I don't normally do book reviews. In fact, I never have. Maybe because I am such a smarty-pants know-it-all and most often use viticulture books as references. Or maybe because writing a book review feels like a term paper assignment from a college English course. I always found it a grind to do book reports during my college days but then found the experience rewarding after I completed the assignment. This is how it was with this "assignment," a review of a new book, "The New Viticulture" by Doug Meador (365 pages, published by Ellem Publishing, Inc. and available through The Wine Appreciation Guild). After having read the book, I feel more enlightened, more assured of some of my own opinions, somewhat frustrated, but overall happy to have read the book.

Please do yourself a favor--continue to read past the first 100 or so pages. The book "gels" better in the latter sections, the writing gets more focused and better constructed, there are fewer technical missteps, and the author does a good job of holding the reader's interest. The viticultural practices and many of the practical ideas brought forth by Meador are strong and well thought-out. This book should not be regarded as a scientific or even technical reference book, though. Some of the technical deductions and statements are misguided while others are downright incorrect. Read this book as a memoir. Each chapter is a virtual sit-down conversation with Meador at a coffee shop, where he reminisces of his years as a winegrower and the changes he has seen and has played a part in developing.

Doug Meador founded Ventana Vineyards, in the Arroyo Seco appellation of the Salinas Valley, in 1974, having grown up on a farm in Washington state and spending his early youth as a Navy fighter pilot. After returning from numerous missions in Vietnam, his plan was to plant his family's apple orchard in Washington. He got sidetracked into planting a vineyard in Monterey County and, eventually, that sidetrack turned him from an apple farmer to a grape and wine grower in the Salinas Valley.

"The New Viticulture" refers to changes in the practices of growing grapes, initially the domain of UC researchers and extension agents. Meador is quite critical of the academic world, accusing them of being "tinkerers" and "putzers" and of not really advancing the practices of winegrowing and winemaking. He brings up everyone's favorite whipping boy, AxR#1, and how ridiculous it was to have ever recommended a rootstock with Vitis vinifera in its parentage. That hindsight is quite clear now, as everyone agrees that the university should have been more cautious. In fact, I recall seeing that most of the AxR recommendations were based on vigor and yield criteria, not on wine quality or on pest/disease resistance.

Reducing Vine and Row Spacing
Meador's new viticulture was largely focused on vine spacing. He felt that the 12-foot row spacing and 7-foot vine spacing recommended by the UC were not appropriate for cool climate viticulture, or perhaps modern viticulture in any region. Early recommendations of row widths were based on equipment that was available at that time, none of which was made specifically for vineyards. Only recently have we seen some of the domestic manufacturers develop true vineyard tractors with narrow widths.

Meador realized this and began to develop vineyards with narrow rows, down to 8 feet (very narrow in the 1970s) and eventually 6 feet. The purpose was at least twofold: 1) to increase vine density so that yield may be increased to economically-feasible levels and 2) to reduce wind eddies between vine rows. The economic aspects are straightforward. Packing more vine rows into a piece of land will increase the productivity of said piece of land. The primary constraints are minimizing row-to-row shading and ability of equipment to pass between the rows. He settled on 6 feet as the optimal row spacing, which required the use of equipment that was not commonly found in the US at that time.

Because the Salinas Valley has a very windy climate, the narrower rows reduced the air flow in the vineyard tremendously, as long as the vine rows were oriented perpendicularly to the prevailing wind. The Salinas Valley wind typically blows every afternoon from the ocean up the linear valley due to convective air currents generated inland. Hence, the prevailing wind is very easy to identify. Meador had the foresight to plant cross-wind while other growers were not taking the wind into consideration. I have made measurements of stomatal conductance in with-wind and cross-wind planted vineyards in the Salinas Valley and it was quite striking how differently vines in the two configurations behaved. Vines in parallel rows to the wind closed their stomata during the afternoon while those in perpendicular rows to the wind maintained open stomata in their leaves in all but the top of the canopy. Bravo to Meador for recognizing this without having to take measurements.

Vine spacing within the rows was shortened by Meador also. Meador writes about the ability of vine roots to intertwine with their neighbors' roots without competition. He refers to the myth of vine-to-vine competition as nonsense, something which I also agree with wholeheartedly. Vine spacing, he says, should be based in consideration of the site's soils and rootstock choice, with wider spacing being chosen for more vigor-producing soils and/or more vigorous scions.

Meador clearly defines the difference between decision-making processes for row versus vine spacing, which is something I totally agree with. I applaud him for bringing that distinction to light years ago. We are asked to assume, however, that those thoughts were originally his. Original thought is relative. Few people develop ideas in a vacuum or completely on their own. Meador says he was the first to develop and implement these new practices, and perhaps he was, but his ideas certainly came from years of looking over the shoulders of others.

Meador's higher-density planting practices led him to question the dominant paradigm about yield versus quality. Clearly, one cannot compare yields from a 12-foot-by-7-foot vineyard to those of a 6-foot-by-4-foot planting. Meador discusses his frustration in trying to get people, especially academics, to think beyond the traditional and artificial "tons per acre" barriers.

Trellising, Training, Pruning and Growing
Meador again lambasts the UC standard trellis system, which he calls the "Haystack" or "California Sprawl," the latter of which is its more common reference. The sprawl system was used for decades in California, its trellis consisting of a single fruiting wire, some being modified with the addition of a second foliage wire or a "T" top pair of wires to help keep the canes from completely flopping over. Regardless of the minor variations on the sprawl theme, Meador found that that system created an overly shaded fruit zone, which promoted Botrytis development in the fruit but that also created a veggie component in the wines. It was that veggie component that was responsible for Monterey County wine growing to be dismissed as a serious wine region during its early days.

