In January of 2022, I left the frigid cold of Walla Walla to visit my friends in California and
bask in their knowledge of head-trained vines. Not too long past the COVID era, and with
protocols still mostly in place, I decided to stay stateside for my Sabbatical and go down
the coast to where grapevines have been growing since the late 1800s. Napa, Sonoma,
Lodi, Paso Robles, and Edna Valley. North and Central California. Arguably where the wine
industry began in the United States.

I visited vineyards with winegrowers who had been working with those properties for many
years, and in a few scenarios, multiple generations. The high reputation for quality and
notoriety of the vineyard first is what I am hoping to emulate in our own small corner of the
world here in The Rocks District.

The point of my research was to figure out the best way to grow wine grapes with the goal of
longevity. My suspicion was that head-trained/ goblet/ bush vine training systems were the
way to achieve this; and I was absolutely proved right.
There is no other vine structure in the world that is still producing ultra-premium fruit at
advanced vine ages than the head-training method. No matter if that vine is low to the
ground, at a standard cordon head height, or in a ladder formation; tightly spaced, or on a
12×12 grid; these vines are surviving and thriving through disease pressure, climactic
intensity, and human error.

The 3-D nature of growing wine grapes this way yields itself to a diUerent approach of
almost every task performed in the vineyard. From bud-break to canopy management and
harvest, each task requires less and less input as the vine ages and grows into the space.
Creating space for the spurs to grow and the fruit to hang, is paramount to this training
form, and why pruning is arguably the most important job in the vineyard.
If you can set a vine up for success from the base structure forward, it will require less
manipulation during the season. Varietal choice is also incredibly important to these
structures, and their ability to hold up the weight of larger sized clusters. Rhône varieties
being particularly large sized (on average) lend themselves to this training form perfectly.

Echoing what I heard from more than one of the friends I spoke with (Tegan Passalacqua,
Robert Biale, Phil Coturri, and John Alban, to name a few); a blend is so much more than
the sum of its parts. The Field Blend in particular. Some of the vines planted amongst
blocks of Grenache are actually Cinsault… some of the Zinfandel, are in fact Petit Sirah,
etc. This aids in the complexity of the wine and in most cases helps to retain the acidity for
otherwise particularly over-ripe varieties. In some cases, the grower has no idea what the
actual varieties are in the block. Do they always get ripe? No. Does this matter? No.
The goal at the end of the day is to craft a wine that will age, and a vineyard that will outlive
its current owner.
What a fantastic European ideal.

Brooke Delmas Robertson
May 2024