The day is hot, but that has nothing to do with the 45 ° C the region experienced three weeks ago. However, we end up taking refuge under the surprisingly lush foliage of nearly 100-year-old abouriou vines (a very ancient Basque variety), in the second vineyard where the truck left us.
Those venerable, beautifully twisted feet Darek rents to his family. His mother, who never made wine, comes from a line of winemakers who have been growing grapes in the Russian River Valley since 1880. The Martinellis now have nearly 200 hectares of vineyards.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
The Old World Winery’s winery is located in Fulton.
–
Darek, the black sheep of the clan, has always wanted to make wine his own way. Two decades later, this “way”, both very instinctive and very scientific, is exactly what the planet needs. Man cares about the health of the environment and his community.
This is what touches Véronique Lemieux, who is trying to do something similar with her experimental and biodiverse plot in Vignoble La Bauge, Estrie. “The search for her is not related to money. It is much wider. You have a life plan. She may decide to keep her discoveries and innovations to herself, but she does the opposite because she wants to see change in her region, in the world, ”says the founder of Vignes en ville.
When Darek started, his “old-fashioned” approach was a little creepy for big, established courts. The name Old World Winery alludes to the “old world” of wine, mainly European, before chemistry came into play after the Second World War. Furthermore, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and any other “-cide” are banned from the vines. The companion adds nothing, apart from a minimal dose of protective sulfur, and does not detract from the wine.
In 1998, at the first Californian meeting of winemakers engaged in biodynamics, there were perhaps five of us and we were considered strange. In 2010, in another meeting in Napa, there were 200 people.
–
Darek Trowbridge, Old World Winery
–
Today almost all young people who start making wine have a minimal intervention approach. That said, less than 1% of the wine produced in California can be considered “natural”, we learn in the excellent documentary Living Wine of which our guest is one of the protagonists, with Gideon Beinstock of the excellent Clos Saron and the young Megan Bell, of Margins Wine.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Darek Trowbridge hands out a handful of his transforming mulch.
–
Without irrigation
What makes the Old World approach so special right now is the focus on soil health, efficient carbon capture, water conservation. Obviously, here all the cultivation is done dry (dry agriculture ), without irrigation. The winemaker is awaiting news of winning a $ 2 million USDA Climate Smart Commodities Program grant that would help its social carbon capture business thrive.
His work is already partially funded by the California Healthy Soils Initiative. “Pay for 50% of my equipment. Of these “materials”, the most important is undoubtedly RCW (fragmented ramial wood or mulch in English), which inoculates with the mycelium.
It was a professor of the Faculty of Forestry of the Université Laval, Gilles Lemieux, who coined the term BRF. He documented his role in the aggression of the soil, the inverse process of degradation. RCW can be embedded in the ground or used as a mulch on the surface.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Véronique Lemieux and Darek Trowbridge speak in front of Ramial’s mountain of fragmented wood.
–
Darek takes us to see his wooden mountain. Véronique Lemieux couldn’t be more enthusiastic! She also has her mound of hers at La Bauge, which was partly extended at the foot of the vines during planting this summer. RCW is a natural protective barrier that creates an environment conducive to improved soil microbiology.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Darek Trowbridge talks about himself.
–
Here, almost everything happens by accident. I am first of all a farmer. I don’t have time to travel around the world to learn, so I look at my environment and find suitable solutions.
–
Darek Trowbridge
–
A small experimental plot adjacent to the cellar testifies to this. “Some time ago, we started putting RCWs under the hens to control odors. On a regular basis, we have removed this soil and put in new mulch. Then, once, we forgot to do it and when we went back to the chicken coop, we realized that the wood had completely decomposed to create a new type of soil, “says Darek. This land was spread over the plot and the vines growing there are exceptionally tall and healthy!
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Véronique Lemieux addresses her questions to the winemaker.
