American Winescapes

The Cultural Landscapes Of America's Wine Country

Gary L Peters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429981968
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Winescapes are unique agricultural landscapes that are shaped by the presence of vineyards, winemaking activities, and the wineries where wines are produced and stored. Where viticulture is successful it transforms the local landscape into a combination of agriculture, industry, and tourism. This book demystifies viticulture in a way that helps the reader understand the environmental and economic conditions necessary in the art and practice of wine making. Distinctive characteristics of the book include a detailed discussion of more than thirty grape cultivars, an overview of wine regions around the country, and a survey of wine publications and festivals. Peters discusses the major environmental conditions affecting viticulture, especially weather and climate, and outlines the special problems the industry faces from lack of capital, competition, and changing public tastes.

1
Grapevines

WINE, THE FERMENTED JUICE of ripe grapes, has been produced and consumed by humans for longer than anyone can remember. As eminent British wine historian Hugh Johnson (1994:12) once wrote, "Mankind, as we recognize ourselves, working, quarrelling, loving and worrying, comes on the scene with the support of a jug of wine." Some of our distant ancestors, whose lives preceded the earliest written accounts of people and places, found that ripe grapes, left alone in a container of some kind, began to ferment. They knew not why (the combination of natural sugars and wild yeasts encouraged fermentation to occur), may even have fretted at the apparent loss of good mature fruit, but they must certainly have liked the fermenting juices—grapey, winy, and capable of both improving the taste of foods and inducing satisfying feelings. Without much doubt, however, it was the effect of alcohol and not the allure of its savor that first made wine popular.

Perhaps as mysterious to those early imbibers as eclipses of the sun or violent volcanic eruptions, wine seems to have found its way very early into religious experiences. Then, as now, too much of this tempting beverage may have induced visions and delusions, loosening for a while the tight grip of reality. As an old Italian proverb reminds us, "One barrel of wine can work more miracles than a church full of saints."

Wine making begins in the vineyard, first with the selection of grapevines to be planted, then continues with the spacing of those vines, their training on trellises or growth as individual standing plants, their annual pruning, and finally culminates in their general care and maintenance: Good wines require healthy vines. Ampelography is the scientific study of grapevines; ampelographers describe and classify them and study their patterns of behavior.

Practically all of the world's wine grapes belong to the genus Vitis, which in turn is divided into about fifty species, all of which are native either to Eurasia or North America. Only one species, however, Vitis vinifera (often referred to as the European wine grape—vinifera means wine-bearing), has proved to be of paramount importance in the world's wine industry. Although some American wines are made from the grapes of other species (mainly Vitis labrusca) and some from hybrids (true crosses between species), the vast majority are made from Vitis vinifera grapes (more than 99.99 percent of the world's wines are made from grapes of this one species, according to British wine authority Jancis Robinson [1986]).

Although there are several thousand varieties of grapes in the Vitis vinifera family, less than one hundred of them are important in American viticulture today in the 1990s, and most wines produced in the United States are made from far fewer cultivars (short for cultivated varieties) still. But before looking more closely at the major cultivars that dominate today's American winescapes, a few words need to be said about how Vitis vinifera made its way from a somewhat isolated beginning to being the dominant species in the world's vineyards as we approach the millennium's end.

Vitis Vinifera: Its Origin and Diffusion

Geographers have long been interested in where things originated and how they have dispersed. The earliest predecessors of Vitis vinifera evolved perhaps 60 million years ago, soon after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Spreading and differentiating, grape species became ever more numerous; their appreciation by humans, however, appears only quite recently on the geological clock (so far as we know), following the end of a series of cold surges (more than thirty glacial episodes), known collectively as the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, that gripped the earth during the last 2.5 to 3 million years or so (including all of what geologists refer to as the Pleistocene epoch and a chunk of the late Pliocene epoch as well).

The latest of this series of glacial episodes, called the Late Wisconsin in North America and the Würm in Europe, gradually ended about 11,000 years ago. We can only imagine the great continental glaciers that covered most of northern Europe and northern America, as well as the extensive glaciers that were slowly slipping down valleys from the Alps and other European and American mountain systems, slowly retreating, causing sea levels to rise and local climates to change as planetary temperatures sluggishly warmed. Glacial advances destroyed vegetation (including early species of grapes) across most of Europe and much of North America, though vines and other plants found room to survive in the southern reaches of what would later become the United States.

As the ice retreated, however, vegetation began to develop again at its margins, putting roots down in naked soils that had only recently emerged from below fields of ice, some of which had been hundreds, sometimes even thousands, of feet thick. Plants gradually worked their way both generally northward and locally up the slopes of previously glaciated valleys in mountainous areas.

