S1 EP0005 - Paul Brock of Silver Thread Vineyard
Paul Brock brings a scientific background to his winemaking and viticulture, but is on a lifelong endeavor to emphasize natural, bio-intensive practices in creating a
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S1 EP0005 - Paul Brock of Silver Thread Vineyard
FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)
00:00:00:08 - 00:00:23:14
Chris Missick: This is viticultural where we share conversations with makers, growers, thinkers and doers, folks who cultivate a good life. My name is Chris Missick and I'm a lawyer turned winemaker in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. And I'm sitting down with great people in wine and other walks of life to hear their stories, learn their lessons and take their advice on the perfect pairing.
00:00:33:16 - 00:01:20:12
Chris Missick: Our guest today understands the responsibility of living a good life. Paul Brock, together with his wife Shannon, own and operate silver thread vineyards on the east side of Seneca Lake. Paul is also the director of the Viticulture in an allergy program at Finger Lakes Community College, where they train up the next generation of winemakers and vineyard managers. He understands stewardship of the land and our responsibility to the community. If you like this content, please help us grow by liking this video on YouTube and subscribing to our show on your favorite podcast platforms. Don't forget to visit our website at viticulture podcast Dotcom. Subscribe to our Substack, where you'll get show notes, transcripts, musings and exclusive offers and check us out on all the major social media platforms. And now here's the show.
00:01:33:01 - 00:02:09:18
Chris Missick: Today, it's an honor to have Paul Brock sitting in the interview chair. He's been a mentor of mine and a lot of ways. In fact, he was one of my professors when I attended the Finger Lakes Community College Viticulture in Technology program. He's been a stalwart of the Finger Lakes wine industry in silver thread vineyards with his wife Shannon on Seneca Lake. And he's done a lot not just in teaching wine, but in living a great lifestyle, in living. What we would like to say is a good life. He cares for the land. He cares for students, and he cares about our industry. So thanks so much for coming, Paul.
00:02:09:20 - 00:02:11:15
Paul Brock: I really appreciate you asking me to be here, Chris.
00:02:12:10 - 00:02:23:01
Chris Missick: I would love to kind of start out with a little bit of a biographical sketch because, you know, like like me, you didn't start in the wine industry, but you found your way here.
00:02:23:03 - 00:03:02:07
Paul Brock: Yeah, I grew up upstate New York, kind of Blue-Collar and went to school for chemical engineering at RPI. I'm trying to make this as short as possible. I was the first one of my extended family on either side to ever graduate from college after, you know, right out of high school and a big extended family. So it's that was great. And then wanted to be an engineer. IBM then ended up at the patent office down in DC examining patent applications. And pretty quickly after I moved down there, I realized I was not going to be in an office for the rest of my life.
00:03:02:09 - 00:03:55:09
Paul Brock: And we will, who's now my wife, Shannon was not at the time. We came up with a five year plan to get us into the Finger Lakes wine industry, really to get me to grad school and then launch into the Finger Lakes wine industry. And so that was like 2000, January 2001, when we came up with a plan. We quit her jobs almost exactly at this time of year. It was March 25th, 2005. We went to New Zealand and ended up here in the Finger Lakes for me to go to grad school at Cornell, graduated there in 07 and had winemaker and one of the local vineyards and wineries and did an internship somewhere else and ended up at Finger Lakes Community College in 2010. And we purchased my wife and I purchased Silver Thread in 2011. So that's about as sure as I can make that story.
00:03:56:01 - 00:03:58:02
Chris Missick: That was a really busy stretch of time for you.
00:03:58:04 - 00:04:14:25
Paul Brock: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's worked out great. And that was that was a pretty hectic decade in this past decades, been hectic and a totally different way, having two jobs and farming and making wine and teaching people how to do the same. So it's it's been great. That's great.
00:04:15:14 - 00:04:24:04
Chris Missick: So, I mean, not to make a joke out of it, but it's very typical for an engineer to come up with a solid five year plan that he then follows through on.
00:04:24:09 - 00:05:11:12
You know, I'd have to say Shannon was one that did come up with a five year plan. And, you know, we had a business plan for our winery was going to look like we probably started that in 2001 and it slowly evolved until we got here. And then at one point, we totally scrapped it because we realized, well, it's just so expensive to buy land and farm and there's all these other brands and there's no way we want to throw another brand into this. And, you know, both of us, you and I have now purchased a brand and kept the name and that it came with and there's real value in that of having something that somebody else started and taking that to the next level and was silver thread. That's what we really were able to accomplish and are still accomplishing that and still moving on that and working on it every single day.
00:05:11:26 - 00:05:38:06
Chris Missick: You know, I think, and, just so you know, we are actually about to change our name. Oh, yeah. But I think that the most important thing is what that name that legacy that you're trying to carry forward is. Yeah. You know, silver thread, really. It references a waterfall, a gorgeous waterfall on the east side of Seneca Lake. And not only that, your founder, Richard Fiegel, am I pronouncing that right?
00:05:38:08 - 00:06:11:21
Paul Brock: You are. Yeah. He was a pioneer here in the Finger Lakes, and he's one of the names that's not mentioned nearly enough. So, you know, back in the late 70s, 77 and 77, Richard was able to get a loan from the farmer who previously owned the land to purchase what was at the time, I don't know, ten acres of Catawba plus thirty five, 40 acres of other land. He turned around, increased the price and some of that and sold that Kate and Rob Thomas.
00:06:11:23 - 00:06:24:01
Paul Brock: And they made Shalestone on their part of that property. And Richard started pulling out Catawba in 1978, finally got around to planting Riesling and Chardonnay in eighty two.
00:06:24:17 - 00:07:35:13
Paul Brock: And that was the start of what is you know, we still have some of those vines. Silver Thread Vineyard. He. The Farm, pretty conventional, he was he was a wine writer, actually, before he bought silver thread or bought that property and his passion was doing everything very organically. And so but he had to learn how to get there. So he used some conventional aspects. But then he quickly transitioned into organic. He actually had an organic certification at one point. And for various reasons, I don't fully understand. He had to give that up and, and it could have in proximity to other vineyards or whatnot. But he continued to farm organically right up till 2011 when he sold it to Shannon I and it was pretty remarkable that he was able to do that. And, you know, some years were better than others. Yeah. And that's pretty clear. But he had it figured out. You know, recently I've gone over some of his old notes, which I really feel really lucky to have. And it's interesting to see some of the ways that he was able to get some success out of that.
00:07:35:29 - 00:09:15:08
Paul Brock: And now it's just, you know, we kind of did a 360. It was kind of like going back to the early 80s for Richard, because I'm not a farmer. I wasn't a farm. I'm a farmer now. I wasn't a farmer at the time. And we really needed to figure this out for ourselves. And so I went more of the conventional approach where using herbicides or rishard always been tilling. And, you know, I realize this is not the way I want to farm pretty quickly. So the past five, six years, we've really been going through 60 full on back into trying to be as organic as possible and an approach that we're really calling bio intensive farming. And it's really kind of a step out of the agenda. Well, it's very compatible with what is the hot buzzword of regenerative agriculture. And so we stopped using herbicides back in 2016 and 2017. We really started looking at what a biological spray program looks like to control the various diseases during the growing season that we have here in the Finger Lakes. And we've been really successful with that approach and just really focusing more on the soil to try and build the vine up that way. And it's been it's been a really interesting pathway. You know, we've got chickens on the farm now. Yeah. And I never really thought I'd have animals on the farm. And I'm just so it makes me happy every day I see him there and take care of and eat their eggs and whatnot. So it's it's fun.
00:09:15:25 - 00:10:01:06
Chris Missick: It is. And I think it's, it is, an important spiritual connection to what we do. Yep. Two things. And then I do want to focus more on that. You know, having Richard Fiegel plant vinifera varietals. Seventy seven. Seventy eight. And what that tells me is how important the policy changes in New York were. The Farm Winery Act was passed in 1976, and so all of the sudden you had growers who were struggling to sell kind of bulk inexpensive native or Lambrusco grapes to the big producers of jug wine. Yeah, they had to find a way to make their land profitable and to make something that consumers wanted or perhaps they didn't even know they wanted it.
