where the wild things were

The first time I heard the word ‘sirtuins’, I thought they might be a rival race to the Klingons. Instead, they are proteins in our bodies, enlisted for a host of critical functions. We can liken them to the conductors of our human symphony, regulating everything from immune function to cardiovascular health. Without getting too clinical, biologists are finding that when these proteins are deactivated, the orchestra begins to play out of sync, and aging accelerates. For those keen on milking the fountain of youth, the million dollar question is what keeps sirtuins activated?

It turns out in a world infatuated with convenience and creature comforts, nature has designed us to struggle. Through a series of elemental modes of fight or flight, we stimulate sirtuin production and they, in turn, keep us vibrant. When our life becomes sedentary and tepid, the proteins feel aimless. So they die off and we age.

Our ancestors were wild things. And wild things are no stranger to deprivation. Daily and seasonally the elements weighed on them with heightened intimacy. Heat, cold, periods of hunger were a packaged deal. Hunter/gatherers remained outdoors, constantly in motion; thorns, splinters and rocks pecking away at their flesh. Hence, the sirtuin response team was constantly activated and the orchestra, when not devoured by a saber tooth tiger, stayed in concert.

Today’s hunter/gather stalks Instagram and forages for coconut water at the farmer’s market. A pride of lions will offer little sympathy if one of their own has skipped a few meals, but tell a co-worker you haven’t eaten today and they’ll light a prayer candle in your honor. Like clockwork, we put on a pot of coffee in the morning and start raiding the fridge. Three square meals is not only recommended, it’s the bare bones expectation for modern living. In between, we graze on chips or cheese or olives, before trundling off to dinner. As we leave the house, our mother’s voice rings in our ears “You’ll catch your death of cold.” So we make sure to bring a jacket to dinner, ensuring that on the 100-meter walk from the car to the restaurant door, the chill of the night air won’t harass us. The car ride over was probably temp-controlled, as undoubtedly the restaurant will be, and later, when we lay a weary head on the pillow, digesting our miso-glazed salmon (or was it arctic char?), the thermostat in the room reads + or - 72 degrees…

tweed Vineyards

Long before pandemics, I found myself in the Lyon train station at the finish line of a summer Viticole trip. It was a blistering day and there was no relief inside; only dead air and the smell of bad espresso. One’s national affiliation had little influence on the bipartisan language of dripping wet. We were all melting. All except for one old man. He stuck out because he was wearing a tweed jacket, as if it were a brisk fall evening. What’s more, he sat under a sky light, the sun pouring on him like an ant under a microscope, while casually reading the local paper in sweatless bliss.

The thought occurred to me in that moment what it must feel like to be a well-adapted vessel, fully self-regulated. The rest of us were crippled by our finely-tuned, hyper-modulated upbringing and here was this man, who was either born on the face of the sun or a complete stranger to air conditioning. It made me ponder the life of a grapevine…

A grapevine wants what every species wants: to thrive. But unlike mobile organisms, grapevines can’t wander about the land spreading their seed with a willing partner. The party has to come to them. Their seed lies within the nectar of delicious berries. And so they attract birds and deer to their clusters, in hopes that the seeds will be carried off, consumed and deposited elsewhere. Thus, an immobile creature mobilizes…

Grapes are planted on infertile soil so vines have to root deep to mine resources. In doing so, deeper root systems acquire more nutrients, more water and a marked ability over time to weather the ravages of drought and frost. Conversely, if we plant grapes in fertile soil and strip out or chemically nuke the competitive plant life in that space—watering the vine regularly through artificial means, anesthetizing the canopy with antibiotic sprays—then we coddle the grape, and the vine won’t kick in the survival mechanism that yields intense, nutrient-rich fruit. The results are flaccid flavors as weak as the untested vine itself. Root systems stay at the top of the soil where irrigation lines offer an all-you-can-eat buffet, diminishing the vine’s ability to withstand the rigors of the wild. If they’re not taken by frost they’ll melt in a heatwave like the rest of us in that Lyon train station.

