"True Facts" Ancient Vines, Twisted Vines, the Dead Arm, Gnarly Vines - Old Vines?

Ancient Vines, Twisted Vines, the Dead Arm, Gnarly Vines… Old Vines? What is “old vine” wine? Like fine wine, do grape vines themselves improve with age?

Imagine if your tomato plants came back year after year, developing dense woody trunks with age. Imagine also that each passing season brought fewer and increasingly smaller tomatoes, each one with flavors sweeter and more concentrated than the last. This may give you an idea of what might differentiate old grape vines from young.

Grape vines can be pushed and pruned to produce viable fruit for wine making as early as 3 years old. They really come into their own after 5-7 years and are at prime right into their 20’s. By this time they have become battered and weathered soldiers, having lived through nearly 2 dozen winters. Despite (or because of) fending off the elements and disease the vines have become hearty and the roots system has grown deep and strong. They begin to produce fewer clusters of grapes and those have smaller berry size. The vine’s efforts and energy in these smaller clusters yield more intense sugars, color and concentration of flavors that many argue only the older vines can produce. 

So when do they officially become “old vines”?

Well, it is anybody’s call. There is no regulation as to when a wine label can state that it was made from old vines. 

In Maribor, Slovenia there exists a single living noble grape vine that state experts agree was planted more than 400 years ago. It is simply known as the Old Vine and is protected by an iron fence, the branches and canes trained so that its lush foliage grows to nearly cover the front of a 16^th century house. A symbolic annual harvest of the venerated Old Vine’s fruit is put into tiny bottles that represent precious protocol gifts.

Maribor's Old Vine - before it leafs out

Now THAT is old! Here in the states we begin to label vines as old sometime after 25 years of age, but 40-50 years seems more authentic, and vines 90-120 years old are truly ancient.  

   

It is in California, where grape vines can reach 120 years and older, that our domestic old vine history and tradition lives, and where Zinfandel old vines are now treasured for the production of premium red wine.

What is truly amazing is that we have ANY old vines at all. The scourge of Phylloxera took its toll on the vineyards of Europe beginning in the 19^th century. Here in the U.S., thanks to a rather embarrassing era of our past, that “Noble Experiment” known as Prohibition, most wine grape vines should have been pulled up and plowed over in the 1920s, and many were.

To the rescue?

In an ironic turn of fate it was the White Zinfandel craze of the 1970s that revived and saved much of the old vine vineyards left fallow following the Prohibition era. Although many considered the White Zin of the ‘70s and ‘80s to be insipid and uninteresting (modern versions have more fruit and are not so cloyingly sweet), it was the phenomenal success of this blush wine that saved many old vines in premium areas. Areas such as the Lodi region which has some of the oldest Zinfandel vines in the state, came into their own at the end of the 20th century as red Zinfandel wines soared back into fashion. The blush and the red Zin styles of wines are made from the same red grapes, but are processed in a different way and taste dramatically different.

Old Vine wine can still kick your butt