00:10:01:09 - 00:12:07:21
Paul Brock: Yeah, that's what I think is so fascinating about that era that, you know, it was a big risk. You know, Richard was writing about the world of wine, not necessarily about the Finger Lakes. And these were the types of wines that he wanted to produce. And he really looked to Hermann Wimer for inspiration to see how can I grow Riesling and the Finger Lakes and how do I grow Chardonnay. That's not intended for sparkling wine, because back in the time that was when the chardonnay that was in the ground was really intended for Gold Seal, sparkling wine and other sparkling wines. So he was looking to plant Chardonnay for still wine production. And it was interesting, you know, the first four rows of which we only have two left that he planted, he actually grafted himself, which just, you know, speaking of connection to the land, there's no better connection and viticulture than putting the plant material together, because we've got to understand to and I understand that some people listening might not understand what I'm talking about right now, that the the vines that you see above ground are not the same as the vines below ground. There's diseases, there's insects in the soil that would prevent our vitis vinifera. Rieslings, Chardonnay, Cabernet is your French varieties. The varieties that all the wine that you've ever heard of are made out of those vines couldn't survive below the ground. And so what we. To do is graft those fines onto rootstock and that that process involves putting the fines together the year before you plant them and propagating them as one vine. And so everything below the ground is one type of vine and everything above the ground is another type. And usually that's left to the nursery to do that. And, you know, I hope I never have to give out those those last two rows. I just walked in this morning and it's just I'm inspired every time I do it because I know that's a totally different business to get into and do that yourself. It's just really cool.
00:12:08:00 - 00:12:29:07
Chris Missick: It is, because there's so much that can go wrong in theprocess, and especially for folks listening who aren't familiar with this process. It isn't even just that you have to start the year before you have to grow the rootstock so that you grafted on to that. And not only that, you have to continually change where you grow your new rootstock because you're concerned about nematodes in the soil, et cetera.
00:12:29:09 - 00:13:01:20
Paul Brock: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, he pulled it off. I don't you know, I know he got some plant material at various places, but it's really interesting that we have that legacy. And now when we talk about planting vineyards, especially with Riesling and Cabernet, Cabernet Franc, we talk about different clones. And at the time they weren't concerned with clones. So like we have no idea what kind of or what a clone of Riesling or Chardonnay actually went in the ground. Except that we know that makes good wine. Exactly.
00:13:01:22 - 00:13:11:00
Chris Missick: Yeah. And just to talk about that, again, you Rob Thomas over at Shaleston, their famous slogan is We only do reds.
00:13:11:02 - 00:13:11:17
Paul Brock: Yes.
00:13:12:11 - 00:13:13:29
Chris Missick: But they're really good reds.
00:13:14:01 - 00:13:14:16
Paul Brock: Yes.
00:13:14:18 - 00:13:24:11
Chris Missick: And kind of between your site and their site, what I think and we're still generations away from actually understanding terroir of the Finger Lakes.
00:13:24:13 - 00:13:54:05
Paul Brock: Yeah, but we are discovering what are making pretty compelling wines from different hands, but the same pieces of land or nearby. Yeah. I mean I always say that Shell Stone and Silver Thread share a site because they're so similar. We have almost no soil over there anywhere where we've got one to say almost no soil. Okay, so three, three and a half feet deep and shale, which is a, you can't, the roots grow into the shale but only occasionally. Yeah.
00:13:55:24 - 00:14:21:26
Paul Brock: And it really makes the vines struggle when it's a dry year. Our vines are small. And I was just talking to Seth, was, you know, the next generation at Shalestone. And he was saying, gee, the vines are small this year. Yep. They're very small and it's just last year was dry and ah, we have very limited soil or you know, for FLCC the teaching demonstration vineyard, which is Anthony Road. There's ten feet of soil there. Yeah.
00:14:21:29 - 00:14:43:06
Paul Brock: And you know, that's a very different growing condition and that's one of the things that makes the Finger Lakes exciting. Place to explore the wines is because we can have a site like where Silver Thread is and then we can have other sites and we're nearby. Yeah, but we're so different from each other. And the wines produced from those sites are different, which is really cool. It's true.
00:14:43:08 - 00:15:25:24
Chris Missick: Your wife, Shannon, I've heard her say many different times and different company that we are probably as close to just the canvas of a Burgundian model as you get. Yep. Because there are so many different soil types. You know, just the quick refresher, the soils here are not necessarily indigenous soils. They were deposited here during the Pleistocene, the glacial era. Yeah. And, and so you have these pockets based upon what the glaciers had picked up somewhere else and deposited there and ground down where you can walk through vineyard and you're dealing with sandy loam in one point in gravelly loam and or maybe very little soil. There's lots of limestone in some pockets.
00:15:25:26 - 00:15:59:00
Paul Brock: Yeah, yeah. We've got this band of limestone and I don't know if Richard was aware of it, but that's where he planted Chardonnay and Pinot Noir we're like, OK, I don't have to make that up. It's actually right there. Yeah. I mean because the shell alternates with limestone and it's fascinating digging. And I was just actually they were kind of clearing a little bit of land to two and a half acres. And, you know, walking the the land of the sky is going to help us do deep ripping and ploughing and stuff and just prepare the land the right way.
00:15:59:16 - 00:16:26:11
Paul Brock: And yeah, he's like, we don't know what we're going to get when once these trees are gone, it's going to be a nightmare. And, you know, he'd never been here before, but he knows about this type of work and these types of locations enough that it is going to be a nightmare, but it's going to be fun. And and, you know, next year we'll plant some vines and the year after replant plant more. And then five, six years from now, we'll just be making wine. And it's amazing, fun stuff.
00:16:26:13 - 00:16:46:12
Chris Missick: So the most exciting part about when we planted our vineyard. So I found a parcel like I'd fallen in love with. It's about halfway between here, Geneva and the winery in Dundee. And I had it formed organically for a few years, the Martins. And then when we installed the drain tile,
00:16:46:19 - 00:16:50:14
Paul Brock: I just want to say, well, local treasure.
00:16:50:16 - 00:17:10:27
Chris Missick: Oh, my gosh, he is unbelievable. And Peter's doing a great job carrying that legacy forward. If you're listening or watching this and haven't had a chance to see Chef's Table on Netflix, they have an episode where they feature Klaus Martin. Sure. Showing is it Blue Hill that a lot of his organic produce.
00:17:10:29 - 00:17:20:24
Paul Brock: I don't know. You know, I've gotten more familiar with him from listening to other national podcasts where he's like he's a star, he's an international star, and he's our neighbor right here. Yeah.
00:17:21:14 - 00:17:46:05
Chris Missick: So we found it. And then when we put the drain tile in, you know, 300 million year old shale was now on the surface. Yeah. And the weather kind of right before planting, doing a lot of other things. It took us a lot longer because we were obsessed, pulling fossils, looking at this unbelievable fossils, trilobites, you know, you name it.
00:17:46:07 - 00:18:32:15
Chris Missick: Yeah. And the coolest thing, you know, just sort of the novice Rockhound or, you know. Yeah. Geologically interested was when you would pull out some of these where because of the way the shale was deposited in that era, you know, it was building layer upon layer and often anaerobic. So no oxygen. Yeah. So these shells hadn't even decomposed. So cool. I mean, just blows the mind. Yeah. The other thing it does is it helps you realize your place as a steward here. So let's discuss that because I had appreciated soil. But I have to be honest, before taking the courses that that you helped manage, I wouldn't have known the difference between dirt and soil, right? Yeah.
00:18:32:17 - 00:19:04:18
Chris Missick: And once you start to get that and once you understand soil is the medium for life. Yeah. It changes the way you think about agriculture because it change it forces you to reconcile that. It is also about us. Yeah, you do a lot to help take care of your soil and you know, and just how important it is that hinges in part. I think it ties together well with what could have been a major tragedy for your life in twenty eighteen or do so.
00:19:04:20 - 00:20:13:00
Paul Brock: I mean, so what happened in twenty eighteen we got 11 inches of rain and between 1:00 a.m. and six a.m. and I mean, I think that at the highest point it was like three and a half inches and an hour and of course all the vineyards around here on a hill and they tend to be a little bit steeper down by us. And I remember you were a student at the time, were you? That wasn't. You were already gone. Yeah. Yeah. So I woke up. It was August 14th. It was six a.m. and at that time of year, six a.m., the sun is just peeking through. It's not quite sunrise yet, but it's you know, you've had first light. And I remember I made coffee, I fed the cat, but the cat made coffee in that order that will let me make coffee if I don't feed it. And then the cat goes out after I make coffee and I open the door and I knew it'd been raining. We're expecting about an inch of rain. And the cat just kind of looked at me and I'm like, Why aren't you going out? And I looked out the door and the road in front of my house is like a raging river. And I was like, Oh, this is different.
00:20:13:06 - 00:20:13:21
Chris Missick: Yeah.
