a student newspaper of the university of tulsa
march 30, 2015 issue 21 ~ volume 100
Vineyards on the plains Elias B
rinkma
n / Coll
egian
Wine in Oklahoma? Well, with a little frontier grit … Oklahoma doesn’t even register on the list of classic wine-producing regions. But that doesn’t mean it won’t put up a fight. Kyle Walker Editor-in-Chief I was staring down into a metal tub slowly filling with clear red, almost orange wine. After four and a half hours of helping Mike Trower, the proprietor of Gander Way Vineyards and Winery, and his friend Ron put this wine through its paces, I watched as the aromatic liquid was pumped out of its six-foot-tall plastic tank, through a set of filters whose workings I could only guess at, and into the bottom of this stainless steel vessel. “This was originally made for holding red lobster,” Mike told me, gesturing to the tub. Over the course of the day, we’d disinfected that tub with an iodine solution and then thoroughly rinsed it with a lot of very hot water two or three times. Having helped hoist the thing onto its side for easy rinsing, I could well imagine it filled with claws and spider-like crustacean legs. Now, instead of future $60 dinners, it held something like 200 gallons of Chambourcin. A French-American hybrid grape variety, Chambourcin is a cross between a strain of vitis vinifera—the classic European wine grape—and a species native to North America. It makes for an excellent physical representation of what I’ll call the “Northeast Oklahoma Wine Scene.” Here, I thought, through a flurry of New World frontier grit, the prairie is transforming an Old World staple. The steel lobster tub put a fine edge on that point. That isn’t to say that all, or even most, of the
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wines produced in and around Oklahoma’s Green Country come from hybrid varieties. Far from it. Indeed, at almost all of the Oklahoma wineries I looked at, European varieties outnumbered hybrid or American ones. If the thought of classic, Rhone valley wine grapes growing in Oklahoma doesn’t strike you as odd, consider the following. Here are the environmental conditions that Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia lists as “favourable” to producing wine-quality grapes: “A fine, long summer with warm, rather than hot, sunshine”; “a dry, sunny autumn” that isn’t “too hot” (noticing a trend?); and “climatically flexible” winter months that don’t drop below -4 degrees Fahrenheit. Or we can turn to Dr. Eric Stafne, now a professor at Mississippi State University, who spent six years at Oklahoma State University as a fruit specialist. When I asked him about the difficulty of growing grapes in Oklahoma, he told me that “it boils down to the environment. Oklahoma has a continental climate, meaning there are large fluctuations in temperature and great extremes. Grapevines prefer hot summer day temperatures, cool summer night temperatures, mild winter temperatures, and low humidity.” Though we spoke by email, I imagine that he wrote the next sentence with something approaching an ironic grin on his face: “Since Oklahoma does not have all of these conditions, some grapevines struggle and fruit quality and quantity can suffer.” But as will surprise no one familiar with Oklahoma weather, the challenges to making wine here are … varied. * My Oklahoma wine journey began at Tres Sueños (“Three Dreams”), the vineyard and winery of Richard Kennedy. Located just outside Luther,
Oklahoma, Tres Sueños is situated on 5 acres and is protected on all sides by thin woodland. I visited with my friend Leigh Taylor, my favorite wine enthusiast. On the way, the road changed abruptly from a two-lane country road to an unpaved, pockmark-riddled clay path. Lucky us: We’d taken Leigh’s Mini Cooper, and by the time we’d pulled up to the Tres Sueños tasting room, I could feel every divot and pothole in my spine and backside. So I was pleased when, on our way in, we were greeted by a cheerful signboard which dutifully proclaimed: “If you need a sign to drink wine, this is it!” After a few minutes conversation with Dawn Shelton, who was manning the bar, I ran into a viticultural challenge that I’m sure is unique to Oklahoma: tornadoes. Tres Sueños produces wine made from grapes that are grown both on and off its property, though they all come from Oklahoma. In May of 2013, one of Tres Sueños’ partners had an unfortunate run-in with Oklahoma’s most characteristic natural disaster. “Our Shiraz grower lost his vineyard in a tornado,” Dawn told me, and since it can take three years to get a vineyard back into shape, that Shiraz is in short supply. As we were about to leave, Mr. Kennedy himself walked in. In his early 70s, Richard is a tall man positively overflowing with facts about grapes. This means he’s clearly overcome the first challenge he faced starting a vineyard and winery in Oklahoma: information. “We were the third winery” to open in Oklahoma, he said. Third, that is, since Prohibition. “It had been 10 years since the last winery had opened.” As can happen when you’re a pioneer,
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See Wine, page 6