I.
THE VINES IN THE SKY CHAPTER 1
Dangerous Grapes
In the Swiss canton of Valais, melted cheese is serious business. At the 16th-century ChĆ¢teau de Villa in Sierreābilled as Le Temple de la Racletteāthe eveningās menu was straightforward: raclette. A guy with a long knife, called a racleur, scraped hot, bubbling, gooey raclette from a wheel onto warm plates that were then whisked to our wooden table, where we added small boiled potatoes served from wooden baskets, along with cornichons, pickled onions, chanterelle mushrooms, and rye bread. After that raclette, there was more raclette. For two hours, the raclette kept coming. Each plate featured a different puddle of raw-milk cheese from a different nearby mountain village. When I asked for ice water, I was gently scolded by the waiter: āNever drink cold water with raclette. The cheese will congeal into a cheese baby in your stomach.ā
No water was fine with me. I was at ChĆ¢teau de Villa to drink wine with my melted cheese. And not just any wine, but wine made from some of the most obscure grapes in the world. As another round of raclette arrived, Jean-Luc Etievent, my unshaven and pastel-wearing French dining companion, poured a glass of humagne blanche. It tasted strange and big and sexy, full of ripe exotic fruit, surrounded by delicate floral aromasāsort of like mountain flowers picked by a Kardashian wearing a dirndl.
If youāve never heard of humagne blanche, I donāt blame you. I have been an aficionado of obscure wine and spirits for years, and Iād never heard of this white wine either. Humagne blanche dates to at least the 14th century, and in the midā19th century it was the most widely grown grape in Valais. Now, only 75 acres of humagne blanche remain in the entire world. By comparison, cabernet sauvignon and merlot each grow on over 700,000 acres worldwide, and chardonnay grows on over 400,000 acres. With a Gallic shrug, Etievent said, āDrinking the same wines all the time is really boring.ā
Before Iād finished with my glass of humagne blanche, I was given a second glass by the other wine sherpa at our table, JosĆ© Vouillamoz, a short, bespectacled Swiss guy in his mid-40s who wears a flat cap and kicks around his nearby hometown of Sion on a kidās scooter. āWe will now taste one of the rarest wines in the world,ā he said, with a flourish.
Vouillamoz poured me a glass of wine made with a grape called himbertscha, which heād helped rescue from a forgotten vineyard found high in the Alps. In the entire world, only these two acres of himbertscha exist, from which less than 800 bottles are made each year. Himbertscha is one of the strangest white wines I have ever tastedālike a forest floor of moss and dandelions thatās been spritzed with lemon and Nutella. Vouillamoz took a big sip and said, āCritics claim that obscure varieties like this will never be as good as Bordeaux or Burgundy. Well, maybe not now. But what about in 50 years? One hundred years?ā
We might reasonably call Etievent and Vouillamoz the Indiana Joneses of ampelographyāwhich happens to be the study, identification, and classification of grapevines. Both are explorers on an obsessive hunt for the rarest wine grapes in the world. Vouillamoz is a world-renowned geneticist and botanist, and coauthor of the encyclopedic tome Wine Grapes: A Complete Guide to 1,368 Vine Varieties, Including Their Origins and Flavors (with Julia Harding and Jancis Robinson). His lifeās work is the study of vitis vinifera, the European grape species thatās used to make most of the worldās wine. Meanwhile, Etievent is the cofounder of Paris-based Wine Mosaic, a small nonprofit organization that works to rescue indigenous wine grapes from extinction. All over the Mediterranean, from Portugal to Lebanon, Etievent and his similarly obsessed colleagues seek out growers of rare varieties, helping farmers identify what grapes they have, then essentially serving as a support groupāorganizing tastings and connecting them with importers, university researchers, and wine drinkers.
I found myself in Valais because Iād grown increasingly obsessed with obscure and underappreciated wine grapes, and Etievent had invited me on a harvest-time trip to see and taste some of Wine Mosaicās most successful projects in the Alps. Here, isolated vineyards, strange microclimates, and decades spent off the traditional wine worldās radar have preserved local grapes and farming traditions. In less than a decade, Wine Mosaic has saved more than 20 traditional Alpine grape varieties from dying out.