00:20:13:23 - 00:21:27:21
Paul Brock: And I quickly realized I've got to cancel class. Yeah. And it was a first class, first and only class I've ever canceled, just flat out canceled, saying we're not making it up, nothing. And you know, for, you know, several weeks it was just clean up because when that much water goes downhill, it really guts the land. And I you know, we always talk about erosion happening slowly over time, OK, a little bit of erosion happens slowly over time. But what I realized that day was that a lot of erosion happens and individual events and that was one of those events and changed the landscape wherever. There wasn't something holding the dirt down. Organic matter in particular, that dirt went down the hill with the water. So the traditional method of managing vineyards where you have a clean undermind strip, a lot of my neighbors just had gullies under their vines, sandstone and one of their hedgerows, which is where we are headlands, I should say, which is where you turned the tractor around at the end of the road so you can drive down the other. A lot of people forget that we've got to be able to drive a tractor.
00:21:29:15 - 00:22:37:17
Paul Brock: He had a just a gully going down. He couldn't get a tractor in or out of the vineyard until he brought in material to fill that in afterwards, and I know in 2019 at least two of my neighbors, if not more, or have replacing debris in the middle of the vineyard. And there is an observation I made that day. We had a gravel pile on August 13th, twenty, twenty eighteen. And we had a woodchip pile there really pretty much right next to each other. On August 14th of twenty eighteen, there was no gravel pile. Gravel pile was in the lake. For all practical purposes, the woodchip pile was still there. And it says a lot for what organic matter is capable of doing in extreme events. And in my vineyard, we had undermined cover crop that was completely, you know, growing underneath the vines. We didn't lose any soil. We were picking up a lot of gravel. Yeah, for weeks we were picking up gravel, but we didn't lose the soil where we needed the soil.
00:22:38:09 - 00:24:19:22
Paul Brock: And it was just fascinating to me, just that, you know, you go through life and then you have certain things happen where, you know, changes how you think about things. And that was one of those times where my whole outlook, like I got lucky because I had already done something that was good. But now I realized just how important it is to keep that land covered. And when I drive by a field in the wintertime that is just brown, I just, you know, brown dirt, not brown is like dead vegetation. It really bothers me now because I, I now understand how important it is to have living roots in the ground to preserve that soil and to continue to build that soil, because when we don't have organic matter growing, we're not building that soil back up. So, you know, as farming in general and viticulture is just a small part of the greater agricultural community, we have to, focus really, on regenerating what the previous couple of generations of really burned up out of the soil and soil is a living, breathing thing. We anything that is in the soil eventually ends up in us, you know, and it's the way the earth is really alive. And we have to be able to really, you know, this generation of farming starting with us, we've really got to say, how do we want to be remembered? Do we want to be remembered for continuing to burn up the carbon that's in the soil? Or do we want to replace some of that carbon that's been burned up? Another time I was digging a drain tile.
00:24:19:24 - 00:25:07:01
Paul Brock: I was trying to get a wet spot out of the vineyard. And I remember I started in the hedgerow where the trees are and stuff just beyond the headlines and. Start digging then, so it was dark brown and black and there's all this life in it and continue to dig with my backhoe into the vineyard, and by the time I got into the, you know, edge of the vineyard, the soil is light brown and just lacked any of that vigor. And, you know, a silver thread. Ben Vineyard there for one hundred and fifty years and it's been farmed for that long and it's lost a lot of that organic matter. And that's not good. And so, like, OK, I've realized that. So what am I going to do now? And, you know, it's it's keeping things growing. It's adding organic matter back.
00:25:08:05 - 00:25:39:21
Paul Brock: So it's to me, it's a challenge, but it's really exciting. And I'm really looking forward to the next, you know, several years of helping people understand this and really going forward with what do we do, like how do we change what we've been doing? How do we move away from the glyphosate culture and move into something else and still maintain our productivity and the awesome wines that we make? Exactly.
00:25:39:23 - 00:26:20:17
Chris Missick: So people don't necessarily know it takes 100,000 years to build an inch of soil, naturally. Yeah. And it's why I always encourage folks it it sounds small, but simple things like not throwing out your food scraps or when you're cutting vegetables. Yeah. Just keep a bucket by the back door. You know, little things like that that you can do in your own home actually does make a difference. Sure does. US and the large swath we've talked about 76 being an important date. I do agree with you. I think it it all sort of happened. And maybe it's because we talk to each other. But between like 2013 and 2016, there was a real awakening that seemed to happen in the Finger Lakes.
00:26:21:23 - 00:26:50:25
Chris Missick: I know growers that I had worked with. A lot of them stopped using glyphosate. You know, there was a big investment in there's a tool that folks can put on their vineyard called a Braun, where if they do want some weed control and they don't have under vine kind of cover crops, they can just get them down that way. Yeah, keep them out of the canopy. What do you think? That's what it was. Is it just the camaraderie of Finger Lakes producers talking and learning? Uh, what do you think led to that?
00:26:51:01 - 00:27:18:20
Paul Brock: Uh, yeah, it's it's interesting as somebody who's been who's gone, you know, purchasing a vineyard that was, you know, being farmed exclusively by tilling under the vine. A Braun actually to, you know, stop tilling and using herbicides and now totally different direction where I've had an undercover cop since, you know, starting to establish that in twenty sixteen.
00:27:20:24 - 00:28:04:04
Paul Brock: There is change is happening and I think. It's a combination, you know, people don't, you know, people farmers don't want to spray, don't want to use material because it costs money and just having a lighter impact and finding a more efficient way to do it could be it. I think that, you know, for the changes we might have seen back then, we're going to see a lot more changes in the coming years. Looking at a sustainability certification for the entire New York state industry, what that's going to look like and where that might hopefully drive some people to go. You know, I don't really want to comment on it because we don't know what it's going to look like yet. We know it's going to be based on vine balance.
00:28:04:06 - 00:28:49:15
Paul Brock: But, or is, God-forsaken going to continue to be a tool for some growers? Probably. You know, there's some. There's some aspects of it and, you know, large commercial growers who are growing juice grapes, you know, it's it's a good tool. But for somebody like us, we were growing wine grapes. We need to get away from that. And we can't force anybody. We got to let people do it through education, really. They've got to they've got to want to do it. So we'll see. You know, there's there's ways to regulate around things. But I don't think our politicians want to regulate glyphosate out of the equation quite yet.
00:28:49:22 - 00:29:28:09
Chris Missick: And quite frankly, with the level of lobbying that happens from a lot of those chemical producers, I don't think we'd ever see that happen. Nope, unfortunately. And that's why it does become kind of a. In evangelizing of the benefits, and particularly as you mentioned, we're not just making juice, we're making wine, and you can taste the difference between properly farmed fruit and kind of what what we would say now is conventionally farmed, even though that window of conventional farming is really probably only about 50 years, because what we're doing is nothing new. We're simply rediscovering what the teachers and the farmers of former generations have done.
00:29:28:11 - 00:29:59:01
Paul Brock: Yeah, well, we had to grow food for people and grow wine for thousands of years, millions of years before we ever got to this point of the agriculture agrochemical revolution. But think about it this way. You know, going back to the soil, what is actually going on in the soil? And, you know, we've got these microorganisms down there, bacteria, fungi, other things. And there, you know, there's more of them in a handful of soil than there are people on the earth.
00:30:00:08 - 00:30:53:18
Paul Brock: And they all there's huge diversity of species and they all serve a place. Now, as soon as we put any kind of chemical in the field, it changes how those organisms interact with each other, changes which ones are dominating. And when we start burning up carbon resources in the soil, that also changes everything. And how do we burn up carbon resources? Well, we put fertilizer out and the microorganisms use the carbon to, you know, use the fertilizer to chew on the carbon. We think that we put the fertilizer out for the plants, but really we're putting it on that those microorganisms. So it's it's really a complicated system. And the more that we respect what is actually going on under the ground now, grapevines are unique that they don't have hairs. You know, people are taught in school.
00:30:53:20 - 00:32:06:15
Paul Brock: You know, roots have root hairs, grape vines don't. And, you know, here's our the surface area to absorb everything. Well, if grapevines don't have root hairs and they don't have many roots, period, how are these absorbing stuff? Well, it's the microorganisms that are helping them absorb everything. So if we're messing with the microorganisms, then we're messing with what? The grape vines uptake. And when you. Take out the and you know, I say this, but I don't really understand quite yet like what the implications are, but I know there are implications because I can see it myself. But when you take out the the impact on the microorganisms and you let them be now, mycorrhizal fungi can have hundreds of miles of reach, if they're undisturbed and they can take stuff from far away and bring it to that vine as the vine needs it, and then what is the fungi you get in return? It gets sugar through the vine, gives the food. So there's a give and take between the plants and the soil. And, you know, when the soil is properly taken care of, I think that that exchange becomes much richer and it becomes a much more expressive.
