now it's my honor to introduce our guest
tonight
the CEO of vidal cellars Bedell cellars
pursue sustainability and in all farming
winemaking and business practices he is
one of the youngest winery CEOs in the
world and has led Vidal through brand
facility and personnel transformations
an active scholar in addition to running
a wine and eat trends writings have been
published by Oxford University Press and
by the New York wine and grape
foundation he earned degrees in
agriculture from Iowa State University
edinburg University and Cornell
University where he is now a PhD
candidate in viticulture please join me
in welcoming Trent Pressler thank you
thank you for that introduction it's
it's great to be here I just start off
by saying if you were I see a lot of old
friends in the audience if you were
hoping that this was actually a happy
hour with wine tasting it's not
unfortunately because this is all I
could fit in my suitcase so if you were
just here for the booze you should
probably just leave at this point it's
also nice to see that the crows showed
up for my lecture it's pretty ominous
it's like some Harry Potter thing going
on behind me I like to walk around a lot
and wave my arms a lot so this is I
might drift away from the mic but I'll
try to speak up Thank You Pat Miller and
the lectures program for inviting me
here it's really exciting and I was just
telling the young man who introduced me
because he's a student member of the
lectures committee that I was actually
on the lectures committee committee
myself as a student 15 years ago now at
this point right so time flies and you
never know what's gonna happen and what
will bring you back to the place where
you started so it's really great to be
here and what I'm going to share with
you tonight I hope is interesting for
most of you since Iowa is such an
agriculturally dominated economy and
state I think it will be my background
is in in farming I grew up on a cat
ranch in South Dakota before coming to
Iowa State in 1995 and I went on to
study agricultural economics and
horticulture at Cornell University and
somehow ended up with this wonderful
opportunity to manage a vineyard and
winery east of New York City which has
been a fascinating experience and I'll
share a little bit about that experience
with you as well as the history of our
wine growing region and some of the
things in the we're doing and the
efforts were making to integrate
sustainable farming practices into the
fine wine world so we'll start with a
little geography lesson I don't mean to
insult anyone but in case not all of you
are totally familiar with Long Island I
know when I grew up in South Dakota I
had no idea where Long Island was and I
thought that the Hamptons was a mountain
chain in Massachusetts so I was
completely off-base this is New York I'm
drifting away from the mic but I'll
speak up so the Finger Lakes region was
very cool climate region it's compared
often to Germany turning the wine
growing sense big steep cliffs and deep
lakes and at the base of Cayuga Lake
right there that's where ethical New
York is where Cornell University is
that's a major wine growing region for
fine wine grapes over here on Lake Erie
there are actually 30,000 acres of
concord grapes so it's where the Welch's
juice cooperative is based
it's the largest center of Concord grape
production in the US although Washington
State is quickly gaining ground just
north of New York City was actually the
first wine region in the US that's where
the French Huguenots first planted
grapes over 300 years ago
Washington down here and this is Long
Island Long Island is us basically a
spit of land that goes about 120 miles
east of New York City out into the
Atlantic middle part is Nassau County
Connecticut it's called the Gold Coast
that's where the Great Gatsby took place
and we call it the South Fork of Long
Island that's the Hamptons
which I'm sure a lot of you have heard
about where all the famous people live
here highlighted and that is the primary
agricultural district in all of New York
State so just a few basic facts so that
everyone in the room is on the same page
and has the same level of understanding
of the industry there's about three
thousand acres of grapes on Long Island
which makes it about the same size as
the Pomerol district in Bordeaux all of
our grapes are vinifera Vitis vinifera
is the species of grape that's used to
produce fine dry European style wines
you might have heard of so a cultivar of
Vitis vinifera cultivar names you've
probably heard of are things like merlot
and Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon
the first plantings were in 1973 so it's
a relatively young region but gaining a
lot of age on the vines so the wine
quality is improving pretty dramatic
dramatically in the last five to ten
years it is the most expensive farming
district we think in the world
effectively we're farming in a suburb of
New York City and what that effects
besides land prices that also effects
labor costs and taxes so we have to
compete on a salary level for labor for
example just one example we had a guy
who was helping us mower lawns around
the winery and he was insisting him that
we pay him $25 an hour and I thought
that was ridiculous until I learned that
Steven Spielberg was paying him 30 so
you know when you're in that sort of
realm and that part of the world people
affect certain things so as a result our
grapes are actually quite expensive
grapes on the bulk market there isn't
much of a bulk market but when they're
they are sold there usually 1,500 to
3,000 dollars a ton and of course the
most the defining characteristic of our
region is that it's an ocean moderated
climate so you might I think a lot of
people think while you grow grapes on
Long Island that's I would never have
imagined that and it does defy a lot of
a lot of I guess odds because looking
here at this map
Laurel it is incredibly dense in terms
of the human population so there are
about five and a half million people on
Long Island it's bigger than Chicago and
but it's about a hundred and twenty
miles long by anywhere between ten and
twenty miles wide the first suburb where
on Long Island in fact there's a
historic town called Levittown New York
where they built the first the first
true suburban tract homes where there
were miles and miles of homes that all
looked the same they look like little
monopoly houses and now you can actually
go visit Levittown it's kind of historic
and cool and all those 50s homes are on
the Historic Register but it was the
first place where America's suburban
sprawl really began and the terrain
opens up and it really becomes sandy and
there are a lot of dunes and shorts
scrubby vegetation and it's not as
densely populated although the
development pressures are quite intense
which I will talk about so we're
surrounded on three sides by water the
Atlantic Gulf Stream comes up from
Florida was very warm water and and so
that warms all the waters around Long
Island to such a degree in fact that we
have our own microclimate so anytime you
hear about big snowstorms in New York
City typically those snowstorms are not
occurring out where we are the water
stays warmer in the winter and it
actually stays cooler in the summer and
so as a result of that it's a perfect
place for growing grapes because grapes
need to have a delayed bud break and we
have a
but break in May and then a very long
extended growing season sometimes
harvest lasts all the way into November
