This Week in the Vineyards

The Rabbit

The vineyards are empty now, full of the promise of things unseen.

Loping down by a low stone wall in Sonoma, a black rabbit slips through a vineyard still laying silent in winter. The vines are still just dry sticks now, clicking in the wind. The rabbit moves more like a snake than a rabbit, hopping over rocks and underneath a barren limb. Suddenly, it jumps into the sunlight and magically turns brown.

It was brown all along, of course, but in the shadow of the wall it looked black.

Secrets are everywhere.

Nothing is what it seems.

“Either give me more wine or leave me alone.”

― Rumi

If you stand still and look, you will see rabbits in a lot of vineyards. Especially in Sonoma. But, you can’t see them until they move. So, you have to look closely.

The entire world is a fierce predator to vineyard rabbits—hawks, humans and horticulture. All out to get them.

After all, you’re not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you.

To vineyard managers, rabbits are pests. There are even courses at the University of Davis and lots and lots of seminars on “natural pest control.” Sometimes, that means Falcons turned loose over the vineyards.

When I asked a winemaker friend of mine what natural pest control was, he said, “throwing rocks at rabbits.”

That’s why they are so jumpy.

The rabbits I mean.

Sunday

On Sunday, we drove up Highway 101 and turned East, away from the ocean, toward the layered vineyards that carpet both Sonoma and Napa Valleys. Black scar marks from last year’s fires still run across the ridges in places. Only scattered birds occasionally burst from the bushes but the long weaving clouds of starlings are nowhere to be seen this time of year.

The sky is clear and blue. No birds in sight, except the waterbirds stepping through the wetlands that lay between San Francisco and the wine country. For those of you who have made this drive yourself, you know that you go up the hill and turn left at the cow.

The cow is a decorated fiberglass work made for a Sonoma county art contest a few years ago. They show up all over Sonoma, usually in unexpected places. I love these cows. And, the artists who made them—and then hid them like Easter Eggs around the county.

This particular cow marks the Sonoma Raceway, a track for racing all manner of cars. NASCAR fans fill the field beside the track with Winnebagos and pickup trucks in the summer. There’s a dust cloud you can see for miles in July.

But today, it’s a shallow lake, covered in water from the rains last month.

It has laid silent for almost two years but now there are trucks moving in and out of the gate as they get ready for a feature race in June.

It’s not the only thing that is stirring in anticipation of spring.

As we drive into Sonoma Valley, I can see small groups of workers here and there wearing bright orange day-glow jackets so they don’t get shot. The jackets tell the powers that be, that these workers belong there and are doing the work of a winery in winter.

They are pruning the dry canes left from last year and piling them in pickup trucks along the road, but the wind is blowing so hard they are having trouble holding them still enough to count the buds.

They leave three buds on each cane. It is those buds that will push out in April and form the long flowing canopies that will shade the grapes through the summer and provide habitat for all manner of bees, butterflies and insects.

Also, wild birds.

Going over to Napa, we pass new plantings everywhere—some of them covered by milk cartons for frost protection. Whole hillsides are being replanted. Acres of vineyards burned last summer. And, the summer before. And, the summer before that.

The wildfires have left the ground dead and broken. Life is hidden here. There is no sign of the overwhelming power that will pour out of the ground next month as life returns.

But today, you’d never know. The only sounds are the sounds of frogs along the water tanks (lakes) that supply the vineyards.

And, the clicking of dry canes in the wind.

State and Federal mask mandates were lifted last week, so suddenly the tourists are back. More than were here before the pandemic.

It’s give or take 62 degrees and the town of Napa is crushed with tourists walking shoulder to shoulder in the streets. Restaurants are overflowing. There’s no parking left at the Oxbow complex and even the pizza places have lines backed up into the streets and on the bridges over the river that runs through the town.

These streets were filled with rubble a few years ago from the earthquake. Chimneys and pieces of walls, plaster and shattered windows, glass on the sidewalks. I couldn’t get through in several places.

But, they built back.

Today, you’d never know what happened.

There are still historically bitter snow storms in the Midwest and the East Coast but here it’s spring. Not on the calendar but in the earth. The hills are thick with yellow mustard. The Mustard Festival is in March and April, and the shelves are filled with new Mustards for 2022.

The Winery

The fields are asleep but the wineries aren’t.

The wineries are mostly focused on the pruning, but inside the tanks and barrels, young wines are still developing. They have to be watched and nurtured with a thousand adjustments. Blue lights flash all night in the labs.

New blends are being tested and wine samples arrive from brokers that may match what the new wines need for balance and depth. Cellar workers arrive early, park in the back and leave in the darkness of a new night.

Salesmen are out all over the country prepping distributors for the spring releases. This time of year there are no bad wines from 2022. Everything is still just a promise.

This time of year, before the April frosts, or the summer’s wildfires, or the blistering heat of the harvest, every vintage is going to be the greatest vintage in history.


Underground

There are many secrets in the vineyards but maybe the greatest of these lies underground right here, right now.

It’s the power of the vineyard to regenerate literally out of the ashes of last summer’s fires. Of mustard blooms to cover over the black fire scars. The power to drive the grapes from the dead vines back into the sun toward the long human process of making wine.

That same power lies hidden in us, too. But, it’s hard to see. Just like the coming of spring in these vineyards. Like the emptiness of these vineyards, yogic traditions speak of an emptiness in us, which gives birth to us from nothing— just like the earth seems to do with the vines.

It’s not easy to see.

A lot of us live like a vineyard rabbit.

But, something will bring the life out of us and the fields both sooner or later. It always does.

Maybe a walk in a winter vineyard will do it.

It’s worth a try.