00:32:10:09 - 00:32:25:27
Paul Brock: Representation, the wine can become a more expressive representation of what that site is really capable of. So it's going to be interesting to see where we're going with that as we start respecting the soil a little bit more and building that back up.
00:32:26:06 - 00:33:12:14
Chris Missick: Definitely. I stumbled upon I do a lot of home gardening tours and I've never grown sweet potatoes, so I was interested in trying some sweet potatoes this year. I stumbled upon a guy who was a YouTube channel and called David the Good, and it kind of opened my eyes a little bit to what we can learn from some of these really great but smaller scale home gardeners. He was talking a lot about fungi and how he puts oatmeal in his soil. And I imagine that's it's the breakdown of those carbohydrates and the sugars that really helps them grow. So I'm excited because I do think there's this whole world of stuff for us to learn, and I like your approach. What was that? Is that a term you came up with, Paul? It's not it's not biodynamic.
00:33:12:16 - 00:33:55:05
Paul Brock: It's bio regenerative or bio intensive. Yeah. Yeah. So I started working with a friend of mine. I just told my story. I'm a I'm a triathlete. I started about 10 year and a little bit over 10 years ago in better shape than me. So I want to swim since the pandemic. So I feel a little funny because because of that. But it was actually in the pool back in 2010, 2011, I'd be swimming and I'm a social guy. I'll talk to anybody. I don't care if we're halfway clothed and Mike could be swimming in the morning if we're talking five a.m. and we got talking and, you know, we work out together and we'd be talking. And it turns out he was a at the time the orchard manager at Red Jacket Orchards.
00:33:55:23 - 00:38:17:25
Paul Brock: And, you know, he found out that I own silver thread. And he's he's an orchard guy. He's got a Masters of science from Cornell, just like me. And so we kind of hit it off and we had a lot in common. And, you know, he's always been interested in organic and biodynamic. And it was really it took him five, six years, really. Kind of. Get into my head enough to help me, you know, down this pathway and what we really decided to call it was bio intensive. Nevine Intensive is actually a term that's used. It's I think there's a group out west somewhere in California, Oregon. But and they're more really focused on home gardening, gardening. So you can produce food on a small scale. So like for, you know, helping a village in Africa or something, trying to be self-sufficient, self-sufficient, instead of having to rely on food being brought in and using all of the resources on the farm and stuff like that and not using chemical inputs, you know, just using biological inputs and what that looks like. And so we kind of adopted that term bio intensive for what we were doing. And really just looking at how do we use the biology of the ecosystem and other biology that we could bring in. So instead of spraying, OK, so we've got five main pathogens that attack our grapevines that we really have to manage. If we don't manage them, we lose our crop pretty much anywhere on the Finger Lakes. And so what do we use when we use chemicals to manage those? Even if you're an organic farmer, you're using some kind of chemical to manage those. So instead of using chemical that's been produced at a chemical factory using a chemical that's by biologically produced. So is that a fermentation byproduct? Is that a plant extracts? Is that some kind of tea that you can make yourself as a commercially available? Is it a live organism that you can populate the ecosystem that exists on the leaves and on the grapevines that would then outcompete or kill the other, the pathogens that you're trying to, you know, control and, you know, going down this path, you know, stopping spraying herbicides and using biological materials, it's really a different mindset and how we farm. And my my favorite analogy was that, you know, farmers always wake up every day saying, oh, what can I go kill today? And like, none of us are farming because we want to kill stuff. We want things to live. And like we want you know, really what we should be wanting is a diverse ecosystem so that our plants that we we are relying on to grow actually survive and prosper. And so that that change in mindset of what how can I go kill everything to how can I make things live and promote more life? That's going to work with me has really been a game changer for me because I never think of. The chemicals we have to apply, as you know, killing stuff, I'm thinking, what are the most efficient things I can find biological materials? And when I can't find biological materials, you know, my next step would be organic. Chemicals like copper and sulfur are, you know, organic, but yet they're chemicals. And how do we do that? And then last, if I need to use, you know, a. Modern day chemical, what is the most efficient one that's going to be most targeted and has the least impact on the bees and the other on my soil and kind of that's where I'm going down the path of how do I manage these things? Because, you know, we've got to be honest with ourselves. We are farming something that doesn't belong here. And because we're farming something that doesn't belong here, we have to manage it. And how do we do that and the way that we're doing the best for the environment.
00:38:18:04 - 00:38:37:16
Chris Missick: So, you know, in copper sulphate, used heavily in organic production for things like powdery mildew, downy mildew. Yeah. Do you have any concerns that all of this use of copper is going to ultimately harm our water tables and hurt us in ways we aren't contemplating now?
00:38:37:18 - 00:41:04:14
Paul Brock: Yeah, so I was under the assumption when I bought Silver Thread that Richard was using copper sulfate. And why was I under the sun? I should have just asked him because I found bags of it that were in the barn. And so I knew he was using it at one point. But I was interested to find that he when I found his notes, he wasn't actually using copper sulfate. He was using other forms of copper. He had stopped using copper sulfate. He still had the backlands dirt cheap. The stuff is like ridiculously cheap. So but it takes a lot to be effective at the control measures that we need. So there are so copper sulfate and OK, I'm a chemical engineer, so I'm going to go a little bit here. It's a it's a plus two form of cation of copper and there's other forms of copper that can be more effective. So there's there's a product out there that's actually a fatty acid of copper that is more effective at disease control. And you need much less metallic copper input in order to have the control. And then there's other products like hydroxides of copper that are also very effective with much lower metallic copper inputs. So I didn't really understand that because I had a mental block for years. Just saying copper is bad, not going to spray copper, can't use copper, but it turns out that copper is not so bad if you use it responsibly. And I don't know, Europe is kind of going in the direction of copper is bad. We've got to get rid of all. And from the standpoint where they came from with their vineyard management, where some producers were dumping fifty pounds of metallic copper on their vineyard year after year for hundreds of years and literally killing that soil because of the copper poisoning. Copper is bad, right? That means copper is bad. Well, when you're using it responsibly and the direction that Europe has gone is they've gone, you know, at one point they said, OK, you can only got 20 pounds of copper and now you can only put I think it's like four pounds of copper. I don't know exactly what they're going down to, even less than that. And then they might face it out. I think they're supposed to phase it out, but it's still controversial because so many people rely on it.
00:41:04:16 - 00:41:05:20
Chris Missick: Yeah, um.
00:41:07:04 - 00:43:06:28
Paul Brock: So I'm kind of looking at that as a model and also different soils, tree topper differently. So it turns out that silt loam soils that are very common here in the Finger Lakes are very resilient to copper inputs. So if you put a little bit of copper out every year and you use that as a tool versus using as the only effective thing that you have, which is copper sulfate was used as then I think that there is a responsible way to use copper, that it's not going to be building up in the soil, especially if you have a rich, biodiverse ecosystem within the soil, then your soils are much more diverse. So the higher organic matter that you have in the soil, the the more resilient the soils would be to copper. So it's a responsibility on one end, you know, that we have that we have to the soil. But it's also, you know. How can we use these things, how can we use our tools and think about our tools that were the impacts are and mitigating while still doing good? So I've been using a little bit of copper each year and I measure the amount of metallic copper. And I've been around a pound, pound and a half now for the past few years. And, you know, going back to that European example where people were putting on 40, 50 pounds of copper, that's a lot. And that's that's irresponsible. So I would never I haven't used copper sulfate. I probably won't ever use copper sulfate. And what I did say before was copper, sulfur. And because sulfur is the other way, when I say copper, I'm saying metallic copper in any form and sulphur, the elementS sulphur, which is a very effective fungicide against things like powdery mildew. And it's organic and it's widely used even in conventional agriculture. And it's still a useful tool and it's effective at what it does. And it's an expensive, too.
00:43:07:00 - 00:43:56:21
Chris Missick: So, you know, in talk of talking about this idea, just to stay in farming for a little bit longer, our responsibility to keeping soil in place, what gets used for folks who don't know? I mean, as you mentioned it earlier, a lot of our vineyards are on slopes and those slopes slope right down to the lake. And a lot of people get their drinking water from the lake. They are extremely rich in fish life. We've seen an increasing problem with algae blooms in the shallower lakes, largely from excessive phosphorus use. But this is something that it's not I mean, not to put it selfishly, it's not just about stewardship. It's about the lives that are impacted in small communities here today.