Suffolk County along Island this is the
number one county in New York State for
agriculture the total value market value
of our products is 168 million dollars
and then the economic but really what's
more important is the economic impact
because there's so much tourism with
five to six million people living on
Long Island there's a lot of tourism a
lot of people come visit the wineries
and the farm stands the wonderful day
trip to come out from Queens you can
have a pastoral bucolic country
experience and strap your hay bale or
your Christmas tree to the roof of your
car and go back to Queens it's a really
wonderful day trip so the total economic
impact is actually a billion dollars and
that includes everything from lodging
and hotel and restaurants and
accommodation thirty thirty-two thousand
acres of farmland it's all just some
statistics for you this is a picture of
the side lawn of our winery and Long
Island is a very few people realized as
well as the oldest farms in America so
there are several farms on Long Island
that are actually in their twelfth
generation of ownership the Wickham
fruit farm which is a mile away from my
winery was founded in 1640 and they're
in the 12th generation of Wycombe men
running this farm so it has a very rich
tradition in terms of agriculture and
prior to that the Corps chog Indian
tribe farmed this land some 10,000 years
ago in the town my wineries in is called
cut jog which means central place in
their native language and actually today
it's interesting meteorologists have
shown that cut jog is the sunniest city
in all of New York State it receives the
most amount of hours of sunlight so I
think that the Native Americans actually
knew a few things this water tower it's
a little water tower we found half
buried in our vineyard and we dug it up
and restored it and put it on a stand we
believe this is what the original
farmers on this homestead used to water
their potato crops
this was the David's family potato farm
the house on our vineyard was was built
in the 1700s and we
found some warhead Indian arrows and
some Revolutionary War musket beads
there's a lot of history on long island
to be appreciated and to learn about
there is a geologist in the in the
audience in fact a geologist from
upstate New York so for her I'm going to
play this fun little video about how how
the soils on Long Island came to be and
that'll be the end of the science lesson
and we can start talking more about
about the wine alright oh wait a second
so the volume is not working in the room
let me just plug it into a different the
history of Long Island began millions of
years ago when the ancient report about
the basement that would become Long
Island Sound when the glaciers of the
last ice age advanced from southern wing
they move through this Basin even deeper
before coming to a halt at this point
the glaciers rate in advance was an
equilibrium with his rate of melting and
for perhaps a thousand years the obvious
remain
constantly discharging of water along
with millions of tons of rock sand and
gravel this sediment built up a ridge
called the meringue which about 50,000
years ago formed the South Shore of Long
Island and is melting increased around
21,000 years ago the ice market began to
retreat then pause the in forming a
second burning in line with the north
border as the ice retreated further the
second Marine acted as a damn for
Glacial world at Long Island Sound
for centuries of water
returning to the oceans as sea level
rose the bed of a recently drained
glacial lake and filled with salt water
and surrounding waters as we know it
today began to take shape and this is
the why okay okay in case anyone was
thinking it I did not get permission
from yo-yo ma to use that music okay I
know that there's a lecture later
tonight about patenting and creativity
and legal rights so just don't turn me
in okay that's the end of the science
lesson and who knew all that about Long
Island right Brooklyn Queen one person
did two people but it's it's a
fascinating place and you know we take a
wrap in the wine world because we don't
have the dramatic scenery of a place
like Napa or the the Andes in Chile and
it's flat as flat as a cornflake and we
like to show people that actually the
soils are quite interesting and diverse
and unique and and perfect for growing
grapes so this is a profile that we
built we have it on display at our
winery it's the soil profile it's not
really to scale there's a little mini
tractor on the top there six inches of
topsoil on Long Island and then a layer
of subsoil anywhere from three to ten
feet and always anywhere between one and
three inches of clay and Merlot happens
to really like clay but that clay the
presence of that clay is one of the
things that determines how well the
soils drain and then there's just pure
sand
and a lot of the beaches on the North
Fork you see this kind of beach stone
which are soft weathered stones so even
though topographically above the ground
it may be flat and uninteresting below
the ground it's actually quite diverse
so this is me with a I don't know 30 or
40 pound striped bass and you're
wondering what in the world does that
have to do with anything but as I
mentioned we're surrounded on three
sides by water and we have a very
fragile marine ecosystem around our
agricultural region that we have to
protect
and it's been healthy for thousands of
years and we didn't want to be the
people responsible for its decline the
stripers the striped bass migrate
through the waters of Long Island Sound
and Peconic Bay there's also a species
called the Peconic based scallop which
is absolutely delicious and it was
endangered in the 70s and 80s and had a
resurgence and so this leads into the
sustainability question on Long Island
there is obviously a huge and tremendous
development pressure with all the people
living there there the groundwater
ecosystem is very fragile and that's
something we really feel we have to
protect and not only that but we really
feel especially in the society that we
live in that we want to be seen as being
responsible and proactive guardians of
the future of farming on Long Island so
to that end I'm going to skip over a few
of these things actually this is just a
shot of what a vineyard looks like on
Long Island almost military precision
and I'll get to this later but we keep
the canopies strictly maintained between
two to four inch catch wires to allow
optimal sunlight and air exposure to the
fruit these are some helicopter shots
that I took of our vineyards showing the
proximity to the water so you get an
idea of the delicacy of this balance
here and this is not populated on this
end of Long Island it's it's actually
still quite pastoral and beautiful this
is our Bedell cellars property we have
three vineyards for 100 acres total this
is one of the three and this is our
Corey Creek Vineyard property this is
actually on the other side of Long
Island so this is on the Peconic Bay
side as opposed to the Long Island Sound
but you can see the estuary coming in
but it's a beautiful place to live and
agriculture and farming is certainly
part of the culture and so are things
like fishing and sailing and it's a
really wonderful beautiful place that
we're all interested in protecting some
of the major red grapes that we grow
Merlot is king on Long Island probably
about 30 percent of the acreage there is
planted to Merlot
as well Cabernet Franc Pinot Noir and
Cabernet Sauvignon are grown on Long
Island and then there's a second tier of
