Wolves, Phylloxera, and Bears. Oh My! with Agricola Foradori
Some brief thoughts from Winemaker Theo Zierock of Agricola Foradori in the vineyards of Italy. This are some short tangents from Theo. While interesting, they weren’t part of the normal narrative. So I included all of them in this little video
This is fourth of quite a few long format videos featuring Theo at Foradori.
In Europe, "We've killed everything that can kill us," but bears and wolves are returning.
Thoughts on Vitis Vinifera (the wine grape) and how it is grown around the world.
Demonstration “marcottage” of how to handle dead vines and create new ones without buying new grapevines.
Don't miss this fascinating six minute video.
Special thanks:
Transcript:
Note: Transcript was created by a third party service and I’ve endeavored to clean up the spelling of ‘wine words.’ There are also some Italian words that I have difficulty knowing how to spell. Any persistent errors are mine alone and not Theo Zierock’s.
Or, watch the video. It is awesome.
Theo Zierock:
In Europe, nothing kills you. I mean you could say maybe vipers if you're in the middle of nowhere and within a week you can't get to hospital, but we killed everything that can kill us. Which is sad, but also makes it more easy.
Well, you have bears and wolves now coming back. It is a problem because the cultural landscape here has a lot to do with cows grazing on the mountains. You know within the, by the 1970s, more or less, all the bears were killed. Then they reintroduced them in the '90s slowly, and now they're coming back because people don't go to hunt, so you have a lot of deer. So, wolves and bears are doing fine. But then the shepherd says, "What about me? My cows are grazing and then once a year, maybe you know, we just kill five of them? Who's going to pay for that?"
So then the European Union said, "Well, we going to pay for each cow." And then you start speculation, say like, "Well then, it might be even a good business to get the bears kill my cows." From the city or from the media, you always have this drive to, "Oh, finally more bears, how nice. And the Swiss are bad people," because as soon as a bear goes through the Alps to Switzerland, they shoot it, boom. No mercy, zero. They say like, "Ah, fucking Swiss people." And say like, "Yeah, okay. But because you are a designer in Milan and you don't give a... want everything to be pretty around you, but if you have your cows up there, what the fuck?" You cannot build huge fences everywhere to keep them out. It's an actual problem. So when things are not analyzed in a more nuanced way, it's always a big fucking debate and it seems to be a time of shitty debates overall.
It is incredible in what circumstances vitis vinifera can produce. It is a sacred plant. It always has been. But there is a reason for that because it's extremely resilient. In fact, our soils are way too fertile for viticulture. If you were in the, although they always did because apparently they were doing well enough.
But for a place like this, you produce vegetables you know, because you can grow fat vegetables. We have a problem with too much fertility in the soil, even though it's sand. And so if you can plant Vinifera you can plant vineyards in the middle of the fucking desert, it will be somehow fine. You can plant it on 2000 meters. You can plant them almost everywhere in the world. In Brazil, they do two harvest a year. It's crazy. They might taste like... So in terms of the terroir and so on, it's a bit different.
Africa is a weird place because you have actually, where besides Northern Africa, historically being one of the most important production areas for viticulture. But then while obviously Islam kind of put it down, but there is for example, the high plains of Eritrea, which might be one of the most interesting areas. The French are doing something there, but then there's civil world all the time, so it doesn't really work. Because there you are in tropical climate, but you're at the 3000 meters. So then again, it's like being here.
So, besides Africa, there is no continent that is like... Oh, I had some great wine from Azerbaijan and from Kazakhstan.
All the guys in the vineyards doing the harvest, which luckily I'm a bit out of because I have more important stuff to do. But no, it's true. But they always say, "Ah there is so many nettles in the vineyard."
"But it's great."
"No, it sucks." Like, "No, no. It's great." Ah, here. So this is one thing that is quite unique. So because we have very sandy soils, phylloxera hates sand. That's why people always say river beds are, you know, can find very old pre phylloxera vineyards in river beds or obviously, volcanic soils. But it's mostly has to do with the fact that phylloxera doesn't like loose soils. And so phylloxera doesn't like this place and which is good.
So we can do marcottage. So this, in Italian is called propaggine so when this plant died three years ago and we just pulled down the plant nearby and it rooted and it's fine. It goes into production the first year. Ah, there we have the example of what we did this spring, same thing. So bad plant here, we pulled this over and now it's growing. And in the first year it already produced. So this is less expensive, more efficient, and more intelligent than actually buying plants.
THIS IS EPISODE #87 OF UNDERSTANDING WINE WITH AUSTIN BEEMAN
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