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and Barber also grow vegetables and herbs for their restaurant and cultivate apples for cider. “If you have a healthy, diversified parcel, [biodynamic wine making] can work,” she says. Last year, Heekin, Barber and friends harvested 1000 pounds of Marquette and La Crescent grapes from Vergennes (whose owners are not currently making wine) and carted them home to Barnard for crushing and pressing, fermentation and aging. Heekin sampled the wines once a week as they changed from grape juice to punchy, effervescent early wine and, finally, to a wine she considered finished and ready for bottling. The entire process took just shy of a year. Late this past summer, Heekin and Barber hauled grapes from Vergennes to Barnard for the second time. They were poised to decant their 2010 vintage into half-bottles and waiting for the first Châteauguay grapes to ripen. With the help of friends, they destemmed the fruit by hand on a mesh rack that Barber had built, separating out the squishy blueblack Marquette orbs that had been damaged by a summer hailstorm. Then they crushed the grapes with bare feet in low halfbarrels — the gentlest way to extract the juice, Heekin and Barber believe. “I think these varietals are much more sensitive to being handled roughly,” says Heekin. That juice is now fermenting in demijohns and tubs inside Heekin’s cantina, gently bubbling as the sugars are consumed by yeast and turned to alcohol. She presses the Marquette caps, or pulp from the grapes, down into the juice twice a day, once in the morning and again when she returns from the restaurant at 2 a.m. Every day, the aromas and flavors continue to evolve. Meanwhile, Heekin and Barber have just bottled their 2010 vintage from the tOm mcneill
winemakers are backing away from the overmanipulation of grapes, both in the vineyard and in the cellar. In soggy, mold- and pest-prone 217 College Street Vermont, though, such practices can Japanese Restaurant be difficult. As a consequence, Heekin is not dogmatic about natural winemaking practices, but she tries to adhere 112 Lake Street to them as closely as she can. She avoids Burlington commercial pesticides and fertilizers. In her cellar, she begins fermentation with wild yeasts — those that occur naturally on the grapes’ skin — and eschews filtering. “I’m trying to learn biodynamics, from 11 am but there’s not a lot of information out Chef-owned and operated. there on how to do this on a day-to-dayLargest downtown parking lot. basis,” says Heekin. “Much of it is what you observe in the vineyard.” She has noted, for instance, that 12v-sansai101211.indd 1 10/10/11 2:00 PM vines have their own personalities and proclivities — starting with the way they grow. Marquette shoots like to “splay,” Heekin says, while La Crescent tends to put forth one vigorous visit our current location at shoot among visit our current location at 4 Carmichael St., Essex 4 Carmichael Street, suite 101, Essex many smaller sevendaysvt.com 802-872-7676 802-872-7676••mylittlecupcakevt.com mylittlecupcakevt.com ones. Responding to that growth is key to pruning — 8v-MyLittleCupcake101211.indd 1 10/5/11 3:03 PM the vital winter task that ushers the plants into the growing season — as well as to trellising the vines. “I was so excited when I saw the first clusters this spring. I said, ‘Wow, we pruned well,’” Heekin says. Until she grew her own grapes, she hadn’t fully appreciated the smell that those Vitis riparia blossoms give off in the vineyard 156 Church St. Burlington, VT — the spicy, floral scent of La Crescent, for instance, or the notes of gardenia in Marquette’s aroma. Without chemical sprays, wine 156 Church St. Burlington, VT making requires constant vigilance. During this rainy summer, Heekin kept ailments and mildew at bay with a succession of teas sprayed on or fed to the plants — chamomile, nettle, horsetail, 156 Church St. Burlington, VT yarrow and dandelion. She tried milk spray against Japanese beetles, which she calls “the bane of my existence.” And Heekin sprayed ground quartz — or silica — to help support photosynthesis. She took comfort in knowing that her grapes shared a varied farm where she
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