Earlier that day, about 40 kilometers from ChĆ¢teau de Villa, Etievent and I visited the most extreme vineyards Iād ever experienced, at a craggy mountain place called Domaine de Beudon. Etievent, perhaps channeling a Parisian version of Indiana Jones, carried a pickax and wore heavy leather boots, along with royal blue pants, a white belt, and a pink scarf. We were joined by yet another rare-grape expert, Jean Rosen, vice president of a Dijon-based organization called CĆ©pages Modestes (literally āmodest grapesā). Rosen, short, stocky, and bearded, was himself a modest guy. His nickname is āPetit Verdot,ā after the least-known and most finicky grape used in Bordeaux blendsāa variety that ripens so late that in some years the entire crop is lost. Before Petit Verdot became immersed in esoteric wine grapes, heād been an English teacher, then an antique ceramics expert.
The only way up to Domaine de Beudon was by a creaky wooden aerial cable carālike something out of a Wes Anderson movie. After we called up to the mountaintop on an old-fashioned phone, we waited as the cable car slowly wobbled down, and then as boxes of grapes were unloaded. A photographer traveling with us, terrified, refused to get into the cable car. Etievent, Petit Verdot, and I squeezed in, and we quickly jolted upward, suspended from a swaying cable. I could see the ground, hundreds of feet below, through the cracks between the floor and the door. About halfway up, the car lurched steeply, climbing almost vertically over a protruding rock face (the beudon, or ābellyā) that gives the winery its name. We all looked at one another wide-eyed. āDonāt look down,ā Petit Verdot said.
We arrived at the top to fields of verbena and thyme and flowers and chickens wandering freely. The vineyards rose straight up, almost 3,000 feet above sea level. Domaine de Beudon, with its motto, Les vignes dans le ciel (āthe vines in the skyā) is considered to be one of the first and most important bio-dynamic wineries in the world. On the cable car platform, we met Domaine de Beudonās owner, 69-year-old Jacques Granges, who wore a bushy beard andāI kid you notāa beret. We shook hands. Granges was missing his index finger. It seemed as though weād arrived for an audience with the mythical wizened hermit on the mountaintop.
As we sat at a table overlooking the sunny valley below, Granges brought out a dozen bottles of wine, and set down two jugs. āThis one is for spitting, and this one is for dumping,ā he said. āI make vinegar.ā
āHeās not going to make much vinegar today,ā Petit Verdot whispered to me.
Granges said little as he poured his wines. When we oohed and aahed over the first, a golden amber and chalky wine made from the chasselas grape, he said simply, āThis is a wine raised by science, conscience, and a lot of love.ā
The next wine, from mĆ¼ller-thurgau grapes, was like drinking snow infused with edelweiss. āThis is like magic water,ā said Petit Verdot. That was followed by somewhat-known sylvaner (called by the name Johannisberg in Valais) and then relatively rare petite arvine, a Swiss variety with less than 500 acres found in the world. That was followed by totally obscure reds from humagne rouge and diolinoir (each less than 300 acres worldwide).
Finally, we tasted a strange hybrid grape called chambourcin, which was created in the 19th century by crossing a French variety with a wild North American variety. Normally, a hybrid grape like this would not be permitted in a European appellation, but Granges was given special permission a few years before to plant chambourcin. āIt grows in a very dangerous, steep plot,ā he said. āMy wife wanted me to plant something there that didnāt need a lot of care and attention since itās so dangerous.ā
I knew a number of American wineries that produced cloying, fruity, mediocre red wines from chambourcin. This mountain chambourcin was different, and for the Frenchmen with me, it was the most unusual and foreign grape of the day. āVery peculiar,ā said Petit Verdot as he sipped it.
