A morning in Partridge Hollow

It’s as if the light of the moon is caught in the fog that strolls through Partridge Hollow on this early morning. I come to a dip in the road that takes me beneath a layer of mist and when I re-emerge, the scene before me is of a marmalade forest painted with the brush of Van Gogh.

“The main thing about our vineyard is that we are away from the main road and don’t hear the traffic,” Gilbert Provost tells me when I meet him at the Redtail Vineyard. Row upon row of vines are blanketed under bird netting that casts a hue of porcelain green over the fields; laughter and conversation rises from the trellis lines as the heads of harvesters momentarily appear now and then. I ease my way between the rows to find Pauline Joicey, Gilbert’s partner. “We’re a high density vineyard with triple the vines for every acre,” she gestures over the expanse, “the narrow row pattern is modelled after plantings originally done with horse and plough in Europe where there is less land available.”

A shaggy white terrier barks from the lower end of the rows. “That’s Skeeter wanting attention. She belongs to our neighbours, Mags and Terry who like to join us in the harvest,” Pauline tells me. “This morning we’re picking Pinot Noir along here,” she indicates, “and after lunch we’ll pick the Pinot Gris…harvesting is work but it’s also a social affair,” she adds.

Pauline mentions the forecasts of rain. “A lot of moisture at this point can create sour rot on the fruit,” she tells me, “there is a distinct vinegar smell to the cluster when that happens… we can deal with the damage done by the birds or the wasps but sour rot is something you don’t want to introduce into your crop.” She crouches and snips a cluster of grapes, inspecting them closely. “It’s hard to believe on such a grand day but recently we were out here at four o’clock in the morning burning piles of hay to build a smoke screen to keep the frost off.”

A goldfinch descends in an apple tree; a spider web shines in heavy dew as everywhere wasps hurry in the air. I investigate a line of plastic water bottles cut in half and tied to iron posts along an electric fence. Inside the bottles, yellow jacket wasps gorge on fermenting grape juice.

“The yellow jackets are welcome earlier in the season as they feed on insects harmful to the plants but at this time of year they can be a challenge…the bottle-traps entice them away…the fencing is to stop the racoons.” Pauline lowers grapes into a bucket, “Last year we put up swallow houses to help keep the bugs down.”

I interrupt Keith Tyers who harvests three rows over, to ask about yields. “Maybe 60 cases per metric ton of fruit…maybe,” he considers,“it’s not a copious amount nor is it why we’re here…you want the quality to be the thing you’re known for…you want Pinot from here to be a Pinot from nowhere else.”

Pauline reflects on the venture of producing organically from the land with the added learning curve of being self-sufficient in electricity. “It makes you think outside of the box…of things you don’t really need and how we use electricity and insulate our buildings…we have people come not only for the wine but for a curiosity about what off-grid really means.”

I follow Pauline as she works the rows. “The wind…bird sounds…hawk sightings…just being out here is worth everything,” she says. Gilbert contemplates the thought: “My passion pointed me in one direction,” he says, “and I’m staying on course. Now that the fruit is ripe and we catch a scent of the juice we can say to ourselves, ‘this is going to be a pretty wine!’ We are very much a green operation trying to walk hand in hand with nature…sometimes she challenges us but at the end of the day she always rewards.”

A jogger keeps pace along the nearby road fenced by old maples; a shower of gilded leaves spills to the ground; the scent of juniper mixes with that of readied fruit as I meander the fields before leaving. Somehow, I consider, the notion of the moon captured in fog is fitting for a morning in Partridge Hollow.