Spring Time in the Vineyard

Springtime is passing in a whir, as it is want to do. Today I read a chapter in Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about how eating seasonably means getting the good stuff while you can – I’ve been so busy doing that, that I haven’t written about it! So here is a slightly overdue look at what spring looks like in the vineyard.


Earlier this month the winemaker at Rusack Vineyards, John Falcone, was so kind as to meet with me and talk about what goes on in the vineyard and the cellar at this time of year. We first talked about the idea of eating seasonably and locally, and I realized that in some ways my interest in local food really sprang from my fascination with local wines. It’s the same model of a small-scale farm making quality products and selling them directly to the consumer. Culturally we tend to separate growing produce from growing wine – as Falcone put it, many vineyard owners get into the business with images of a glamorous, leisurely lifestyle in mind, but basically, he says, it’s farming.

Moreover, “wine is part of the table, to me. The two go together. The best wines need food to bring out their character.” (It seems inherently true, but that’s a surprisingly rare notion in this country; in one study cited in the Smithsonian’s Food & Think blog, only 46% of wine was consumed with a meal!)

But Falcone is well positioned to take a broader view of such things. One of the wonderful things about a relatively small winery like Rusack is that he personally takes the wine through every step of the way, from budding to bottling – in a larger operation, each worker may deal with only a few myopic aspects of the process. Other winemaking staff at Rusack include one assistant, Steven Gerbac, plus John’s wife, Helen Falcone, who keeps them organized. A few seasonal workers are brought on to help with harvest and bottling. Seasons in the vineyard and in the actual winemaking process run on different cycles, and Falcone oversees them both.

Rusack winemaker John Falcone

He starts each vintage by working closely with a vineyard management company, to ensure the grapes develop just the way he wants. That is, as much as nature will allow. The weekend before I visited, temperatures in Ballard Canyon dropped below freezing for several hours. The tender new growth was protected by spraying it with water; the ice counter intuitively protects the plants from getting any colder.

In a couple of months the vines will flesh out with lush green leaves and clusters, and the canyon will become one of the most beautiful places in the world to sip wine. Then in the fall, when the grapes have developed a complex flavor and just the right amount of sugar: Harvest, and the beginning of the winemaking season. Falcone and his crew are busy from September to early spring with the crushing, fermenting, barreling, racking, and tasting. Now that the cellar is somewhat calmer, he will spend the spring finalizing plans with the other vineyards they will buy grapes from this year, and working on developing sales contracts to get Rusack wine into restaurants throughout the state.

Which brings us back to food. Falcone cut his winemaking chops in Napa, just as that region was exploding into the gourmet mecca it has become. Similar to my own experience, Napa’s taste for fine local food followed its taste for wine. Falcone says he’s beginning to see that in the San Ynez area – which means we can look forward to more good stuff to come.