As our tasting turned into drinking, fruit flies gently buzzed around crates of fresh-picked orchard fruit. My phone died, and time seemed to stop. Petit Verdot pointed toward the Great St. Bernard Pass in the distance. āThis is one of the great historic places to cross the Alps,ā he said. āThe whole region is divided into valleys. They were isolated. Historically, there wasnāt a lot of communication or exchanges. You can see why each place developed its own grapes.ā
Even though it was brisk and cool amid the vines in the sky, all day long a bright sun shone over Valais. Finally, the sun began to set and we watched the cable car climb to meet us again. Earlier, Grangesās wife, Marion, had told us that their first cable car, years ago, derailed with Jacques inside, and heād plunged down the mountain. Heād been badly injured and spent time in a coma. No one said a word on our descent.
A few hours later, over raclette at ChĆ¢teau de Villa, I wanted to know: Why had grapes like humagne blanche and humagne rouge and diolinoir and himbertscha nearly disappeared?
āPeople became ashamed of the old-time grapes, the grapes of grandpa,ā Vouillamoz said. āThey began planting the so-called ānoble grapesā and they would disregard the rest.ā Noble is the historic designation for grapes like chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and pinot noirāthe ubiquitous international grapes that made Bordeaux and Burgundy famous are now popularly grown everywhere from California to Australia to South Africa to China. āNoble grapes,ā Vouillamoz repeated the word with disdain. āI hate this term.ā What bothers people like Vouillamoz and Etieventāand meāis that while 1,368 wine grape varieties may exist, the sad truth is that 80 percent of the worldās wine is produced from only 20 grapes. Many of the other 1,348 varieties face extinction.
Another raclette arrived, and it was strong and funky. Throughout dinner, I was taken by how diverse each puddle of cheese had tasted. A few were mild and creamy, one was sharp and piquant, and a couple were stinky and tangy. Much like wine grapes, Iām always surprised by how many cheeses exist in the world. As Charles de Gaulle famously said of France, āHow can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?ā But even de Gaulle underestimated: France has at least 400 varieties of cheese, and probably more than 1,000 if you count subvarieties. And thatās just France: Hundreds of cheeses, each made according to some local tradition, exist in the rest of Europe. Those of us who quest after obscure grapes hope for a world of wine thatās equally raucous and ungovernable. But wineās diversity is always under threat, and every grape that remains untasted, unknown, and underappreciated faces the risk of extinction.
After pausing only a moment to eat some cheese, Vouillamoz poured yet another rare variety, this one called gwƤss. āGouais?ā said Etievent, with a raised eyebrow. GwƤss, better known as gouais blanc in French, has been banned across Europe, by various royal decrees, since the Middle Ages. Thatās because monarchs considered it a peasant grape that made bad wineāgou, in medieval French, was a derogatory term to describe something inferior. Its vines were also extremely prolific. GwƤss often took over entire vineyards, and the aristocracy didnāt want a commoner mating with its noble grape varieties.
Thatās a curious thing I was learning about grape varieties: Each one has been created by two parents, a father and a mother, that cross-fertilize, just like youāre taught in high school biology. For centuries, we could only hypothesize about a grapeās parentage, but since the advent of DNA testing by scientists like Vouillamoz, we now clearly know the family tree of many grapes. Through DNA testing, for instance, gwƤss has been found to be the ancient mother of around 80 varieties, several with noble pinot noir as the father, including chardonnay, gamay, and possibly riesling.
āYeah, gwƤss is kind of a slut,ā Vouillamoz said. His girlfriend, who was sitting next to me, shot Vouillamoz an exasperated look. āOK, OK, so weāre not keeping with the times,ā he said. āThat is a very sexist thing to say. Iām sorry. After all, we call the male grapes āCasanovasā when they father a lot of children.ā
I said that itās really odd to think deeply about the sex life of grapes, especially personifying them to the point of slut-shaming. I told Vouillamoz that I doubted many people wanted to think about reproduction when they spit out an irritating grape seed.
āYes, but they should!ā said Vouillamoz. āA seed is life!ā
Clearly, Iād slipped down some sort of rabbit hole into a vast alternate universe of wine geekdom.
