Note: Prior to the Wine Writers' Symposium, participants had the option to prune some vines in the Napa Valley Wine Reserve, the 50-acre vineyard at the entrance to Meadowood. Members of the Reserve can participate to whatever extent they like in wine making—sort of an upscale Crush Pad. The winery's caves even have carved-out spaces where members can store their wine libraries.
After the pruning lesson, we went inside for a writing exercise where we talked about the morning. This is mine, and I've left it unedited except for what we did in the session.
I mean no offense to the Meadowood staff or the many hard-working folks in Napa. I actually enjoyed myself and found the exercise educational, but I was struck by the observation that the posh life was never far away. I couldn't avoid the obvious metaphor. Alder, who writes better first drafts than I, shared the more common view of the morning.
Snap. My pruning shears squeeze shut, a branch falls off the vine, and a glistening drop of sap oozes from the wound. The vineyard manager walks up and eyes my work. "Not bad," he says, "but cut this shoot a little closer because you want the one that's nice and straight, not the one that's crooked."
I pretend, for just a moment, that I'm learning the secrets of grape growing and wine making from polished experts. The sun is shining, it's a cool-but-not-too-cold day, and I'm deciding which shoots to prune from a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon vine, a plant that will in a few months produce the country's most expensive wine grapes.
But in fact, I'm a modern-day Marie Antoinette, playing in a little garden outside a palatial retreat, my Versailles the luxurious Meadowood resort in St. Helena. I'm just one of countless would-be wine makers who tromp through these 50 acres, working as much or as little as I choose to produce a custom wine.
The Disneyland atmosphere tints the day. My pruning shears glisten with a suspiciously new sheen; the staff, waiting out of sight like the Magic Kingdom's security guards, will clean the tool after I leave. The fruit I've helped shape will be brought into a winery so clean you could dine on the floor, so manicured that the stainless-steel tanks have been custom designed to mimic the large, conical oak fermenters in the next room. Should a drop of rain threaten my city-dweller's garb, the voluptuous Meadowood umbrellas cluster by every door. I'm half-surprised there aren't animatronics or little trolleys that we can ride in.
Perhaps it's not Disneyland after all, but just Napa, an area where migrant pickers pluck the fruit owned by dentists and movie directors who used their fortunes to become winery owners, who "make" wine by hiring knowledgeable staff. Perhaps my morning of wine making was an authentic Napa experience after all.
