Why appreciation of old vines is challenging yet more important than ever

Recent harvest in Mokelumne River-Lodi's Royal Tee Vineyard, a mixed block of own-rooted vines (Zinfandel with Carignan, Mission, Flame Tokay and Black Prince), still owned and farmed by the same family who planted the vineyard in 1889.

Old vines are officially a thing. 

For years and years, appreciation of old vines has fallen almost exclusively in the domain of growers who nurture old plantings far beyond the conventional shelf life of productive grapevines, typically thought of as somewhere in the range of 25 to 35 years. 

The reasons for farming vines much longer than that have been, for past generations, largely selfless, entailing motivations not much more than the importance of retaining family heirlooms. Maybe nine parts sentiment, one part value or practicality. 

You know how pet dogs often resemble their humans (or is it vice versa)? Custodians of old vines are often like their plants, creaky and cantankerous, stubborn and gnarled, wise beyond belief—the wine world's proverbial Golden Retrievers, standing guard by the cattle gate.

Old vine Carignan and picking knife in Mokelumne River-Lodi.

The survival of old vines, of course, has also been taken up as a cause by vintners who value old vine plantings as much as their growers, plus wine lovers who appreciate the products of vintners harboring this particular predilection.

Most recently, old vines have been benefiting from the attention garnered by groups issuing clarion calls. Props definitely go out to organizations such as California's Historic Vineyard Society, The Old Vine Conference and The Old Vine Registry hatched in the UK, South Africa's Old Vine Project, and Barossa Valley's groundbreaking Old Vine Charter for sounding the alarm: Old vine plantings are bound to disappear if they are not better appreciated, studied and promoted—by the industry, by the media and trade, and mostly by wine lovers themselves.

Owner/grower Terri Harvey walking through her Original Grandpere Vineyard, own-rooted vines in Amador County, dating back to 1869 (the oldest continuously farmed block of California Zinfandel on record).

Why increasing appreciation of old vines is still a tall order

Skepticism over the value of old vines is understandable, considering the fact that wines of high quality and delineation of character are also made from younger vines farmed in traditional rotations, in which older vines are routinely replaced for reasons of optimization of grapevine health and vineyard productivity. Winegrowing, after all, is big business, and most of the time, there is little room for sentimentality in the business world.

Old vine viticulture, however, presupposes a slightly different valuation of wine quality. It is a wine quality that is a little more skewed towards the concept of terroir, commonly defined as "sense of place."

With or without the use of that terminology, here is what we know from our most recent work in California: The older the vines in a given vineyard, the more likely wines produced from those vines are able to express sensory qualities directly attributable to their source, or "place." We know this because if you make wines from younger vines from, say, the exact same vineyard, those wines do not exhibit as much delineation of character, in the nose and on the palate, as wines from the older vines.

1921 photo of the Mettler family, who originally arrived in Lodi's Mokelumne River appellation in the late 1890s and began planting Zinfandel grapevines such as these. Mettler Family Vineyards.

At what point, however, does this observation become less a point of fact than, at best, a tortuous theory? First, it is important to break down the definition of terroir itself. Not everyone agrees on it, although I suspect it is more of an issue of misinterpretation of the concept, despite its common usage. For our purposes, let's go with the following threefold consensus:

• Terroir is a summation of growing conditions within a given vineyard or region related to Nature (climate, soil, aspect, sunlight, altitude, vintage conditions, etc.).

• Terroir entails conscious human intervention, since neither viticulture nor winemaking occur without actual decision-making, labor, experience, skill or artistry, economic constraints or wherewithal, and anything else involving input.

• Terroir is also a term that can be used to describe manifestations of sensory qualities directly attributable to a vineyard or region, which end up in a bottle and are ultimately perceived by a beholder.

Old vine Grenache (planted in the 1920s) in Chateauneuf-du-Pape's Domaine de la Solitude. Wikipedia Commons.

Terroir as it relates to old vine plantings is directly tied to the fact that grapevines that are well adapted to specific places, with longer than average histories of cultivation in specific or traditional fashions, are more likely to express a sense of place, respective to individual sites.

If anything, much of the misunderstanding of what gives old vine plantings value is due to the fact that that their end products are often perceived conventionally, in ways that are more mythical than empirical in relation to causation: That is, the myth that all old vine plantings are, by nature of vine age, exceptionally low yielding, and therefore more likely to produce wines that are "big," darker in color, and intense or more concentrated than wines made from younger vines—sensory qualities commonly associated with old vine wines.