00:43:56:25 - 00:45:05:24
Paul Brock: Yeah. Anything that happens on the slope eventually makes its way down to the lake. I've talked to my soul in waterski. You know, I generally tend not to dig a whole silver thread without talking to my. Yeah. Soil and water guy at the county. And he just makes me feel better. Yeah. He's generally of the approach of you can do whatever you want. You're the farmer. I'm just here to make sure you don't ruin the stuff. But his biggest complaints are the dairy farmers were their cows are in the streams. He's like, we've got to fix that, you know, because those streams where the cows are, they're defecating in the streams and they're ending up right in the lake. And that's a tremendous amount of nutrient load on the lakes. And so that's number one, probably the biggest agricultural problem we have. And I hate the it's a certain segment of the population. It's not every dairy farmer, but dairy farmer should have the streams, walled off, you know, fenced off for their herds. Number two, we've got to be cognizant that anything we're putting out there is going to slowly filter through or quickly go down in the face of a deluge.
00:45:05:26 - 00:46:29:27
Paul Brock: And I'm really you know, I'm learning like we're all learning. We have to keep learning. You and I are both lifelong learners, you know, what does that look like? What is my responsibility? OK, so I've got a pesticide I want to use. I've got to follow the label. That's number one. You know, don't spray it within a hundred feet of water body. And in following those rules and then making sure, you know, having. Again, it goes back to resiliency in the soil of the soil that has life in it has more organic matter and it has roots growing in it is going to be able to digest any input that you put on the land more efficiently. So it's not going to make it into the lake, you know, if it does make it in the lake.It's been decomposted and it's a it's a small byproduct that's not really an effective thing anymore. So it's we've got to be conscious of that and we've got to keep learning. I'm always looking at, you know, I think on Wednesday I'm participating in something with Synacthen Kubelik Watershed folks and just always looking like, what can I do and how can I do it better? And never being complacent. And what I'm doing is the best thing. I would never joke with myself that I'm doing the best stuff.
00:46:29:29 - 00:46:31:27
Chris Missick: Yeah, we have so much to learn.
00:46:32:00 - 00:46:32:26
Paul Brock: Yes. Yeah.
00:46:33:03 - 00:46:54:02
Chris Missick: And speaking of so much to learn, we haven't seen people have called it global weirding changes in weather patterns. I heard I heard you mention an anecdote recently about the eclipse and what that may have meant for farming. We actually maybe we don't know, but I'd love if you could share that.
00:46:54:04 - 00:48:16:15
Paul Brock: Well, I just you know, I remember every year I remember the weather we experienced. And ever since I got into farming, you know, it's been very apparent to me that the weather affects everything that happens, including what goes into the bottle of wine every year. So it's really important to me to understand different weather events. And I've used the eclipse just as a time stamp to make people remember twenty seventeen and where you were when the solar eclipse happened because everybody watched the solar eclipse. So it's really easy, timestamp, that everybody can go, oh, I remember that. Versus a flood of twenty eighteen. Nobody really remembers what they were doing. Know on August 14th. Twenty twenty eighteen. But everybody remembers what they were doing when that eclipse happened in North America. And what happened after that is a story that I need people to know. It was really warm. It was really sunny. It was a beautiful summer up to that point in twenty seventeen. And then it got like a day or two after the eclipse, it got really cold. We had frost in the Adirondacks and it stayed cold and it really delayed the ripening for twenty seventeen and right into almost the second week of September. It wasn't looking good. Now we're coming off of twenty sixteen which is a sunny dry year and we had more crop out than anybody had realized up to that point. And when we have a lot of crop out there, we have to ripen that crop, which means more work for the vines.
00:48:16:27 - 00:49:08:11
Paul Brock: And when it's cold, the vines aren't doing any work. And I remember those last two weeks of August, it was like high of 65 and coal, you know, into the 40s at night. And it was like vines aren't doing anything. We're moving on now. It's moving. I remember the start of the semester going, yeah, we're going to make wine this year. I don't know when. Yeah, this is kind of an odd, odd thing that's going on right now and then and then second week of September towards the end, it just got beautiful, you know, highs in the 70s and 80s, lows at night in the maybe mid 50s or 60s. And everything just started moving. And we had, you know, it was an eighty degrees in October. We some some October is we never see seventy degrees. We had like stretches of 80 degree weather and it was just ended up being a glorious harvest.
00:49:08:22 - 00:50:18:16
Paul Brock: But there was a point, you know, for those two, three weeks in late August, September, like it could have been a disaster, like we could have been harvesting things like seventeen breaths, which generally we'd like at least twenty, twenty two is really awesome. And that's the sugar level that's in the graves at harvest. And like we'd like the acids we owe the Riesling under eight and a half eight and we needed to be warm and sunny to achieve those two things. And twenty seventeen who weren't getting there. And then we, we got lucky. And you know, that's a beautiful thing about beautiful, beautiful thing about the Finger Lakes is that most years we get lucky, whether it be early in the season or late in the season, it's knocking on wood. So but we live in a climate that's challenging and it makes it really rewarding to do what we do every year. And, you know, you and I don't know what the reward of twenty, twenty one is going to be right now, but I know in a year we're going to be talking about something that happened in twenty, twenty one that, you know, by the skin of our teeth. We got a crop and we made wine and it was awesome.
00:50:20:09 - 00:51:06:12
Chris Missick: And it really does depend. I mean there are years where, you know, the snow is coming. It's seventy degrees, but it's going to snow in two days, two feet, and you've got to bring crop in. You're right, there's always something, whether it be a plague of some sort of pest, which seems it's different every year or the whether, you know, the thing that I do love about the Finger Lakes is our diversity of varietals and styles. So, you know, years that are cooler, we just make a little more sparkling wine and other other years we focus on some of those Bordeaux reds. Yeah, but yeah, it is something. And then with regard to climate change. Yeah. How do you think this is going to impact us?
00:51:08:11 - 00:52:43:05
Paul Brock: Well. Well, always makes me feel better about climate change is that we're in the Finger Lakes and that we're already coming from a challenging situation. Yes, we've endured more extremes in the past decade than, you know, our previous generation probably had to do their entire farming time, but. We've been enduring challenging conditions here, and it's been a mindset from one grape grower to the next and one winemaker to the next to know the tools that you need to be successful in those challenging circumstances. And now that we're going to have more extremes and different extremes. I know we'll be able to deal with it as long as we can grow a crop, you know, and that and that's the big effort, you know, as long as we can, you know, hang fruit on the vines and ripen the vines, we'll be able to make really good wine because we've been resilient in the past. We understand how to be resilient. And I don't see any reason why we're going to lose the toolbox that we've, you know, spent generations building here in the Finger Lakes. And I think that's really the the thing that I like to hang my hat on. And, you know, we've never been able to know that, oh, it's going to be a dry year because we live in a certain place that's always dry. We don't know that, but we know how to deal with wet years and know how to deal with cold years, we know how to do a warm years, we know how to deal with dry years. It's we've done it and we'll figure it out there.
00:52:43:08 - 00:52:47:02
Chris Missick: There does seem to be one pest in the horizon that has everybody nervous.
00:52:47:12 - 00:52:49:05
Paul Brock: Spotted lantern fly.
00:52:50:09 - 00:52:52:08
Chris Missick: That's right. Cue the scary music.
00:52:52:10 - 00:52:53:03
Paul Brock: Yes. Yes.
00:52:53:14 - 00:52:56:28
Chris Missick: And I'm throwing a picture up. So if anybody sees one.
00:52:57:00 - 00:53:01:15
Paul Brock: Yeah. Throw all of the pictures of all the generations. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
00:53:01:24 - 00:53:15:00
Chris Missick: So that's going to be up here. But let's recap that what we're facing where it is right now. And I know they did find, uh, some. Yeah. In Ithaca and even up. Did they find one in Geneva.