red Vitis vinifera grapes grown there
Malbec Syrah and Petit Verdot which are
primarily used as blending grapes
although I'm here to say that I think
sarah has quite a future along Island
even though it's typically known as a
hot climate grape because its homeland
is in their own in France it actually
does quite well for us so this is a
merlot grape vine typically structured
for a Long Island so everyone can see
what it looks like and how do we
practice our horticulture and grasses
growing under Divine's which I'll talk
about later one dominant we thinned the
clusters to 1 cluster per chute and this
is very meticulous and very
labor-intensive and very expensive to do
but we do it for a couple reasons one is
so that the the vine the grapes ripen
more easily if the vine has fewer
clusters to ripen in theory they would
have more
photosynthetic capacity to channel into
those grapes just like an analogy if any
of you are home gardeners and you prune
all the
of a rosebush the remaining bud is
probably going to end up being a pretty
big rose and then also we we have to do
all this work because of where we're
growing grapes which is an extremely
humid and wet climate long islands one
of the wettest places in the world for
growing grapes and that leads to a lot
of disease pressure from things like
powdery mildew and downy mildew and
black rot and from OPS's and all these
wonderful things that you may or may not
have ever heard of but there are
diseases that afflict grape vines
specifically and they are those diseases
and their pressure is what makes
sustainability on Long Island such an
interesting conundrum this is a Cabernet
Sauvignon canopy actually that photo was
taken near Thanksgiving in November of
2007 it was such a hot year in 2007 is
such a great growing season that the
canopy was healthy and functioning all
the way through to Thanksgiving and it
was really one of one of the very
special vintages ever so I'm gonna skip
that so just a couple of points here on
how sustainability had its origin and
the first time that the the term I think
was really used with intention in the
lexicon was in a 1987 UN World Report
world Commission on Environment and
development in which they said
sustainability is development that meets
the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs so
that's the when painting the big picture
for you now and that's a little vague
and we'll we'll get to learn more about
what specifically that means for us and
then a couple years later the American
agronomy Society chimed in and they said
sustainable agriculture has won that
over the long term enhances
environmental quality and the resource
base on which agriculture depends
provides for basic human food and fiber
needs is economically viable and
enhances the quality of life for farmers
in society as a whole so I think this is
actually a pretty complete and thorough
definition of sustainability primarily
because it hits on
three main points that's in order to be
sustainable either as an entity or a
business or a farm or even in your own
life something should be socially
equitable environmentally sound and
economically feasible I won't talk a lot
about the economic feasibility tonight
there's just too much to talk about
but suffice it to say if a business
can't sustain itself economically then
it doesn't matter how well you treat the
environment if the business ceases to
exist that's certainly not a Nabeel so
on Long Island and in talking to some of
my colleagues in the industry when we
talk about sustainability we talk about
it with some of these other terms that
it's actually a pathway for us it's a
dialogue it's a way of life and it's a
dynamic evolving system that doesn't
really have a specific definition that
you can look up in textbook I especially
like this bottom one it's not a zero-sum
game it's actually a continuum toward
improvement and so even though all the
farmers in our area may not be
practicing sustainably sustainable
farming we're all part of a dialogue and
part of a discussion and we're all
working toward the goal of understanding
and appraising and assessing all of our
practices so to kind of characterize it
for you and how we might shift our
thinking from our traditional way of
thinking to a sustainable way of
thinking in terms of growing grapes we
can pose this question what pesticide
should I use for this problem which is a
pretty typical agricultural kind of
question I have a disease in the field
and I need to kill it basically but when
you start to engage in a sustainable
process that question we can kind of
change and alter our thinking and think
hmm so what measures could I take to
minimize my use and risk from this input
and so that has a whole plethora of
questions surrounding it do I need to
use this spray at a particular time for
this particular disease organ
how much is it the best time to use it
etc so I'm gonna go through a few
particular specific points of things
that we do in the vineyard that are part
of our sustainability program and first
and foremost I mean sustainability was
actually done for us about 30 years ago
a lot of the the vineyard owners on Long
Island realizing the development the
intense development pressures from the
millions of people that live in Long
Island got together and sold or
transferred the development rights to
their properties to Suffolk County and
so what this means is most of the
vineyards on Long Island are actually on
100-year they're called forever in
farming 100-year leases to the state or
to the county and this means that our
vineyard will never be a 7-eleven or a
strip mall or a gas station or an outlet
mall or anything which is predominant on
Long Island in suburbia so that's number
one we know that there's at least 3,000
acres of grapes on Long Island that for
a hundred more years can be nothing else
except farms we also emphasize in
particular that a lot of the other
vineyards and something that we do at
Fadel is that we keep a lot of the
ecosystem elements and flow so it is a
very parse alized part of the world
where a lot of homes have yards and
fences and even a lot of the farms
themselves have fences and we try to
maintain wildlife corridors so this is a
plot between a couple of our vineyards
where we left a wide swath and there's a
very biodiverse cover crop here it's
actually in bloom here in the spring so
we have anywhere between 30 and 50
species of clovers and fescues grasses
and legumes that all create a very bio
diverse environment and enhance the the
beneficial insect relationships and then
these are some blue bird houses so
bluebirds actually used to be quite
common in Long Island and they're a
native species and they've come across
some hard times and so there's actually
a woman on the island who has a PhD in
ornithology and she's worked with a lot
of the vineyards to design
a specific a bluebird house that
bluebirds would like and so we built
these and we set these out out in the
vineyard and this is just a picture of
our vineyard manager Dave checking the
bluebird house and we actually had some
nesting pairs last year so that was good
we've also been an industry partner with
Cornell University for several research
projects there's a program at Cornell
called vine balance workbook and there's
also an extension office in Long Island
and Cornell's done a lot of research for
on our property and a lot of the
neighboring vineyards testing out
organic and sustainable fertilizers and
peanut meal trials and leaf pulling
