Longer Step: Ideas for Justice and Sustainability

  1. Dom Perignon is tossing its entire 2023 vintage. It's just not good enough. This is one of those lessons that most of us winemakers may not be sensitive enough to. After years of making rose wine from Leon Millot (and winning lots of silver medals for it), I've finally decided I just don't like it enough, and won't make it again. This is partly because my abler winemaker friends are making killer-good reds from both Leon and Foch. I used to make Leon red, and yes I would let it spike to 85F to remove some of the herbaceous notes,  but people didn't like it unless it was aged a few years. But these younger winemakers are adding oak to the primary ferm, and removing the wine and cap from the seeds as soon as they can, and their wines are amazing. Leon is such a perfect grape for here that I simply must find some ways to use it. It was 25% of my red blend that won Gold this year, so that is one good way (blended with Valentin Blattner's Labelle, Ukraine's ...

 How does this relate to the blog's topic of justice and sustainability? Because growing native grapes is much easier on the planet than growing Euopean grapes here, which need frequest sprays that can kill off beneficial insects and soil organisms, and they need tractor fuel, to apply those sprays, which pollutes the air. I've written a book on Modern (hybrid) grapes and why more grapegrowers should be growing them: Modern Grapes for the Pacific Northwest.  I hosted a winetasting that featured Mission wines (see below) and six mostly-award-winning Muscadine wines from a North Carolina winery (made from Noble, Magnolia, and Carlos grapes). My ancestors moved from Scotland to North Carolina and fought the British there in the Rev War, and later they fought the North from Tennessee in the Civil War, and I went to school and met my spouse in Tennessee, and then we lived in Texas, so aside from certain current political issues, I am a South-loving person and I love to ...