00:53:15:27 - 00:55:38:17
Paul Brock: I heard this. Yeah, but it was an isolated incident, maybe just like one one adult were down in Africa, they actually found egg masses. So makes you throw up the picture of the egg masses to everybody. Should be everybody across the country should understand what this test looks like so it's not allowed to fly. And I've done a lot of kind of weasel my way into the invasive people of New York State. Just sat in some of their meetings to see how they're talking about this past and understand what's being done about it. And really so far, the management of the spot on that didn't fly. So it showed up in the Pennsylvania area, Lancaster area of about six, seven years ago. And they're pretty sure it's been here for two or three years before that. And I hope I'm getting this right. If anybody who's really in on on it now is listening. But so it's around. It's present before you really see it takes, you know, a few generations. But it is an insect that has one adult generation a year and overwintering is egg masses. Then it goes through several successive generations every year and then usually adults sometime late summer. So during harvest time is when the adults are around. And what they do is they attach themselves to perennial plants like vines and other trees, and they suck the phloem out of it. And it basically goes right through them and it comes right out. So they because vines, you know, are not as big as a oak tree or not very big at all compared to that, they don't have a lot of mass when all of their sugars are being sucked out by the you know, what the spider lantern fly does. It swarms onto the vine and usually picks like one or two vines and a swarm onto that and suck the life out of it. And then they'll move on to the next one. And you'll see if you see these videos online, they're just covered and this will be their harvest. And this. The honey dew coming out the back end gets all over the grapes. Turns out that that's not the worst thing, but it's not anything desirable.
00:55:38:19 - 00:55:39:08
Chris Missick: It's gross.
00:55:39:10 - 00:58:07:29
Paul Brock: Yeah. And promotes, you know, other mildewy and stuff like that. It's disgusting. So we've got this this past, you know, so it's been contained in Pennsylvania. It's spreading. It's likely that we will see it in our vineyards. They're saying probably next year, 20 or 22 will see it. We might see some this year. It's not going to be a real problem, probably till 2023. Probably won't be a real problem everywhere. And where I'm really focusing on is making sure that my vines are resilient and healthy and can withstand an onslaught if one occurs. And it's really kind of scary because we know this because it's one generation a year, it's really easy to control, to kill them with insecticides. But nobody wants to be spraying insecticides. No, at harvest time. And it's really the adults are most controllable. So I have my faith. And Cornell University, Cornell Carver Extension, Penn State, those folks that are really working on it, there's some hope that there's a native, a couple of native fungi that attack it and maybe weaponize them, that fungi hate to use that word when it comes to agriculture. But in this case, we want to weaponize it. So this pest is endemic to like China and kind of goes hand in hand with the tree of heaven through heaven and Lantis. And there's a lot of that here in the Finger Lakes. And so I've been cutting that down. That's over a thread, you know, where we have it, and encouraging my neighbors to cut it down. We're not certain. Well, we the experts are not certain if the spot on the fly needs the tree of heaven or just prefers a tree of heaven. It's likely that it just prefers. But, you know, it's something we all need to keep our eye out because it's not just viticulture that's going to be impacted. I mean, it's when you have an insect swarming on the side of your house, you might not be sucking anything out of your house, but you're not going to like that. And that's that's the reality that people are dealing with down in Pennsylvania. And it's not that fun. But apparently, you know, it'll go through a high and then they kind of die off. And we don't really understand what's going on with this past. And we know that and their native habitat, they're not a pest. It's really just here where they don't have as many natural enemies that they behave like they are. So it's really interesting,
00:58:09:15 - 00:58:38:19
Paul Brock: I think, that we're going to be able to withstand it somehow. I have no idea how quite. Yeah, and I'm glad that the people who are running the quarantine are doing such a good job that it's not here yet because if nothing was done, it would have been here three or four years ago and it would have been really bad and we wouldn't have had any tools. But some good people are on it. And I trust that when it gets here, we'll have some strategy. I don't know if it'll be a good strategy, but we'll have a strategy.
00:58:38:24 - 00:58:48:28
Chris Missick: Well, and it's even more impressive that it has been kept out this long, because when you think about where a core group of Finger Lakes visitors are coming from, that's Pennsylvania.
00:58:49:00 - 00:58:50:08
Paul Brock: Yeah, right from the heart of it.
00:58:50:11 - 00:59:04:08
Chris Missick: Exactly. I had folks from Lancaster in the tasting room this weekend. Yeah. So the fact that we've been able to keep it out is in part reliant on the fact that these folks live with this pest down there right now. They know how dangerous it is for us.
00:59:04:10 - 00:59:05:23
Paul Brock: They don't want to bring here. No.
00:59:05:25 - 00:59:14:27
Chris Missick: Yeah, yeah. So I wish it had kind of more negative names attached to it because, honey dewyou have heaven like these are really
00:59:14:29 - 00:59:16:07
Paul Brock: lanterns.
00:59:17:25 - 00:59:31:01
Paul Brock: The worst name associated is fly. Nobody likes flies. It's not really it's oh it's a sapsucker is what it is. And it's fat. It's a beautiful and it is beautiful. It's a beautiful insect. But it's, it's a terrifying devil.
00:59:31:12 - 00:59:41:27
Chris Missick: And it is something that if you're listening in California right now, I know there are a lot of California growers who are keeping abreast of this because it could devastate the entire apparently countries.
00:59:41:29 - 01:00:15:14
Paul Brock: Apparently it's been found there I mean, like you look at the road map and it loves to lay its egg masses on metal like rusty old metal. And you look at the railroad beds and it goes right through their country. I mean, this this thing can show up anywhere. And we all have to be on the lookout for apparently I think they have found it in California. And so it would be interesting, you know, because once, you know, if it gets into the grape industry there, then maybe some real research dollars will be thrown at it and we'll weaponize those fungi in no time.
01:00:17:13 - 01:00:21:13
Chris Missick: Can we spend a few minutes talking about some of your research into nitrogen in fermentation.
01:00:22:11 - 01:00:27:06
Paul Brock: For fermentation? Yeah. So when were you a second year student at FLCC Chris?
01:00:28:00 - 01:00:29:18
Chris Missick: It was 16.
01:00:29:27 - 01:00:35:08
Paul Brock: OK, so. It was maybe 20, 17,
01:00:35:13 - 01:00:40:07
Chris Missick: I've seen things that you've done, it might have been BEV NY or some other industry, and
01:00:40:16 - 01:01:01:17
Paul Brock: I should say that I a sponge, when it comes to the research and nitrogen, I've done very little of my own research. And I'm a practitioner when it comes to both grape growing and winemaking. And so I've always been very concerned with fermentation, nutrition. And 2017 after harvest, somebody came from
01:01:02:03 - 01:03:06:20
Paul Brock: Scott Labs and Lalleman, and was talking to my class about all the new research. And this is very new stuff like and then a couple of years. And it really just through I thought I had a really good handle on into into tatters and really looking at what a healthy fermentation looks like. We know that nitrogen plays an important part. So there's a lot of other micronutrients and vitamins. So it's it's not you know, it's not so simple, just nitrogen. There's organic and inorganic nitrogen and fermentation and they both come from the grapes. We can add both forms and it turns out and the Finger Lakes, when I was at Cornell, I studied with Thomas and tackling he published a paper back in 1990 showing how deficient our grapes are in the Finger Lakes and nitrogen. And it was a source of one of the, um, well, it was the source of the problems that we were having in the in the cellar at the time. Meaning like there a lot of stuck fermentations, a lot of fermentations or the yeast just could not finish fermenting. So he identified the problem, low nitrogen. His solution was add as much inorganic nitrogen, which is diammonium phosphate as possible. Well, we've come a long way from that to the point where I'm managing nitrogen and fermentations, but not using diammonium phosphate at all anymore. It's actually I mean, I think it's still a good tool, but only when necessary, really. Certain yeast like more nitrogen than other yeast. And if you if you match the yeast to the environment that they're in. So if you have a low nitrogen environment, put a yeast in or the native endemic use are probably going to be OK with a little bit of nitrogen. So how do we manage them otherwise and make sure that they produce the maximum amount of really good smelling and, you know, fruity characteristics that we want to come out of our lives.
01:03:06:22 - 01:03:48:04
Paul Brock: And it's really about organic nitrogen. And, you know, knowing how much you have and I stress this all the time to to winemaker's you've got to measure your what's called yeast assumable nitrogen. And if you're not if you don't have a handle on that, you can't manage it. It's just like managing your checkbook. If you don't know what your balance is, you can't really manage that checkbook. So you've got to know how much nitrogen is there. And then you've got to understand the tools that you have on the shelf or not. And what either pulling those levers or not pulling those levers, how might those impact your your final result? I am a grape grower at heart.
