It was just one of those years. There was way too many
grapes and I was tired of making jelly.
I figured ….this can’t be rocket science…. I’ll try making wine. Heck, they’ve been making it for 2 thousand
years. With a good hill country recipe, more grapes than you can say grace
over, and a grass roots fascination in the process of it all, the stage was set
for the fulfillment of a hearts desire.
Growing up in the Magic Valley of Texas, there was always
some type of plowing, harvesting, canning and cooking going on. We had rag
dolls stuffed with cotton gleaned from the side of the road. Sunday there was
fried chicken and a ritual nap on pillows stuffed with feathers (a by-product of lunch). In black dirt, you can grow anything, and it
grows all year long. In retrospect, I
recal a grapevine outside my sister’s bedroom window. It never did any good at
all. It was an annual disappointment.
By moving to Erath County to raise a family a new world was
opened for me. First of all, I didn’t
even own a coat. Then the ground was “sandy
loam”, what’s that!!!?. My in-laws had
to teach me all over on how and what to
grow. Additionally, you had only short
seasons to accomplish this. Citrus was
replaced with wild plums and brazos berries. However, one of the greatest finds
for me, was wild mustang grapes. They
were everywhere and, they didn’t burn my hands when I picked them. That’s a big
thing!
My life became scheduled by chasing wild mustang grapes on
an annual basis. Maybe I should say an
annual obsession which lasted 12 months out of each year. Does this mean is was just an
“obsession”? Probably so….well anyways. There was the picking and the processing; add
bottling and making homemade labels just for the fun of it. Still had to save enough for jelly… so, we
took cutting from around the county and made a small vineyard next to the
house, just to have some of our favorites close enough to keep an eye on. 1000
foot of vines was where we started.
Then there is the vision board. This is what you do when you
hit a certain crossroads in your life and you ponder exactly what you want to
do when you grow up. It has pictures of a large vineyard and on one of the
corners…three oak trees. This was
followed by : “The Phone Call”.
My husband had been visiting with a local doctor who had put
in a vineyard. Seems that he had some
vines that were not going to take his vineyard the direction he was looking
for. The vines were a mustang highbred and were going to have to go. I got a call asking how many vines I
wanted. At first I started thinking how
to extend my current rows and after doing the math my answer was “I can take about
300 plants”. I stopped for a moment and looked at my vision board….What Was I
Thinking!!!!. I called back and
said…I’ll take them ALL! Now we have
12,500 foot of vineyard. It’s almost
exactly what was on the vision board including three oak trees that sit in a
bunch at one corner. Come by and I’ll
show you the picture…it’s crazy 😊.
One day I was visiting a fellow vitner. He asked me many questions about the
vineyard, and about wine making. We
found so much in common. It was easy to
see that we both had quite a passion for the wine making process. Then he said
to me, “you know Shadows make the best wine.”
This statement has stuck with me and I ponder over it quite often. It’s
been commented that, it takes 4 men to work 1 acre of a vineyard for the first
4 years, then one man for each 4 acres after that. “Labor intensive” can be an
understatement for the care of and sustaining of a vineyard. One would expect
that being in the vineyard hands on and passionately caring for it would make a
real difference in the outcome of the wine itself. I believe this is a fair and
accurate statement. But I believe it goes even further. It’s an understanding
that sometimes you have to get out of nature’s way and having faith that the
trials and triumphs that come each season are for a reason. It’s way more than
just the humans in a vineyard that cast their shadows. Every drop of rain, each
blade of grass, the rays of sun and the beams of the moon, the way the wind
tosses and twirls each leaf; they cast their shadows leaving their mark on each
vine, leaf and grape.
Laying the wine to sleep and waking it up when you uncork a
bottle casts its own type of shadow and makes the wine ultimately what it turns
out to be.
My prayer is that when you cast your own shadow on a glass
of our wine that you can feel, if even just for a moment, that you are part of
this vineyard. Taste the cool of the
moon and the warmth of the sun. Find the fragrance of each flower and the hint
of oak from the trees that surround it. Join in with every bird, bunny, chicken and
hawk that find refuge in its branches and its fruit. It’s all here…. all you have to do is tip your
glass.
Cheers!