Realizing that the standard trellis system was not appropriate for conditions in the Salinas Valley, Meador says he developed the vertical trellis system. The vertical trellis (commonly referred to as Vertical Shoot Positioned, VSP) was much more effective at wind blockage, since it was a taller canopy structure. Furthermore, it opened up the fruiting zone so that the "vegginess" in the fruit and wines could be eliminated. Meador found that a low fruiting wire at 28 inches above ground allowed for a tall canopy with an ergonomically-suitable fruit zone for hand-harvesting. Newer machine harvesters were able to harvest fruit at that height and the trellis was quite suitable for machine harvest without tremendous vine damage.

Meador seems to prefer the unilateral cordon training system for vineyards, unless soil conditions dictate a wider spacing than 4.5 feet. Wider vine spacing should be trained to bilateral cordons. He recognized that longer unilateral cordons did not develop uniformly down the longer cordons, another fact that I agree with completely. Most of his vineyards had close spacing, so he tended towards the unilateral cordon approach. He was strongly critical of leaving spurs in the bend of the cordon because of the uneven growth and development that created, along with the tendency for those canes to break when mechanically harvested. To fill in the gap between vines, which he despises for lack of efficiency, Meador likes to run the cordon from the next vine over to cover the gap up to the point at which the cordon reaches the fruiting wire, creating a continuous cordon.

Meador generally prefers using a cordon-spur type of system, which may be double-pruned (i.e., long spurs cut back in early spring) to delay budbreak or to reduce wood canker fungal infestations. He suggests the use of kicker canes to "balance" out the vines on a vine-to-vine basis. I don't have a problem with vine-specific pruning levels, but I do disagree with the use of kicker canes as part of a planned viticultural practice. Kicker canes, to me, indicate that the vine vigor is too high based on poor decisions about spacing and/or rootstock. Meador claims that vineyards that do not need kicker canes were planted too far apart. I can't agree with this. Mixing canes and spurs on the same vines usually leads to differential development of shoots and fruit on the cane and on the spurs.

Renewal of spur positions was high on the priority list, according to the author. He likes to regularly renew spur positions by retaining suckers on the cordon or base of the spur arm so that the lanky spur positions are not allowed to develop over years and years of growth.

He discusses a "mold and hold" vine growth approach that applies largely to irrigation and fertilization practices. He wants to develop the vegetative canopy sufficiently to provide enough leaves, then terminate shoot growth and maintain the canopy in a healthy state from that point through post-harvest. His goal is to have shoot growth cease 30 to 40 days before harvest, which seems late in my opinion (I'd like to have them stop by veraison at the latest). Nevertheless, the approach is generally sound and I appreciated the discussion of watching shoot tips as feedback for controlling vine growth through irrigation and fertilization.

There were other points made by Meador that I thought were spot-on. He called shoot trimming a remedial measure that is outside of normal practice. All shoots do not need to be exactly the same size and trimming shoots is an indication of a vineyard out of control. He also talked about limited leaf removal from vines to prevent the export of potassium from the leaves should they senesce during the growing season. The primary goal of leaf removal was control of Botrytis, but the secondary consequence was limiting high potassium in the fruit.

Meador also discussed the over-arching objective, which I completely agree with: the goal is to achieve ripe flavors in the fruit at the desired sugar concentration. He feels strongly that fruit should be tasted in the field for ripeness and that fruit composition is important--but secondary to flavor. He also rails against the trend toward high-Brix, over-ripe fruit leading to high-alcohol, pruney-tasting wines.

Read the book
I appreciated this book much more as I read more of it. Yet, the early chapters are fraught with mistakes that could have been corrected by a technical review. For instance, there are no check valves in the vine's xylem. Water can flow bi-directionally. There are features in the xylem that prevent the water column from collapsing due to air entry, but those do not prevent flow of liquid water.

The "Meador Heat Pump" discussion, which was given quite a bit of attention, is unfortunately totally wrong. Meador discusses non-transpirational water flow through the vine (such as bleeding sap or guttation) as being driven by thermal expansion of the water in the vine, along with the "check valves" to prevent backflow. This is not how it works, and thermal expansion of water would account for less than 1 percent by volume. Early-spring sap flow is accomplished by root pressure, in which an increase in osmotic solute concentration in the roots forces water entry from the soil. Reverse sap flow, moving nutrients and photosynthate from leaves to fruit and other parts of the vine occurs through the phloem via the well-published pressure-flow mechanism. This has been well-documented, as it has been studied in many different plant systems. How do I know this? I was a graduate student at that same university system that has allegedly "failed" the industry.

Why do I say that the university system has allegedly failed the industry? Meador ends his book by launching a critical invective against the university system and how it has failed to prove its worthiness for our industry. I found the section to be well written and well thought-out. The argument should not be summarized in just a few sentences, so I suggest you read the book. I find that Meador makes some very valid points, though the current state of viticulture as it is today cannot be laid claim to by any one individual or group of individuals. There is no doubt that practitioners such as Meador, an innovative, inquisitive and well-traveled viticulturist, have contributed appreciably to the state of the art. Ideas are not created in a vacuum, though. We create new ideas from the ideas of others whom we have experienced in life. No doubt that there is an academic somewhere in the idea pool that went into creating "The New Viticulture." wbm