01:03:48:16 - 01:05:11:03
Paul Brock: I don't want to screw up what I do in the vineyard. And that to me makes fermentation, nutrition and understanding the ecosystem that is a fermentation and it's a short lived ecosystem, whether it be, you know, for a week or two or three months. Yeah, that's a short lived ecosystem. And we've got to appreciate that. We want you know, there's certain health aspects that includes nutrition, that includes temperature that we can all again, it goes back to learning more about. And it's the amount of research that's been published since 2015, 2016. It's just really unknown to a lot of people. And I'd have to say that just to throw a bone out to Scott Labs, they've done the best job of disseminating that information and really changing their recommendations over the past two or three years and how they're recommending people manage fermentations for the better because, you know. We can always know more, and that's it always comes back to that. We can't be complacent in what we're doing because there might be a better way. And I truly feel like my lines have become more reflective of the vineyard as I've learned how to manage the grapes better as I deliver them to people in the bottle. Yeah, so.
01:05:11:29 - 01:05:35:02
Chris Missick: So I know we both do things differently in the cellar and do things differently from kind of the textbook way of doing it. But it seems like this kind of the, the traditional method of you've got your hand measurement and then at the start of the ferment you've got your your dose of nitrogen and then one third of the way through you you've got another. Yeah. That seems to be changing that.
01:05:35:04 - 01:07:44:25
Paul Brock: Yeah. So I try and back off, you know, as long as I have some amount of nitrogen we try and back off that initial dose at the beginning of fermentation and own and give as much at one third as possible and what that does. So if you give a lot of nitrogen early on the fermentation and we're really geeking out right here, so we're losing people and we've got people, they're seeing the same time when you give the fermentation a big dose of nitrogen early on, beginning of fermentation, what we're talking about is on the the sugar is just being consumed and the fermentation. So we throw a bunch of nitrogen. And then what happens is the yeast population build up really high and they need more nitrogen later on versus when you wait to want their sugar depletion, you give all the organic nitrogen and they're actually. You're going to have a lower population of yeast that instead of using all of their energy to sustain a higher population, they're going to use that energy more to make a more beautiful molecule. So it's been a you know, and if you're inoculating fermentation, using a rehydration nutrient is still like it's more important now than ever. And to do that, it's what we have as winemakers to ensure that we're going to be able to focus on, you know, focus on the vineyard more than focusing on fixing a line. You know, I don't want I don't like fixing wines. I don't like talking to people about fixing wines. And, you know, you know, one of my downfalls in life, I would say, is that people look at me as, you know, a respected winemaker. And what they don't realize is I don't want to help them fix their wines. I want to help them make better wines. And that really starts with the grapes and being responsible during fermentation. So you don't have to mess with the grapes. And if you're good, your yeast. Your wines are going to show it because you're a wines are going to be reflective of the vineyard, not by some intervention that you had to do in the cellar.
01:07:45:03 - 01:08:12:29
Chris Missick: Exactly. And I think that is the key in both of us. I do some depending on the site, depending on the style we're going for some totally on inoculated. Yeah, no nitrogen additions. And there are others where you hold it. And yeah, you just want to respect the fruit and you've got to kind of a vision of what that wine will be if. Let's talk a little bit about Finger Lakes Community College. So your other hat, a little bit about the program and then we're going to take some wine. Sure.
01:08:13:01 - 01:08:14:12
Paul Brock: When is this going to air, Chris?
01:08:15:10 - 01:08:18:10
Chris Missick: This will probably er sometime in May or June.
01:08:18:12 - 01:09:02:09
Paul Brock: OK, so it won't be any surprise that I'm leaving FCC at the end of August. So this will be a kind of more and more or less official announcement. I've been there for 11 years. I got to see the viticulture senator from, you know, a dream to you know, that's where I teach people now and the teaching demonstration Vinyard. And it's just time for me to move on and let somebody else really take that, take everything I've built up and take in a new direction and infuse new energy. But, you know, I'm extremely proud I could do it for my whole life if I didn't have my own vineyard and winery. Yeah. That I'm so passionate about.
01:09:02:23 - 01:09:03:08
Paul Brock: Yeah.
01:09:03:10 - 01:09:26:14
Chris Missick: So, yeah. So you you held the hand of this program from its start, which was like closets with carboys to a facility now with I mean a number of 30 gallon jacketed temperature controlled tanks, beautiful press pad. I think you finally got a good bottling system there. Yeah.
01:09:26:22 - 01:09:27:09
Paul Brock: It's beautiful.
01:09:28:00 - 01:09:34:27
Chris Missick: So in so many ways I just I wish that center was my cellar with bgger tanks.
01:09:34:29 - 01:10:52:29
Paul Brock: I wish it was my cellar sometimes. It's so flexible, you know, and I have had the pleasure of using that to bottle my wines because we bottle FLC see once a year. And as an instructor in bottling is a very complicated process. I always say getting grapes is the most important thing to having a good bottle of wine, getting good grapes. Second most important thing is fermentation. Third is bottling. You can mess all of it up if you don't follow the right way. So I've had a practice and I've used my own wine to practice focus. And we've actually, because we normally be paying other people to help us follow our wine, we pay FLCC and I say we silver thread. So I've had the pleasure of using that space with my own wines and my own time without students around. And it's a wonderful place to work with. And I think you're saying that I have to agree it is a great space. And I on one hand, it's it's been perfect for the students. On one hand, sometimes it's too nice. Yeah. But it's it's too nice and just the minimum amount of way that it doesn't have tools that you wouldn't expect to find elsewhere. I mean, it has what you need, but it doesn't have
01:10:53:05 - 01:10:54:22
Chris Missick: you don't have a cross flow, right.
01:10:54:28 - 01:11:05:25
Paul Brock: There's no cross flow. There's not a centrifuge. You still have to hook the hoses up and the pumps up and fight over the good pump. Yeah, exactly.
01:11:06:19 - 01:11:08:07
Chris Missick: Which even happens in my cellar.
01:11:08:09 - 01:11:09:14
Paul Brock: Yes, I know
01:11:11:19 - 01:11:17:13
Chris Missick: folks that are listening can actually get access to some of the wines. I don't know if the school sells it directly.
01:11:17:15 - 01:11:46:21
Paul Brock: Yeah. So you can contact me it Paul.Brock@FLCC,EDU, or Gina.Lee@FLCC.EDU. She'll be there after I leave. But she really Gina makes a wine sales happen. But if you guys are interested and some student made wines, it's all exceptional. We are a commercial winery. It's fifteen dollars a bottle. Doesn't matter what the style is, it's just the easiest way for us to do it. And all the funds go back into the program in some way or another
01:11:47:12 - 01:11:50:19
Chris Missick: in a plug for a liquor store in Geneva. Pedulas has some on the shelf.
01:11:50:21 - 01:11:51:06
Paul Brock: Yeah, yeah.
01:11:51:19 - 01:12:33:28
Chris Missick: I think it's neat and I actually do try whenever I travel or whenever I'm looking for stuff, I actually seek out a bottle or two of student wines and co-op wines to give me a sense for, you know, where the baseline is in a lot of cases for a region. And they are there. They're delicious. Yeah. I appreciate you. I've shared this with you, but I particularly appreciate this idea of trade schools of your schools because, you know, masters and law degrees are not for everybody. In fact, I encourage some folks don't even think about it. But, you know, these two year programs, whether it be to learn to be a plumber or an electrician or a winemaker.
01:12:34:00 - 01:12:48:03
Chris Missick: Yeah. Offer this incredible opportunity to have a short time investment work with leaders in that industry, and it's a relatively small cost outlay. Yeah. To get a skill that you'll carry with you your whole life.
01:12:48:10 - 01:13:40:29
Paul Brock: Yeah, it's it's incredible. It's not expensive. Like, it's it's affordable. You get access to good equipment. And I mean, there's so much government funding behind these two year programs. It's there for the people. It's there for everybody so that the community benefits from it. There's a reason why these programs exist. And and we're very lucky. I mean, I've been lucky to be part of NOCCA from you know, the program existed for a year before I got there. But the really kind of mold, the direction that it goes in, but there's so many other programs and nursing or biotechnology or, you know, just all sorts of things that are hands on that give people an education and let them go out in the world and make a living. Yep.
01:13:41:13 - 01:13:57:04
Chris Missick: And that's what I love. A lot of folks get stuck at 24. And they are in debt. And it sets back the idea of being able to start a family. Yeah, they can start that a little earlier. Yeah. I wish I would have. I was way too old when I had my first child.