Classic, 1890s era, gobelet trained Zinfandel in Duarte Vineyard, growing in the beach-like Delhi series sandy soil of California's Contra Costa County, a region known for fragrant, silky yet acid driven styles of the varietal.

Two things wrong with this assumption:

1. Many old vine wines are not big, dark, intense or concentrated—if you expect these qualities in all old vine bottlings, you are bound to be disappointed, or disabused of the value of old vines—but rather, elevated only in terms of sensory qualities reflecting a specific vineyard or appellation, whatever those qualities may be (which, often enough, are the opposite of "big," "dark," "intense" or "concentrated").

2. While old vine plantings are low yielding, for the most part they are not so low yielding that they do not meet profit expectations. If they did, almost all the old vine plantings existing in the world today would have been torn out long ago. As previously mentioned, winegrowing is big business, and even old vine plantings need to meet productivity levels in order to make them worth keeping in the ground.

Mission (a.k.a., Pais or Criolla) grapes in Deaver Ranch in the California Shenandoah Valley AVA; originally planted in 1853, barely five years after the discovery of gold in Amador County.

I cannot speak authoritatively about old vine wines grown in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Australia, South Africa, or any other regions outside of California, but I have appreciated old vine California wines as much as anyone. Here is the thing about old vine bottlings in California, however: Their production and appreciation have evolved in crucial ways, mostly because, similar to the increasing use of the word terroir in the wine industry, all winemaking involves conscious human decisions, not just artistically, but also in respect to marketing and branding objectives.

Which, in fact, is why much of the media, trade and consumers still think the ultimate expressions of old vine wine are big, dark and concentrated. If you think of venerated old vine plantings as being like contestants in beauty pageants—in other words, starting out with a certain amount of core beauty to work with—then you might understand why many lots of old vine wine are subjected to a good amount of "beautifying." They go through lots of work-outs and are slathered with makeup to exaggerate natural qualities, donned in perfect dresses to show off the body, and trained in practiced ways of speaking before taking the stage.

Recent Carignan harvest in Mokelumne River-Lodi's Spenker Ranch, planted in 1900 and still generously yielding grapes producing sleek, delicate yet strongly perfumed, acid-driven red wines.

This explains a lot of of the standardized ways in which grapes from old vine blocks are treated, involving...

• Picking grapes ultra-ripe, typically at high sugars, to ensure maximized fruit expression.
• Adding water to wines in the winery to achieve targeted alcohol levels.
• Adjusting acidity and utilizing other amendments to balance deficiencies or enhance original qualities.
• Fermenting with a chosen yeast to meet sensory goals.
• Blending with complimenting varieties (more often than not, not grown in the same vineyard), also to meet sensory goals.
• Aging in favorite choices of oak barrels to increase complexity and, typically, add "markers" consistent with a chosen brand identity.

This is not to be critical because, as I keep repeating, wine production is a gigantic industry, and even companies that produce old vine wines for the sheer love of it need to craft competitive styles of wine to toe a bottom line. Still, the more that is done to a wine sourced from an old vineyard, the further you get away from the pure taste of that vineyard. 

Old vine Garnacha in Spain's Carinena DOP. grandesvinos.com.

These days, there are more and more handcraft producers in California who are deliberately steering away from this approach. Most of them are on the small side, but they are making waves, the way so-called boutique wineries revolutionized the perception of California wine back in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. 

All the same, many if not most of the state's most established old vine specialists, even those known for minimal intervention and native yeast fermentation, will still put their wines through the paces to meet industry standards or their own brand-related goals, the way beauty contestants are dolled up to meet the expectations of judges and audiences. It's all about making a bang; or, as often the case in commercial wines, scoring "points."

Shiraz over 70 years old in Oliver's Taranga Vineyard, McLaren Vale, Australia. vinography.com.

Be as it may, the industry, in California at least, continues to lose more acreage of old vine plantings than it gains. A big reason is because the taste of old vine wines—that is, the taste of the terroir intrinsic to individual old vine sites, as well as in entire regions where old vine plantings are found—is still blurred in large part by winery manipulations. It is hard to appreciate old vine wines when you don't know exactly what they're supposed to taste like.

Therefore, old vine wines still remain a minority preference among consumers. For most wine lovers, the age of vines is neither here nor there. They don't see what the advantage is because they aren't necessarily tasting it. Heck, much of the media as well as wine professionals in the trade still have vague notions of what many old vine wines taste like because most commercial products are less about vineyards and more about branding or arbitrary interpretations of varietal character. 

Papera Vineyard, head trained Russian River Valley Zinfandel planted in 1934.

