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Art in times of covid

Monday, 29 November 2021 by Derek Mossman Knapp

photo credit Monty Waldin

After being quarantined for too long now I have begun to think that perhaps we the wine trade sometimes speak too much to our own selves in a kind of vinous echo chamber. I suppose it is natural to want to gather the herd back together like in healthier times. But I think wine is bigger than that. I do not mean bigger in a ‘comercial’ way. I am not suggesting “we could sell more” if we could just open up the audience, but rather I speak of artistry. Art is the elevating of peoples lives. And wine is art. And I do not speak of just the artisanal bits. 

The arts embody values and necessities that we are lacking in the world today. Lacking in part because of Covid and in part because populist politics have cast a dark shadow on the world in which we live– that affects all of us even if some of us are a hemisphere away.  As artists: musicians, painters, writers, cinematographers, and yes winemakers are called upon to “minister substance to the world” as Wynton Marsalis once said. To help the people get through the times.

And as we work on the farm and in the cellar we make hundreds of decisions. Today as we make these decisions there is a force pulling us to make them for practical / commercial reasons — because the buyer thinks that his customers would like a wine “like that successful one over there” or “like the neighbours make”  or perhaps the most dangerous: “like the way it is supposed be made”.

I disagree with this force’s pulling. In these times on the farm and in the cellar, I think integrity is more vital than ever, even if the need for success to win out over failure is arguably also more acute. I say integrity, like sustainability, is not a luxury that we should aim to afford when times are good, but rather I think we must hold firm– especially in stranger times. Artists have always had to fight for an audience for without one they starve. 

Art PepparLately, I have taken to listening to a lot of music. I like to listen to Jazz: Art Peppar, Wynton Marsalis… Music, like wine, matters in these times. It gives me comfort to think jazz is inherently American and in these dark times for the US it is good to remember some of the great that they have created. Jazz is soulful — like good wine.  The concerned and the soulful are always at battle with the callous and the crass. Winemakers as artists are a part of a battle against the global decline into popular mediocrity. How to do this work without snobbery, without smugness, and without falling into simply preaching to the converted? How to do it without selling out– nor selling the wine-drinker short?

I do not pretend to have the answer, but I have seen it done and I do know that when one manages to do it, one goes from being an isolated, underestimated, peasant farmer doing things back-wards to being tangible proof of the inevitable transcendence of culture and artistry.

In these times, more so than ever, we must stay the course and do the work that will help all of us get through revived and inspired.

djmk

español:Arte en los tiempos de covidDespués de estar en cuarentena durante tiempo me doy cuenta de que a veces hablo demasiado hacia la misma industria. Quizás porque anhelo reunir la manada como en tiempos más saludables. Creo que el vino es más grande que eso. No estoy sugiriendo que “podríamos vender más” si abriéramos la conversa a más público, sino hablo de el arte: la elevación de la vida de las personas. El vino es arte después de todo. Y no me refiero sólo a lo arte-sanal.

Las artes encarnan valores y necesidades que faltan en nuestro mundo de hoy. Falta en parte por Covid y falta porque la política populista ha arrojado una sombra oscura sobre el mundo en el que vivimos que nos afecta a todos, incluso si estamos a un hemisferio de distancia. Como artistas, los músicos, pintores, escritores, cineografos y sí, los enólogos están llamados a “dar sustento al mundo”, como dijo una vez Wynton Marsalis el trompetista extraordinario, para ayudar a la gente a superar estos tiempos.

Mientras continuamos trabajando hacer vino, cultivando para producir se hace cientos si no miles de decisiones para hacer un vino. Y siempre hay una fuerza que empuja a que estas decisiones se tomen por razones comerciales, porque el comprador piensa que a sus clientes les gustaría un vino “como ese otro vino exitoso” o “como hacen los vecinos” o quizás el más peligroso: “como nosotros siempre hemos hecho ”.

En estos tiempos en la bodega, creo que la integridad es más urgente que nunca, pero también lo es la necesidad de que el éxito venza al fracaso. Yo digo que la integridad, como la sostentabilidad, no debería ser un lujo que alcancemos en los buenos tiempos. Debemos adaptarnos a los tiempos especialmente a los tiempos extraños. Los artistas siempre han tenido que luchar por un publico– sin público se mueren de hambre.