In Ribeira Sacra, we find vineyards like the old man in the tweed jacket. The region is pure extremity, a staggering gorge that has to be visited to be believed. If Poseidon sprang out of the river Sil with a glistening trident, this would make sense. A wealth of native flora surrounds and fuels death-defying terraces of interplanted Mencía. Rocky, granitic soils of slate, schist and gneiss make organic matter a prized commodity. There are no irrigation lines running down the gnarled rows, for this is Green Spain, where every hour a passing storm gives rise to a sunny rainbow. And while the region’s few vineyards are dominated by chemical farming, Envínate is in the business of restoring damaged parcels, paying local vineyard owners top dollar to farm organically.

the best defense…

Defense by its very nature is reactionary. We get sick, we take a pill. We get really sick, we become dependent on them. We over-sterilize ourselves like the vineyards we tend and the wines we bottle. But very rarely do we go on the offensive. Going on the offensive would mean walking back domestication. We’d rather be seduced by a neck pillow commercial than let nature in. And yet it is inescapably a part of us (nature, not the neck pillow). Those whose typical Tuesday no longer consists of being chased by lions and tigers or mortally wounded by a superficial cut will make a stirring counter argument. But make no mistake, what humanity is really playing defense against, now and since the agricultural revolution, are the laws of the jungle. And they teach us many things. Among them, that there is a difference between preventative and proactive.

Lately, the Envínate team and I have discussed how the vibrancy of a living entity hinges on the vibrancy of the ecosystem that interacts with it. A wine and a vineyard, as with a human being and its natural surroundings, should be an unbroken chain. It is that chain that dictates a life form’s resonance; its quality of life.

Think of the vineyard as the gut of a wine. The strength of a wine’s immune system is directly proportionate to the wealth of biome where it was cultivated. So it is with our immune system and subsequent gut biome. For if, as we discussed in the beginning, elemental modes of fight or flight stimulate sirtuin production, then the natural struggle that a truly wild space provides, is all the offense a wine needs to keep the symphony in tune. If we spray a vine with sulfur or copper to combat disease, then a farmer might also consider replacing the fallout of that antibiotic prescription with a probiotic enhancement, like homemade teas from foraged herbs in the area. We’re not the only ones who should be eating local…

When harvest comes, and the grapes are to be brought into the cellar, offensive-minded wine growers understand that the wealth of yeast populations on and around the berries are the last vestiges of a wine’s resilience. And that microbial wealth is a direct result of a farmer’s work leading up to harvest, the proactive encouragement of a teeming ecosystem over the extractive controls and refinements that domesticate it. Whether biochar or ruminants or cover crops or agroforestry or beekeeping it is probiotic enhancements like these that elevate the potential for a wine to be fit for fermentation and vibrating with complexity. That is if a winemaker can control themselves in the cellar. For if we are not to coddle a vineyard, ought we also not coddle its fermenting elixir?

Galicia Libre

An offensive stance implies reconsidering the ‘additives’ of life, which are sold to us in every bug spray commercial, every vacuum cleaner attachment, and every input for the perfect lawn. The additives promise to make our lives better, but they are derived at the expense of the natural world and help encourage our isolation from it. Sadly, the more isolated we become, the more nature scares us. And the more our essence is dimmed.

With wine it is no different. The same consumerist additives like synthetic yeast and Velcorin promise to make a winemaker’s life better, but they too are derived at the expense of the natural world and isolate a wine from its essence. For Envínate, however, the winemaking playbook is nearly additive-free. Outside of sterilizing one’s cellar equipment, the only defensive tactic involves a small addition of sulfur before bottling.

So if a winemaker were willing to part ways with sulfur, like Envínate has this year with our bottlings, what is left to protect a wine? What form of offense will make up for a lack of defense? Only that which has encouraged a living liquid’s immune system.

quantity of life issues

The journey comes full circle when we take our first sip. For the wealth of biome that once lived on grapes in a vineyard, now finds its way to our gut biome. If the chain that shepherded those nutrients was unbroken from vine to cellar to bottle, only then can we begin to have a discussion about wine as a healthful product.

Wine geeks very rarely entertain such talk. They’re too busy debating whether a natural wine or conventional wine will age better. Personally, I’d rather watch paint dry than go there. But for the sake of the human argument, I do find it interesting that the oldest living people in the world rarely hail from urban confines, with all the modern conveniences and refinements. They exchange the bells and whistles for rustic living somewhere in rural France or a small fishing village in Japan. Places with less right angles and cultures with less pills.

Whether that translates to the vinous experience—how this Envínate bottling will age in comparison to sulfured bottlings—I don’t know. The more I sink into nature, the less I care about immortality. Whether I live to be 44 or 108, I just want to be singing. I want the same for my wine.

—Brian McClintic

**Special thanks to Michael Sager for these amazing photos.