A hypothetical Hebén

@Clive posted:

Hi Everyone

However, at the moment, what I need is some sage advice or commentary about starting a vineyard.

Don't, is my usual advice

Currently, our hero has found a small farm near Luso in central Portugal with gentle slopes and a sandy, well-drained soil and a small lake. I think I'm going to make the potential planting area 20 acres. Is this too small?

That's pretty large for a one person operation on sloped ground where use of machinery might be limited.  At that size your story is going to need to include at least a full time helper and probably 2-3 other people assisting.  Remember the original calculation for an acre was how much land one person could cultivate 1 = 1  8 acres might be more realistic and still would produce 2000 cases on average.  Your hero doesn't want to try and sell more wine than that on his own.

I need him to prepare the ground, plant the vines and see or make some sort of recognisable progress in year one, although I realise that the project is 3 - 4 years to get a harvest and then however long it takes to produce wine. One problem is that he has only a couple of surviving vines, so how the heck does he propagate those in a reasonable period of time?

Doing 20 acres, or even 8 in a year would be about impossible, but it would be reasonable that he'd plant a full vineyard with a variety that's easy to graft too, say Merlot  Most of his first year would be nurturing those Merlot for eventual grafting and grafting material as it was available.  Live grafting is a bit harder than doing it from dormant buds, but that would slow your timeline down.  In any event that's another character, grafting is almost always done by a specialist.

And what sort of bureaucratic hoops might he have to jump through to eventually get to his first bottle of wine? This book will only follow him to the end of the first year of the farm, at which point he needs (the reader needs) to see something positive - however minor - that prophesies future success.

I can't speak for Portugal, but in the US, hoops is an understatement.  I currently have over 40 licenses or permits from over 25 different agencies at every level of government you can imagine.  Most people who start the process to open a winery can't get through the bureaucracy to make it happen.

Were I writing the story I'd leave out anything but basic talk of starting the winemaking operation, since that's some years away.  That's most of the bureaucracy.  Starting a farming operation is about 1/5 of the work.  The reality is if you have him open a winery, most of that first year would be consumed with permitting and licensing.

Hebén is a white grape, right? So how come it is listed as being paired with other grapes to produce reds (alfrocheiro preto, for example)? Is this normal, and something one would do with such a rare grape, or not?

I had to read up a little on Heben.  It's not unusual to blend red and white grapes to make a wine, at least not historically.  Most operations until the 20the century would not have had the equipment, room or resources to do it any other way.  I don't think you'd do that with the grape now though.

Heben seems to be a pretty inferior cultivar in a lot of ways and it looks like most of it's contribution to the wine world was people crossing it with something trying to make it better.  It seems to be a sparse yielder with problems with set and uneven bunches. It's flowers are all female, which is highly unusual.  Again I imagine historically if you had it, you spent most of your time with it trying to breed it into something better.

It must have some good underlying qualities though as it's been crossed into many varieties that are widely planted.  I can't say what those might be as even Oz Clarke's "Grapes" doesn't cover it and that's probably the most complete resource in one place for obscure varieties.

So there we are - if you have any (polite!) comments, I would be really grateful for them, and will add all names - and the wine spectator forum, of course - to my acknowledgments.

Thanks!

You can probably work out my direct email from my signature fairly easy if you think I can help further.

Hi Paul. That's a great response - thanks so much.

I have 4 people working on the hypothetical vineyard, supporting themselves by teaching online while they develop the business. I'll adapt accordingly.

I'm just 3 chapters from the end now, and then I'll be going back to review how it all fits together, and doing some serious content and copy editing. I'll take on board what you've said, and come back to you a little later if I may, following that review.

Once again, many thanks for your help. ("Don't", "nail-gun..." )

Cheers, Clive

Feel free to reach out.  I don't go through all the forums often so missed this for a week.  Direct email is fine if you'd like.

I've done the entire field to bottle process multiple times.  I've also done rescues, restorations and just about every other vineyard scenario you can think of.  What we people who have done this experience and talk about amongst ourselves and what others think about the process are connected in only the most superficial ways.    I say that just because you probably want to write for the later and not the former.  Too many details and you'll lose your audience at the salad course.