Tuesday, 30 November, 2021
Wine-Searcher, Kathleen Willcox
For wine geeks, the relative merits of the impact of human intervention on the flavor and terroir of wine is as contentious as gun control or cancel culture is for the rest of the world.
Many enophiles passionately believe in the supremacy of wine that expresses "land over hand", while others elevate the idea that having an intelligent – some might even say God-like – force shaping and focusing the flavors of that land is the key to transcendence, especially amid the challenges of climate change.
One thing almost everyone agrees on: a reliance on machines in the growing and production of wine is terrible, horrible, no good, very bad for viticulture. But is that knee-jerk response merited, especially when it comes to the production of Port?
The art of foot-crafting grapes goes back hundreds of years. A classic lagare, or basin where people step on the grapes, is typically about 12 feet square. The grapes are placed in the lagare in a layer of around 30 inches, and people then jump in and do the hard work of rupturing grape-skin cell walls without crushing the seeds (that would make the wines taste bitter).
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