01:13:57:10 - 01:14:57:27
Paul Brock: I always like to encourage people of the right and we get people of all ages right out of high school to people like, you know, at the time. I believe you could practice in front of the Supreme Court and got that honor while you were a student. I think having nothing to do with being a student for obvious reasons. So it's we get everybody we've had people with PhDs before, and it's it's really cool when somebody comes in and goes, I don't I'm not tied down. I would like to see as much of the wine world as possible. And then we have people going to Australia and New Zealand. And it's really neat to have people out there. And I always get the same feedback and they come back and they say I was more prepared than the people from Davis or from Cornell or from Eisenheim or whatever that they were working with at these other internships and harvests. And I'm always I'm proud of that. And at the same time, I'm like, damn straight.
01:15:00:00 - 01:15:28:27
Chris Missick: And, you know, I'm going to one other kind of small plug on that. I had already owned the winery for five, six years. I did, I learned a lot, particularly in the areas of kind of sciences. Sure, I didn't have that. And so even if you're in the position as a winemaker or you're new to it or you're an owner, I think it's great. And then you also get a chance to see the quality of the education that you should be hiring. from that program will bring to you.
01:15:29:00 - 01:15:34:21
Paul Brock: I'm really excited to have one of your your assistant, Matt. Yeah. Right now as a student. So he's a great guy.
01:15:35:00 - 01:15:51:14
Chris Missick: So I love the new label. That's Father. And I have to tell you, when I opened the bottle, it perfume jumped, right out. I mean, it smells amazing. So we're going to be tasting the twenty twenty silver thread dry Riesling. Sure. And why don't you tell us a little bit about this.
01:15:51:16 - 01:17:27:07
Paul Brock: So this is a very new wine. We actually bottle this in January and it's a quick turnaround time for a wine. And I would give you all sorts of romantic reasons why I chose it. But I'll be honest, speaking of Pedulas, I'd forgotten to grab a bottle and I was up in Geneva like I hope it has one of the new labels. And this is the one with the new label they had, which I'm really excited because when I was thinking about what wine I was going to bring, I was like, I should bring the dry Riesling because this is what the Finger Lakes is about. This is like this is what we're known internationally for. And I think in coming years, we're going to be known more for all of our other varieties and our obscure local varieties and whatever you want to call them. But it's this is driving. This is what is help put Finger Lakes on the map as a world class wine producer. And this is a representation of three different lakes. We've got grapes in here from Keuka Lake, from Cayuga Lake and from our own vineyard, from two different vineyards on Seneca Lake. So to me, this is the epitome of a dry Riesling is now it's mostly from my own vineyard. It's about well, it's a plurality from my own vineyards, like forty five or 50 percent for my own vineyard. And then some from the Doyel Vineyard, which is actually the oldest commercial Riesling vineyard on Seneca Lake, which is just like one hundred yards of my vines. There's a vineyard planted by Charles Fournier. Yeah. So I think that what's in this bottle really represents the history and the future of the Finger Lakes. So I love showcasing dry Riesling. Wherever I go, I'm with you.
01:17:27:15 - 01:17:54:28
Chris Missick: So Charles Fournier had been the head winemaker at Veuve Clicquot before coming here post Prohibition. Um, the other thing I. I absolutely love about dry Riesling is it showcases the vintage really well and kind of just piggybacking on that. Your wines tend to show really well the further down the road they get. I opened to 2013 Dry Riesling, which wasn't a great vintage, but it was tasting amazing.
01:17:55:00 - 01:17:55:15
Paul Brock: Yeah.
01:17:56:23 - 01:19:18:24
Paul Brock: That, you know, 2013 was one of those challenging years after a beautiful year. 2012 was the warmest one of the driest, longest growing seasons was the warmest we've ever had, was the longest we've ever had. And because it was warm, sunny, long, the buds were all developed going into 13. And there's this huge crop out there. And then we got this really crappy, warm, cloudy, humid weather that made it really challenging to grow the grapes. But with work at it. And we we were successful and I've got high standards every year. The grapes that come into the winery have to be clean. And if they're not, then we have to do the work to make them clean. And some years are easier than others. 2020 - easy. All the grapes weree beautiful. You had you had to do very minimal management in 2020. You didn't you couldn't do nothing. I saw actually I saw one of our neighbors did nothing and had no reason, one vineyard. And it was sad to see that like it was wiped out in such a beautiful year. But it just goes to show no matter how good it is, you're just one bad decision away from disaster, which is every other year. But 2012, it was beautiful. Yeah. And all you do is very minimum. And the fruit was great and it was a real pleasure to make wine.
01:19:18:26 - 01:19:23:18
Paul Brock: And last year, given it's a bright spot, given all the other stuff that w
01:19:23:20 - 01:19:45:04
Chris Missick: hat a terrible year it was otherwise. So the first thing that strikes me is the I mean, the concentration on this. It really is. I've tasted that many other twenty 20 Rieslings from other producers yet. Yeah. But it's beautiful. The acidity is bright and sharp hints at that kind of lemon peel, but the palette weight in the stone fruit is really impressive.
01:19:45:06 - 01:20:01:07
Paul Brock: Yeah. Yeah. I'm a. Just again, I like to learn about my wines as they age, you know, I know about the vintage and I always tell the story of a wine through the vintage, and I expect there to be a lot of concentration in this one in 20 years. And it should be,
01:20:01:09 - 01:20:41:21
Paul Brock: you know, Riesling all the way through should be really good. And I don't know that 20/20 is going to be one of those years that ages forever. I mean, yes, I mean, eight years down the line, it's going to be beautiful, but it's not going to be like a cool vintage that age much longer and retain their youthful characteristics for longer. I think that the 20s are going to be beautiful early on over the first five years of their lives, and probably more beautiful than than the cooler vintages ever will be with the cooler vintages are the ones at last they last. Yeah. And so I'm really excited about the 2020 coming into 2021.
01:20:42:01 - 01:21:03:05
Paul Brock: For all you people who are coming to the Finger Lakes. I mean, you're going to be in for a treat with all of these lines that are from 2020 and actually for the next several years because it was such a beautiful growing season and we had that opportunity to have wines made for us. For all practical purposes, you know, we just had to stay out of the way and get these grapes in the bottle and the
01:21:03:07 - 01:21:05:18
Chris Missick: one year when we had the most time to do stuff.
01:21:05:20 - 01:21:06:05
Paul Brock: Yes.
01:21:08:04 - 01:21:26:18
Paul Brock: But, you know, it's rewarding whenever you drink your own wine, especially in public, you know? Yeah, of course. We drink our own wines at home all the time, but not hopefully not too much because we have to be exploring other people's minds. But it's nice, you know, bring a bottle to you and sharing it with you and hearing, like, how your experience is. I appreciate that.
01:21:26:20 - 01:21:36:02
Chris Missick: No, it's it's fantastic. The whole lineup is you're one of the few that consistently makes great Pinot Noir. So nice work. Appreciate it.
01:21:36:04 - 01:22:03:12
Paul Brock: Thanks, man. That's one of my only regrets in wine making, is that in 2020 I didn't make a pinot noir, because it's such a beautiful year and it was the best red pinot noir year I'll probably ever see. Yeah, and we didn't have enough grapes. Oh, we we put it all into the rosé. And my wife said, listen, we all the money for rosé by next September, you know, it's two years down the road. We've got to make the rosé. And I said, yeah, OK. Yeah, well, the rose is beautiful.
01:22:03:16 - 01:22:06:18
Chris Missick: Yeah. Iimagine it is, I'll pick, is that at Pedullas?
01:22:06:20 - 01:22:14:06
Paul Brock: no and yeah, I didn't notice it there. So but I we have it at the winery. I sent some across the lake to and a drone or something.
01:22:14:12 - 01:22:24:26
Chris Missick: Sounds great. Yeah. For anyone who doesn't know it would take me about 45 minutes to drive from my winery to your winery. Yet, I can see yours outside the window. It's just on the other side of the lake so.
01:22:25:04 - 01:22:27:02
Paul Brock: Yep. Get there faster in a boat.
01:22:29:19 - 01:22:31:03
Chris Missick: Well, I appreciate you joining us, Paul.
01:22:31:10 - 01:22:37:05
Paul Brock: I appreciate you asked me, Chris. This has been a lot of fun chat and thanks. Yeah. Thank you.
01:22:38:01 - 01:22:46:14
Chris Missick: So Paul Brock is doing amazing things in the Finger Lakes, touching lives, teaching, and he's seeking balance and he has faith in the future.
01:22:48:00 - 01:23:08:27
Chris Missick: I hope you enjoyed the show. This has been viticulture where we share ways to cultivate a good life. Don't forget to visit our website at viticulture podcast Dotcom. Subscribe to our substory, where you'll get show notes, transcripts, musings and exclusive offers and check us out on all the major social media platforms. Thanks again for stopping by.