Continued warming encouraged more plants, including some early members of Vitis vinifera, to flourish, especially in sunny sites. Although we may never know this with certainty, evidence strongly suggests that one subspecies, Vitis vinifera sylvestris, established a foothold on south-facing slopes of the Caucasus Mountains sometime after the last glacial episode came haltingly to a close. The Caucasus Mountains stretch eastward from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea; the southern Russian border runs through them today, separating Russia from neighboring Georgia and Azerbaijan. Somewhere in these latter two nations, or perhaps in adjacent Armenia, early wine making began, probably between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago. Geographer Harm de Blij has suggested that the earliest grapevines to be cultivated were those of Vitis vinifera sativa, a plant that wine historian Hugh Johnson now argues was in fact not a subspecies at all but the first real cultivar. Grape pips (seeds) from these early cultivated vines have been found in the Transcaucasian region and have been dated to somewhere between 7000 and 5000 B.C. In Vintage: The Story of Wine, Hugh Johnson (1989:18) wrote the following about this early time in the history of the vine:

To put this era of human history in some sort of perspective, it was when advanced cultures, in Europe and the Near East, had changed from a nomadic to a settled way of life and started farming as well as hunting, when speech and language reached the point where "sustained conversation was possible and the invention of writing only a matter of time," when technology was moving from stone implements to copper ones, and just about the time when the first pottery was made, in the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea. It seems, from what faint traces we can see, that it was a peaceful time, which has left us images of fertility rather than power and conquest.

Although we will never be certain, it seems possible that wine—that newly discovered and enthusiastically received beverage—played some role in the gradual transition in human society and culture that was occurring in the lands south of the Caucasus at that time. Thucydides, for example, suggested that "the peoples of the Mediterranean began to emerge from barbarism when they learnt to cultivate the olive and the vine" (cited in Johnson 1989:35).

Recently, archaeologists have found evidence of intentional and systematic wine making that dates back to 5400 B.C.—only a millennium or two after humans first began to live in fixed houses and to till the soil. This discovery of wine residue in a 2.5-gallon jug found in a home in Hajji Firuz Tepe in western Iran (then occupied by early Sumerians) by archaeologist Mary Voigt and dated by archaeological chemist Patrick McGovern is the earliest confirmation of wine making known. The residue in the jug, which had a cap to seal it (further evidence that the vessel may originally have contained wine), was found to be primarily calcium salt of tartaric acid, which naturally occurs in high concentrations only in grapes, along with traces of a yellowish resin from the terebinth tree, which was widely used in antiquity as a means of preserving wine and slowing the growth of bacteria that could turn the wine to vinegar. Evidence of beer residue was found in the same house, suggesting that at least 7,400 years ago, some of our early ancestors were imbibing alcohol. It is not unlikely that these early folks, like people today, were seeking ways to alleviate the stresses associated with living, trying to cope with uncertainty and change.

Vitis Vinifera in Western Europe and North Africa

From a broad center of early domestication in the Transcaucasian region, cultivars of Vitis vinifera began journeys in at least three different directions—eastward and southeastward into Asia, southwestward into Egypt, and westward through Anatolia to Greece. The diffusion of viticulture through Asia carried vines into the Zagros Mountains, then on to India, China, and finally Japan; the remaining two diffusion paths gradually set the stage for Vitis vinifera's appearance in North America, where numerous other species of Vitis were already growing, though to our knowledge none had been used by early inhabitants for wine making.

Grapevines in Egypt

By about 6,000 years ago, cultivars of Vitis vinifera were probably being grown by Mesopotamians (who certainly were consuming wines), and the vines were gradually dispersing southwestward toward Egypt, though nothing significant is known about the details of this journey. By about 5,000 years ago, the Babylonians were exporting wine to Egypt, and within the following millennium, grapevines were being cultivated in Egypt as well, where the consumption of wine and its association with royalty and religious ceremonies had become well established. Around 3200 B.C., Egypt became unified under the Menes people, who created the First Dynasty; kings from that dynasty were known to have had large wine cellars. Without doubt, those intrepid traders, the Phoenicians, also played a role in moving both vines and wines around the eastern end of the Alec liter ran can in the following millennium.

Although we know little about wine growing in Mesopotamia, Egyptian artists left paintings and decorative pottery that clearly depicted wine-making processes. The early Dynastic period in Egypt was followed by the Old Kingdom (2700-2180 B.C.), a period characterized by rulers such as Imhotep and Cheops. Both art and architecture flourished early in the Old Kingdom, culminating in the building of the great pyramids at Giza, the largest of which is Cheops (2300 B.C.). Wine was commonly consumed and produced in Egypt by this time, primarily by the wealthy, royalty, and the priesthood.

The Egyptians may have been the first people to take wine growing seriously; they studied viticulture and enology, created several new innovations (improved wine presses, for example), yet gradually turned more toward beer as their beverage of choice for everyday consumption. Although we don't know what cultivars grew in vineyards along the Nile delta, we do know from Egyptian artists that people trained the vines, stomped the grapes by foot, used clay jars for fermentation and storage, and made wines that were certainly appreciated by the nobility. We know little about the quality of these wines, but it is hard not to agree with Hugh Johnson's (1989:30) observation that we should not "dismiss what people of such culture as the Egyptian aristocracy described as good, very good or excellent, took such trouble in making and pleasure in drinking."

