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Is wine from grafted vines like The OC after Mischa Barton left? A shell of its former – some might argue, true – self, and quite frankly, pretty lame compared to the OG?
"The indisputable greatness of ungrafted vines lies in their homogenous structure," says Nik Weis, owner and winemaker at St. Urbans-Hof Weingut in the Mosel. "There are not from two different pieces of wood. There is no disturbance of the sap flow by a grafting cut. It is one closed plant system. It is the plant the way nature or God created it, original and non-manipulated, a true and pure plant. It is the best way to grow vines, grapes and to produce great and authentic wines which reflect their regional character and provide maximum quaffability."
Blame the loss of "greatness" on a microscopic aphid, and the relentless change inherent in empire building. In 1866, a grower in southern Rhône first sounded the alarm, noting the death of a block of vines. Phylloxera vastatrix, an American Yankee, had invaded France via global trade, then commenced his infamous death march across the continent, and beyond. The only thing that saved the wine world, ultimately, was grafting. In 1878, desperate growers began fusing phylloxera-immune native American rootstock to European vines. These days, most available rootstocks hail from three American vine species. (Check out this Wine-Searcher primer to parse the technical side of grafting).
Viticulture was transformed; while field blends were the norm pre-phylloxera, after, organizing grapes in the field by variety became de rigueur, and regional grape-growing trends were transformed. While the classification system that defined French wine culture, and later wine culture everywhere, was initiated in 1855 with the Bordeaux classification of the Médoc, after phylloxera it really began to take root. In 1935, the AOC system was officially instituted.
Few would argue that systematic plantings and classification are a bad idea, but was there an essential element of "greatness" lost in a process that owes something to the dark arts of Doctor Frankenstein?
Lost magic
Some argue that untampered with vines display subtly different characteristics than those that have been grafted together.
"Wines from ungrafted vines tend to show a little more mineral, herbal and tertiary characteristics" says Daniel Callan, assistant winemaker and cellar master at Paso Robles' Thacher Winery. He has worked multiple harvests in South Africa with ungrafted vines, and began working with ungrafted vines in California in 2017.
Callan adds that these wines tend to be less superficial. "They're less showy with the fruit, and they're less obvious," he says. "They may actually be less varietally 'true', but I think they are more expressive of site, which is more interesting anyway. They're more cerebral than pleasurable."
While there is little hard data on how prevalent ungrafted (often refer to own-rooted) vines are, they exist in small pockets and dense clusters all over the world, often thanks to a vineyard or region's relative isolation, terroir and dumb luck. (In South America and regions of Eastern Europe like Armenia and Georgia where the dreaded aphid never made serious inroads, ungrafted vines are common.)
A vineyard located in the aphid's European HQ, the Rhône, is pre-phylloxera in every way.
"In 2012, I purchased an amazing parcel with ungrafted vines on Mont Peiguerolle, located in the village of St. Genies de Comolas, part of the Cru Lirac," says Rodolphe de Pins, owner and winemaker at Château de Montfaucon. "It was known as being one of the oldest in the Rhône Valley, dating back to 1871. The parcel is not big, about 0.75 hectares, planted with 18 different varietals, the majority being Clairette Blanche and Rosé. Obviously there are still the means here to resist condition, what are they?"
De Pins mused that most likely, the sandy soil, which makes it difficult for the phylloxera insect to move and survive, contributed, as did the vines themselves. Other producers echoed his sentiments about the terroir being essential, pointing to sandy soils, rocky soils, acidic volcanic soils, high altitude and extreme isolation as being ideal natural foes of the destructive aphid.
"At the time these vineyards were planted, they made choices based on massal selection, so they selected vine individuals by observation over many years," De Pins explains. "The diversity helps, because it's not a clone, it is more resistant to disease and infection."
Now, as vines inevitably age and die, he follows the vineyard's first caretaker’s lead and makes replacements and plantings based on massal selection.
On the other hand...
Producers are not universally starry-eyed over ungrafted vines. Daniel Brennan, winemaker at Hawke's Bay, New Zealand’s Decibel Wines, has been working consistently with a block of ungrafted Pinot Noir vines alongside grafted vines of the same clone, sees plenty to celebrate in grafted vines.
"We're now in the block's 15th year and we know these differences pretty well," says Brennan. "The own-rooted vines ripen a bit quicker and tend to produce fleshier wines with bigger tannins, while the grafted vines tend to produce prettier and more elegant styles."
