go on, I should say a few words about the importance of the picking of the grapes in winemaking. What is the primary factor in producing wines that dazzle the senses, sway the intellect and woo the heart? There are people who believe that great wine is all about the grapes. They say things like, "You can make mediocre wine with slightly below average grapes, but you can't get your teenage son to mow the lawn for less than $15, and that's an outrage." This is the Grape School. And there are those who say the winemaking techniques employed hold primacy (this is the Winemaker School, which no winemaker in the history of alcoholic fermentation has declared allegiance to—publicly). Lesser known, perhaps, is a third school of thought: the Picker School. Under this thinking, it is the picker, ultimately, in whose hands vinous fate is cradled. I am agnostic on this question, as I have great respect for growers, winemakers and pickers—and, truth be told, I think the barrel cleaners and the bottlers are pretty darn important, too.

Time had slipped past 11 a.m. and the sun was high and strong, but we were a day ahead of the heat wave. For us, warm temps; tomorrow would bring sizzling heat. This picking was more difficult than I had remembered picking to be from my experience in Oregon. Pinot's tight clusters wrap themselves around guide wires, shoots and canes and hide behind other bunches, posts and huge webs guarded by vicious spiders. Mercurial? Ha! this grape is a pain the ass. The five adults worked away, the vineyard quiet save for a whirring remote control car and the chatter and occasional screeches and wails of little boys. Most of the time, one of the wiminfolk kept an eye on the lads and their car while the guys picked (and, it must be said, the little guys were great through a very long day).

When you throw that first bucket of grapes into a 44-gallon garbage bin you think it's going to take forever to fill it—and it almost does. Despite the size of our contingent, it took more than two hours to gather in about 700 pounds, an amount that would fill a 26-gallon barrel and allow for the making of about 5 gallons of rose as well as, quite probably, the spillage of several gallons (I am the world's sloppiest winemaker).

Next: The Crush

Will somebody please explain to me why sportswriters are so concerned about the financial success of baseball? I've just finished reading this column and can't for the life of me imagine why this scribe is so worked up about whether baseball is as big as football. My only concern about baseball is that when I sit down to watch the game, it's entertaining. Period. Why would I care if ratings are up or down or if more or fewer people in inner cities or suburbs or Mexico City or some podunk one-stop-light village on the far side of them thar hills are watching the games? I'm into baseball because it's a great game. I'm into the game. Last night I saw a thriller between the Giants and the Diamondbacks, and tonight's tummy-twister was the A's against the Twins. Scintillating stuff as the A's chalked up No. 17. The worst thing that could happen now is that baseball undergoes some kind of NFL-style remaking, sucking the heart and soul right out of it. Just leave the damn game alone. Don't touch anything (OK, maybe get rid of the DH in the AL, but that's it).

They didn't strike (told you so; see Wednesday's post), and now the pundits are mopping up. And it's ugly. We see quickly that it's simply not possible for sportswriters to accept a happy outcome. They spent the last several weeks wondering how the two sides could be so foolish as to allow another work stoppage and now that a deal has been reached without interrupting the season, they can't bring themselves to parcel out credit. Oh, no. They're onto their other pet screed—lecturing fans for being dupes.

Take a look at Tim Keown's column on ESPN.com. It's condescending—as is most punditry these days, be it political or sports—and in its insistence in being smarter than you, runs aground on the shoals of illogic and stupidity.

First, Keown's assertion that the players "didn't want more" is absurd. Everybody knows that the status quo would practically have guaranteed the players huge raises over the next several years. Fans understood this, that's why they felt the owners were right in demanding a revised playing field.

Second, Keown wants you to know that revenue doubled in the past six years. So? In business, one side of the ledger is only important relative to the other side. A lot of dot-coms that shouted about their five consecutive quarterly 125 percent revenue increases in 1999 and 2000, and are out of business in 2002, can tell you about that.

Third, to say that Minnesota and Oakland are "aberrations" (I think the actual term Selig used was "anomalies") is hardly belittlement. In fact Selig's insistence that the system barely allows for competitive success in smaller markets casts the Oakland and Minnesota stories in an even more impressive light. In the Selig line of thinking, those two franchises did the nearly impossible. In the Keown line of the thinking, it's no big deal for a small market team to succeed.

