Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine (2 page)

On the quiet morning in mid-September 2010, as the Grand Monsieur walked through the vines of Romanée-St.-Vivant and looked to the sky, he searched for clues that would help him determine when to begin another year’s
vendange
.

Off and on, for centuries, ruling aristocrats and government officials had set the date for the start of the harvest for all of Burgundy. Typically, and most unfairly, this
ban de vendange
corresponded with the wishes of the wealthiest owners of the finest vineyards, which produced the highest quality grapes. In theory, the policy of a unified harvest period made sense, as the harvest took over the entire region. Horse-drawn wagons filled with grapes on their way to the wineries clogged the rural roads and tight city streets. Businesses closed, willingly or otherwise, to allow friends and family of vignerons to pick and sort. But in the way that mattered most, for bureaucrats to choose when the harvest would begin for all was inherently flawed policy.

Only the vigneron who tends his vines knows when his berries are ready. Only the vine farmer himself knows that the grapes growing in one section of his vineyard, say, where there tends to be more exposure to sunlight and wind, will mature faster than the berries in another section of that same parcel. An east-facing slope of vines likely gets more of the hot midday sun. And so on.

Then there’s the myriad farming techniques. Each Burgundian grower has his own way of doing things—a hybrid of science and metaphysical voodoo, informed by tradition and faith, and, of course, viticulture. So many nuances. In the end, no one understands the contours of a parcel of vines better than its vigneron. The way Mark Twain’s riverboat captains knew the secret shoals of the Mississippi. The way a husband understands the curves and mysteries of his beloved’s form.

France is relatively small country, eight thousand square miles smaller than the geometrically similar state of Texas. The Burgundy region, the mostly pastoral countryside to the southeast of Paris and comprising four “departments”—the Yonne, Nièvre, Saône-et-Loire, and the Côte d’Or—represents only about one-twentieth of the country. The roughly forty-mile-long by three-mile-wide corridor of Côte d’Or wine country, which stretches from the city of Dijon to just south of the city of Beaune, is little more than a wrinkle in the universe.

Yet within that wrinkle, the temperature and the terrain vary dramatically. The Côte d’Or is divided into two regions: Vineyards in the south belong to the Côte de Beaune, and the vineyards in the north are in the Côte de Nuits, which at the time was where all but one parcel of Monsieur de Villaine’s vines grew. Although the two
côtes
(literally, slopes) are in such intimate proximity, they may as well be on different planets when it comes to late summer weather. So the officials in Beaune ultimately
surrendered to the reality that the decision of when to harvest should rest where it does now, with the vignerons themselves.

When Monsieur de Villaine walked his vines he would sometimes picture the prehistoric ocean that covered this part of France. Visions of ancient fish floated like sunspots before his eyes. He watched the creatures swim, then, as the earth’s crust moved apart and came together, pushing up mountains and cracking off faces of cliff—as the ocean receded—he watched as the sea creatures fossilized, atomized, sprinkled down, and vanished into the soil. He saw the holy ghosts enter the wild land—the monks in their pointed hoods cutting away brush, raking the earth, then kneeling and putting the earth in their mouths, and then marrying their vines to the soil.

Monsieur de Villaine sensed the energy in the veins of the earth around him, an energy that would infuse the Burgundy wines that King Charlemagne had so very long ago declared worthy to be consecrated the blood of Christ. The Grand Monsieur imagined the princely namesake of his Domaine pacing these vines, ensuring his parcels were not too densely planted, insisting that quality never be compromised in favor of quantity. Of course, too, the Grand Monsieur would see himself as a boy in these vines, disinterested and trailing behind his own father and grandfather.

Like virtually all Burgundians, the de Villaines were Catholic. The Grand Monsieur had spent a fair amount of his life in churches. He likened the many thousands of vineyards of Burgundy to the shards of a stained glass window. Thousands upon thousands of parcels divided, seemingly without rhyme or reason, and within those parcels, a range of asymmetrical
climats
that were at once unto themselves and yet exquisitely pieced together into a meticulously engineered, breathtaking whole.

So far, the growing season of 2010 had brought much rain and humidity. Which could mean disaster for the Pinot Noir. “Pinots” are so named because the clusters of this grape varietal resemble a pinecone. Just as the structure of a pinecone is as dense as it is delicate, the Pinot grapes grow in tight bunches that leave little room for the flow of air between the berries. Under the shade of the canopies of leaves, within the tight cone-shaped clusters of 2010, because of the humidity, moisture had set in.

If Monsieur de Villaine timed his harvest too late, rot and mildew might eat away the grape skins. The botrytis fungus might render the grapes so many white, dusty cadavers that would turn to dust during picking. It was bittersweet irony that as the berries matured to peak ripeness and sugar levels, just when they would have the best to offer, they were simultaneously decaying, soon fit only to be left on the vine, to fall off and die into the soil.

