Welcome to Out of the Kitchen, our ongoing exploration of the relationships that build and sustain the food industry. This year, we’re traveling the country to look at how sustainability has become a rapidly growing movement within the food world. Chefs at the forefront of this trend are introducing their patrons to local farms, fresh ingredients, and innovative dishes while farmers are educating chefs and consumers about where their food comes from and what it takes to grow the food served. Their practices and personal customer approaches provide a bigger impact to the community at large, hoping to create a better and more sustainable future for all.
John Williams stared at the grapes and vines all around him and just couldn't figure it out. He had the education--agricultural degrees from Cornell University and UC Davis. He had the resume—he'd been the winemaker at wineries in both California and upstate New York. He'd even worked at Stag's Leap when its 1973 Cabernet won the Judgment of Paris, which upended the French wine world and ushered in the age of New World wines. He had the spot—a gorgeous patch of 30 acres and growing in the heart of Napa Valley. And he had the help of the cutting-edge technology and chemical mixes that were the products of the finest minds of the corporate labs of the day, the mid-1980s. And yet his wine grapes, Zinfandels and Sauvignon Blancs, while still good, just weren't good enough for Williams.
"We were getting grapes, and we weren't even abusing chemicals so much," he says. "It was, what else could we get out of this farming system other than what were getting? It was more the sense we were excluding life from the ground above and the soil below."
So Williams called up friends at Fetzer Wines in Mendocino County, who was experimenting with organic vegetables and grapes. They, in turn, put him in touch with an organic-farming legend "Amigo" Bob Contisano, who instructed Williams in the organic philosophy and instructed him in organic farming techniques, chief among them, arguably the most important part of winemaking: Let the vines be the vines. Williams took the message to heart. "I wanted to invite life back into the farming system," William says.
In the spring of 1988, he began converting Frog's Leap into a fully organic winery, convincing several of fellow grape growers to join him. He earned the California Certified Organic Farmers certification the next year. Today Frog's Leap isn't only organic, biodynamic, and sustainable, boasting the first LEED-certified building in the California wine industry, it's also dry farmed.
"The approach to dry farming is what surprises people the most," says tasting room manager Jonathan Rietz. "Most Americans don't realize that growing without irrigation is not only possible but is actually beneficial to the grape. They see irrigation throughout the valley, and they look at us in shock: 'How is this possible?' They're shocked that we can do this, and do it successfully. But this is the way people used to farm. I have to remind people that this is the way wine was produced since Roman times."
Not only is dry farming a critical environmental decision for drought-stricken California, but it's also what Frog's Leap says is key to better-tasting grapes. The aim is to make the setting as close to what the vines are naturally designed for. The soil is inundated with healthy microbes and healthy bugs the rootstock healthy and happy, and acts like a sponge to hold in the winter rains for the plant to survive on in the dry season. Between the vines, cover crops keep the soil in good shape, while other beneficial plants act as invisible fences around the grapes, keeping pests at bay.
The establishment process for the vines themselves is longer than usual, because Frog's Leap removes any irrigation systems already in place, then spends two years growing other crops on the land, to help the soil rest and regain its health and nutrients. Then the rootstock goes in. Williams and his team let the rootstock grow on its own for at least a year before grafting on the Cabernet or Zinfandel vine, followed by another year to let the vine climb up its wire and another two before it's ready for its first crop. All in all, it's a six-year process before the first grapes appear on a new vine--and Frog's Leap doesn't usually use any for winemaking until the fourth leaf. The grapevines' job is to simply be itself, to take its growth at its own pace, to bear fruit when it's time, and to act in its own best interest.
"The grapevine is smarter than us, and better adapted to this environment than us," says Frog's Leap general manager Jonah Beer. "We don't decide for the grapevine how many leaves it should have, or whether its top or bottom leaves should be lopped off, or whether it needs to be trestled like a turkey. We give it a healthy ecosystem to live in, where it can communicate with the fungus and other plants, sense the moisture and food in the environment, and make the decision on its own for how many grapes it creates and how long to develop them. There's nothing cutting edge about the way we farm unless it's 1868 today. We're not arrogant to think our iPads can grow grapes better than a grapevine. Grapevines aren't corn or wheat. They don't require so much of our input."
The result? Grapevines that last 60 to 70 years, and that last long enough to create more subtle, deeper, and more complex fruit that, in turn, makes for a classically balanced wine.
"Our style of wine hasn't changed, but most of the vineyards around us have gone for a bigger-style Cab," Beer says. "We give people a classically proportioned old Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, a style that many of our guests think was all but lost until they come here."
"It's not like we're beating the drum for organic, it's all about making better wine," Williams says. "There's a deep sense here that we've invited life back into the farming system, and so we live in a living and breathing agricultural environment here. We can't help but believe that it helps us make better wine and have healthier lives for all the organisms involved—including our guests, hopefully."