Fourth, no, Tom Hicks won't get any of George Steinbrenner's money. What Keown doesn't tell you is that everybody will contribute an equal proportion of local revenues, and everybody will receive an equal share. Because it has fairly large local revenues itself (because of the A-Rod deal!), Texas will be a net loser in revenue sharing. Plus, it will be subject to the luxury tax. Montreal, meanwhile, will be a big winner under the rev-sharing plan, as will Minnesota and Oakland (which should help them keep their fine young teams together, something fans, I'm sure, will be happy about).

Fifth, Keown and the others who think they're smarter than fans like to say that greater financial parity won't make dumb owners and general managers smarter. This is a classic straw-man argument. Nobody has said that greater income redistribution would make dumb owners and general managers smarter. Quite the contrary: Dumb management will still be penalized; and now, smart management has a better chance of being rewarded. Furthermore, smart organizations will have a better chance of keeping their teams together, which is a major concern of fans.

Finally, Keown is outrageously disingenuous in his late, brief show of gratitude that a deal was struck. "So it's done. Great news. No games were canceled. The damage was minimized, and after today that's all that really matters." He writes this in the last paragraph of his column, after spending hundreds and hundreds of words ripping the people who run the game and the fans who support it. If he really was happy about the outcome, that sentiment would have been the gist of his column. But Keown, in the typical fashion of the embittered sportswriter, didn't give a shit if the games went on or not Which is fine, as long as he doesn't expect us to think he did.

Niko is deep into Why.

On the Net somewhere I came across a torture technique said to be used on political prisoners many years ago. Worked like this: A rat-filled cauldron was placed mouth-down on the victim's stomach and the cauldron was heated from the outside. The rats, having nowhere to escape, would gnaw through the victim's stomach.

The Why torture isn't quite that bad.

Why you turning on the grill, Daddy?
To cook the fish.
Why?
Because that's what we're having for dinner.
Why we having fish for dinner?
Because it's good for us and we like the taste.
Why is it good for us?
It's a lean source of protein and is high in healthy fats.
Why?
Oh, I'm sure it has something to do with all that time swimming around in water. Salmon live in the water, of course.
Why?
That's where all fish live.
Why?

I reckon every parent of a 3-year-old (oh, all right; he'll be 3 in a month) has been through this. And every parent has been tempted to answer: Because. We have vowed not to take this easy way out. The kid is curious. Feed the curiosity, don't stomp on it!

Barry hit a homer.
Why?
Because in baseball, that's what you try to do, hit the ball a long way.
Why?
Because then you get to go all the way around the bases and score a run.
Why?
Because those are the rules of the game.
Why.
Because, well, no, it wasn't Abner Doubleday, but somebody about 150 years ago decided that would be a fun game.
Why?

I've vowed to wear the kid out, to answer every question ever-more elaborately until Niko caves and says, "Oh. OK." But it hasn't happened yet. Niko remains undefeated.

Daddy, can we make wine today?
Wine? No. The grapes aren't ripe yet. We've got to wait a couple more weeks.
Why?
Because that's when the grapes will be ripe.
Why?
Well, over the course of the summer the plant converts sunlight and water and nutrients to energy and grows fruit and transforms that fruit into a plump orb filled with just the right ratio of sugar and acid. It's then and only then that we can make wine. And, interestingly enough, the grape alone among all the fruits carries these vital ingredients for making wine. Did you know that?
No. [Pause.] Why we make wine out of grapes?
Well, I think the answer is really a short three-letter word: G-O-D.
Why?
God wanted something to drink, that's why. It was John Stuart Blackie who said: "Wine is the drink of the gods, milk the drink of babes, tea the drink of women, and water the drink of beasts."
Why?
[Pause.] I don't know why.
Why?

Bloggers get grief for being enraptured with their own viewpoint, but I know people who've never even heard of blogs who are just as bad. They feel compelled to deliver an opinion on everything under the vanishing ozone. Maybe bloggers are vanity publishers opining into a dark place that escapes even Google's bright light, on topics about which they have no expertise, with little research and no editing. But I submit that such an assault on the culture is far less abhorent than the (non-blogger) type who consistently accosts you in the flesh with his half-baked, already-evaporating take. Run into one of these guys and you are hopeless. You can feign disinterest, but that won't slow him down. The slashing and pummeling will continue until you finally have to say, "Hmm, yeah, good point."