Elena Pozzolini, winemaker at Tenuta Sette Cieli, who has worked with grafted vines in Italy, the US and Australia, and ungrafted in Argentina and on the Isola del Giglio in Grosseto, Italy, concurs.
"I believe that grafted vines have allowed winemakers to improve the average quality of wines, by making their behavior and production more uniform," Pozzolini, adding that it "sometimes comes at the expense of production excellence".
Ultimately, she says she doesn't "believe that the rootstock can interfere with the expression of the terroir".
Bob Pepi, owner of Eponymous Wines in the Napa Valley, and a consulting winemaker to Terrapura wines in Chile, has worked with grafted and ungrafted wines for 20-plus years. Like Pozzolini, Pepi argues that grafted vines give winemakers more control and flexibility.
"Grafted wines do better in a wider variety of soil types," Pepi says. "Everyone used to think you couldn't grow great Chardonnay or Pinot Noir unless you had limestone as they do in Burgundy. But grafted vines allow producers to plant a wider range of varieties in more soil types."
Then there's the matter of infection. Even winemakers like Paul Foppiano, co-owner and vineyard manager for Foppiano Vineyards in the Russian River Valley, who uses ungrafted vines to "fill holes" in older vineyards, says that going commercial with a new completely ungrafted vineyard in his region would be terrifically risky.
"They’re not as disease-tolerant as grafted vines and there's so much disease pressure where we are," he says. "And they'll probably get phylloxera, and other diseases that just live in the ground here. I usually expect ungrafted to live five to seven years here. The great thing about them is that they grow like weeds, so I think of them like a Band-Aid in our older vineyards."
This year, Foppiano will harvest his largest crop of ungrafted vines – totaling a few hundred – in an old Petite Sirah vineyard for the first time. "It will be interesting to compare differences in flavor on a wider scale, and I'll be watching to see how long they live. I don't see it as commercially viable here, but if we were somewhere more remote with less disease pressure? Maybe."
A middle road?
Is it possible for producers and consumers to get what some see as the perceived aesthetic benefits of ungrafted vines without the cons and the risk of an economically crippling infection?
Weis is trying to make it happen in the Mosel Valley. Rarefied vine manipulations runs in his blood. Weis' grandfather Nicolaus Weis (1905-1971), was the first private person in the Mosel to found his own nursery business; he produced rootstocks in Germany and Southern France, and created three Riesling clones (Weis1, Weis17 and Weis21), which are considered by many to be the best Riesling clones in the world. Nik Weis' father Hermann Weis continued the work, and got the first Canadian import permit for vines grown in a nursery field in Europe. Now, more than 60 percent of all Riesling vines in Canada hail from Weis' Mosel nursery.
"When I took over, I started to focus on old vines' genetic variation," Weis says. "Along with my vineyard manager Hermann Jostock, I went up and down the Mosel and collected scion wood from the oldest Riesling vines we could find, saving it from getting loss or extinct and planted it around the winery. We created what I call the Noah's Ark of old Mosel Riesling vines. It's a gene bank of sorts, and we've registered the vines and plan to use them in our own vineyards as a groundwork for highly complex and authentic Mosel Rieslings. We also sell them to other producers."
The planting of ungrafted vines is prohibited in Germany, Weis notes, adding that some enclaves of Mosel that are very rocky and that the phylloxera louse cannot move around, still maintain ungrafted vines.
"But it is dangerous," Weis says. "We can never forget the danger that ungrafted vines bear for a stable and safe wine industry It would be absolutely irresponsible to grant permission for a widely spread use of ungrafted vines because the lethal danger of phylloxera will always be there."
There is an appetite for wines with an element of danger and mystique, and certainly a desire to drink something distinctive wines that tell the story of a place through the glass. Thacher markets its wines made from ungrafted vines as such, as does California's Tegan Passalacqua, Sandlands, Washington's Chateau Ste. Michelle and dozens of others.
"The hardcore contingent seeks out wines made from ungrafted vines," Thacher's Callan says. "In a tasting room setting, a well-curated wine shop or in a restaurant with an intelligent somm, the value of these vineyards can be communicated, and people respond."
Even for those who see the benefits of grafted vines, there's something ineffably delightful and alluring about ungrafted vines.
"I think because they're becoming more and more rare, it's a very special thing," Decibel's Brennan says. "It's a glimpse of history and I'm all about that, like the idea of time travel through sense memory. And if this can be achieved through own-rooted wines, then preserving these sites is commendable, and I support it wholeheartedly."
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