THE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 2020 N D7LAST YEAR A FRIENDasked me a question I
had never considered before: Over the
many years I had been writing about wine,
what was the greatest thing this job had giv-
en me?
I answered almost reflexively. As a New
Yorker who has spent most of my life living
in Manhattan, wine had provided me a con-
nection to nature that I most likely would
never have experienced otherwise.
I’ve thought about this a lot over the last
few weeks, as the pandemic has now been
with us for more than four months.
Most of that time, I’ve been in my apart-
ment, far away from vineyards, much less
anything that might reasonably be con-
strued as wild and natural, like a forest or
ocean. I feel the difference, physically and
emotionally.
My friend professed surprise at my an-
swer. He had assumed that I would cite the
wonderful, otherwise inaccessible wines I
had been able to drink, or maybe the many
intriguing personalities in the wine world
with whom I’ve spent time.
These have been wonderful benefits as
well. If I were not representing readers of
The New York Times, I would never have
had an opportunity, to drink, say, great old
wine made from grapes harvested in 1846,
or to try 16 vintages of Château Lafite-Roth-
schild going all the way back to 1868.
I also know that my understanding of
wine would not be nearly as rich without
having had the opportunity to spend time
with people as diverse as Jean-François Fil-
lastre, a little-known Bordeaux vigneron;
Paul Draper, the longtime guiding force of
Ridge Vineyards; Bartolo Mascarello, a
tireless defender of ancestral Barolo prac-
tices; María José López de Heredia, an
equally stalwart proponent of traditional
Rioja; and so many others.
But nothing in wine has affected me so
profoundly as observing the intimate rela-
tionship that enlightened farmers have
with the land that they tend. What I’ve
learned from them has shaped my outlook
in many important facets of my life, from
the foods and wines I buy to the clothes I
wear to how I think about climate change
and political issues.
It’s also made clear to me how little we
know about the natural world, particularly
the complex and intricate links that govern
the well-being of a healthy ecosystem, from
the network of microbial life in the soil to the
diversity of plant life to the importance of
animal life all the way up to the apex preda-
tor.
Taking away any one link in this compli-
cated chain can have devastating conse-
quences — to the soil, the air or even the fla-
vor of the wine in your glass. Even some-
thing as seemingly mundane as putting up a
fence, which might impede animal path-
ways or divert the natural flow of water, can
have ripple effects far beyond anything in-
tended.
I would not have grasped any of these
connections had I not spent time walking
the land with people like Deirdre Heekin of
La Garagista in Vermont; Mimi Casteel of
Hope Well in Oregon; Andy Brennan, who
makes ciders in the Catskills; Steve Matthi-
asson in Napa Valley; or Arianna Occhipinti
in the Vittoria region of Sicily.I COME TO NONEof this naturally. I was born
in the suburbs to city people. My father, who
grew up Brooklyn, never left the city until a
classmate at N.Y.U. one summer invited
him to visit his family’s house upstate.
There, the classmate showed him their
property, including a vegetable garden. As
my father liked to tell it, his friend reached
down and pulled up a carrot and proudly
displayed it.
“From the dirt?” exclaimed my father,
whose sidewalk-and-streets upbringing
had not prepared him for such a sight.
I, at least, had the opportunity as a child
to go to a camp, to hike and swim and learn
how to gather wood and build a fire. But as
an adult, I have never hunted or fished. I
love to hike, but not overnight. I prefer run-
ning water and clean sheets to tents and
sleeping bags.
Still, nature has touched me through
wine. Perhaps it’s an example of biophilia, a
notion popularized by the biologist Edward
O. Wilson, who posited that humans possess
an innate love of nature.
I can’t say if it is true, but I am desperate
to smell the earth and air in a naturally
farmed vineyard, to walk in a forest or
stumble barefoot through a stream.
I owe my consciousness of this yearning
to wine. If it had not been for wine, I would
not have been able to distinguish between
the dirt my father perceived and living soil,
which teems with unseen life, playing a cru-
cial, symbiotic role in ensuring the healthi-
ness and well-being of plants, including
grapevines.
I would not have known that you cannot
assess the healthiness of a vineyard withoutlooking at the ecosystem, of which the vine-
yard is a small part.
