This Napa Valley
in California where I've lived for twenty six years and raised
my three children,
is regarded by many
masters
of
wine
as among the most endowed (possibly even the best
endowed) locations on
Earth
to
make fine wine.
That's not necessarily because there are so many
great wine makers
who live and work here. There are, but
great wine makers
can come here to work from anywhere in the
world,
and vice versa. A
friend
of mine who's a
wine maker,
resides in
the Napa Valley
but he
makes wine
in Argentina. Once a month for four days at a stretch, he travels
from
the Napa Valley
to Argentina where he attends to the
wine he's making
there (it's an ongoing process).
In the heady upper echelons of the
wine
world,
the environmental conditions in
the Napa Valley
are so unusually ideal for
making wine
that the place is known simply as
"the Valley".
To say
"Napa
Valley"
is unnecessarily redundant - like if I told you I'm going to a
Sting concert or to a Madonna concert, there'd be no need for you
to ask me "Sting who?" or "Madonna who?". Just one name is enough
for you to identify it.
Living here, I've developed a taste for the
finest wine
- to be sure. But the truth is in the evening, I'd rather sit back
at the amazing
Cowboy Cottage
with an icy cold bottle of beer (Pabst Blue Ribbon is
my brew of choice) than with a glass of
fine wine.
The Valley's
wine makers
are wont to say "It takes a lot of cold beer to
make fine wine.".
One of
the Napa Valley's
many environmental conditions which make it so ideally endowed for
making fine wine
is its
relentless
dry, non-humid heat at the time when the grapes are ripening on the
vines:
105º
in the shade for days and days on end, cooling down to a
frigid arctic (by comparison)
80º
at night.
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<aside>
Why is this ideal for
making fine wine?
Oenology, the science of
making wine,
is unlike any other agriculture. In almost all other
agricultures including the growing of grapes to eat,
water
is a necessity. If you're a farmer growing wheat or lettuce or
tomatoes, you panic in a hot, dry, non-humid drought and you
pray
for
rain.
But if you're growing grapes to
make wine,
you panic when it
rains
and you
pray
for a hot, dry, non-humid drought.
The reason for this anomaly is simple: the
fine wine makers'
recipe book's list of ingredients doesn't start with "tons of
grapes". Rather, it starts with "tons of sweet
grapes". Sweet grapes (which is to say grapes with more sugar)
make the best
wine.
Sugar fuels the fermentation process which transmutes grape
juice into
wine,
and
rain
(ie
water)
dilutes grapes' sugar. Furthermore, drought ensures maximum
sugar concentration in two ways: one, there's no
rain
(ie no
water)
to dilute the grapes' sugar; and two, the
relentless
dry, non-humid heat evaporates any additional
water
in the environment.
<un-aside>
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