En estos tiempos, yo he aprovechado de escuchar mucha música en estos días. Estoy escuchando Jazz: Art Peppar, Wynton Marsalis. . . La música, como el vino, importa en estos tiempos. Me reconforta pensar que el jazz es inherentemente estadounidense y en estos tiempos oscuros para Estados Unidos es bueno recordar algo de lo Great que los gringos son capaces. El jazz es conmovedor, como el buen vino. Lo preocupado y lo conmovedor siempre están en batalla con lo insensible y lo grosero. Los enólogos como artistas son parte de la batalla contra el declive global hacia la mediocridad y el consumismo popular. Entonces: ¿cómo hacemos este trabajo sin esnobismo, sin presunción, y sin caer en predicar a sólo los ya convertidos? ¿Cómo lo hacemos sin comprometernos, y sin comprometer el alma del vino?

No pretendo tener la respuesta, pero sí sé que cuando lo alcanzamos, se pasa de ser un agricultor aislado, subestimado, campesino que hace las cosas al revés, a ser una prueba tangible de la inevitable trascendencia de la cultura y el arte.

En estos tiempos, más que nunca, debemos seguir y hacer el trabajo para ayudar a la gente a superar estos tiempos.

wine and artwine and jazz
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Garage Wine Co
Winery: Camino San Antonio Caliboro KM 5.8 San Javier 3660000
Región del Maule, Chile

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About Garage Wine Co.

Garage Wine began quite literally in Pilar and Derek’s Garage. After half a dozen vintages making wine for an informal market of family and friends, it began exporting to UK & Denmark in 2006

The Parcels

GWCo makes wines from a series of individual parcels, small lots / bottlings of 8 -22 barrels that include a series of dry-farmed field-blends of Carignan, Garnacha, Monastrell, País, Cinsault and Cab Franc grown on pre-phylloxera rootstock with small farmers in the Maule and Itata. Each wine is from a 1-2 hectare parcel in a different place: Bagual, Caliboro, Coelemu, Guarilihue, Loncomilla, Portezuelo, Puico, Ranquil, Sauzal, Truquilemu…

Over the years working in the community we have raised a veritable posse of vineyard hands whose skills are working the vineyards the old way / the traditional way— originario. We cultivate vineyards with small vigneron partners who work with horse and plough as his family has done for generations. Some of the parcels, where the next generation moved to the city, we have opted to rent long-term creating more work for the local hands who do want to stay on the farm.

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The vineyards are on the old Coastal Range of mountains closer to the Pacific — Chile’s other mountains. These are older and cooled more slowly so they have granitic soils, many with intrusions and cracks for roots to get deep down into. When GWCo. speaks of the provenance of our wines however we mean more than just the geology of the terroir. This is a good start, but we are convinced the farming practices that have evolved over generations have as much to do with the wines’ personalities as the soils. The regeneration of the vineyards long since neglected depends upon this farming.

GWCo. also makes an old-vine Cab Franc (old bush head vines) and a Cab Sauv blend in the Maule as well as two Cabs mountain-grown in the Maipo where the firm began in 2003.

All the wines are made by hand with native yeasts in small tanks, punched down manually and pressed out in a small basket press. GWCo is still very much a DIY operation and we still tow much of the crop back to the winery in trailers behind trusty pickup trucks 2,ooo kilos at a time.

Single Ferment Series Wines

Pais & Cinsault in the Secano Interior, the cradle of the original Chilean viticulture, have been forever the victim of commodity pricing. When GWCo saw its Carignan growers being paid paltry sums for their other fruit we began acquiring small bits from various farmers to experiment. From the beginning, we paid bonafide prices that would allow for the traditional field works to cultivate the soil properly to continue into the future. Commercial bottlings of “Single Ferments” began with serendipity when we simply could not resist not one but three small bits of Cinsault. And then promptly plain ran out of tanks to ferment them in. With nowhere to put all three, we simply stacked the second bit of newly harvested fruit on top of the first already fermenting—and then the third on top of both, creating one single fermentation from the fruit of three farms. We adopted the same technique with Pais and subsequently named both wines: Single Ferment Series.

The Nitty Gritty

In these times it is important to stand for what you believe in, and more importantly to build the kind of business you believe in. At Garage Wine Co. we revive old vineyards in marginalized Chilean communities to make coveted wines. We’ve positioned these wines in a dozen established fine wine markets around the world and we grow. The wines are not made to be expensive per se, but they are found on the higher shelves– they need to command a price that allows for proper farming. What we have discovered is that the long-term practices of regenerative farming not only make for better fruit and thus more flavourful wine, but that such a business can become a force for financial, community and environmental good.

