Why Great Vines (and People) Need to Struggle

And what a famous rock star taught me about wine and life.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Mediterranean tasting on Thursday.

We spent the evening traveling around by imaginary yacht, hopping from one Mediterranean shore to another, taking in the sights, smells, bites, and yes, of course, wine. One minute we were standing in Liguria eating pesto and drinking Vermentino, the next we were watching an imaginary sunset over Sardinia with Cannonau in our glasses. It was a little bit silly, but I hope a lot bit fun—and hopefully a nice way to escape everyday life for a little bit of virtual sunshine.

One topic came up during that tasting that I’ve been noodling on ever since…

Why do wine people always talk about vines needing to struggle?

As we explored places like Sardinia, Corsica, and Liguria, we kept running into the same theme. These are stunning landscapes, but they’re not exactly easy places to grow grapes. The vineyards cling to steep hillsides. The soils are rocky. Water can be scarce. In places like Liguria, you can barely get a human into the vineyard, let alone a tractor.

This is something we’re taught over and over in wine classes:

“The vines need to struggle.”

“The best wines come from stressed vines.”

“Poor soils make great wine.”

I realized on Thursday that while I say those phrases all the time, I don’t know that I’ve ever taken the time here to properly explain why this is the case…

The short version is that grapevines, like all plants, are trying to survive and reproduce. Fruit exists because plants evolved a way to package their seeds in something attractive enough that birds and animals would eat it (aka fruit) and spread those seeds elsewhere.

A grapevine’s ultimate goal isn’t to make delicious wine. It’s to make another grapevine.

Years ago, while I was studying for my first sommelier exam and waiting tables in Los Angeles, a guest framed this concept to me in a way I’ve never forgotten. At the time, I had no idea I was talking to a world-famous rock star, but hold that thought.

First, it’s helpful to understand what’s actually happening in the vineyard.

If a vine has abundant water, rich soil, and easy access to everything it needs, it becomes extremely vigorous. It puts a tremendous amount of energy into growing leaves, shoots, and vegetation, and often produces a very large crop of grapes as well.

The problem is that all of that energy gets spread across a huge crop, which can make the grapes less concentrated, less complex, and frankly less interesting. (Have you ever tried to put your energy into ten different projects instead of doing one really well? Same concept.)

That’s why, in most wine regions, growers intentionally cut off perfectly healthy clusters of grapes every year in a practice called green harvesting. Once the vine has set fruit (formed all its tiny clusters of grapes), the grower prunes away a portion of those clusters because they know that, if the vine tries to ripen all of them, then none of them will be particularly remarkable. Fewer grapes means more concentration in the grapes that remain.

But in places with naturally difficult conditions—rocky soils, limited water, poor fertility, steep slopes—the vine often does much of that work on its own. Because resources are limited, the vine naturally produces less fruit and concentrates more of its energy into the grapes it does produce.

Now, this can swing too far in the other direction. Too much stress is bad. A severely stressed vine may produce very little fruit at all. What growers are really looking for is balance: enough resources to keep the vine healthy, but not so many that it grows wildly without limitation.

When water and nutrients aren’t sitting right at the surface waiting for it, the vine has to work harder. Its roots dig deeper in search of what it needs, its growth is naturally limited, and the fruit becomes more concentrated as a result.

That’s why some of the world’s most exciting wines come from places that seem almost impossible for agriculture.

Think about Santorini, where vines grow in volcanic soils on an island with no natural water source and almost no rainfall. The vines survive by pulling moisture out of the humid sea air. Or the Canary Islands, where vineyards emerge from black volcanic sand and lava fields in landscapes that often look more like the surface of another planet than farmland.

The growers in places like these aren’t usually worried about green harvesting. They’re often just hoping the vines produce enough fruit to make a crop at all!

And yet those difficult conditions are exactly what can make the fruit so compelling. Because fruit is the mechanism a plant uses to spread its seeds, you can almost think of the vine as investing everything it has into making that fruit as attractive as possible to the birds and animals that will carry the next generation elsewhere.

It’s the same reason dry-farmed tomatoes often taste so much better than tomatoes that receive abundant irrigation. When a plant has fewer resources available, it tends to focus those resources much more intensely. That’s why fruit from these seemingly impossible places can be so extraordinary.

Which brings me back to that conversation.

Years ago, I was waiting tables during brunch service in Los Angeles. I was studying for my first sommelier exam. I didn’t have my pin yet, but I was trying to absorb everything I could about wine, and this concept was still relatively new to me.

I had a lovely European couple at one of my tables who ordered a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with brunch. As I poured the wine, the husband excitedly told me about a recent trip to France. He had been touring wineries, and someone had explained this concept to him—that the vines needed to struggle.

He couldn’t get over the idea because he thought it was such a perfect metaphor for life.

He told me that he felt like he himself had really had to struggle throughout his life, but that those struggles had given him character—and the qualities he was most proud of.

And then he said something I’ve never forgotten.

He said, “Isn’t that so evident when you look around? You meet people who have had everything handed to them. They’ve never really had to struggle, never had to work particularly hard for anything, and honestly they’re usually not the people you most want to spend time with.

And by contrast, you meet people who, by all accounts, should not have survived because they had the hardest conditions growing up. But those conditions built strength and gave them something to overcome. They turned them into the most inspiring people you’ve ever encountered.”

He said, “I want to be one of those people.”

And then he laughed and said, “It’s no wonder those wines are more interesting!”

At the end of the meal, another server who had apparently been watching this whole conversation came over and started asking me what on earth we’d been talking about for so long. After a few questions, they finally said, “You know who that was, right?”

I had absolutely no idea.

It was Bono.

Which clearly says more about my music knowledge than anything else…

But I’ve always remembered that conversation.

The older I get, the more I find myself coming back to it whenever life feels particularly difficult. Because as much as I would love to skip the hard seasons, those are usually the times that teach me the most. They’re the seasons that force me to adapt, build skills I didn’t know I needed, and evolve my perspective.

I didn’t intend for this to become a personal development newsletter, but if you needed a little encouragement this week, maybe it’s this:

Whenever life feels like a struggle, just remember that your favorite wines have to struggle too.

And if it makes the wine… Maybe it’s making you better too.

Or, at the very least, maybe it’s making us all a little more interesting with age…

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

And if you’d like to hop back aboard our metaphorical yacht, our next live tasting is July 2nd, when we’ll be exploring the Adriatic Sea and tasting our way through Croatia, Slovenia, Emilia-Romagna, Puglia, and beyond.

I hope you’ll join us.

Cheers,

Kelsey