Vines Arrive in Europe

Although the Egyptians gradually lost interest in wine—first because of the shift to beer as a beverage of choice and then with the arrival of Islam—and today make very little of it, they seem to have played an important role in the early diffusion of Vitis vinifera to Europe. Between about 3000 and 2000 B.C., viticulture arrived in Crete, quite possibly from both Egypt and Anatolia (now Turkey). Wine consumption quickly became associated on this sunny Mediterranean isle with festivals, burials, and various religious events.

During the next millennium, grapevines and viticultural practices arrived in Greece as well, most likely from both Crete and Anatolia. Trade between Crete's Minoans and Greece's Mycenaeans was well established by then, and cultural practices were being transferred from Crete to the Greek peninsula, where the population was growing. Worship of Dionysus or Bacchus, both names for the Greek god of wine, provided evidence of how Greeks felt about wine and its role in their lives.

Henceforth, Vitis vinifera was to reach its apogee in Europe. The Etruscans (in what is now Tuscany) developed viticulture, probably before the arrival of the Greeks. Within the last thousand years before the birth of Christ, the Greeks carried vines to Sicily, Italy (which they called Enotria—the land of the vine), southern France, and the Iberian peninsula. Although the Greeks initially developed the science of ampelography, it was the Romans who were to carry viticulture to new heights and to further diffuse wine growing throughout Europe, as far northwestward as England.

By all accounts, the Romans loved their wines; bacchanalia, the Roman festival of Bacchus, celebrated the fruit of the vine with singing and dancing. Viticulture became firmly established as a significant part of the Roman agricultural base. Not only did the Romans often drink to excess, but they also were among the first to experience a number of problems that still plague the wine industry today, including cycles of overproduction, calls for protection from foreign competitors, and variations in quality (and possibly adulteration of wines as well). Roman officials may have been the first (but by no means the last) to interfere in the wine business; threatened oversupplies and falling prices were sometimes met by decrees to remove inferior vineyards, for example. Much later, governments became involved in regulating everything from production levels to the types of vines that could be grown in particular areas. The political geography of wine has a long history, some of which will be touched on later.

At the same time, the Romans developed the sciences of viticulture and enology. The growing, training, and pruning of vines were studied, along with pests that affect the vines, and viticulturists began to search more carefully for cultivars that would thrive in specific microclimates. Wooden barrels for the aging of wines were employed by Roman wine makers to improve their products, some of which were quite long-lived (though we have no idea how good they might have been). More important than those Roman innovations, however, was the continued diffusion of viticulture throughout western Europe.

Wherever the Roman legions went, viticulture seemed soon to follow. Leaving home may have been acceptable to soldiers, but leaving behind their wines must have been intolerable, Vitis vinifera vines were carried to France's Rhone Valley, to Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Loire Valley, and Champagne; to Germany's Rhine and Moselle Valleys; and even to merry old England (where recent decades have witnessed a considerable renewal of that nation's wine industry, mainly by using hybrid grapevines that have been developed in Germany). A look at a map of western Europe will quickly show the relationship between these Roman viticultural sites and the rivers that allowed Roman penetration into the interior of the continent. Those same rivers, of course, served to move the wine to markets, including Rome.

Within a few hundred years of the birth of Christ, Europe's viticultural map had been thoroughly drawn—and with few exceptions, its great wine regions, as we recognize them today, had already been planted with vines. Numerous cultivars had been recognized by the Romans, and the task that remained in Europe was to match specific cultivars more closely with the regions in which they would do best; in contemporary America (and even in Europe, despite strict viticultural laws) this search continues, balancing viticultural and enological knowledge with the ever-changing tastes of the world's wine consumers. In our present global economy, wine moves more widely than ever before; producers in search of growing profits chase consumers in search of value, mediated always by fluctuations in currency values and government decrees.

Vitis Vinifera in the New World

The history of European viticulture is interesting, but far too complex to more than sketch in for this introduction. Suffice it to say that European viticulture survived a variety of difficult periods (the Dark Ages, for example), surmounted all obstacles (including many attempts to do away with it, tariffs to discourage trade, and treaties that affected it), and somehow continued to improve technologically and qualitatively. The use of wooden barrels was raised to higher levels, especially in France; bottles and corks were introduced, Champagne was "discovered" and brought to perfection, port and sherry entered the wine lexicon, along with such enological curiosities as retsina—a Greek wine flavored with resin from the Alep pine. Wine quality...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: A Geographer's Appreciation of America's Wine Country
• 1 Grapevines
• 2 Major Cultivars in American Vineyards Today
• 3 American Environments for Wine Grapes
• 4 American Wine Making Comes of Age
• 5 Wine Regions and Wine Labels
• 6 American Viticultural Landscapes
• 7 Seasons, Ceremonies, and Wine-Judging Events
• 8 The Viticultural Area as a Working Landscape
• 9 Communicating About Grapes and Wines
• 10 America's Viticultural Future
• References
• About the Book and Author
• Index