Smoke on the Water, Fire in the Sky

Nature is full of surprises. If you don’t pay attention, you might miss something.

My own relationship with nature is tenuous at best. Where I grew up, nature meant I had to mow the lawn. I’d rather be out laying by the pool at the Hyatt than wandering through the wilderness making acorn tea.

On occasion, however, I’ve found myself in nature anyway, and always with strange results. Sometimes I think n is making fun of me.

My grandfather owned a little farm in Texas down by a spring that he rented out to a sharecropper named Red and his wife, Bessie. In addition to the crops, Red liked to raise a few goats to make a little extra money.

I didn’t know anything about goats, as you probably already suspected, so when we drove into the farm, imagine my surprise when I looked up and saw goats hanging in the oak trees. I wasn’t sure whether to bring it up or not.

“Goats in the trees you say? Yep, everything’s normal around here.”

They had climbed up onto the oak branches for reasons only God and goats know. Since chickens liked to roost in those same oak trees the whole scene was a little different from mowing lawns, but who was I to question Nature?

Did you know goats can sleep in trees? I suspect not. You see what I mean? Nature is full of surprises. You gotta pay attention.

I finally decided it was completely normal because nobody but me thought it was strange.

“That Red runs a tight ship” my father would say. I assumed the goats were on the ship too. Kind of like Noah.

Normal is not Normal Anymore

Since those days I’ve learned nothing is normal. We just get used to things…even goats in the trees.

So, here we are going along, doing just fine with goats in the trees. Then, when we drive up one day and the goats are gone, we get all upset. Unbridled outrage follows. We are a sad and fickle species.

One day Napa’s grapes are rolling along producing great wines and the next day the grapes are gone. Burned in a wildfire. Burned by the sun into raisins. The rain is gone. So, the water is gone.

Change in the environment requires change in us. Getting outraged isn’t helpful. Nature’s not listening to you. Or, me for that matter. The 100 degree heat doesn’t care how important you are. Or, how rich. Water drains away from rich people the same as it does from poor people.

The thing about change is that you have to decide what to keep the same and what to change. And, how you’ll know the difference. It’s us doing the choosing. Nature doesn’t have the choice, we do.

What this means, is that no matter how much it looks like the problem is with the world outside of us, the real problem is within us. The earth has no problem changing, but you and I do.

Nature is changing the wine country all over the world now. It looks like the problems are heat domes, and flooding, and bigger hurricanes, and massive late snowstorms and droughts. Those things are a problem but they are not the problem.

When we can’t agree there is a problem, the problem is us.

Back in my day, before electricity was invented and dinosaurs roamed the earth, we used to say “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

We also said, “When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s too late to drain the swamp.” We said a lot of things. We were very big on snappy sayings. Some of us should have just shut up. But, you get the idea.

Whether we agree or not, the water’s still run out, the heat is still searing grapes, and the wildfires grow bigger every year. So far, at this point 2021 is the worst year for wildfires in recorded history. Maybe we ought to think about those metaphorical alligators around our neck a little more often.

Today, what we do about climate change is a political issue throwing off outrage on every side like papers in the backseat of a car when you drive too fast and leave the windows open.

Our species generally responds to climate and environmental changes with new technology. It may be a stick, it may be a steam engine. It may be personal rockets for billionaires. Maybe we will again.

But, whether you are outraged or bored by how we relate to nature, it reminds us of what Americans don’t much notice any more—that we are a species literally connected to the land, to each other, and to the sky.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the vineyard.

Changes that keep winery owners awake at night

Let’s just pretend for a moment that you own a winery in Napa Valley. You know—dinners, concerts on the lawn, chatting over the latest petit sirah release while munching on wild game and greens made by your personal chef.

The New York Times this week tells a little mini story about Dario Sattui’s wineries that illustrates what being a winery owner can be like. Last September the wildfires burned down one of his wineries, destroying millions of dollars in property and equipment and 9,000 cases of wine.

Insurance paid for most of the damage.

In November, when the wine was made from the grapes that hadn’t burned down it turned out that they were totally ruined by the smoke. The entire 2020 vintage was lost. Undrinkable and unsellable.

Grapes only ripen once a year. If you lose a year, it’s gone. You can’t get it back.

By spring, the reservoir at a Sattui winery dried up and there was no water to irrigate the 2021 crop. Just cracked clay where the water’s supposed to be.

Then, in March, every one of the insurance companies refused to insure anything else, so if something tragic happens this year all we be lost. If the 2021 crop burns down, there will be no money to replace it.

Nature is full of surprises. So are insurance companies. They are part of the financial environment. So are the banks who call the loans you have to have to stay in business.

So, you’re the winery owner. What would you do?

This is from another part of that same story:

“Across the [Napa] valley, Aaron Whitlatch, head of winemaking at Green & Red Vineyards, climbed into a dust-colored jeep for a trip up the mountain to demonstrate what heat does to grapes.

After navigating steep switchbacks, Whitlatch reached a row of vines growing petite sirah grapes that were coated with a thin layer of white.

The week before, temperatures had topped 100 degrees, and staff sprayed the vines with sunscreen.

“Keeps them from burning,” Whitlatch said.

The strategy had not worked perfectly. He pointed to a bunch of grapes at the very top of the peak exposed to sun during the hottest hours of the day. Some of the fruit had turned black and shrunken — becoming, effectively, absurdly high-cost raisins.

“The temperature of this cluster probably reached 120,” Whitlatch said. “We got torched.” —-from the NY Times, last Sunday, July 18th, 2021 (see photo above)

OK. Spraying suntan lotion on the grapes is not something I was thinking about, but it’s definitely responding to the changes at hand.

And, you thought goats hanging in the trees was strange. Grapes and goats both collapse at 120 degrees. Suntan lotion goes on forever.

I talked with my nephew, Justin, who lives in Napa and owns part of a farming company there—water is not a metaphor for him. Thousand dollar raisins are a problem, not a marketing opportunity. Even in Napa.

He’s pretty confident the growers and owners will find a way to adjust. I think he’s right, but I also think that if you’re in the market for a vineyard you might want to look to Washington State where the Columbia River doesn’t run dry.

The thing is, if we can’t see the problem, if we think the temperature, or the drought or flooding is the problem, then we can’t see the solution.

We are the problem and we are the solution.

The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.—Cassius, Act 1, Sc 2 “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare

In Search of Still Waters

Reacting to nature’s surprises is our job. It’s not nature’s job to change what it’s doing. Floods and heat domes aren’t the wrath of God. They are the wrath of our own inattention.

We gotta pay attention or we miss things.

Napa Valley will go on. It will still be producing great wines for the rest of my life anyway. On the other hand, I might outlive Miami. You gotta pay attention.

I wrote in an earlier issue that one of the best of the best Napa wines is produced at Krupp Brothers, which almost didn’t exist. Geologists had failed to find water on the high mountain property and as a last ditch effort the founder, Dr. Jan Krupp brought in a Water Witch—a person who uses a stick to dowse for underground water.

It worked. He was a doctor. Science was the way he solved problems. When science didn’t come through, he had to change himself first—and then the world changed.

They have lots of advanced technology in that winery, but Krupp Brothers is world famous because Dr. Krupp didn’t just rely on current science and technology, but he used his imagination and found it himself to try something nobody else was thinking about.

Maybe it’s time to bring in the witches.