trials and all kinds of things and then
this bottom one is quite important which
I'll get to later but integrated pest
management which I'm sure a lot of you
have heard of when you go out into the
field and you scout for diseases so I
mentioned before the cover crop growing
underneath of the vines prior to this
and you probably saw on this slide
earlier this is what most vineyards used
to look like a little island so they had
probably a 4-foot weed free strip which
was it's not just magic how that
happened so that was kept weed free with
pre-emergent herbicides usually roundup
and you know the logic was I guess that
it was neat and tidy but after time
people were thinking well do we really
need a weed free strip because over
3,000 acres these four foot strips add
up to a lot of application of materials
but also you know Long Island is such a
wet place and there's so much rain that
actually we thought well we should
probably have more plant material under
the canopy of the vines to help soak up
all of the rainfall so it just is a
logical thing that a lot more of the
vineyards are starting to allow the
grass to grow naturally all the way
under the canopy and it might just seem
like a small thing but it really is
quite substantial to get people to
change their mindset so now a lot of our
vineyards look more like this they look
more like a prairie meadow kind of with
the vines growing out
of a biodiverse cover crop and also we
emphasize as one of our sustainable
points is using human labor over
machines and these are a couple of our
guys planting some young albariño
grapevines in the vineyard and then I
mentioned at the bottom here pesticide
use which I'll talk about in a second I
don't want to dwell on chemicals but it
is certainly part of this and so we take
all of our materials that we the
byproducts of the process of making wine
so this is what's called a Reyes the
Reyes is actually that stem that holds
clusters of grapes together even the
grapes you get from the grocery store
and after harvest there's a lot of rake
it rake rake I I'm not sure what the
plural is leftover as well as the the
grapes the skins themselves after we
press out the fruit to make the wine and
so we compost that and this is a two
year old compost heap so it's looking
pretty beautiful and we'll spread that
out throughout the vineyard every year
as an organic fertilizer so that was
some of our sustainability points in the
vineyard a few of the things we do in
the cellar first and foremost we ferment
entirely using indigenous yeast so this
is something that we actually pioneered
and we're the only winery we think in
eastern North America making wines
completely with indigenous yeast and you
might wonder what this means well just a
two second lesson on how wine is made
grape juice has sugar in it okay yeast
eats sugar and they excrete alcohol so
alcohol is effectively yeast urine and
sort of it's so good tastes good though
right so the yeast that most wineries
use our bioengineered yeasts that come
in a zip pack from La Lomond and France
or a company in California they they
generate yeast they dry them they freeze
dry them and they ship them to you well
the other interesting thing about grapes
is that grapes have a micro flora of
yeast on them already that's why they
have that little white kind of cloud
appearance and so you don't actually
need to inoculate with a foreign yeast
and our winemaker is now in its 30th
vintage making wines using entirely
indigenous yeast
so there's yeast everywhere all of you
have yeast all over your skin on your
face and your hands and it's flu it's
floating in the air and certainly in the
winery environment there's yeast
everywhere as well what we do at the
beginning of every harvest is we large
glass jug of Chardonnay juice and then
where each of our employees goes out
into the vineyard or into their
backyards at home and they collect
something that they think is pretty or
that is important to them but that
importantly is part of the native and
indigenous local flora so we bring in
there's some apples there there's beech
plums there's some wild roses Rosa
rugosa camomile wild violets and we
bring in all the local flora elements
from all around our vineyard and we put
them into this starter culture so in an
algae if you cook at home this is sort
of like a sourdough starter culture we
keep this percolating all throughout
harvest and we use it to inoculate the
fermentations of all of our different
lots of wine and so I think this is one
of the one of the biggest ways that we
can produce natural wines and wines that
are sustainable and in keeping with our
own surroundings I mentioned the use of
hand labor over machines another thing
we do at Bedell is we don't use
machinery and pump fruit and juice from
place to place we use gravity in the
whole process so when we need to empty a
tank we open a valve and let it drain
out and then we have interns who come in
and shovel out the pumice and we do take
interns and we had an intern two summers
two harvests ago from Iowa State is
Jenny here okay we had a wonderful
intern from Iowa State so we do accept
applications if anyone's interested and
you get to do this job but anyway we use
gravity and a lot of commercial wineries
big conglomerates they'll pump juice and
fruit from place to place through little
hoses and when you do
that you have a chance of shearing the
seeds and when you if you've ever bitten
into a grape the seeds are actually very
bitter
and when you share the seeds to release
those polyphenolic compounds into the
wine and you can have a pretty harsh
wine by using gravity and doing it all
by hand we extract much softer flavors
we think we use hand coopered French oak
barrels and this is one of our crew
who's topping offs and barrels right
there and then we also use natural cork
so there's a lot of debate right now
about screw caps on wine and those
artificial corks that are kind of
plastic but I'm here to tell you that
natural corks are the most sustainable
way to close a bottle of wine by far
they are a 100% renewable resource
harvested from the Quercus this is an
oak tree subspecies that is native to
Portugal and cork is actually from the
bark of the Cork Tree so cork trees can
live to be a hundred years old the cork
tree in these big slabs and then the
tree will just regenerate the bark and
they can regenerate it they usually do
this once every five to nine years and
then the tree lives to be a hundred
years so it's totally renewable it's
natural it's biodegradable is
effectively tree bark and you're
supporting the livelihood of guess how
many to million farmers in Portugal
depend on the cork industry so another
part of sustainability for us is
supporting farmers and other parts of
the world and I think the last thing the
world needs is another petroleum product
that we dumped in the landfill like a
screw cap
so I'm forcefully opposed to screw
capping wines you couldn't tell and this
is a cross-section of how we make cork
and if you haven't ever seen the process
it's it's really cool this is just the
cross-section of the bark of the tree
that you saw the guy chopping off right
there and it's extruded from the bark
just like that and that's the cork you
find in a bottle of wine and then you
pay different prices for different
grades of cork there's about 30
different grades and you can pay
anything from a couple cents a cork to a
dollar 25 cork for the very best so one
other aspect of our use of indigenous