I donāt know that Iāve ever really emerged from that rabbit hole. The rare wines from that day at Domaine de Beudon and the dinner in Sierre loomed significantly in my mind for much of the following year. Especially one Saturday during that muggy summer week when everyone lost their minds over PokĆ©mon GO.
All week long, instead of doing work, Iād been wandering, sweatily, around Philadelphia capturing PokĆ©mon on my iPhone. I wasnāt playing this game with my sons. No, the boys were actually away visiting their grandparents in California and I was alone, at loose ends, and I downloaded the app on my own. I found immediate, satisfying success in PokĆ©monās world, ignoring the reality of being a guy in his mid-40s trying not to be creepy while meandering through city neighborhoods and parks, eyes glued to the screen, flicking my finger to catch imaginary monsters. I filled my PokĆ©dex with rare species such as the Aerodactyl, the Ponyta, the Venusaur, the Rhyhorn, and the Hitmonchan as they popped up on lawns and benches and garbage cans. After only a few days I was fast approaching Level 18. Needless to say, when I awoke Saturday morning, I was overcome with deep shame about how Iād spent my week.
Yet I couldnāt help but think that PokĆ©mon GO offered some kind of metaphor for my own life as a wine writer. Over the past couple of years, Iād spent weeks and months gallivanting around Europe, seeking out obscure wines made from rare grapes, grown in little-known regions: rotgipfler and zierfandler from Austriaās Thermenregion. baga and antĆ£o vaz from Portugal, schiava or lagrein from Italian SĆ¼dtirol, altesse or verdesse from Franceās mountainous IsĆØre. I would sip and taste and consume those wines, then capture my impressions by jotting notes into a black Moleskine. When I thought about my life like this, it was no wonder that many friends and family members didnāt consider my wine writing to be any more serious than PokĆ©mon GO.
In any case, I decided to take a day off from PokĆ©mon. Instead, I paid a visit to the Outer Coastal Plain wine countryāwhich is a pretentious and boozy way of saying that I made a 35-minute drive to the semirural area of southern New Jersey near where I grew up. These days, people endeavor to make quality wine from our sandy South Jersey soil, which always invites snideness, or at least backhandedness: āThe Outer Coastal Plain might be the perfect place to make fine wine in America,ā said the New York Times in 2013. āThe O.C.P. has only one real challenge. Itās in southern New Jersey, a state associated with many thingsāSpringsteen, Snooki, industrial pollution, the mobābut not great wine.ā
People love to crack jokes when I tell them about farms in New Jersey. But Gloucester County is one of the few places where the Garden State nickname still makes sense, though even here McMansion cul-de-sacs gobble up the farmland. My family has worked in the produce business here for decades, and my cousins and I bought summer fruit for our own fruit-and-vegetable stand from the countyās many farmers. Back then, the only wine I can remember in South Jersey was sickly sweet blueberry or peach wines that people bought at summer fairs.
I crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge and merged onto Route 55 right before the exit for the Deptford Mall, where I hung out as a mulleted teenager, listening to Bon Jovi and Cinderella blaring from a friendās Camaro. As I drove, I was seized by some guilt. Even though Gloucester County is not far at all from where I live and work, I rarely return for a visit. Once off the highway, I took a slightly roundabout scenic route, through Elk Township and the community of Aura, which was once among the best peach-growing areas in the nation. As a teen, Iād learned to drive on country roads like these, steering white-knuckled next to Mr. Pickens, the gym teacher who taught Drivers Ed. wearing polyester coach shorts and a whistle around his neck. In Aura, I grew a little sad when I didnāt see many fruit trees. There was, however, a large housing development called The Orchards. Soon enough, things got more rural, as I turned on to Whig Lane, then Elk Road past the Hardingville Bible Church and Old Manās Creek Campground. I passed a Christmas tree farm, a used tractor-trailer cab for sale in a front yard, and finally some apple and peach trees. I thought about filling a bucket with some berries or peaches at a U-pick spot called Moodās Farm, as my family has for years. But this day happened to be Moodās Farmās blueberry festival and the place was teeming with crowds eating blueberry pie and blu...