I was in the vineyard in the early morning. The sun hadn't topped the Marri redgum trees, which are in full blossom, (literally driving my bees into an intoxicated frenzy), and there was the unfamiliar presence of dew on the ground. Fall has really arrived down under and it continues to be strange to me, a Northern Hemisphero, to be experiencing autumn at this date in the year. Doubly strange to be hearing of all my friends' Spring doings back in the States, with their hankering to move outside, when my attention is heading within... We picked the Chardonnay a couple of weeks ago and the leaves have yellowed considerably, with some shriveling. It feels decidedly different to walk through now - not just that the fruit is gone, but also there's that tangible sense that life is going inward, that the energy of the block has shifted. Even the spiders seem to be less active here. Generally I encounter many more webs as I walk through, but their activity seems to have diminished somewhat. Echoing Holden Caulfield, I wander through the vines wondering where the spiders go in winter.
At harvest we whole-bunch pressed the Chardonnay right into barrel where it immediately began to ferment, entirely with wild yeasts. The entire batch took off running and didn't stop until it was dry. We topped it off a few days ago and I had a taste and was overwhelmed by our great good fortune at having made such an astonishingly complex and elegant wine. Here's a picture of a few berries that made it into the barrel. Note the high-tech spoon used to remove them:
Afterwards I gave the barrels a loving scrub and they looked so nice I had to posteriticize them:
After pressing the juice out of the Chardonnay, I took the pressings back to the vineyard where I will be composting them soon. Their sweet liquid was a magnet for every insect in the territory, but no competition for the Marris whose scent is on the breeze even now. Here's a snap of the pile (weeks after sitting here) to which I will be adding grass clippings and cow manure and various biodynamic preparations:
It's a way of returning the nutrients removed from the vineyard to the soil in a way that makes them bio-available, that is to say in a form that is easily absorbable by the plants.
Today I looked in on the Malbec which is undergoing fermentation in a stainless steel open fermenter. The folks at the winery nicknamed this fermenter "Harry Highpants" because it is so tall. The juice is kept in contact with the skins during fermentation in order to leach tannins, flavor and color into the must in a process called maceration. In the course of fermentation, carbon dioxide is formed carrying the skins to the surface where they form a cap. They need to be kept wet and in contact with the juice in order to extract color and tannin and flavor. To do this, you either plunge the cap below the surface of the juice ("punch down") or pump the juice over the cap. Here's a snap of a "pump over" which distributes the ferment and both wets and massages the cap of skins.
What I learned today that I found so interesting is that a punch down is not just a punch down and a pump over is not just a pump over. Essentially you can transmit your vibration, intention, spirit, and feeling into the wine as you perform the action! (I know - duh!) So the objective is to massage the cap with the juice, moving it with energy and focus. Pretty cool, right? The idea here being that at every step of the process you can consciously affect how the wine turns out through your mindfulness. It works much as if you were cooking. A recipe is only just a recipe, if you shut off your intuition and mechanically follow the directions.
Again I'm struck by how everything involved in the process of wine-making matters! Attitude, feeling, focus, sensitivity are all brought to bear in every step. It is not formulaic unless you are making formula wine, which we most emphatically are not doing.
I have a sneaky suspicion that this Malbec is going to be awesome!
Two weeks later we’re easing up to the equinox and going in for the Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s the very opposite of the Malbec harvest – the moon is full, the energy, autumnal, the light silvered, brooding, quiet. The sea is snapping, blasting powerful low timbre pops that rise to reverberate over the ridge, like the sound of a faraway storm. I’m receiving the sounds in my gut like a type of foreboding and I will my breath to slow and my silly human thoughts to empty out so that something else can come in.
The ground is damp to my bare feet. The slightest breeze feathers up laden with moisture, redolent with anticipation. The fullish moon sets down below the horizon and the light has been extinguished. The night has been switched back on. Mercury and Venus have risen and gleam in the East, Saturn and Mars blaze in the western sky. It is a celestially rich moment with various forces and planets lining up perfectly. I’m feeling positively biodynamic as I rock down to the vineyard.
I compose the horoscope of this vintage in my sleep-deprived skull. Addled, grinning, I physicalize the least profound thoughts in all of astrology. I’m giggling with the chill energy of the morning, tasting grapes as we roll up the nets. I pause and listen to the world waking up -- first kookaburra, then magpie, lark, honeyeater, western ringneck parrot, the convoy of crew rolling in.
It’s early and the winery is silent. The whoosh of water, thrum of pump, and whirr of machine has yet to begin. I’m plunging the Malbec, pushing down the cap of skins that have floated to the surface of the ferment, bubbled aloft by carbon dioxide produced during fermentation. And for the first time ever, it is quiet enough for me to actually hear what plunging sounds like. It has the resonance of the sea. Each plunge elicits a wave and reverberation. There’s a rush of tide created by the seeds tumbling in the wash and plinking against the side of the open tank, like waves breaking on a pebbled shore. Each motion sets up the soft swoosh and ebb of the wine dark sea. She churns and seethes and bubbles and pops, pulsating with vigor and life, all set in motion by the plunge.
The wind shoves in through the marris, rattling the leaves, and causing a sentinel pair of cockatoos to lament. The energy of that translates into the wine through the kinetics of plunge. I clench bandhas, control breath, reach to make each thrust a graceful vinyasa. I will myself into a clear focus, only to catch a random cloud casting an impish shadow across the fields. And in that moment I feel like the world has just moved through me, and on through the wine, and it has. This moment, and then this one, will reverberate in the drinking.
It’s profound and inexplicable. It’s part of the transmutative magic.
I continue the motion, breathing a heartbeat, now setting up a diastole, systole, a thrust of intention through the lifeblood of the ferment. I pause to test a sample of this living beating concoction. I have my hands in her, my arms. Everything has gone purple. I taste her with my nose, throat, lungs. I’m intoxicated and haven’t had a drink.
A living current has flown into me through the ferment and back out of me again. She is making herself, and I merely follow her command, caught up in her immensity, her power, her inexorability.
Hours later, I still hear her powerful song, still breathe her heady scent. Something still resonates in my spine. It is her breath. She breathes, inspiration and expiration, with a breath so great, it encompasses the region, and time itself. This is way bigger than I am.