Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine (16 page)

Sure, Wildman said when Henri de Villaine and his partner, Monsieur Henri Leroy, had asked him if Wildman & Sons might have some work in the States for Aubert. The way Henri and Henri had put it to Wildman, Aubert needed some time away and would be coming to America; he wasn’t sure if a life in wine was right for him, they told Wildman, but he was curious.

The colonel arranged for Aubert to spend a few weeks working with his offices in New York. Wildman took Aubert under his arm and showed him how the wine business worked inside:
who was who, whom to trust and whom to avoid, the necessary taxes and tariffs, the unnecessary markups. He gave Aubert a master’s class in the very network of importing, exporting, and distribution of wines that Wildman and Schoonmaker in effect had created. Not only that, Wildman arranged for Benoist to host and employ Aubert at Almaden, and facilitated meetings for Aubert with a couple of California’s most influential figures in wine.

The morning after he arrived at Almaden, Aubert got on with the rest of his American adventure. Benoist had made a guesthouse available to Aubert. It was one of seven Benoist had constructed on the estate. All of them were well-appointed and filled with Napoleons. A handful of the Generals clad in various military ensembles hung around as Aubert dressed the part of a vigneron: a simple plaid shirt, khakis, and boots. He put on his thick-framed black eyeglasses. His dark brown hair was in a military-style buzz cut. He could have passed for an American GI home on leave. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and headed outside to begin a day with a living legend.

Aubert would describe the start of his first day in California wine country in the
La Revue du Vin de France
like the romantic poet he was:

Professor Albert J. Winkler was the foremost viticulture expert in California, which essentially made him the foremost viticulture expert in the world. A native of Texas, Winkler earned a PhD in horticulture at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1921. He spent the rest of his life working as a specialist in viticulture and winemaking. He was responsible for a number of industry-altering studies and breakthroughs.

In the late 1920s, Winkler developed a sulfur dioxide gassing process that made it possible to ship grapes to the East Coast. In the 1930s, he founded the department of viticulture at the University of California, Davis, where he would be a faculty member for four decades.

One of the first projects he undertook there was to identify
which parts of California were best for growing grapes based upon his “heat summation method”—an extensive analysis of the average temperature in an area and its impact on fruit ripening. In what became known as the “Winkler Scale,” he determined there were five “zones,” I through V, with I being the best (coolest) and the most comparable to Burgundy’s Côte d’Or. Only two years before Aubert arrived in California, in 1962 Winkler published the book
General Viticulture
, which immediately became a definitive guide for winegrowers. He served as a consultant for Almaden.

When Aubert approached the professor, he was in his sixties, thin, lean—in fact, very much like a vine himself, Aubert thought. Winkler wore an olive-colored shirt, khakis, and a wide-brimmed olive-colored hat cocked just so, giving Winkler more the look of a Texas cowboy than a viticulturist.

They climbed in an old jeep, similar to the ones that had zipped around the bases of France. Winkler shifted the thing into drive and darted off into the vines. For hours they bounced through the vineyards first planted by Theé and Lefranc, stopping here and there when Aubert noted the pronounced differences between the viticulture of France and California.

Right away, Aubert questioned the distance between the vines. There was as much as six to nine feet between each. In Burgundy it is much less. Burgundians believe that some density of planting is good for the vines because it forces them to compete for nutrients; the more a vine struggles, so goes the cliché in Burgundy, the better the vine and the wine. In the Côte d’Or, a vineyard is bit like an arena of horticultural Darwinism (which is an undercurrent of the massal selection versus clonal debate). Aubert’s question was the question of a novice, but that’s precisely what he was.

Winkler stopped the jeep and the two men got out for a closer inspection of the vines. While they kicked at the dirt and talked, a filthy flatbed truck rumbled past, bouncing over the dirt, kicking up dust. The bed of the truck was fenced in with walls of wooden slats. Mexican workers were hanging on to the exterior of the slats. Aubert and Winker stopped talking for a moment to let it go by. Aubert was amazed that with all the bouncing none of Mexicans’ hats or none of the Mexicans themselves went flying from the truck.

Winkler explained that while France has a Mediterranean climate that is often very wet, California is a desert. California vine growers had tried planting at the same density as Burgundy’s vignerons, but due to the lack of water and nutrients, the vines ended up killing each other. Winkler pointed out that despite the Burgundy–Northern California differences in planting density, the volume of production per acre was the same. While there were fewer vines per acre in California, each vine produced more quality fruit.

In Burgundy, while there were more vines per acre, each vine, due to its struggle, produced less useable high-quality fruit.

