Harvesting Dreams

«BACK I take a sip and look around. Good weather, to say nothing of good wine, help bring out the masses. All day volunteers come and go: young farmy types, middle-aged couples with kids and dogs, friends dropping by just to say hi; a whole cross-section of Missoula. In France this day is called vendage; in Italy, vendémmia. Here in the U.S. it’s simply “The crush.”

There is another term I have been hearing, terroir, loosely translated from the French to mean “the somewhereness” of a wine. Looking out over my glass, the somewhereness of this vintage would have to include the 1,000 feet of rubble and glacial outwash the winery is built on, also the multiple risings and fallings of glacial Lake Missoula that once covered the property, the scars of which are visible on the sides of Mount Jumbo to the east. The land itself slopes gently to the south, decanting the rows of vines as if to spill them into the Clark Fork River far below. To the north the near shoulders of the Rattlesnake Wilderness Area can be seen rubbing 6,000 feet into the sky, while the low hills to the west, treeless and tawny in their October furze, provide long hours of afternoon light that the grapes drink and drink and drink again.

Andy comes up from the vineyard and when I ask what varieties of grapes he grows, their names roll off his tongue: Frontenac, Maréchal, Foch, Leon Millot, St. Croix, St. Pepin. All cold-hardy varieties, he explains, vines and roots he knows can withstand Montana winters.

This day is unseasonably warm. The sun beats down. Passing a table lined with his own products Andy instead pumps twice on a keg from the local brewpub, The Kettle House, and fills a red plastic cup with Indian Pale Ale. “What winemakers drink on harvest,” he jokes, and his Adam’s apple bobs.

Besides fat Cat White and Farm Dog Red (a blend of all four of their dark grapes), Rattlesnake Creek Vineyard puts out the lovely Moonlight Pinot Noir, from grapes grown in Oregon, and Blind Curve Sauvignon Blanc, made from California grapes. With the grapes grown on premise Andy will also attempt a Beaujolais-style wine this year (possibly to be called Range Rider Red in honor of montana’s ranchers and farmers) as well as an ice wine. For the great many thankful customers, Rattlesnake Creek Vineyard also produces the excellent Flathead Cherry Dry, a table wine made only from cherries and described as a good Pint Noir with just a hint of cherry. Each year during the height of summer cherries are trucked down Highway 93 from Elise Rousseau and Al Silva’s organic cherry farm on Finley Point in the Flathead Valley, passing between the 1,500 lavender plants blooming along both sides of the winery driveway at the end of their journey.

Not too long ago a bottle of Flathead Cherry Dry found its way to Mendocino County, Calif., and into the glass of John Parducci. Parducci is a legendary winemaker and connoisseur, an icon in the wine world. That evening—over venison steaks, baked potatoes and salad—reports have it that Parducci swirled the mystery vintage, watched its glycerin legs crawl down the glass, inhaled deeply, and tasted. “That’s pretty darn good wine,” he said. Only then did he learn it was from Missoula.

Casey ouis grins wryly at the retelling of this story. It is not his job to keep track of the many compliments the winery is collecting. His job is to make good wine. Casey is the vineyard manager and just now arrives with another load of grapes, 28 yellow and white plastic totes stacked in the bucket of a John Deere. Casey wears wide Ray Ban sunglasses, a gray wool cap in the fashion of a French peasant and a gray T-shirt with FARMY written across it in bold black letters. We are in the back room, four 500-gallon stainless steel tanks squatting rocket-like against the side wall, another half-dozen smaller vessel also waiting to receive the grapes. Because these grapes will be made into a Beaujolais-style they go straight into the tanks, stems and all, to undergo a fermentation process called “carbonic maceration.” Other varieties, to make other wines, are pressed outside, first passed through a horizontal auger to de-stem them, then churned into a large drum-like machine that is essentially the modern equivalent of bare feet.

”The number one question we get asked as if we do a stomp,” laughs Andy who is standing nearby.

Stomp or no stomp(the answer is no stomp), Andy passes a hand through his brush cut hair, looks at the ground and admits, “It’s kind of a romantic notion, I’ve got to tell you.” His head comes up, the eyes. “You know, having a vineyard and winery. But some of that luster and romance fades away a little bit because it’s really hard work. And there’s a lot of risk.”

Most of the risk comes in the form of Mother Nature, notorious for her bipolar mood swings, and so Andy studied with U.S. Davis’ oenological department, buffing up on his chemistry. He also visited wineries and vineyards in Minnesota and Wisconsin and stayed with the venerable 91-year-old Elmer Swenson, father of North Country grapes. In fact, the best advice Andy ever got came from Swenson, guru of cold weather grape growing in North America. “Make wine,” old man Swenson told him simple, “And have fun.”

This year the harvest goes on for three Indian summer days—blessed days. In the morning the sky is a wine-stained rose and when the day is done, a bourbon twilight falls. On the second evening, after the harvest, a group of the most hardy sits or stands around the counter in Andy and Connie’s kitchen. Someone plays an acoustic guitar. Pizza is ordered in. In the back room 3,700 poounds of Frontenac grapes sits fermenting. Three hundred and ten gallons of St. Pepin and 225 gallons of Maréchal Foch grapes are stacked up outside in bins along the north wall and more hang on the vines, waiting for morning. Everfone is happy, in a good mood. Not one person, to me knowledge, comments on the nearly 1,300 cases of wine stacked up in the living room behind us, or says that a guest, waking in their comfortable double bed tomorrow morning will be greeted with the sight of all that wine not  six feet away.

That evening, as the festivities wind down, my wife and I take our leave. Saturn hangs low in the east. In the driveway we pass a magnificent whitetail buck bedded down 20 feet away. He doesn’t even move, just stays there, blinking, his eyes, a hallucination of sorts, as if dreamed there, as if he too was in disbelief looking at those four-and-a-half acres of grapevines spread out and lined up under the Montana sky.  —Written by Charles Finn