Vineyards recently re-planted as field blends

[jdaw1]

Andy Velebil has commented on the ‘recent’ spread of block planting.

But in the 1980's there was a whole lot of "B" side Port companies. This was the dark days of the Port industry. A lot of consolidation, large corporations buying Port companies and running them into the ground, technological changes, large scale replanting and a move toward block planting, etc.

Do we know of recent instances of vineyards re-planted as field blends? And were those field blends just the fashionable five, or were they old-style proper field blends of many many varieties?

[Andy Velebil]

Andy Velebil has commented on the ‘recent’ spread of block planting.

But in the 1980's there was a whole lot of "B" side Port companies. This was the dark days of the Port industry. A lot of consolidation, large corporations buying Port companies and running them into the ground, technological changes, large scale replanting and a move toward block planting, etc.

Do we know of recent instances of vineyards re-planted as field blends? And were those field blends just the fashionable five, or were they old-style proper field blends of many many varieties?

My understanding is some producers are going back to sort-of field blends. That is, instead of tossing whatever they had on hand they are doing mixed micro-blocks of several known grapes varieties. By back to I don't mean wholesale ripping out and replanting everything. Basically, instead of making everything true block planting and true old-style field blends they've come up with a hybrid of the two.

[jdaw1]

some producers

Are there any names that may be revealed?

[Andy Velebil]

Not my place to do so, sorry.


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[jdaw1]

Found one.

Pintas, like many vineyards in Portugal, is a field blend which means even its winemakers cannot be sure of the precise blend of grapes in the final wine. Sandra said this is what she believes makes the region so unique. So confident are the couple in the centuries old method that while many new plantations are being planted by single variety, Sandra and Jorge are set to replant a field blend at their nearby Quinta da Manoella.

Edit: and another.

But concerns are growing that, in this brave new world of regulated, clonally selected Touriga Nacional, this elusive Douro character may be lost. The answer? Throw out the rule book and mimic the past by replanting mixed vineyards.

‘We are doing that,’ confirms Tiago Alves de Sousa. ‘We are doing single plantings, but mixed ones also, because we want to see which method will lead to the best wines. It’s all about experimenting… Honestly, it’s an organised style of chaos, but then again, it was always organised chaos in the past as well.’

But that chaos is being refined, in that, of the dozens of varieties found in the old Gaivosa vineyards, 20-30 are not going to be replanted. Of the others, cuttings are taken from the oldest and best vines in the estate and then replanted in a ‘recreated’ field blend experiment of about 0.5ha. But will this include a proportion of Touriga Nacional grapes? ‘The acidity is lovely, but I think we have enough already,’ says Tiago Alves de Sousa.

[djewesbury]

I'm interested in the Alves de Sousa experiment. If 20-30 varieties are being discarded (perhaps there were four dozen or so in the original), then this is still a homogenising move, albeit with some mitigation. Presumably those 20-30 are the weaker, less reliable, less disease resistant. But wasn't the point of the field blend that the weaker varieties were encouraged to greater heights by their proximity with all the others? And that it all balanced out in the tonel, and then in the bottle? I am not convinced that the science of the field blend has ever really been understood; and don't know that these experiments with modified blends are really that close an approximation.