by Andrew Chalk
If there is a giant hole in the repertoire of Texas wines it is the absence of Pinot Noir. Despite the popularity of the grape and its sourcing from an increasing number of weird and wonderful places, the USDA 2020 Texas Wine Grape Varieties finds 66 different wine grapes grown in the state but pinot noir is not one of them. Vinepair claims that the grape is grown in the diminutive Fredericksburg AVA but doesn't say by who, at what vineyard, or who uses it. The enquiry I put out to author Courtney Schiessl was not answered. Neither was the inquiry to her editor, Joanna Sciarrino. But Monty Dixon, owner of Bar Z Winery in Canyon, TX, and Bayer Family Vineyards in Meadow, TX have reason to feel aggrieved as they combined to make a really impressive Texas pinot noir in 2016.
That effort aside, most of the Texas attempts at the wine that I have tasted have lacked even type-correctness.
At the same time we have over 30 varietals that have solid track records here. Few parts of the USA can claim to successfully produce that many varieties. So why has pinot noir proven so difficult? To find out, I picked the brain of a man with over 30 years experience growing grapes in Texas, Dan Gatlin, founder of Inwood Estate Vineyards.
It is Not Just the Length of the Growing Season
Thanks for your question. The short answer is that like almost all vines in the State of Texas, Pinot vines are being overproduced relative to the genetic parameters dictated by the genome. However, the problem shows up in Pinot in a much more graphic and obvious way for reasons described below
“We have to review our basic understanding of grape ripening to illuminate the problem. 100% of the flavor of wine is made in the leaves, or leaf canopy. Energy collected from the sun through leaves functioning like solar cells or collectors is photosynthesized into polyphenols which accounts for flavor in wine. This chemistry is deposited into the fruit by way of a secondary circulatory system called a phloem.* The more days that the fruit is in the field means more days the sun comes up and goes down, each day being one more day to make polyphenols.
The traditional thinking on this topic is self-evident and incredibly simple: to achieve higher levels of ripeness, you simply find a place with a longer season so that more days on vine allows for the production of more polyphenols. The flaw in this model is that only one side of the equation is addressed.”
Here, Dan’s reference to the growing season is to the period in which temperatures are high enough to ripen (770F) but not so high as to cause vines to shut down (1000F). Critics of Texas as a base for viticulture often refer to its short growing season and contrast it with California’s Napa Valley as the paradigmatic long growing season. But Dan points out that this comparison is misplaced because it ignores, as he puts it, the other side of the equation.
Yields Are Key
“The other important issue, maybe most important, is this: how many clusters are you trying to ripen? If you have 100 clusters to ripen, each one will get 1/100th of the work and benefit of the canopy. But if you have only 10 clusters, each one will receive 1/10th of the same, and your fruit will be 10X more enriched with the critical chemistry needed to achieve premium wine.”
Gatlin is the best known Texas exponent of the view that yields and clones are the two most profound influences on wine quality. Of course, he assumes a professional winemaker endeavoring to make the best wine that he can. The best known academic proponent of this view is Professor Mark A. Matthews at the University of California, Davis who set out his views in his deftly titled Terroir and Other Myths of Winegrowing.
So Texas growers have another margin on which they can adjust - yields. A piece of background information is useful here. Inwood’s Colos and Magnus wines are produced from yields of only 0.29 tons/acre. The Texas average is 3.0 tons/acre, so Inwood’s yields are a combination of the economically insane and viticulturally spectacular. Inwood is not totally alone in this choice of yields.
“People would say “Four clusters per vine! You're crazy”. Now that would not be the first time I've been called crazy or much worse. However, I remember parking my rental car in Aloxe Corton some years ago and venturing into the adjacent vineyard which was trained about knee high to me… When I got down on my knees and pulled up the canopy, I still have (somewhere?) the pictures I took of 2 clusters per vine. So here's the takeaway: if a premium or ultra-premium vineyard is producing at 2 clusters per vine in Burgundy, why would we think we could make Pinot in Texas at 50?”
With an answer to the original question in hand, Gatlin finishes with this:
“A Prediction: Someday, someone will make a really great Pinot Noir in Texas.”
Dan Gatlin
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