–
Véronique Lemieux dreams that the governments of Quebec and Canada will fund soil research. “When I got back from California, I called Steven Guilbeault’s office [ministre de l’Environnement et du Changement climatique]. There really is something to do with soils for carbon capture. It’s kind of embarrassing for us, I find, to see everything being done on the other side of the border. I thought Canada was more generous and that in the US it was mainly the private sector that was funding this kind of research, but in this case it was the US government. ”
Since surely man will never stop drinking wine (and therefore doing it!), Perhaps we should accelerate the transformation of this agricultural activity into a good for the environment?
Note that Darek Trowbridge’s wines are distributed by the La QV agency. Three cuvées are currently available for private order. They can also be drunk in the following restaurants: Boxerman, Hélicoptère, Rose Ross, L’âtre (Joliette), Le Mapache (Val-Morin) and, in Quebec, in St-Amour, in Arvi, in Kraken cru.
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Related
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Eva Dumas
The print
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With his straw hat, denim shirt and elongated figure, Darek Trowbridge would have been as comfortable on a ranch as in a vineyard. But he doesn’t have the manners of a spaghetti western cowboy. He is an affable, generous, committed man. Right at the start of the harvest – starting in mid-August under the scorching California sun – he has reserved the whole morning for us.
We find it at the main address of the Old World Winery in Fulton, Sonoma County, an hour north of San Francisco. Quickly, he makes us get on his truck to begin the tour of the vineyards with a plot that is quite new for him, next to a few rows of grapes of the giant Gallo. It was at the invitation of its owner, a certain Greta, that the winemaker began to cultivate these four hectares of zinfandel and various apple trees.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Darek drives his truck through the zinfandel vineyards.
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“I take care of it as if it were mine,” he says, as we take refuge in the grove at the back of the field, for a tailgating-style tasting (tailgate). You should know that in California, few artisanal winemakers own their vines. Is too expensive. So they rent plots or buy grapes. Since Darek considers himself a farmer and wants to see healthy soil and plants, he rents and cultivates them.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Single Cloud is a blend of red and white grape varieties.
–
At our request, the “pastoral winemaker”, as he likes to call himself, pours us before the cuvée of the 2020 harvest, hastily collected while the forest fires threatened to burn the vines or, at least, to give an unpleasant smell or an unpleasant taste of smoke in wines (smoke stain). We were too curious to know, through the taste buds, how he got out. Several estates simply decided not to make wine that year, as conditions were so difficult. Single Cloud 2020 (a co-fermentation / coceration of red and white grape varieties) emerges from the thick cloud of smoke as if there had never been a fire. It is fresh and fruity.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Darek pours himself one of his ciders.
–
We continue with the older vintages: Abundance 2015, another blend of whites and reds (Muscadelle, Chasselas, Trousseau Gris, Mondeuse Noire, Abouriou and Zinfandel); Four Horsemen 2011, a blend of Portuguese vines (touriga nacional, tinta madera, tinta cao and sauzao) grown in a vineyard with horses; Zinfandel 2010, Merlot 2009…
There are a few ciders all around that help set the palate back in place. Even without these beautiful fermented apple juices, the tasting would have been so digestible that the reds retained their freshness, despite the density and evolution. You can feel the life that continues to swarm in these wines.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Zinfandel almost ready for harvest
–
A precursor
The day is hot, but that has nothing to do with the 45 ° C the region experienced three weeks ago. However, we end up taking refuge under the surprisingly lush foliage of nearly 100-year-old abouriou vines (a very ancient Basque variety), in the second vineyard where the truck left us.
Those venerable, beautifully twisted feet Darek rents to his family. His mother, who never made wine, comes from a line of winemakers who have been growing grapes in the Russian River Valley since 1880. The Martinellis now have nearly 200 hectares of vineyards.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
The Old World Winery’s winery is located in Fulton.
–
Darek, the black sheep of the clan, has always wanted to make wine his own way. Two decades later, this “way”, both very instinctive and very scientific, is exactly what the planet needs. Man cares about the health of the environment and his community.