yeasts is that our wines tend to mimic
and reflect the flavor and aroma
profiles of our region and this is a
beach plum which is a prunus species of
plum that grows in the sand dunes of the
coastal northeast coastal New England
Long Island it's a beautiful plant you
we have some similar things here in the
Midwest like chokecherries and I think
there's plums in the ditches around that
my mom used to make jam out of but this
is a very similar thing a lot of people
think that some of our wines that the
Reds in particular have flavors that our
regiment of beach plums but an
interesting aspect of our work is that
you know in the wine world you're
constantly trying to describe what you
do because there's so many tens of
thousands of wineries on earth and you
have to be able to say why it is that
what you make is different from the
other wines and so the flavor profiles
are some of the ways that we
differentiate our products and no one
else has our unique combination of local
flora and local flora aromatics and so
we think that's unique and special to
what we do and another quick chemistry
lesson in case you're not familiar with
I can't help myself but you have to know
this because it's really cool a
strawberry will only taste like a
strawberry because it only has
strawberry aroma chemicals in it and a
banana is only going to taste like a
banana because it has banana aroma
chemicals in it but the grape is the
only fruit in the world that actually
contains the aroma chemical compounds of
every other fruit and in fact a lot of
things besides fruit so there are almost
400 aroma chemical compounds in grapes
that resemble other things so when a
yeast eats a sugar sugars are all
floating around in space in wine
attached to aroma molecules okay so when
you taste a grape
that's not fermented it just kind of
tastes like a grape but when the yeast
cleave the sugar from the
molecules your left effectively with a
solution of hundreds of aroma molecules
that can smell like any number of things
this is why when you see people taste
wine and they swirl the glass and they
smell it into think oh it it's like
cherries or vanilla or something they're
literally smelling those flavor
chemicals in the wine they're not just
making that up it's true it's it's
chemistry so better living through
chemistry one last point about
sustainability and this is the bottle
that's sitting right here in front of me
so this is our wine called musee which
features a specially commissioned
artists label and so we also
commissioned new york-based artists to
design our labels for us which is
another part of our sustainability
effort the artists are all good friends
of our owners and so they are happy to
do this for us and we pay them with a
couple cases of wine and our owner I'm
fortunate to work for a gentleman who's
actually on the board of trustees of the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City so
we get to commissioned some pretty
exciting artists to do our labels this
is a gentleman named Chuck Close who did
this label for us you might have heard
of him or seen him he's a quadriplegic
he's been on the cover of Time magazine
he used to be the Dean of the art school
at Yale I believe and he paints giant
portraits of people's faces with a
million little squares but he's a New
York based artist he's a living a modern
master and he was given the National
Medal of Arts by Bill Clinton in 2001
avid gardener and a huge food and wine
fan lives on the east end of Long Island
and he's a friend of our owners so we
commissioned him to do this label for us
it's actually a daguerreotype of Merlot
grapes and a daguerreotype was the
original form of photography where you
exposed the image on a glass plate so he
described this as as a nude because
daguerreotype used to be considered the
most detailed and an impressively
detailed way to take a photograph and
then you only have one original on the
plate you can't digitally reproduce it
although what we did obviously for the
label so when you get a chance if you
want to come up later and look at it
detailed I was in my horticulture
seminar yesterday I even said you can
see a little pattering he'll do it's a
funny story I took these grapes in to
Chuck closest studio and Soho in a
cooler with dry ice and I didn't really
know what I was getting into but I
knocked on the door and I walked in and
he has ten assistants working with him
and I stepped into his studio and Kate
Moss was there naked and it was you know
a little startling and I was like okay
I'm here with your cooler full of grapes
mister clothes and he was working on a
whole series of degorio types and he you
can look it up on the Internet he did a
whole series of daguerreotype photos of
Kate Moss naked which are now in the
permanent collection I believe at the
Museum of Modern Art and they're they're
beautiful but he did a whole series of
photos of famous people but that was my
story for the day and I anyway also it
goes without saying recycling was the
buzzword probably now that's a ten year
old buzzword but all of our labels are
printed on 100% post-consumer waste
recycled paper and our glass bottles are
now made with recycled glass as well and
we do recycle all of the glass and paper
in our facility so we're running out of
time I want to allow some time for
questions but quickly I also just want
to mention that we're starting to
establish regional certification on Long
Island and this is a process that I'm
helping lead and our wine maker has
really been the driving force behind
Long Island sustainable wine growing
incorporated so we've started a 501c3
nonprofit organization which will
provide third party certification of all
of our wines and we figured well you
know we've been using sustainable
practices for 30 years
but in the real world you don't get gold
stars for things like that because
actually no one cares unless you tell
people and you force them to understand
what you're doing so you know it wasn't
good enough in our at least in our
business climate to just feel good that
we'd been growing grapes sustainably for
30 years we also need to be
to prove to people in a serious way that
they're certified as sustainable and put
a little sticker on our label and tell
people that this is what we're doing and
this is why you know if they're
environmentally minded about the
products they purchased this is why they
should care so we've developed a
coalition of like-minded wineries with
this goal in mind to communicate the
practices to the public in an
understandable manner to highlight
shared principles among all the various
certification philosophies and forge
better relationships with consumers who
make environmental awareness a priority
and at the end of the day we also want
to be seen as proactive leaders in our
world because we we are in such an urban
environment so that if there were ever
any question about the status of our
groundwater for example we could say we
were being very proactive so we have a
technical working group which thank God
I'm not part of this is a group of
vineyard managers that get around a
table and look at chemical books about
which pesticides and fungicides have
particular use and efficacy for
different disease organisms but
ultimately we use this as our guide that
protective materials for plants can't be
problematic for the fragile groundwater
ecosystem we're working out the
enrollment requirements but we think
they'll be probably an annual fee
growers who want to join the
sustainability program will have to
