Eight Hundred Grapes by Dave Laura

Author:Dave, Laura [Dave, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Exile on Main Street

My father had a theory that what was of equal importance to the wine you presented in your vintage was the wine you left out of the vintage. In winemaking, this was known as declassification. Declassification: a fancy word for what wines you were willing to throw out. The decision was made as early as when the grapes were picked. It was made as late as after investing months fermenting the wine.

I always thought that was what made my father such a great winemaker. There were some winemakers who wouldn’t declassify anything that came from their vineyard—the factory winemakers, the big producers. They didn’t care about quality control to begin with and they didn’t care about it at the end. They wanted high yields, regardless of weather, regardless of rot. Give it a shiny name and sell it for five dollars. Someone would be glad to drink it.

My father believed in low yields, working from the best grapes, balanced pruning. The year of the second awful harvest, after sweeping fires, my father declassified more wine than he bottled, even though it meant he risked going broke in the process. Even though it meant that he risked everything.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.