“An object seen in isolation from the
whole is not the real thing,” the Japanese
farmer Masanobu Fukuoka wrote in his
seminal 1978 book, “The One-Straw Revolu-
tion,” and I’ve come to see the simple truth
in that insight.THROUGHOUT THE 20TH CENTURY,the trend
in agriculture — what we now call conven-
tional agriculture — was isolation. Vast
tracts of corn, soybeans, wheat and even
grapes replaced the subsistence farms
where a mixture of vegetables, fruits,
grains and animals coexisted.
Such polycultures were threaded
through with wild areas, where beneficial
insects, birds and other animals lived. This,
theoretically at least, fostered a healthy bio-
logical diversity in which pests and dis-eases were kept in check naturally rather
than through artificial means.
The isolated monocultures that have
come to dominate modern agriculture lack
the sort of symbiotic relationships between
species that keep ecosystems healthy.
These man-made constructs have dis-
rupted the natural order, which must be re-
placed with insecticides, herbicides, chemi-
cal fertilizers and other modern crutches. A
sturdy environment becomes fragile and
must be continually propped up.
The effect of modern agriculture is felt
throughout the food chain. Millions of ani-
mals grow in an unhealthy industrial envi-
ronment and must be pre-emptively plied
with antibiotics and other drugs to replace
natural defenses.
Contemporary orchards are another ex-
ample, as Mr. Brennan, the cider maker, de-
tailed in his 2019 book, “Uncultivated: Wild
Apples, Real Cider and the Complicated Art
of Making a Living.” In an effort to maxi-
mize yields and minimize labor, humans
have turned to dwarf trees and clonal root-
stocks that cannot even stand up on their
own, and survive only with intensive chemi-
cal spraying.
When you begin to examine the sources
of your foods and wines, and you become
aware of the compromises made almost en-
tirely for commercial purposes, you begin
to analyze more closely what exactly is in
your glass and on your plate.Many people understand with one bite
the difference between a commercial toma-
to and one grown locally and sold at a farm-
ers’ market. We can easily taste the depth of
flavor in a farm egg that is absent from com-
mercial supermarket eggs.
Why would anybody doubt that a wine
produced carefully from conscientiously
grown grapes would be superior to bottles
of processed wine made from industrially
farmed grapes?
If you’ve walked a chemically farmed
vineyard, no matter how neatly it’s mani-
cured or how pretty the bordering roses
might be, you cannot help but be horrified
by the gray, lifeless soil underfoot.
Contrast that with the bountiful vine-
yards of Ms. Casteel or Ms. Heekin, which
are part of healthy ecosystems. They ap-
peal to all the senses, from the sounds and
sights of birds and insects to the smell of life
to the soft give of the soil beneath your feet.
You can certainly taste that sort of vineyard
in the wine.
This is not to say that traditional prac-
tices are always best in agriculture. Advo-
cates for regenerative agriculture, a way of
farming that emphasizes building and sup-
porting the organic matter that composes
healthy soils, are dead set against age-old
practices like plowing and tilling.
These techniques not only disrupt the life
of the soil, they say, but also release carbon
to the atmosphere that otherwise could
have been stored safely in the earth, miti-
gating climate change.
The aroma on a fall or winter day of old,
discarded vines being burned, another tra-
ditional practice, can be pleasant, until you
realize it’s another disastrous release of car-
bon into the atmosphere.
It’s easy to write about wine without any
sort of awareness of nature. You can sit at a
table tasting hundreds of wines, without a
thought to where they came from, beyond a
bottle.
Many people have argued that lots of
great wines have been made from chemi-
cally farmed grapes, and that is true. But at
what cost? And how much better might
those wines have been if the source ma-
terial had more depth, purity and complex-
ity?
A connection with nature fosters ideal-
ism, romance and hope. It puts many people
in touch with God, if your mind goes that
way. In the interconnectedness of all things
including a glass of wine, one can see either
the astounding beauty of nature or the hand
of the creator.
When you lose that connection to nature,
all you see is a glass.THE POUR ERIC ASIMOVGood Wine Leads Back to Nature
On food and agriculture, and
their precarious balance.
BRIAN BRITIGAN‘An object seen in
isolation from the whole
is not the real thing.’[email protected]. And follow Eric
Asimov on Twitter: @EricAsimov.
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