In Vermont, a win for hybrid grapes
Published 12:00 am Friday, January 8, 2016
- Caleb Kenna / New York Times News ServiceDeidre Heekin sniffs one of her wines at the farm and winery she runs with her husband Caleb Barber in Barnard, Vermont.
BARNARD, Vt. —
Wine is now made in all 50 states, though few suggest much of it is any good. But on a hillside just outside this small town in central Vermont, a little east of the Killington ski resort, Deirdre Heekin makes wines under the label La Garagista that are so soulful and delicious, they challenge crucial assumptions long taken for granted.
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Vermont may seem too cold for good wine. The climate is daunting, especially for vinifera grapes, the species that includes all the famous wine grapes of European origin known around the world. But Heekin grows hybrid grapes, crosses between vinifera grapes and those of hardier native American species, which can thrive.
For wine lovers conditioned to cherish the best expressions of pinot noir, riesling and other benchmark grapes, the notion of drinking wines made from hybrids with names like la crescent, frontenac and marquette feels like trading in your chauffeur-driven Bentley for a bus pass. Wines from hybrid grapes can often be dull and dreary. Rarely are the grapes grown or vinified with care, though they can occasionally surprise: Inniskillin’s vidal ice wine, for one, made on the Niagara Peninsula, is a sweet, luscious delight.
But what if hybrids were farmed as carefully and conscientiously as the finest vinifera grapes in a venerable vineyard? And what if those grapes were lovingly and naturally handled in the cellar, with no additions or subtractions, to bring out their best expressions?
Though it’s not exactly her intention, Heekin and her La Garagista wines demonstrate that wines made of hybrid grapes cannot only be deliciously satisfying but can also show a sense of place.
Heekin and her wines raise these questions as if they were fascinating stories, which is not surprising since she is also an accomplished writer. I loved her book “An Unlikely Vineyard: The Education of a Farmer and Her Quest for Terroir,” which was published last year and led me to seek our her wines. After I tried them, I knew I wanted to visit their source. I finally got there in August.
Unlike most modern wineries, which are devoted solely to the grape and the bottle, La Garagista is only one facet of the diverse working farm Heekin operates with her husband, Caleb Barber.
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Equipment is strewn about. A flock of chickens, presided over by a handsome rooster known as Mr. Darcy, scratches and pecks among the vegetable and flower gardens on raised wooden beds. On the other side of a small orchard of apple and pear trees is a greenhouse, a small vineyard and a garagelike structure used for winemaking.
As with everything they grow, they farm the vines biodynamically, a system that envisions the farm as a diverse organic ecosystem. Heekin finds the hybrid vines to be specifically appropriate to Vermont.
“They’re uniquely American, a melting pot,” she said. “They’re like regional varieties you would find in Italy that are really particular to the place they’re grown.”
Heekin’s wines are not intended to be complex works of art. They are direct and fresh, rooted in the notion that wine is food and belongs on the table, like bread or fruit.
The vineyard is just an acre on a southeast-facing slope for now, with another acre and a half to come, on soils of schist, clay and sandy silt threaded through with mica and quartz. It is supplemented by 7 more acres on two clay-and-limestone vineyards in West Addison and Vergennes, both overlooking Lake Champlain, which they farm but don’t own, and a scant three-quarters of an acre planted at the historical Shelburne Farms.
My favorites among her wines include the 2014 Ci Confonde, a lightly sparkling rosé made of frontenac gris that tastes of raspberries and lemons, with a touch of refreshing bitterness, and a 2013 Damejeanne, which is 90 percent marquette, a red grape, and 10 percent la crescent, a white. The result is bright, floral, spicy and vivacious. The wine was inspired by traditional Côte-Rôtie and old-style Chiantis, both reds blended with a bit of white.
“For a lot of reds, I’d rather blend in a bit of white than manipulate it in the cellar,” Heekin said.
I tasted quite a few different 2014s, which are still aging in glass demijohns in the cellar. I was especially impressed by the crescent grape, which makes tangy, tense whites that can differ markedly depending on where they are grown; by the marquette, which can be so vivid and elegant, and by a blend of three frontenacs, blanc, noir and gris, with St. Croix, a black grape, all from the home vineyard and fermented together to produce a juicy, savory, lively wine.
Heekin is a confident winemaker whose instincts have been encouraged by mentors like Bruno De Conciliis of Campania, Italy, who urged her to stick to the old ways, and Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyard, from whom she learned the importance of inspiration. She and her husband collaborate closely on their enterprises without, given their dance backgrounds, stepping on each other’s toes. Yet their division of labor is clear.
“Caleb’s the cook and I’m the wine, even though he’s integral to the whole operation,” she said.
Barber agreed. “One person has to make the decisions about the wine,” he said. “I can be the counterbalance.”
The biggest problem with Heekin’s wine is that she makes so little, about 3,000 bottles a year, although she foresees eventually expanding to 24,000. Right now, they are mostly available in New York, Boston and Vermont (of course), with California, Montreal and London to be added this fall.
Quantity may be a result of their Vermont terroir, where vines are plagued by Japanese beetles, mites and black rot, among other maladies, all of which are treated homeopathically, according to the precepts of biodynamics.
The climate intrudes, too. Last June, there was more than 9 inches of rain, a record, which is better for apples than for grapes.
“We probably won’t make a lot of wine this year, but we’ll have a great cider harvest,” Barber said. “That’s why you have diversity.”