You want to be a better skier. You notice that Olympic-level skiers tend to get knee injuries. So, you grab a sledgehammer and pulverize your patella.
Does that sound stupid? No stupider than some of the logic surrounding wine. Take, for instance, the “green harvest.” This is a yearly spring event where vineyards lop off up to thirty percent of their crop and leave it on the ground to rot. Why? Well, as any winemaker will tell you, lower yields make better wine.
Grapevines are about the only agricultural product that’s routinely tortured. While peas and corn grow lush and leafy-green, grapes are kept miserable. The idea goes way back. Being slightly less necessary than food, grapevines were historically planted in hostile areas where nothing else would grow. Clinging to windblown cliffs, their roots tunneling down through barren rock, bereft of nutrients, the vines that made it were survivors. Travel around the Old World and you’ll see that the famous vineyards responsible for the world’s best wine are all quite low-yielding. The idea that grapevines should suffer is so entrenched that European appellation laws are based on it.
But according to Richard Smart, this is nonsense. Smart is a superstar Australian vine-doctor, revered by some, detested by others. He’s done numerous experiments that show no correlation between quality and yield. In fact, his high-yield vineyards often make the best wine. What does matter, he found, is reduced shoot growth, an open leaf-canopy that allows more sun to hit both leaves and fruit, and relatively less water. If lower yields occur, they’re a symptom, not a cause. Throwing away fruit to make better wine is about as useful as breaking your own bones to perfect your bump-skiing.
Why do wine producers ignore potent new science in favor of the traditional, the inscrutable and the downright stupid? Because, let’s face it, wine isn’t rational. We’re not satisfied that it tastes good and inspires giddiness. We must also imbue it with the awe and mysticism more commonly reserved for communion wafers.
Wine myths abound and are seldom questioned. Many drinkers believe sulfites cause headaches and corks mean high quality. Among producers, myths get really weird, ranging from tasting specific types of earth in wine all the way to burying ground-up quartz in the horn of a cow during a full moon, and digging them up six months later to brew into a tea for annointing vines with.
To become a myth, a story needs to synch up with certain archetypal grooves. Dissect tales that resonate—from Jesus, to Pinocchio, to the rise and fall and rise again of Martha Stewart--and you find the same thing: a hero passing through harrowing trials before claiming, at last, a rightful state of grace. The worse the torture, the more powerful the tale. Jesus was crucified; Pinocchio only teased. OK, he got swallowed by a whale, but the guest room was pretty comfy.
The point is all heroes have to suffer to earn our veneration. The low-yield myth, in the end, is probably less about viticulture and more about justifying wine worship (not to mention wine prices). So, despite the protests of scientists like Smart, no doubt great wines will continue to journey, Orpheus-like, through hell and live to tell about it on their back labels.
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