[Noozhawk’s note: In early February, Will Henry told Noozhawk that he was about to plant the first estate vineyard for Lumen Wines, the label he co-owns and produces with Lane Tanner, and we jumped at the chance to document the process from Day One. Following is the second article in a series about the life of a new vineyard by Noozhawk contributing writer Laurie Jervis and photographer Len Wood. Click here for the first article.]
Designing and carrying out a new project gobbles up time, and a new vineyard is definitely a project.
Will Henry — owner with his wife, Kali Kopley, of Pico at the Los Alamos General Store and co-owner with Lane Tanner of Lumen Wines — understands the longs hours demanded of business owners.
Kopley founded Uncorked, Petra Restaurant & Wine Bar and Soupa, all in North Lake Tahoe, and manages them with an operating partner, Henry told me.
A vineyard is a business: It requires conception, design, construction (an irrigation system, the trellis and support) and the planting and care of the grapevines.
Lumen Wines’ first estate vineyard will soon cover five acres on the 11-acre hilltop property off East Clark Avenue that Henry and Kopley purchased in 2018. The project has been years in the planning and was a dream of Henry’s late father, businessman Warner Henry, who died last August at age 82.
Henry and Kopley named their vineyard Warner Henry to honor his legacy.
When we met Will Henry at the site on April 12, the temperature was 58 degrees and the winds blustery at about 15 mph.
“This spring is windier than the past couple of years, for sure,” he said.
Indeed, this spring has been remarkably windy, much to the bane of those with allergies. In a vineyard, however, excessive wind does not negatively affect vines until “shatter,” which can occur later in the growing season.
Shatter occurs when a grape cluster fails to fully form during its infancy. The causes: The flowers were not pollinated, and never developed into berries, or the berries fell off right after they formed. This leads to what is known as poor fruit set.
Henry opted to run the vine rows at Warner Henry from north to south — the optimal direction for a vineyard — as the vines get both morning and afternoon sunlight.
The vineyard will be farmed organically, Henry said, meaning no herbicides will be applied to kill weeds; he may instead utilize sheep to graze down the weeds.
He described early April as a “juggling act” between the installation of the vineyard irrigation and trellis systems. Ideally, laying of irrigation lines comes first, and trellising second. Sometimes, they need to overlap.
When the young vines go into the ground in early May, they will be spaced three feet apart, he said. The width between each row of vines will be eight feet, so the grid will be an 8-by-3-foot row. The average spacing is a 5-by-7-foot row, he said.
“We’ll be a little unconventional with tighter space between vines, but we’ll have a wider row” that can accommodate a tractor, which will provide more choice between hand and machine vine maintenance and harvesting, Henry explained.
He likens his estate site to the reputation earned by a small plot of land in the famed Romanée-Conti region of Burgundy, France.
Any “postage stamp of a vineyard” could produce world-class wines simply because of the terroir of the region.
“You place your bet in the most logical way you can, and then it’s luck,” Henry noted.
Given his property’s temperate climate, Henry told me that he would not install an irrigation-linked frost-protection sprinkler system, but instead opt for a “blower,” which blasts a layer of heated air up over the vines.
“We’re also in a good spot because we’re on a hilltop and don’t have low spots, where cool air tends to pool and cause damage,” he said.
The soil on the property resembles and feels like confectioners’ sugar. It’s soft and fluffy, and very powdery. It’s a given that the soil here will drive the high quality of future grapes.
When Kopley and Henry purchased this site in 2018, it came with a permitted well, even though the land had never been farmed. Rather than let the permit expire and try to reapply, the couple had a well drilled 900 feet down through “all sand until the very bottom, when the soil turned to gravel,” Henry said.
When we returned to the property for a second visit on April 22, the irrigation system’s underground lines and hoses were in place, and workers were forcing steel end posts into the soil. These posts — angled in the ground at both ends of every row — anchor the trellis system and provide tension for the wires that support the growing vines.
Three men teamed up on the task.
One sat at the controls of the machine, which moved on tracks instead of tires for better support in the sand; another held the heavy post in place for the machine’s auger; and about 80 feet down the vine row, a third man used hand signals to direct his colleague at the controls to designate pressure slightly left or right so that the post was exactly in line with the mapped row.
His subtle movements reminded me of an airport ramp agent directing a jet to park at its passenger terminal.
That day, Kopley told me, was the crew’s sixth straight day of anchoring the end posts.
The pinot noir grape vines, when they arrive late next week, will hail from two California nurseries: Novavine in Santa Rosa, and Wonderful in the Kern County community of Wasco, Henry said.
Coming next month: Planting the vines.
— Laurie Jervis is a Noozhawk columnist. She tweets at @lauriejervis and can be reached via winecountrywriter@gmail.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are her own.