Saturday morning started far too early, though not too bright, as it was lightly sprinkling when I went across town to fetch my partner in agricultural shenanigans. Despite being five minutes late, we were on the road early enough we were going to arrive 20 minutes before the You-Pick farm opened… so Cedar & I detoured and had breakfast at our favourite coffee shop.

Then we proceeded deep into farm country, heading east to the last weekend for blackberries (they were looking quite picked-over and sparse) and the first weekend for grapes. Yes, in mid-July, and yes, I was surprised it was this early, too. But Joy, a vitis labrusca x vinifera cross. It’s a small, blue-black, seedless, non-slipskin table grape, released in 2012, known for its tolerance to heat and rain. With the amount of both that we’ve been getting this year, it’s ripened early and yet maintained a high brix – high sugar content.

So off we go, trundling out into the vineyard, stopping to ogle the trunks, the cordons, wince at a massive dieback in one section that looks like frost damage took out almost all the plants, cheer at a few cuttings that are freshly rooted and struggling to become a new trunk, and passing row after row of other varietals under bird netting still in veraison – the stage of changing colour as they ripen.

I am not a complete stranger to vineyards, but usually have appreciated them at a distance while buying wine. This was the first time to really get up close, hands-on, and see what leaf roll and other damage looks like, to feel and taste clusters of grapes not grown for prettiest look in a clamshell on a supermarket shelf, and to really see the difference between rows that had mechanical pruning vs. hand-pruning, and rows that had the canopy management done with those that have not yet had that stage attended to… and get a strange look from another random person out picking as I bent over and called for Cedar to come see a cordon that was easily an inch and a half in diameter, saying, “Check out this wood! Isn’t that beautifully thick? Oh, this one’s been growing a while…”

What?

We both picked several pounds of grapes, as well, and I currently have a cookie tray with a silpat covered in a single layer of grapes freezing down solid, so they can be ice cubes in future glasses of water, wine, or sangria. When those are done, I’ll pour them in a ziplock, and start the next round.

Then we went to the farmer’s market, to pick up vegetables for the week, as well as some bread and other minor bits. On the way out, we stopped at the local winery’s booth, and between tasting samples of their apfel and buying a bottle of blackberry wine, I inquired of the owner what varietal she was growing, and when it’ll harvest. (Most of their grapes come from the High Plains near Lubbock, but they have vines planted on their estate that are almost old enough; they’re hoping they’ll produce enough this year to make a bottling.) She was delighted to talk about the weather this year compared to normal, and how it’s affecting the brix and the ripening, and other such matters…

All of this is good research. Most especially, it’s the little things, like finding a bird nest in the grapevine, and the way that one varietal went from hard opaque jade green as it ripened to deeply translucent like milky emerald, veined with brighter lines like a gooseberry, that will probably make it into the book. You just can’t get those, or the smell of the vineyard, the way the wind moves through (or doesn’t, by the thick canopies), or the way the clusters of grapes clump and mix ripening in size as well as colour until they look like an inverted geode exploded in a dense cluster of amethyst, royal blue, and jade, all misted with that bloom that rarely survives the trip to market.

You can’t get those out of a textbook!

Now I just have to get to the part of the book where the seasons turn to canopy management, crop thinning, veraison, and harvest. They’ve finished winter pruning, celebrated bud break, and are frantically doing all the chores that come most crucially between bud break and bloom. Oh, and dealing with insurgency and counter-insurgency forces, and smugglers. (What? Oh, it’s set during a cold war going hot. But I already know a bit about firefights and ambushes; it’s the vineyard that’s requiring oodles of research!)

For once, I’m ahead on the research! And I have grapes to prove it!