Romance/Reality

When the frost alarm sounds at 2 am, Laura is already awake and reading a book on the couch. Last night, standing on the deck after sunset, she had sensed frost danger. The sky had that look: shattered obsidian with stars glinting like raw shards of light. And then there was the air, the way it had been warm all day but then suddenly went cold over the vineyard, like a doused campfire. Her husband was away, navigating a commercial airliner in the night sky between Phoenix and Denver, so she would be on vineyard frost patrol alone. She pulled some blankets into the living room and settled into the couch for a shallow sleep, her ears perked for the alarm.

Kurt and Laura arrived in southern Oregon more than ten years ago and settled near the California border in the Rogue Valley. They liked how the big cities were far away—Portland and San Francisco each required a five hour drive—and they reveled in the isolation of being tucked between mountain chains, the Klamath-Siskiyou and the Cascades. When they looked up, one slow turn made the bounded horizon seem like the edge of the world, as if there was nothing except tree-covered mountains and a sky-dome full of crisp Sistine light.

When Kurt and Laura moved in with a plan to grow grapes, pear orchards covered the rolling hillsides, but few vineyards. The whole family pitched in to help plant. Kurt’s 75-year-old father drove the tractor, and their two grade-school-aged kids set the vine cuttings in the soil, planting merlot, syrah, and chardonnay. They built a trellising system and, as the vines grew, trained the canes along the wires. Three years later, they harvested their first small crop and sold the grapes to Foris winery, an operation owned by a gnomish winemaker named Ted Gerber. When they first moved into the valley, Ted had warned them of the difficulties of pursuing a life among the vines. Over time, however, they proved their commitment to the lifestyle and established a close relationship with Ted, learning how to produce the very best fruit possible for his wine.

By the time the alarm sounds at 2 a.m., some nearby farmers have already turned their frost protection fans on. Affixed to poles that are 50 feet tall, the giant fans are angled so that they blow warm air downward and stir up the cool air currents that settle near the valley bottom. Beneath Laura’s feet, the living room floor vibrates from the deep diesel engine rumble of the fans. She sets her book down and checks the thermometer: 34 degrees.

She puts on a pair of thermals, a heavy jacket and shoes, and walks outside to a red vineyard cart and starts up the engine. As the engine warms, her small dog, Teasel, hops into the cart and nestles into a ball on the floorboard. She feels his warm fur on her calves.

As she steers the cart down the rutted path to the vineyard, the headlights illuminate tall stems of yellow mustard flowers. The night air is cold on her face, uncomfortable, but she keeps her mind focused. There isn’t a choice. Sleeping through such a night in April could mean disaster. The emerging spring buds are delicate, and one frost can render the small, pink-fringed leaves crisp and brown.

It’s at moments like these—at 2 a.m. on the coldest nights-- that many vineyard owners look back and laugh at the romantic notions that led them into the profession. Gazing at vineyards, they often joke, is romantic; owning one is another matter. Grapevines are labor intensive, and growers like Kurt and Laura must make at least eleven passes through the vineyard each year, tending each one of their fifteen thousand vines by hand. A year off is not an option, even when the market is depressed. Grapes are unlike other crops in this way. In a bad year, corn farmers won’t plant corn—or maybe they’ll follow the whims of the market and plant soybeans instead. Grapevines don’t allow for such flexibility, requiring many years of careful nurturing to reach maturity. And mistakes are long-lasting. A farmer might plant a certain variety only to discover ten years later that the wines it is producing are bitter—perhaps because the grapes required more sun exposure to ripen, or maybe could not tolerate a particular soil deficiency. Then the farmer must pull up the vines and start all over, trying out a different clone or variety. Unlike in France where generations have inhabited the same sites for centuries and passed their knowledge of the land to their descendants, in America there is no such lineage to draw upon. At less than four decades old, the New World wine industry is still considered embryonic, and growers fumble about to learn the nuances of their land. Only foresight and stubborn tenacity get growers like Kurt and Laura through the hard times.