Eric Miller - The Vintners Apprentice: An Insiders Guide to the Art and Craft of Wine Making, Taught by the Masters

INTERVIEWS WITH THE MASTERS

MY FIRST VISIT TO A WINERY AND VINEYARD WAS TO BENMARL, THE HIGHLY ACCLAIMED WINERY IN THE HUDSON VALLEY OF NEW YORK RUN BY ERIC MILLERS FAMILY, A DAY THAT LIVES INGRAINED IN MY MEMORY. I SAW ROW UPON ROW OF BEAUTIFUL VINES RISING UP AND DIPPING DOWN THE VALLEYS FLOOR. I SAW THE BIG METAL TANKS AND WOODEN OAK BARRELS. SINCE THAT DAY I HAVE WANTED TO PLANT VINES AND MAKE WINE. ERIC HELPED ME PLANT MY FIRST VINEYARD WHEN I WAS 23, AND HE HELPED ME PLANT MY MOST RECENT ONE FOUR YEARS AGO. HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE FOR ANY OF MY FARMING QUESTIONS, AND NOW HE HAS WRITTEN THE BEST BOOK ON GRAPE GROWING AND WINEMAKING FOR ANSWERING YOUR QUESTIONS.

Growing grapes and making wine, especially great wine, is not an easy endeavor. And most books available on these subjects are extremely technical, almost taking the fun out of the process. The Vintners Apprentice is the first book on winemaking that I have ever read that keeps the romance of wine balanced with the technical aspects of this art. The proliferation of vineyards and wineries in the New World is unprecedented. In the United States alone there are now 6,000 wineries, which is up from a mere 200 forty years ago when I first met Eric.

While Eric has written extensively about the art and process of winemaking, he has also interviewed winemakers from South Africa, France, the United States, Italy, Chile, and Germany, which gives the reader great insight into winemaking around the world. If you are like Eric and me, who have found our passion for growing grapes, making wine, and (of course) drinking it, and are considering this kind of lifestyle for yourself, you must begin your journey by reading the stories of how the great winemakers of the world began their journey. You read real stories from real winemakers, the up side and the down side, while always maintaining a sense of humor and enthusiasm, supplemented with beautiful photography. This should be everyones go-to book to understand where to plant grapes (soil types, weather and wine conditions), what grapes to plant (Vitis vinifera, Vitis labrusca, hybrids), and what you can expect to achieve in the final product.

The book is full of fascinating and useful information in a down-to-earth approach with such things as The Winemakers Tool Box, The Vintners Marketplace, and solving winemaking problems. The Vintners Apprentice even tells you how wine barrels and corks are made and how they help in aging. The joy of harvest, the excitement, emotion, and exhaustion of crush time, to the disappointment of some harvests with the threat of rain, frost, or hailits all here.

So how do winemakers make wine? From Missouri to St. Emilion, France, from the Old World to the New World, everyone has a unique take on the process. This book is all about the journey of grapes from the vineyard through the winery to the wine on your dinner table! Eric Miller makes this wine journey easy, simple to understand, and enjoyable, and I am honored and proud to introduce this book to you.

KEVIN ZRALY

Author and educator, Windows on the World Complete Wine Course

I GREW UP IN WINE AND HAVE LIVED MOST OF MY LIFE IN WINE. MY FATHER WAS AN ARTIST WHO WAS HOPELESSLY ROMANCED BY WINE, SO I DIDNT REALLY HAVE A CHANCE FOR A NONALCOHOLIC CHILDHOOD. GROWING UP IN HARTSDALE, NEW YORK, I LOVED TO PLAY A GAME AT DINNERTIME WHERE MY DAD WOULD BLINDFOLD MY BROTHER AND ME AND OFFER US A SMALL TASTE OF WINE. BY THE AGE OF EIGHT, I HAD GRADUATED FROM IDENTIFYING WHETHER A WINE WAS FROM BURGUNDY OR BORDEAUX AND WAS ON TO THE GREATER CHALLENGE OF TELLING WHETHER IT WAS RED OR WHITE.

By the age of thirteen, I had begun our familys annual uprooting to new schools in new countries. We were living in the small town of Saint-Romain, Burgundy, where I made the delicious discovery that the ancient Roman sewer system under the main street opened into most of the wine cellars in town. It made perfect sense that everyone I knew either exported wine, made wine, or made barrels for wine.

Those years in France exposed me to wine and food in the way only the French can do it. Later, while living in England (during what I call the boarding school era), where there were no beautiful vineyards or romantic cellars, I turned my attention to learning about the wine trade, as only the British can do it. With my modest understanding of French wine regions and wine types, I became judge and jury of illegal blending practices. Ill never forget discovering the guilty logic of a rogue bottler saying, One mans Chteauneuf du Pape is another mans Nuit St. George. How could they say Pinot Noir tastes like Syrah and Grenache?

At the age of nineteen, back in the United States, bored with college, desperately trying to avoid getting a job, I ended up working the steep hillsides of my fathers newly planted vineyard in the Hudson Valley. I found myself alternating between jeans and tuxedo but always with a glass of wine in hand. Dad was quite an upstart, professing to make fine East Coast U.S. wines where none had gone before, and his Benmarl Vineyards got a lot of attention for his particular ability to proselytize and charm at the same time and for his brilliantly creative Socit des Vignerons that brought Manhattans wine elite to our door.

From his earliest days, author Eric Miller has been surrounded by wine, grapes, vineyards, and wineries. Wine is both his vocation and his lifelong avocation.

When there wasnt a steady stream of East Coast vintners at our dinner table, from Charles Fournier (of the now defunct Gold Seal Winery) to Walter Taylor (scion of the Taylor Wine Company and founder of Bully Hill Vineyards), I found myself in the cellar with the likes of Alexis Lechine (importer, author), Emil Peynaud (Universit de Bordeaux), and Peter Sichel (of Blue Nun fame and whose family owned Chteau Palmer). By then I was hooked.

And ready to expand my horizons. While we experimented with grape varieties that would grow in the harsh New York winters, great things were happening to the west in California. My favorite sporting events were tastings, pitting the likes of Team Mondavi Valley Floor Cabernet Sauvignon against Team Mayacamus Mountain Grown Cabernet. In a slight variation on train spotting, my greatest thrill during those years was a lunch at Freemark Abbys restaurant, identifying legendary figures such as Mike Grgrich and Louis Martini at a table nearby.

It would seem natural that my next move would take me to California, but the lore of fate, family, and my desire to master the terroir of a region led me instead on a quest to find the best grape-growing region on the East Coast. This journey ultimately led me to the tiny village of Chadds Ford in southeastern Pennsylvania, where I would spend the next twenty-nine years building the Chaddsford Winery, refining my craft, and satisfying a wellspring of passion to understand my own dirt, my rain, my sun, my wines. Above all, I wanted to make something uniquely Mid-Atlantic, USA, and delicious.