complete an annual self-evaluation of
all of their own practices on the farm
and then they'll will have a third
person come in and inspect the farms and
go over their workbook with them and
make sure that they're compliant and I
should note that also everyone is
participating will have written plans
for wildlife compensation areas their
cover crops vineyard maps and they'll be
expected to have their sprayers
calibrated annually but I think most
importantly is that we're being very
inclusive so all the growers are at the
table right now
the growers that are extreme to the left
and to the right on the production scale
of things everyone's at the table
talking about sustainability maybe not
everyone at the table is going to
qualify for the program initially
because you know maybe they're not all
using the best practices
but the point is that it's a dialogue
and it's a communication and it's a
continuum and maybe someday they'll be
able to think about the different kinds
of practices that they'd want to use
there's a few other things that people
would be expected to have plans in place
for their farm to reduce runoff with
physical structures vineyard floor
management and this is critical the
timing with precipitation forecasts Long
Island we get over 50 inches of rain a
year and if you spray your vineyard and
then it rains the next day that's a huge
waste of money and it's a greater chance
of leaching into the groundwater and
these are very important questions for
sustainability that we're really
straining to drill down on a detail
level with our peers and this is a
practical example of a vineyard work
calendar that we're helping everyone in
the region devise so this is a 52 week
calendar year from week 1 activities
that take place in the vineyard
throughout the whole year so pruning hi
bud break blue Razin Razin that's when
the grapes change from green color to
purple or black harvest of course so it
might seem kind of Elementary but these
are interesting things to kind of nail
down and I'll give you one example catch
wire lifting we've had some people say
well you know I noticed an outbreak of
spider mites around the time that we
lifted our catch wires and you know we
think mmm I wonder why that is and the
reason of course is that spider mites
like dust and they live in dust and they
nest and lay their eggs and dust that
settles on the film on the surface of
grape vine leaves so it's a good chance
to think okay well maybe the practices
and things you were doing in your
vineyard at the time that the dust mites
were breeding we're raising up dust and
maybe you were driving through with your
tractor too many times or maybe it was
dry and the dust was disseminating into
the air and so you created an
environment in which those insects could
thrive but again that's the kind of
conversation you can't really have
unless you have everyone at the table
talking openly about the
practices in a constructive way so
that's part of the sustainability
process as well I'm sorry I'm on the
verge of losing my voice so I want to
show a little video to close with
because I actually think it covers a
couple of the things that I talked about
it's just a three or four minute video
that many of you have probably already
seen but I think it's a testament to a
couple of things the first is that the
flavors of the things that we eat can
hearken us back to a particular time or
place and you remember I was talking
about Long Island wines being Regiment
of the native flora of the coastal
Northeast so think about that when you
see this video and the other thing which
is a little sentimental for me which is
that greatness can come from anywhere
and you can do anything you want in this
world and coming from Iowa State I see a
lot of students in the audience so well
I'll let the video do the talking
there's no way to meet the chef thanks
but I just generated back
at first he goes this is a joke but as
we need explains you smile the only
asking an occasional question the
story's done ego stands
holiday is repairs
in many ways the work of christianism is
a position that well-kept ourselves our
judgments before I Omega T criticism
which is found to write a tweet but
bitter truth requisite must face the
value of grand scheme of things but
average piece of criticism making itself
times are pretty truly miss something
and that is in the discovery and defense
of the new worlds of some kinds of new
talent new creations the new these
friends last night I experienced
something new and extraordinary medial
Thomas is a very unexpected source to
say that both the beam and its major
examined my preconceptions of our client
working in groups understatement they
have brought me to my pause and pause I
may not see I'd like to stay for chef
Gustav famous bottle anyone can cook but
I realized only now I truly understand
what he makes not everyone can become a
great artist
but a great artist
from anywhere this is difficult to
imagine more humble origins than those
of the genius now Kalina Bustos lives in
this critical period nothing less than
the finest chef in France I will return
to my life alright so that was my
closing thought to you which I think
hits on a couple of points which one was
the two at a time and two that you can
do anything you want from anywhere in
the world so you're at Iowa State you
can go anywhere and do anything you want
and I never thought I'd be standing here
fifteen years ago and as Anton said yeah
he said it better than anyone could so
and then the last point which is
somewhat relevant and I didn't touch on
a whole lot which is the role of critics
and in my line of work critics really
rule and it's almost like the movie
world where if you get a bad review it's
not so good but if you get a great
review it can propel your business and
your life to new and exciting places but
I think the most important thing is to
know what's inside of your heart and
what you want to do and what you believe
in is both an artist and a and a farmer
if that's what you're doing or anything
you do and you're working in your life
if you stay true to what you know is
right then ultimately the the criticism
good or bad shouldn't really matter all
that much to you so anyway with that I'd
love to take questions from the audience
yes right well the main challenge in
terms of economics for us and the
sustainability question as it pertains
to the vineyard is the cost of managing
the vineyard and and the cost of the
disease control during the summer and
you know I mentioned briefly that the
integrated pest management approach
where you can be more targeted and
specific about when an organism arises
in the vineyard and when it needs to be
sprayed an old way of thinking about
managing vineyards would be oh it's it's
Tuesday at 4 o'clock I'm gonna spray now
or it's Thursday and I'm at noon and I
always spray every Thursday at noon
which is an untoward and blunt approach
it's like hitting the problem with a
sledgehammer
and when you spray kind of randomly or
haphazardly you're not sure if you're
actually killing the disease organism
specifically that you're want to and you
know like I said it could rain the next
day so Spray material is not inexpensive
and you can spend six figures easily on
spray material managing a vineyard on
Long Island for a year so those
questions even though they seem a little
they might seem a little small and the
scheme of things actually they do add up
so that's an important sustainability
question for us in terms of economics
