How to Plant a Vineyard, Part 22: If Only I Knew
“If only I had known,” are words often carried by the vineyard wind, sometimes in the tone of “ohh, interesting,” sometimes in the tone of “hmm, interesting,” and usually in the tone of “holy shit!”
This happens because one experiences wine knowledge as a trapdoor, a black abyss mixed with conjecture, circumstantial evidence, and fabricated theories. Just when you think you know “something,” you suddenly discover you know nothing, only to discover a moment later that you did know something, only to experience again that this “something” was nothing.
This is also the case because no matter what topic you touch upon, seemingly trivial and innocent at first glance, you quickly discover, to your horror, that it is a topic as winding as the Amazon and, like that mysterious river, full of traps waiting for you.
Take staples, for example, those U-shaped nails you nail to the wooden end posts (the ones at the end of the row). Buy them too thick or too thin, and you’ll pay. Buy them too long or too short, and you’ll pay. Buy them ungalvanized, and you’ll pay over time. And I’m not talking about paying strictly in currency, although that’s not trivial at all, but about paying over time, in overtime and physical effort, then in rework, searching for new material, and, heaven forbid, in mitigating the consequences of ill-fated decisions. Of course, if I had ten posts, the issue might not arise, but when there are several hundred posts, everything takes on a different tone.
Lately, my favorite topic has been the numbers on these very posts. Without a doubt, such markings make life easier, from detecting diseases to calculating where to enter and spray. I could give countless examples.
It might seem like the topic of numbers is easy, but like monsters under the bed, questions emerge, and you frantically search for answers before they devour you. And they can devour you, because I must add that a decision must be made, and time is always in short supply. What size numbers? How much? What material? How engraved? How weather-resistant? What information do they contain? What colors? How attached to the posts? At what height? These are all questions you must grapple with.
Once I’d pushed through this river, once my choices were made, or literally, “dead in the dark,” not a week would pass before I read from an English winemaker that the best material was… female, the ones with a hole, breeding earrings, but only the large ones, for cattle, not to be confused with those for pigs, sheep, or goats. Apparently, they’re cheap, visible, and extremely durable. If only I’d known…