Whereas, when I get set to launch my opinions, here, you can click away in an instant. No harm, no foul!

1. There will be no baseball strike. But if there is, it will be a good thing because it will free up the great spaces in my evenings and weekends now devoted to watching the Giants. (This is the same way I approach the pennant race when the Giants are teetering on elimination. "Just lose," I say. "You bastards take up too much of my time." And they do lose, eventually.)

2. We shouldn't invade Iraq unless there is real evidence that an attack on the United States is imminent. My suspicion is the Bush administration is hard at work manufacturing such evidence.

3. Warm weather that speeds up ripening and brings the harvest in soon will be lauded by winemakers and growers as a welcome turn of events. The grapes will have shot forward to a stunning state of ripeness. Either that or, continued cool weather that slows ripening and brings the harvest in late will be lauded by winemakers and growers as a welcome turn of events. The grapes will have gathered enormous complexity by virtue of this extended hang time.

4. The new Vintner's Collective in downtown Napa is beautiful and the people behind the project are to be saluted. But I hate it. It's St. Helena plunked down in our crappy little downtown and it makes me think the anti-redevelopment crowd, which I had previously dismissed and which fears for the vanishing working-class soul of Napa, might have a point: Twenty or thirty years from now the whole friggin' valley, from American Canyon to Calistoga, will be a gigantic food/wine/B&B/gallery Disneyland. The Green Lantern alone will survive–as the "scary ride."

Steve Edmunds of Edmunds St. John is one of my favorite winemakers. He's traveled up and down the state for 20 years now seeking grapes that have the potential to be turned into distinctive wines. And he succeeds so often because winemaking, for him, isn't a about convincing critics to reward him with high scores; the goal instead is to make wines that are interesting. But he can explain his philosophy better than I. In addition to being a great winemaker, he's a wonderful writer (and a musician to boot). Check out his brief essay describing his approach to winemaking, and then bounce around the ESJ site a bit to learn more about his wines. They're well worth tracking down--and compared to typical celebrated California wines, are a steal.

Last Week's Workouts
Mon: Swim 2000 yds (mostly 250s and 100s); run 40 min treadmill
Tues: Swim 1750 (a hard 1,000, 2 250s...); bike 1:20 at 125-135 HR (23 miles)
Wed: Swim 1750 yds (8x100 on 2:10, etc.)
Thurs: Bike 1:20 at 125-135 HR (23 miles); Mountain bike 1:45
Fri: Swim 2000 yds (8x100 on 2:05, etc.); 4 mile evening walk
Sat: OFF
Sun: Bike--Tour of Napa Valley (103 miles, 6:04 riding time)

My first mountain biking race was in 1987 at that granite monolith in the eastern Sierra, Mammoth Mountain. I wore a goofy yellow helmet that had, I think, exactly zero air vents, and my bike was unsuspended, front and back. Come to think of it, I don't think anyone had any suspension at the time, even at the NORBA World Championship. That's right: World Championship. They could call it the World Championship because we Americans owned the sport. We invented it on Mt. Tam and the Euros were, for another year or two at least, still skinny-tire weenies. The great veteran runner/rider/triathlete Ned Overend (aka, The Lung) won the race, and I can't remember what happened to John Tomac, the emerging sport's young endorsement-besotted turk. I finished far back but strong, strong I tell you, on my Univega Sport, which weighed in at probably 40 pounds, including the rack on the back.

The point of this windy recollection is as you expect: To establish my street cred as a mountain biker. Because 15 years and a lot of miles and a lot of races later, I've turned on my tribe. Or maybe not. This is my problem: I love mountain biking, but I very much dislike mountain bikers.

I didn't fully realize all this until a visit last Sunday to Skyline Park, on the southeastern edge of our fair town. We were there for a walk in the Native Plants Garden, but the park proper is the only legit mountain-biking option that a Napa resident can hit without loading the bike into the car. As we pulled into the parking lot--me, my wife and almost-3-year-old son--we noticed a pack of mountain bikers getting ready to roll. They had dual suspension, Camelbacks, the latest frame technology--all the accoutrements of fanaticism, or at least weekend warriorism. I was immediately irked that they had, in fact, loaded their bikes into the car and driven to Skyline. Skyline is nice riding, but there's as good or better to be found all over the Bay Area; it makes no sense to come to Skyline from afar. And if you're local, why not ride to the park?