also we try to support the local
community and other restaurants and
other craftsmen and other farmers as
much as we can I do think that the the
village of people and I mean village buy
in the Hillary Clinton sense of the word
village bringing people together in our
wine and food world and Long Island
helps sustain and lift the entire
industry so there was a day when Long
Island didn't have any good restaurants
or hotels and the wineries were kind of
at they're floating in the wind by
themselves but we've encouraged in
Foster
entire wine and food community including
farmers markets and restaurants that
emphasize local products and it's helped
as I've pointed out one of the first
slides lead to a 1 billion dollar
economic impact for our region so now
there's more to do for people then just
come drink in a winery they can stay
overnight and you did a restaurant and
do a lots of other things so it's a
roundabout answer welcome
well I'm what issue comes up like the
rain yeah well there are some compounds
that are on the market that are more
specific than others some of the newer
compounds are more targeted and
specifically target one thing whereas a
lot of the older compounds were more
broad-spectrum and we kind of just knock
out a lot of different things but that
is not as necessarily a sustainable
approach to just knock the problem on
the head with a sledgehammer so then
again on the other side of the coin some
of the newer products that are
considered low risk by the Environmental
Protection Agency are highly leachable
in groundwater so they might be great
for a region that doesn't have
groundwater issues but they're not so
great for us so all those things all
those questions have trade-offs and need
to be considered on a individual basis
yes hi
no you know uh the closest I can think
of as Norton so Norton which i think is
native of Missouri I believe there's a
trial plot of Norton in Long Island and
they only last year they only needed to
spray it twice all year which is
remarkable I mean we have other wineries
have to spray dozens of times so Norton
would be the closest thing that I can
think of I was talking to a geneticist
at Cornell a couple months ago and
that's saying you know we've genetically
engineered almost everything else to
have resistance or not resistance to
almost everything you name it and yet we
still have grape vines all around the
world that none of which are genetically
modified to be resistant to the disease
that is so it's so prevalent for them a
couple diseases one is falak Sarah the
root last that killed every vine in the
world in 1880 you know and I guess we
haven't gotten to that place yet where
that genetically modified grape vines
would be acceptable to people but you
know if I could have a Chardonnay vine
or a merlot vine that didn't need any
upkeep you know and was resistant to
everything that nature threw at it that
would be that would be pretty terrific
so someone will get rich on that someday
I hope yes yeah
right absolutely and wine is a very
historically driven industry anyway so I
think it would be a problem for a lot of
people and a lot of grapevines are 80 to
100 years old and there's history and
wineries in France and Italy that are
you know a thousand years old so yeah it
would be hard yes it's definitely new
we are definitely at the forefront of
this although there are a couple I would
say that the world gold standard for
sustainability in wine is Oregon there's
a group called Oregon live low input
viticulture and enology they have a
really great website you could check it
out there at the top of their game for
sure but they have a different climate
than us it's not really as wet and they
don't have the same kinds of disease
pressures there have been some other
sustainability initiatives from other
regions in the world and in terms of
your direct question of competition I
don't necessarily I mean I think people
will look for anything that
distinguishes a wine from the wine next
to it on the shelf you know I think
there's 9,000 wineries in the US alone
and tens of thousands in the rest of the
world and so grapes are one of the few
may be the only agricultural product
that is really a luxury good and we
strive and everyone in the wine world is
desperate to not be a commodity and to
make everything seem different and and
Anton ego said it as well and things
that are new need friends and and we're
in sort of a frantic in the wine world
there's this frantic pursuit of the new
and what's the hot new grape from the
hot new part of the world and so I don't
I don't know if sustainability is going
to be the hot new thing in we don't
really you know we're not really chasing
a trend we're doing it because we think
it's the right thing to do and the
problem to with chasing trends in the
wine world is that by the time you've
caught it you're four years behind the
next one so yes yes no that's a really
great question are you a microbiologist
okay you're just super smart you brew
okay yeah it is risky and what he's
referring to is that we could for
example have a rogue strain of yeast
take over the fermentation and make the
wines taste pretty bad we've had a track
record of very clean fermentations and i
think it's because a few of the primary
organisms that are doing the
fermentations are highly predatory and
they maintain their presence in the
winery kind of all year round
either magically because they're on the
surface of things or also because our
wine main winemaker maintains a small
jug of fermenting juice all year round
so we do we don't scientifically you
know we don't look under microscope so
we don't say oh we have the strain that
did the ferments and it was so good and
we want to use it every year we allow
the ferments to arise naturally but I do
think that probably if we did look under
a microscope there'd be a couple that
are doing the job urine in your app so
yes
ah right yes that's a great question and
we have actually and the reason we don't
do the glass etching is that it's
actually quite expensive and you have to
order huge volumes in order to get the
price breaks and a lot of our wines are
made in small batches and like 5200
cases so to do a glass bottle itching
would be prohibitively expensive but for
a wine where they make thousands and
thousands or maybe even hundreds of
thousands of cases that could be a good
option and then you wouldn't need in the
paper at all
I don't know much though about the
actual etching process and the chemicals
they use in that and what that's about
but there are some pretty bottles yes
and you had join it first yeah more more
grape juice yeah we just keep we keep
some juice you can also just keep it at
a low low temperature and the ferment
will continue but we'll be in almost
like a stasis um like for celcius I
don't know what that is in Fahrenheit
but yeah like in the 40s or 50s so
they're Hardy they're tough little or
little things yes oh okay great all
right then we probably don't want to do
that yes
yeah yeah yeah right yeah Oh from
intruding in the water table the
aquifers well gosh I mean we're not
specifically doing anything or involved
in it the Dec is definitely involved in
it no no and but it is interesting and
during hurricanes sometime on Long
Island
they'll be they call it salt spray and
this year we had a hurricane and some of
the vineyards had very severe salt spray
damage and it's not just that the
hurricane is bringing water off of the
ocean but also it's coming up in the
