The Big Green House

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

 

The grapes of math

Did I mention the sixty-degree temperatures we had over the weekend? My apologies to those of you on the wrong� er, I mean East Coast, but that part of the trip was especially nice. I know I�ve said that I like cold weather, and I still do, but a little early springtime can be good, too.

Much to my surprise, the wine that we shipped from Lodi on Monday arrived at The Big Green House today. Now, had I been on this trip by myself, this probably would have been an entire case of nothing but Zinfandel from various wineries. Due (mostly) to the influence of Science Girl, however, we also picked up a couple of Ports, a Black Muscat, a Barbera, a couple of Sauvignon Blancs, a Zinfandel-Sangiovese blend, a straight Sangiovese, and a somewhat Chianti-esque blend as well. I�m not complaining, mind you, since I picked out some of those non-Zins myself. In the past, though, it�s been Zin Zin Zin. (Another contributing factor is that we didn�t get to visit a couple of my favorite wineries. Amador Foothill was closed for remodeling, and we just flat ran out of time before we could get to Sobon Estate.)

We saw a lot of grapes left on the vine while we were buzzing around, a sight that�s always a little disturbing. There was a big frenzy, during the late 90�s, to get as many vines in the ground as possible. Prices were going through the roof, and everybody was going to get rich. (Sound familiar?) My parents even contemplated getting in on the grape boom; they had me look into planting ten of their twenty acres in wine grapes (probably either Zinfandel, Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, but we never got that far into it). Their plans ground to a halt when I told them that several reliable sources had mentioned a minimum start-up cost of $10,000 per acre. Add to that the three or four extremely labor-intensive years before we�d ever see any marketable fruit, plus the fact that if we didn�t have a contract with a winery � and it would have been very difficult for us to have secured one, being first-time growers � we�d only be able to sell at the usually lower spot market price once we did have any grapes to sell, and you�ll see why I�m not running their vineyard right now. (Which I might be doing if they�d gone ahead with their plan.)

As it turns out, we�re lucky it was so expensive. There has been a glut on the market for the past couple years, and many farmers are finding it cheaper to leave the fruit on the vine or to actually rip the vines out. This may eventually translate into lower retail prices on wine (haven�t seen much evidence of that yet), but for right now it means a lot of very nervous growers.

bmarkey 1/29/2003 06:12:00 PM