At this stage of his life this viticultural reality was something Monsieur de Villaine understood quite well. Many who knew him, or thought they knew him, whispered that he was beginning to appear frail and often seemed fatigued; that his vision and instincts were not quite as sharp as they had been. There was the story circulating in the vineyards that driving home one evening he had struck a young girl on a bicycle. It was nothing serious. And of course, according to the talk, the Grand Monsieur felt terrible and had visited the young girl in the hospital. In short, people had begun to wonder how many vintages Monsieur de Villaine had left in him.

He was aware of the talk. He pretended not to hear it or care,
but he did care. Such whispers raised the question of whether he was leaving himself too long on the vine.

Truth be told, there were times when he thought of the talk and it caused him to doubt himself. More often than not, when he considered the gossip it emboldened him. He would shrug and blow the air from his cheeks—as the French like to do—and he would tell himself that he still had much of his best to give.

Besides
, he thought,
what was the alternative for the Domaine?
Whenever the question of his successor crept into his head he told himself he had more pressing matters to resolve, like now, the decision of when to harvest. He persuaded himself to believe that on the matter of his retirement and his heir apparent, the longer he waited the better.

The soft September breezes that rustled the waist-high leaves surrounding him were welcome. The winds dried the moisture, combated the fungi, and prolonged those last critical days of ripening, enabling the grapes to reach maximum sugar level and balance; giving them just that much more time to swell on the vine like so many sweet supernovas, which in turn, so went the hope, would infuse the wine with marvelous flavor.

In that September morning’s air, though, Monsieur de Villaine sensed the sort of stealthy humid heat that he had come to learn often foreshadowed violent rainstorms, perhaps even hail. This raised more questions that required immediate consideration: Were storms imminent? At what pace were the humidity and rain spreading rot on his fruit? Could he give his berries more time on the vines or did he need have his vineyard manager, Nicolas Jacob, call in the pickers?

The Grand Monsieur wiped his brow with his handkerchief.
The sound of the rustling leaves reminded him of the soft winds that blow across the tiny whitecaps on his favorite fly-fishing spot, the Loue River, to the east, in the Jura region. If he closed his eyes Monsieur de Villaine could see himself there, standing in the current with his rod, with the music of the birds and the wind and water. He cast his line, his hope, forward. A flick of the wrist and he watched his line soar and then dance down onto the water’s surface of brisk currents. He would either catch a prize or, just like that, his line would float back to him, giving him the chance to cast again. In the fly-fishing stream there was no such thing as failure, no family shareholders or critics to disappoint. No pressure.

This was not the case standing in a vineyard contemplating a harvest. Monsieur de Villaine would tell you that every growing season affords the chance for new beginnings, another opportunity to conjure forth from nature and then vinify and bottle some new interpretation of the
terroir
.

Terroir
meaning the sum of the natural characteristics unique to each parcel or
climat
of vines: the amount of sunlight and rain an area receives, the pitch and composition of its earth, and, of course, the vines. Roots pull the energy from the earth below, while the leaves harness heaven’s sun and draw the rising sap. All of this together, the essence of
terroir
, the very essence of Burgundian winemaking. Although the French Impressionists did not think in such terms, what their very best paintings capture is the magic of
terroir
.

This idea that each vineyard, and then even each
climat
within each vineyard, is its own spiritually charged ecosystem wherein everything is connected in unique alchemy—the grapes merely a manifestation, a by-product of this divine collaboration—is a philosophy that skeptical outsiders have oft dismissed as nothing
more than a marketing ploy or misguided pretentious hooey of the French. For the Grand Monsieur the mysterious power of
terroir
was as real as the Savior’s death and Easter rising.

In every harvest there was the chance, too, for the vigneron to be born anew, to catch a prize, to achieve poetry and forget, if only for a short time, past missteps, lost loves. Another opportunity to produce a wine more interesting, more pure, than the previous vintage. A chance, if necessary then, for the vigneron to achieve… validation, redemption, to rise again, or, perhaps, bottle what might be his final mark.

There was also, of course, the possibility of crushing disappointment, to fall short of fully harnessing the potential God had provided. Like those vintages the Grand Monsieur had bottled in the 1970s, when he was just starting. Many of those wines were technically correct—“drinkable,” as the French say when they are being polite about wine that is subpar—but some were remarkably unremarkable.

In theory, Burgundian winemaking is very simple. The vigneron’s greatest challenge is to do as little as possible, to get out of the way of the metaphysical, leaving the
terroir
to nurture and birth the fruit. The vigneron is merely akin to the midwife who facilitates the delivery.

Then comes the pressing of the fruit, where, again, the goal is to meddle as little as possible. Yet the Burgundian process done right must be synchronized to the rhythms of the moon and relies on the soul of the vigneron. At once it is all so simple, and yet maddeningly unpredictable and complex. Like love. Like poetry. Like philosophy.