The Baby and the Bathwater  

As South American wine exports have boomed over the last quarter-century, it has grown increasingly difficult for small farmers to sell their old-vine grapes at a proper price – a price that can consistently sustain family and community. Mainstream buyers want more for less and they would have the growers modernise. The modern wine business calls for spraying instead of cultivating, scaling instead of focusing, and above all: reducing the cost of labour. But with the old vineyards, the labour is precisely where one finds the wisdom of farming passed down through the ages. Throwing that away would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Regenerative Farming

Farming in the Secano Interior, the Maule and Itata valleys of Southern Chile, has been a way of life since Colonial times. Not just vineyards, but mixed farming of heritage seed wheat, free-range livestock and local market produce. Small-scale farms use dry-farming methods: turning over the earth to capture scarce seasonal rainwater, and nutrients from the clever use of seasonal cover crops that in turn help sequester carbon from the air, and the use of horses to get into rows where tractors can’t reach.

This is where GWCo. works; too far from the comfort zone of those in the mainstream. These vineyards were neglected and relegated to bulk wine for decades because the booming market wanted branded varietals that didn’t command a price to support the work.

For more than a decade GWCo. has worked these old vines, there has been a marked improvement both in vineyard health and quality of the fruit produced.

The marrying of the fieldcraft of these small-scale farmers with the lens of modern science and GWCo’s mindful winemaking took a decade, but the marriage has proven successful not just for GWCo, but also for the farmers, our suppliers and customers alike. Over the past few years, we have begun to rent and in some cases acquire the property underneath the old vines. Today one-third of our production is worked our way with our own people.

Necessity was the mother of sustainability

Sustainability for us was never about seals and certifications. We became sustainable just trying to survive being small in an industry geared to the big. Vintage after vintage we made our way through a series of necessary work-arounds, finding a way forward, that only later would be seen to be sustainable.

Recycled bottles – Because our production runs were small we were challenged when it came to dry-goods. When bottle makers refused to deliver to us, we found a local bottle recycler who became a trusted partner. This small business employs workers in a rural part of the country where stable and safe work is hard to find. What we learned is that when bottles are manufactured they have a limited shelf-life on the factory patio—a best before date if you will. Today we buy these bottles and wash them before use. This is glass that would otherwise have been smashed and melted and remade—without ever having been used. What is the carbon footprint of a bottle manufactured twice to be used once?

Labels & Packaging— We learned to paint / silk-screen bottles because our bottlings were so small that the label printers did not want to work with us. The industry was geared to long print runs and said there was no money in printing 1200 labels. So we built a custom machine and found experienced hands with silk-screening. Luis, our bottle painter, has been painting bottles for us for 11 years now. (Chile’s first hotel built entirely of recycled materials: The WineBox, has adapted out bottles for their lamps today.)

What’s with the wax? - Regular capsules were also sold with a minimum far larger than our needs, so we found a school supply firm that would make us food-safe wax for seals from crayon wax.

All of these workarounds-- bothers slash hassles at the time, led to a positive and durable differentiation in packaging. We have continued to work with earth-friendly inks for silk screening and recycled materials for cases.

Fermentation tanks: Unable to buy new tanks— designed to make mainstream wines, large, expensive and inflexible in their design, we took the leftover cuttings and scraps of a large stainless manufacturer and pieced together Lagars (traditional word for open tanks). We did it for far less money and the upcycling created opportunities for local welding shops.

Fruit: Years ago we bought from mainstream growers. When we made a crackerjack wine, the grower would use the prestige with critics to sell our fruit to someone bigger / better known leaving us without said fruit and without continuity in our portfolio. After two or three experiences such as this, frustrated, we went South to the Secano to work with growers unknown, unpolished, and disconnected from the mainstream. Working closely with small growers far from the beaten path, we found diamonds in the rough. When the polishing was done we had forged a bond with the growers—partnerships that we have continued to build upon with others in the neighbourhood.

Diverse leadership

Let’s face it, the wine business can be conservative, clubby and patriarchic. Having a female lead our work helps us work with our growers and suppliers on a different footing. We also like to mix scientists with field hands. Instead of contracting the cheapest bused-in labour, we keep it local where there are more experienced hands. Mercenary piecework doesn’t work — proper sourcing does. It’s a mouthful, but in a phrase: the difference created by the discretionary effort released when you work in good faith with local farmhands is so much more than the savings that might be achieved from cost-cutting, that there’s no comparing the two. We have never looked back.

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