This is what touches Véronique Lemieux, who is trying to do something similar with her experimental and biodiverse plot in Vignoble La Bauge, Estrie. “The search for her is not related to money. It is much wider. You have a life plan. She may decide to keep her discoveries and innovations to herself, but she does the opposite because she wants to see change in her region, in the world, ”says the founder of Vignes en ville.
When Darek started, his “old-fashioned” approach was a little creepy for big, established courts. The name Old World Winery alludes to the “old world” of wine, mainly European, before chemistry came into play after the Second World War. Furthermore, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and any other “-cide” are banned from the vines. The companion adds nothing, apart from a minimal dose of protective sulfur, and does not detract from the wine.
In 1998, at the first Californian meeting of winemakers engaged in biodynamics, there were perhaps five of us and we were considered strange. In 2010, in another meeting in Napa, there were 200 people.
–
Darek Trowbridge, Old World Winery
–
Today almost all young people who start making wine have a minimal intervention approach. That said, less than 1% of the wine produced in California can be considered “natural”, we learn in the excellent documentary Living Wineof which our guest is one of the protagonists, with Gideon Beinstock of the excellent Clos Saron and the young Megan Bell, of Margins Wine.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Darek Trowbridge hands out a handful of his transforming mulch.
–
Without irrigation
What makes the Old World approach so special right now is the focus on soil health, efficient carbon capture, water conservation. Obviously, here all the cultivation is done dry (dry agriculture), without irrigation. The winemaker is awaiting news of winning a $ 2 million USDA Climate Smart Commodities Program grant that would help its social carbon capture business thrive.
His work is already partially funded by the California Healthy Soils Initiative. “Pay for 50% of my equipment. Of these “materials”, the most important is undoubtedly RCW (fragmented ramial wood or mulch in English), which inoculates with the mycelium.
It was a professor of the Faculty of Forestry of the Université Laval, Gilles Lemieux, who coined the term BRF. He documented his role in the aggression of the soil, the inverse process of degradation. RCW can be embedded in the ground or used as a mulch on the surface.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Véronique Lemieux and Darek Trowbridge speak in front of Ramial’s mountain of fragmented wood.
–
Darek takes us to see his wooden mountain. Véronique Lemieux couldn’t be more enthusiastic! She also has her mound of hers at La Bauge, which was partly extended at the foot of the vines during planting this summer. RCW is a natural protective barrier that creates an environment conducive to improved soil microbiology.
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Darek Trowbridge talks about himself.
–
Here, almost everything happens by accident. I am first of all a farmer. I don’t have time to travel around the world to learn, so I look at my environment and find suitable solutions.
–
Darek Trowbridge
–
A small experimental plot adjacent to the cellar testifies to this. “Some time ago, we started putting RCWs under the hens to control odors. On a regular basis, we have removed this soil and put in new mulch. Then, once, we forgot to do it and when we went back to the chicken coop, we realized that the wood had completely decomposed to create a new type of soil, “says Darek. This land was spread over the plot and the vines growing there are exceptionally tall and healthy!
PHOTO SUPPLIED BY ALEXIS COZETTE
Véronique Lemieux addresses her questions to the winemaker.
–
Véronique Lemieux dreams that the governments of Quebec and Canada will fund soil research. “When I got back from California, I called Steven Guilbeault’s office [ministre de l’Environnement et du Changement climatique]. There really is something to do with soils for carbon capture. It’s kind of embarrassing for us, I find, to see everything being done on the other side of the border. I thought Canada was more generous and that in the US it was mainly the private sector that was funding this kind of research, but in this case it was the US government. ”
Since surely man will never stop drinking wine (and therefore doing it!), Perhaps we should accelerate the transformation of this agricultural activity into a good for the environment?
Note that Darek Trowbridge’s wines are distributed by the La QV agency. Three cuvées are currently available for private order. They can also be drunk in the following restaurants: Boxerman, Hélicoptère, Rose Ross, L’âtre (Joliette), Le Mapache (Val-Morin) and, in Quebec, in St-Amour, in Arvi, in Kraken cru.
–
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