Running Dry: Do California's vines need drip?

Strolling into a vineyard behind Turley Wine Cellars, Ehren Jordan announced: "This is the real deal."

The lanky 40–year–old winemaker was referring to a plot of dry–farmed zinfandel. Situated between Calistoga and St. Helena, its view extended south into the heart of Napa Valley, but the low–profile vines seemed to exist in a different era. Each plant grew on a wooden stake, ten feet from its nearest neighbor; no metal wires were suspended over the vines, and no irrigation hoses snaked among the trunks. As far as this modest eight–acre vineyard was concerned, we could have been in the Napa Valley of 1908.

Just behind us, another Turley vineyard, planted in 1996, exemplified a more modern approach. The vine cordons grew close together on horizontal wires above plastic irrigation lines, with the plant's annual shoots trained upward in a VSP (vertical shoot positioning) trellis. "That one sets way more crop," Jordan explained. "It's harder to control the plant, and it's really expensive. I have a feeling that, when we start to get wine over here, we're going to want to tear that one out."

As it turns out, the "old" vineyard is actually the newer one. The vines went into the ground in January 2006, and the following July, each plant received five gallons of water—the only irrigation they've ever gotten.

"We did it old school, by pulling a water container through the vineyard," Jordan said. "I can't tell you the number of people who said, 'You can't do that,' but it's been wildly successful—the plants are incredibly healthy and robust. On that other vineyard, the irrigation alone cost more than this one did to plant."

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