Robert Sinskey Vineyards

Naughty or Nice?
Sweet soil for a sweet wine!

It’s been a wet one. The first two weeks of January 2017 delivered twelve inches of rain to our pretty little Bay Area valley. Highways closed from flooding, slides and accidents. Buildings leaked, cars failed to start and dogs made a mess of things… but enough complaining. We needed it after years of drought.

It wasn’t really that bad, especially if you were prepared. But what if you weren’t? Then, you lost soil, had to deal with erosion and/or soil compaction and basically lost your bank account of nutrients to the whims of mother nature.

Many farmers are naughty and look for quick fixes or shortcuts that end up causing more issues downstream. One of the biggest problems is the over-use of herbicides. We at RSV strongly believe that herbicide use begins a downward spiral toward a vineyard’s dependency on excessive synthetic and nutritional input for viability. Herbicides break the chain nature provides for a healthy soil… destroying the tilth of the soil.

Soil tilth is an interesting and often overlooked aspect of farming. “Tilth,” simply put, is the physical condition of the soil. Soil that has been drenched with herbicides becomes compacted as the cover crop dies and it no longer benefits from the natural tillage and aeration grasses and legumes provide. As plants grow, their roots open up the soil and allow water and air to penetrate the surface. Then, when the plants are “mowed” by animals, they form a blanket on the soil that preserves moisture and habitat for worms, microbes and fungus… all the things that break down organic material into nutrients that naturally transfer to the vines.

However, a healthy soil is not only good for the vines, a healthy soil is also good for the planet as it has the ability to sequester carbon whereas herbicide sprayed and heavily tilled soil is a poor carbon sink and actually releases carbon into the atmosphere… very naughty!

As I look out my window, I see our vines with a cover crop that has been mowed by sheep to a height resembling a lawn and, even though there’s been more rain in the last few weeks than in the last six years, there is no erosion and no standing water. Yet, when I look past our fence to the neighboring property, I see a barren landscape that has been sprayed and tilled to the point that little is growing other than the dormant vines. Rills form on the slopes and puddles of water remain for days after each rain, failing to penetrate the surface, missing an opportunity to provide benefit. Tractor and truck tires leave deep tracks in the mud that further contributes to this compaction. All this could have been avoided if they looked beyond the false economy of spraying herbicides.

There is a sweet spot when soil has the right amount of organic material to act like a sponge - and when you do work it, it actually smells “sweet,” as only healthy, rich humus can. It is much better to play nice with nature and let her do the work she evolved to do, rather than assume we can do it better. Because, no matter how much we think we can control and improve nature, she always finds a way to control us.

Sweet Memories

A meal at my Italian great grandmother’s dinner table wasn’t complete until the cookies from the Italian bakeshop around the corner made an appearance. Most often they were served with strong coffee but, every once in a while, Papa DiGregorio would break out a sweet wine to enjoy with the cookies. The kids could taste, but never gulp. But to a child, that sweet wine was like nectar and I always managed to quaff a little more from unattended glasses. My lips would tingle as the tiny sip of stolen wine slid over my tongue and down my throat. A moment of pure pleasure.

I didn’t care for most of the cookies. Some of them were downright unpleasant to eat, particularly the ones sheathed in bitter sesame seeds, but oh, the pignoli! The pignoli were the prize. The heady scent of pine and almond, the slight chew at the center of the cookie, and that armor of pine nuts. They exuded tender oiliness when pressed gently between my back teeth. It was a texture that I had never experienced before. I tried my best to grab as many as I could before my hand was slapped away, leading me to slink away to the corner of the room to enjoy my hard earned treasure. The sweet memories of those pignoli lingers even now.

I love pignoli with RSV’s Pinot Gris Late. There is a synergy with the light sweetness of the wine, the crispness of its finish, and the pignoli, that makes the combination sing. The cookie’s crust with studs of pine nuts perfectly tempers the sweet almond paste interior to make a not-too-sweet Pinot Gris Late-worthy cookie. A memory worth saving.

Until the Next Wine....
Maria

EAT: Pignoli

The drought continued into 2014 with little relief in sight. Fruit set was smaller than expected with smallish clusters of berries with thicker skins than previous vintages. This resulted in wines with nice intensity and elegant structure.

This wine is comprised of three lots from RSV’s organically farmed vineyards - two lots from the Three Amigos Vineyard and one from Scintilla Sonoma Vineyard, all in the Carneros. The grapes had plenty of hang time, harvested on October 2 at 28.5 degrees Brix for full development of flavor and an elegant “Vendage Tardive”-like sweetness. The wine stopped fermenting at 7.5 degrees Brix for a not-too-sweet, delicately refreshing dessert, spicy cuisine or cheese wine.