Then they took off and I could tell by the belly-driven tone of their conversations, by the way they shot down the little grade that connects to the trails, by everything about them, that they were ready for some hardcore riding. Never mind that it was Sunday and the park was full of hikers. Never mind that Skyline's track is often narrow and a hiker wouldn't have a prayer getting out of the way of a bike coming around the curve on an off-camber, gently down-sloping stretch. Never mind, moreover, that any other visitor's goal of some modest communion with nature--its sound, its quiet, its delicious lack of human intrusion--would be exploded by the presence of these cyclists.

The question I had wasn't how hikers could have a good time under these circumstances--it was how cyclists could.

A few days later, still thinking about all this, I gave my road bike a rest and pedaled my '96 Bontrager Privateer S (Indy shocks up front) over to Skyline. It was 5 p.m. on a weekday and nobody was there. I clambered up the Lake Marie fire road, cleaned a wicked rocky, rutted, singletrack climb and swooshed down the hill in the invigorating cool ocean breezes rushing from the Bay to the south. Good golly, I had a good time.

Alone.

I didn't bother anyone. And nobody bothered me. I knew before I even hit the dirt that it was unlikely I'd come across even a single hiker. And I didn't. This freed me to ride unencumbered, and that made all the difference.

There isn't a chance in the world I would have enjoyed myself if every half-mile or so I had been coming across a hiker. I would have known I was wrecking their experience, and fears of a collision would have distracted me. (And a distracted mountain biker is a bleeding mountain biker.)

Where does that leave me? Here: I now know what it is, exactly, that I dislike about mountain bikers. It's their unwillingness or inability to empathize with other trail users. No matter how courteous they might be, mountain bikers on busy, narrow trails are a pain in the ass. Period. They take more than their share of the space, in every sense. They are selfish. But go ahead and ride. Ride hard! Just do it when you won't be bothering everyone else. You'll like it even more.

It was very late, well past the customary appointed hour of slumber. But we were nearing the station, finally--just about to lie down and read "The Salamander Room." And that's when Niko turned to me and said the one and only thing that would derail the bedtime express: "Daddy, can we go downstairs and watch the Giants game together?"

We sat hip-to-hip on the couch, my arm around his shoulders, as Schmidt overpowered the Mets and Niko talked. He talked about how the fishes breathe water, and about the Duplo office tower he built, and how we could go to a lot of Giants games if we won the lottery, and how black olives have lots of flavor because of the salt and the vinegar, and he looked outside at the blackness and asked, "Is it night now?"

It pours out. The theories to explain the mysteries, the questions to answer curiosities, the speculations to close gaps in suspicions. Niko isn't interested in thrills, in screeching down the slide at the playground or tearing around the yard on his tricycle. Niko wants to understand. (The other day, he and his mother sat for a full 30 minutes studying the area under the kitchen sink, working out which pipes took which water--yucky, hot, cold--where, and how the garbage disposal motor works, and why that white plastic pipe thing goes up to that vent hole thing up there.) I confess: Sometimes I fall into my old impatience and sink under the weight of Niko's unending assault of Whys? and am tempted to grab that wretched ol' buoy Because! But so much is missed, and tonight reminded me of that. Niko unloaded the day's accumulated knowledge and I, the Daddy, sat there full of pride and love, dazzled to my very core, soaring at the wonder of how far his short journey has already taken him, and where he might go in the years to come.

This is great. The Associated Press talks to an expert whose credentials are unspecified, and a clueless neighbor; reads from a lawsuit by a disgruntled former devotee that was settled; and the next thing you know a thriving winery is labeled a "cult." To be sure, it's a fine line between off-beat organization and cult and this "fellowship"/winery may fall on the cult side. But who thinks mainstream media are well-equipped to make the distinction? Not me. I read this story looking for some hard evidence that Renaissance Winery and Vineyards was evil, but never found it. Especially appalling was the passage in the story where the writer says of Renaissance, "[t]hey are virtually unknown to their neighbors," and then goes onto quote a local retiree who, with no apparent evidence at all, proclaims, "They are really on another level. It's a cult. They don't make decisions for themselves." How does she know this? We're not told. Weak stuff from AP, and weaker yet for the Chron to pick up the story.