Writing About Wine and Culture

Enacting the mantra of Los Poblanos, "Rooted in History; Planting Seeds for the Future." Here are some scenes from Los Poblanos Inn and our guest lecture with Dylan Storment, Wine & Spirits Director of Campo Restaurant.  The term "poblano" derived from the Spanish verb "poblar" to populate roughly translates as la gente, la comunidad, the people, the folks. Spending a day with us at the University of New Mexico, Dylan vividly reflected the spirit of Los Poblanos by sharing time, building new connections, and welcoming our students to enjoy and to learn more about the history of wine and the gifts of New Mexico.

Our class wishes to extend a special thank you to Dylan Storment, (soulful Sommelier) and Wine & Spirits Director at Los Poblanos Inn who joined our class on Thursday, February 21, 2019 to deliver a guest lecture on wine literacy. Dylan gave special focus to the intricacies of grape fermentation and the excitement of exploring international wine cultures. Some of his newest favorites hail from the Canary Islands (off the coast of Spain & Africa), Baja California, and Mexico! Sharing lunch with Dylan at Namaste Indian and Nepalese Restaurant near the campus before his guest lecture at the University of New Mexico. We took a walking tour of the UNM campus together with a visit to the Biology Greenhouse to check on our incubating vines.  Four of our twelve newly planted rootstock vines are budding their first leaves. Los Poblanos Inn in the Los Ranchos Village of Albuquerque, New Mexico takes pride in its eco-friendl...

There is a place where everyone knows your name, and it is called the Black Range Vineyard Winery in Hillsboro, New Mexico where Nicki & Brian Odell welcome all who cross their adobe threshold in the heart of this 1800s era mining village with a glass of locally produced wines, homemade snacks, and a few New Mexico microbrewery beverages.              

From the casual toast "s alud !" to celebrate a home cooked meal with friends to the more formal ceremonies and milestone rituals like weddings, baptisms, communion, funerals, wakes, and other liturgies throughout history since the pouring of libations to the gods and goddesses of Greco-Roman antiquity, the semiotics (symbol systems) of wine signals the formation and reaffirmation of kinship ties, friendship, and community in many ways.

We watched the rain catchment system dripping a steady drizzle into the barrels at the Pollinator Garden today and made our Spring Cleaning Garden Task List for the next few weeks: prune; weed out dead plants; start new wild flowers and herbs in the Greenhouse; paint the pallets; and find space to add three new vines to the already-existing trellis. We decided the trellis needed a "comb over" with a few fresh new strands to balance the lone Thompson Seedless vine already growing by itself at the Pollinator Garden. We will be assigning our Lobo Garden Working Groups and Garden Tasks next week to implement our class Spring Cleaning action plans.    

Our class took a walking tour through the rain on Valentine's Day to visit the Lobo Gardens around campus and to find a good place to transplant our newly sprouting vines when spring finally comes to New Mexico. 

Writing, like the cultivation of vines and production of wine, is always a story about transformation. The fermentation process that gives us wine from grapes (the alchemy going on in a bottle of wine as it matures over time) offers us some powerful metaphors about beauty and mystery. Is there a wine goddess or god in every bottle? Is there some kind of "cellar elf" or "wine ferry" hovering over every winery? Greek myth-makers conjured up the figure of Dionysis. The Romans gave us Bacchus. I guess we might call these gods of wine the Greco-Roman Santa Claus. Like language itself, wine is not a static thing. Wine (and language) are living things. The transformative features of wine (like language) give it flavor, complexity, and character. There is magic in the bottle.  If it's not changing, it's not wine!

Dr. Gill Giese notes how purity myths influence attitudes about wine: In the attached photo of a couple bottles of rose wine at a local grocery store.  Notice the deposit at the bottom of the bottles on the right. The deposits are potassium-bitartrate salts ("crystals") that have settled out after bottling. This indicates that the wine was not 'cold stabilized' in the winery. The reason for this is the fact that tartaric acid is very soluble in wine but its mono-salt, potassium -bitartrate is less soluble and precipitates during processing due to the presence of alcohol. It is less soluble in wine versus water and this temperature dependent. Subjecting the wine to near freezing temperatures will induce the tartrates to fall out of solution. These precipitates are also known as "cream of tartar".  This stabilization should have been accomplished in the winery by lowering the wine temperature to slightly above freezing and holding there for abo...

In the ecology of writing as with gardening and vine plating, it's all about relationship. 

Our Lobo Gardens class at the UNM Biology Greenhouse. Planting together and writing together engages all the elements of creative process. Writing, like growing vines, represents a complex ecology of relationships. 

       

One week after the revelry of planting root stocks, our class visited the UNM Greenhouse on Thursday, January 31 to inspect the incubating vines.  We were thrilled to find our vines showing signs of new life with tiny sprouts of white fuzz.    

Dr. Gill Giese, NMSU Extension Viticulture Specialist, of  the Los Lunas Agricultural Science Center, graciously  joined our class on Thursday, January 24th at the University of New Mexico Biology Greenhouse to help us plant grape root stock.  After a brief lecture on planting, grafting, and pruning, we got our hands dirty planting a dozen vines including Tempranillo, Petit Verdot, and Malvasia varietals proven to thrive in New Mexico.