I know this because, to cite one example, I often hear wine professionals say the following: "I love Zinfandels from Lodi because they're so big, rich and round," or something to that effect. The reality, though, is when Lodi Zinfandels are made with minimal artifice, they are actually the opposite: light, delicate, flowery, and edgy with acidity rather than round or fat. And the older the vines in Lodi, the more light, delicate, flowery and edgy they are.

When a group of Lodi Zinfandel specialists first began bottling minimal intervention Zinfandels under the Lodi Native label (in 2012), the most common thing we used to hear when the line-up was presented in professional circles was, "Why, these wines don't taste like Zinfandel at all." What they meant to say was, Lodi Native style Zinfandels do not taste like commercial expectations of Zinfandel, which is something largely defined by wines grown in better known regions such as Sonoma County. Pure Lodi style Zinfandels don't taste like Sonoma County Zinfandels because they aren't grown in Sonoma County. They taste like the individual vineyards in Lodi where they come from. Simple as that.

1954 row of Pinot noir in Van der Kamp Vineyard, California's Sonoma Mountain AVA; one of the few surviving pre-1970s plantings of the grape in the state.

Again, this is not to say that an old vine Zinfandel is not "improved" by a good dose of Petite Sirah, or that a Mataró cannot be enhanced by judicious amounts of oak or by blending from multiple vineyards. But the more you doctor up an old vine wine, the more you blur its original profile. The individuality of old vine wines would be easier to appreciate if consumers, trade and media were able to perceive them in clear-cut ways. 

The way, for instance, we are able to readily delineate a Musigny from a Chambertin or Sancerre rouge, a Côte-Rôtie compared to Cornas or Saint-Joseph, a Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley's Dundee Hills in comparison to ones from McMinnville, Russian River Valley, Fort Ross-Seaview, Santa Lucia Highlands or Sta. Rita Hills. 

To know, know, know these kinds of wines is to love, love, love them. To achieve the same level of appreciation for old vine wines, they need to be presented with skill, with science and artistry, and also as with as much truth to their intrinsic terroir as possible.

Old vine Zinfandel originally planted on its own rootstocks in 1901, retaining a muscular grapevine structure allowing the vineyard to remain extremely productive in terms of wine quality (very distinctive sensory profile) and yield (3 to 4 tons per  acre) after well over 100 years.

Ten reasons why old vines are more important than ever

1. Wines made from old vine plantings are prized for a certain complexity and depth of flavor. As the age of grapevines increases and roots grow deeper and more extensive, plants gain more access to nutrients and minerals in the soil, and to water during drought years. Older vines typically develop thicker trunks and sturdier arms. It is not uncommon to see vines over 75 or 100 years old trained as free-standing "goblets" or "bushes" with arms that are longer or thicker than their trunks. This is unusual, in a sense, because grapevines are not trees—they are, fundamentally, climbing or creeping plants, but as they become older their fruit can be cultivated almost like that of trees or bushes while retaining a healthy functionality not too different from plants allowed to grow out naturally in the wild.

2. As they reach an advanced age, old vines gain a physiological advantage of greater sap flow than what is possible in thinner, younger vines, allowing the plants to develop a better balance of leaf canopy and fruit, optimal for ripening and more likely to produce high-quality wine. Healthy plant structure also makes older vines less prone than younger vines to disease pressure such as trunk disease and eutypa (the latter, a common "dieback" fungus that kills arms or spurs, shortening the lifespan of plants). Fungal and bacterial afflictions are the major reasons why trellised vineyards are usually pulled up and replanted every 20 to 35 years, whereas single-stake, spur-pruned, head or vertical cordon-trained plants can remain productive for over 50 or 100 years.

These 30-year-old Cabernet Sauvignon plants in California demonstrate why trellised vines as well as certain cultivars (especially Petite Sirah and Bordeaux varieties) are not ideal candidates for old vine viticulture: Because they are prone to eutypa and other trunk diseases leading to dieback and eventual death.

3. It is no coincidence that old vines exist in parts of the world where the environment is naturally conducive to long-term grapevine health and optimal fruit production. These are generally regions of the world possessing a Mediterranean climate—defined by cold, wet winters and hot, dry summers—because wine grapes (i.e., Vitis vinifera) first originated in the Mediterranean Basin, only changing their morphology when crossed with wild vines native to other regions. Older vines are most likely to flourish, that is also to say, in vineyard sites and wine regions most conducive to adaptation—and the best possible wines of the world are always made in the best possible sites.