They stopped at a stretch of parcels “that were like an undulating sea.” The previous year, the professor explained, this was all prairie; now it was half Pinot Noir, half Cabernet, and the vines would be harvested in about three years’ time. They were planted as cuttings, without being grafted to a stock. Aubert asked about the strategy of planting two different varietals in the same parcel. Such a thing in Burgundy would be sacrilege.

Ever since the medieval monks cleared away the brush, married the Pinot to the ostensibly inhospitable landscape, and birthed excellent wines, no one questioned that planting Pinot and only Pinot in the Côte d’Or was best according to God and
nature. Considering vulnerable cuttings were planted, Aubert also asked Winkler about phylloxera.

The answer to the phylloxera question was easy: San Benito County had never been troubled by the pest. Vinegrowers there hadn’t grafted in more than ten years. As far as mixing varietals in the same plot, Winkler joked that every French vine grower he’d ever talked to asked the same question.

We have different standards than you do in Burgundy, he said.

Citing his breakdown of the five regions, the professor said that in Northern California varietals ought to be matched to the climate, whereas in Burgundy it was all about
terroir
. Zones I and II, for example, are good for Pinot and Cabernet, while Zone V, where Almaden had vines in Paicines, were best for dessert wines like the golden Muscats. (The fact that the Muscat varietals are so hearty, able to grow in even the most dry regions, explains why they are the oldest grape in the world.)

Aubert was stunned there could be such uniformity of temperature within each region. Winkler assured him the climate was incredibly consistent. In fact, he said, we constantly monitor it.

Winkler walked Aubert to a phone-booth-like shelter; inside he gestured to a thermometer that recorded the temperature.

Winkler explained that his team recorded the temperatures weekly and the numbers confirmed that “all of this valley is Zone I and that we were right to just plant fine grape varietals, like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Those grapes ask for a slow maturation, a late harvest. So Zone I, the coldest or rather the less warm, is well suited for them. In Zone V, we harvest in late August. Sometimes we’ll harvest in November. Napa Valley, the old wine coast, is between Zones II and III; Cabernet is definitely successful
there, Pinot Noir has much more difficulties. This valley of the Paicines is coolest in California; it’s hotter in San Francisco, which is on the ocean, due to the altitude.”

Aubert could not believe that there was no concept of
terroir
in California.

Winkler reached up and scratched the front of his head, pushing his hat up as he did so, and said, “Here we have around ten valleys that have the climate and soil that allow the culture of fine grapes. None of them are really different from the others except for the climate. As for the soil, within each valley it can’t be considered so particular or unique that it gives a specific character to the wine that it produces. Of course, the combination grape-soil-climate does make the wine different. The Pinot Noir from Paicines gives maybe a better wine than other ones on other hills, but, in all the valleys classified I and II regions, the Pinot Noir does well.”

Aubert tried one last time.

“You mean,” he said, “there will never be any kind of specific, scientific connection between a particular grape and the soil?”

“First,” Winkler answered, “we have to find out, get our data, get that experience, the proof that it’s really clear that in a certain vineyard, a grape gives a better wine than another grape. The Cabernet, according to the expert-critics, is totally successful in California, whereas the Pinot Noir is still looking for its right land. Maybe we found it here, at Paicines.… Within years, with experience, and research, we will know that maybe the land here will give a better Pinot Noir than the other varietals. If so, we’ll set up the vineyard accordingly.”

On their way back to the jeep, Aubert was startled when a flock of birds launched from the vines, screeching around him so close he swore he felt wings flutter against him.

“One of the pests we do have to contend with,” Winkler said.

Just before he climbed into the jeep, Aubert kicked at the soil. It was covered in splinters of stone that reminded him of Burgundy.

Louis Benoist did take it upon himself to set up Aubert on a blind date with a young lady he thought was compatible with the Frenchman. Benoist even planned the date. A baseball game. Take a pretty American girl to America’s pastime, have some peanuts and Cracker Jack, and who knew, Benoist thought, maybe that night Aubert might not come back.

Aubert would never be able to say for sure where exactly the game was played or which teams played. “Play,” as far as Aubert was concerned, was a bit of an overstatement. A bunch of guys standing around for two hours, all of them each wearing a big leather glove on one hand, waiting for the guy holding the stick and the guy throwing the ball to make something happen.

Aubert couldn’t understand any of it and quickly determined he didn’t want to. The girl was a daughter of friends of the Benoists. She didn’t seem to know much about this baseball business herself, nor seem to care. She was nice enough, but shy. She didn’t say much. The men who held the stick didn’t do much, so not much of anything happened. Aubert would remember that night as one of the most boring of his life.