water table and there is actually a
quality that a lot of critics use and we
use a lot in describing our white wines
and we say that they have a certain
saline minerality to them and it is
actually I'm not at first we thought we
were just making it up but so many
people over years keep using that
descriptor in our wines like they kind
of taste saline in a way in a good way
and the aromatic crisp whites so now
we're embracing it as part of our local
too far because we can't really change
it so it is what it is yes
oh well I suppose in the long-term sense
of things we are basically growing
grapes at sea level and if there were a
sudden and dramatic rise in sea level we
would be out there uh-huh but I actually
try to worry about things that I can
have some modicum of control over and
that I have no control over so for the
time being I'm trying to run my business
and grow my grapes and I am at sea level
and if something catastrophic happens
and I don't know I guess I'll moved to
Colorado yes
last year we processed about a hundred
and twenty five tons of grapes and we
are pretty small in the scheme of things
and we make 10,000 15,000 cases of wine
a year a winery like gallo of Sonoma
which I'm sure all of you have heard of
I don't even know how many millions they
make but they make in the tens of
millions of cases a year and I was
recommending earlier there's a great
documentary film that everyone should
watch if you are interested in wine and
care about the politics and economics of
wine it's called mondo vino by Jonathan
Nasser and it's a three hour long
documentary it's won a lot of awards but
it really highlights the difference in
the wine world between the small
artisanal farm producers and the global
conglomerate what I call beverage
producers and it's worth looking at if
you're interested very thought-provoking
yes Carol hi
hmm yes the only animal product that
anyone would really I think feasibly use
in winemaking would be egg whites and
egg whites are used when let's say you
have red wines sitting in barrels and
red wines can be very very tannic and
sometimes you need an tannins are those
compounds that dry out your mouth and
sometimes you need to precipitate out
some of the tannins chemically so that
the wine is more is more pleasurable to
drink and there are a couple of ways to
do that one is you can put it through a
sophisticated filtration process two is
you could just let the wine settle an
age naturally in over time years those
tannins will settle out and you don't
have a problem or you can force the
tannins to precipitate by putting even
either whipped egg whites into the
barrels you just dump them in out of a
copper Bowl or you can use animal casein
products which would precipitate out the
whites so that would be the difference
between vegan wine and not vegan wine
and I don't know if I actually don't
even know any wineries that label their
wines as vegan because most of us just
assume that it that it is anyway because
very few people use those things but
sometimes you need to and in in Bordeaux
a lot of the tannic Reds they then use
egg whites as well so that'd be the only
way yes yes
yes isinglass thank you and what's that
made from okay yes so that wouldn't be
vegan thank you good question all of our
tanks are built on stilts and I'm saying
that in all seriousness all of the tanks
are probably five or six feet off the
ground and so when we harvest the fruit
and we bring it in for the first time we
sort it on a sorting table and it gets
lifted up into the tanks with a conveyor
belt so that's the stage when we use
electricity to get the grapes into the
tank and elevate them up and then
they're at a level where when we need to
empty the tank it's high enough that we
can do the work that way a lot of
wineries that are more sophisticated
than my own have elaborate gravity
systems where the winery is like five
stories tall under the ground
and the fruit will come in at ground
level and as it ages in this process it
kind of goes down if you ever have a
chance to travel the world and look at
wineries there's some spectacular
gravity-fed systems out there right
right we will pump juice of finished
wine when we need to get it to the
bottling tank for example but we'll
never pump anything that's solid like
skins we call it pumice grape pumice
seeds or skin and that way you won't
have the shearing action that I talked
about to release the bitter flavors but
in order to bottle it I mean if I had
him more money I would build my bottling
line underground underneath of the tank
so I could do everything with gravity
but to bottle we do have to pump it up
to the bottling machine yeah
okay here's the tears the dirty little
secret my degree is not in agronomy but
uh I was in the Honors Program and I had
the very fortunate and Dana Schumacher
here can is she can attest I was in the
interdisciplinary studies major so I
took all kinds of classes I took some
horticulture botany biology but I also
took a lot of philosophy and political
science classes so I I recommend to
people Pat's daughter I think did a
pretty similar thing when you when you
do a diverse degree and
interdisciplinary degree you can tailor
it for your life however you want and I
think the most important thing is that
you learn how to think critically and
whether that's about agronomy or
anything else if you take a wide array
of classes and you don't pigeonhole
yourself into one particular thing then
you know you can do anything you want
but yeah my degree is not in agronomy
actually I was determined not to be an
Aggie here at Iowa State because I grew
up on a farm in South Dakota so I was
like I'm gonna take philosophy classes
I'm gonna be like liberal and cool I'm
not gonna wear my cowboy boots and
anyway it worked out okay
yes
yeah
the quarks Oh Oh like a recycled cork
yes actually you can yeah right those
are great questions okay the first part
is that there are recycled corks but
they take old corks and chop them up
into a fine dust and then extrude them
with glue effectively to make a new cork
so they're not so great there's actually
been some research that shows that the
micro qualities of the glue in
artificial corks both chopped-up cork
and fake plastic works has adsorption
quality and actually can adsorb some of
the flavor and aroma molecules in the
wine so I guess the answer is no I still
think cork yeah yeah no we can't and you
know we get it across here on a boat
which is still a lower carbon footprint
than getting it from California on a
truck and there's a great study I can
refer you to about the carbon footprint
of wine and actually for a New Yorker
the carbon footprint of French and
German wines is about half as it is
California wine because it's so much
more efficient to get wine and heavy
goods across to New York by boat but
anyway I digress we collect corks in our
tasting room and then customers come in
and take them and use them for craft
projects but in terms of a local source
of barrel no although there are some oak
tree forests in Minnesota and Missouri
that are known for making good oak for
barrels the best oak still comes from
France and his hand coopered in France
using French oak and it's a
centuries-old tradition there and you
really can't get oak that's better than
French oak there's some Hungarian oak
but American oak is still you know at
the margins I would say you're welcome
and we have a reception where you can go
ask more question so let's give our
speaker another round of thank you back