4. While minerals in soil do not in themselves impart actual flavors to wines through root systems, a sturdier, deeper-rooted vine remains a healthier vine, especially in years marked by challenges such as mega-droughts, flooding, extreme heat or frost, or any of the "once-in-a-century" weather events which now seem to occur every few years as manifestations of global warming. In these conditions, it is the older, deeper-rooted grapevines that remain the most productive, often yielding the highest quality, if not the most interesting, wines, notwithstanding slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes.

In Mokelumne River-Lodi's Bechthold Vineyard, consisting of own-rooted Cinsaut planted in 1886,  the extremely deep (nearly 100-ft.), fine sandy loam alluvium contributes directly to the fine, silky, floral and faintly loamy sensory qualities in resulting wines.

8. While old vine viticulture has always been appreciated in Europe, where winemaking traditions go back millenniums, in recent years the appreciation and commercial value of old vines have been rising in New World wine regions such as California, South Africa, Australia ad South America. The winemakers who work with these vines have come to a deeper understanding of the unique attributes and nuances possible in grapes from mature vineyards, and are learning the best ways to coax out the sensory qualities through techniques such as fermentation employing native yeast (as opposed to laboratory cultured yeasts). Native yeasts, which occur naturally on the skins of grapes, are now recognized as being just as much a part of an old vine site as its particular soil, climate, or how grapevines are cultivated. This is why old vine winemaking is now often associated with "natural" winemaking—it just makes sense to craft old vine wines with a philosophy based upon restraint or minimal intervention, giving old vine sites a chance to express themselves more fully in the bottle.

5. Old vines, as a rule, yield smaller crops than younger vines, largely because older plants tend to self-regulate—they have developed a biological instinct to produce only the amount of fruit they are capable of carrying, as a direct response to environmental factors sensed by the vines. When the climate is favorable, they produce more fruit; when challenging, less. There is a common misperception that this results in more concentrated flavor; or in the case of red wines, deeper and darker colored qualities. This is not necessarily true, since grapevines as young as three years old can also produce dark, concentrated wines. Because of their matured plant morphology, however, older vines are more likely to produce wines with sensory attributes reflecting specific vineyards or regions, which are quality factors within themselves. 

Historic Vineyard Society sign marking Lizzy James Vineyard; Zinfandel first planted in 1904 in Lodi's Mokelumne River appellation.

6. In the world of wines, it is the wines that best express their origin or appellation that tend to be the most highly prized and celebrated. This, again, is not to say that younger vineyards in favorable sites cannot achieve equally lofty status. However, a winegrower is more likely to achieve that with more mature vines; which is why, in vineyards consisting of both old and young vines, fruit from the older plants are often kept separate from those of younger vines (even in vineyards regularly rotated after 35 years), simply because the best wines almost always come from older vines.

7. The unique sensory qualities of older vine wines—often described in terms of the French word for "sense of place," terroir—are also the reason they are often treated differently in the winery. In France, to use one example, old vine wines are typically aged in extra-large oak vats called foudres, which can be anywhere from three to over ten times the size of a regular-sized barrel (the latter, generally holding 225 or 228 liters). Wines aged in foudres are less likely to absorb the flavor of oak, and this allows the nuances of old vine wines, which can be subtle, to predominate in the resulting wine. In the U.S., many wineries specializing in old vine wines use "neutral" barrels—that is, regular-sized barrels that have been used three, four, or more times before, thus imparting less oak flavor to the wine.

Foudres in West Sacramento's Haarmeyer Wine Cellars, utilized to emphasize terroir over oak qualities in wines such as old vine Zinfandel.

9. In addition to their distinctive qualities, old vine wines are also justifiably valued for their rarity and historical significance. In many cases, old vine plantings are owned and farmed by conscientious custodians, or often the exact same families who planted the vineyards, for as long as the age of the vines, over numerous generations. These special vineyards become emblematic of the culture of specific regions, be it Sonoma County or Lodi in California, Barossa Valley or McLaren Vale in Australia, or South Africa's Swartland or Stellenbosch. In California, old vine sites can now be officially recognized by a nonprofit group called the Historic Vineyard Society, and there are now similar organizations in other wine regions around the world.

10. The appreciation of an old vine wine can be just as much a way to connect with the past and to celebrate an enduring art form, not much different from listening to the music of history's greatest composers, or reading the literature or gazing at the art of past masters. There can be more to a glass of wine than just an alcoholic beverage that happens to be well-made. If it is a wine made from old vines, you can also delineate the distinctive character of a specific, historic place, and the heroism of farmers who happened to have the foresight to keep old vines in the ground, rather than tearing them out and starting all over because it is commercially convenient. 

Recent photo of Joe Maley, whose family arrived in the Lodi appellation in the late 1860s, in a vineyard that he planted with his late brother in 1958.