Wineforest Farming

I’m forcing myself to write despite cracked fingertips and sore forearms. I’ve been planting trees and vines… together, in the same holes that I’m digging by hand.

I broke ground yesterday on what we’re calling the Wineforest Farm in Spencer, New York. It will be a “married vine” experimentation and demonstration site. It’s the first and only one in North America that I know of.

You gotta start somewhere. This seems a good spot.

You may be wondering, “What is a married vine?” Or, “New York?” Or, “WTF?!”

Join me on a virtual walk through an enchanted wineforest...

On the Wineforest Farm every vine will have a tree partner… for life. There will be no post-and-wire trellising, just vines growing on living trees. This is a poly-culture that when mature will be an edible and drinkable landscape that you can explore, lounge in the shade of (we don’t do enough shade-lounging these days), gather flowers from (I don’t think we do enough flower-gathering these days either), and more.

If you’re familiar with the “three sisters” of gardening – corn, beans, and squash – and the way they have been grown together for their symbiotic benefits by the people of this land since before it was known as North America, then you can think of married vines as the three sisters of perennial fruit production.

The beginning of a beautiful friendship… hazelnut and catawba.

I’m selecting and planting trees for several reasons, including: mycorrhizal compatibility with vines, edible-ness, and beauty.

Of course I think every tree is beautiful, but over the past couple weeks in the North Eastern US, I’ve seen what incredible displays of color some trees offer at bloom. As it happens, you can eat the flowers of two trees with some of the most beautiful spring displays: redbud and magnolia.

Besides those two, I’ve also planted willow, hazelnut, American persimmon, and thornless honey locust. In the future I’ll plant more of these as well as pears, apples, cherries, sugar maple, and mulberry.  

Each of these species of tree associates with the same type of mycorrhizal fungi in the soil as grapevines (arbuscular), and so theoretically they will be able to connect symbiotically underground, create a shared network of greater size than would be possible by themselves, and therefore have increased health and resilience, as well as further access to the micro-nutrients and minerals that makes grapes and other fruit taste rich and complex… leading to more delicious wine.

The edibleness of the trees isn’t just for my own enjoyment. We plan to raise grazing pigs, geese, and eventually cows within the system. Fruit that falls to the ground becomes delicious treats for these folks as they munch through the understory plants. American persimmon in particular can continue to provide nutritious calories into February, long after the grasses and forbs have died back.

But let’s go back to beauty. Imagine trees full of pink, purple, yellow, and white blossoms in spring, dotted across a sweeping hillside of field flowers and blooming bulbs. This is the first harvest of the year – a feast for your eyes, nourishment for your heart and spirit. I don’t think polyculture is just about biodiversity and resilience. I think it’s also about feeding and developing every aspect of ourselves – including our aesthetic enjoyment, the stimulation of all of our senses, especially our sense of wonder. We can cultivate so much more than wine as winegrowers.

Pollenated by flower-light, painting with tree-words.

I’ve selected grape varieties that are adapted to this climate in terms of hardiness to the temperature extremes here as well as the fungal and disease pressures. Because of relationships with a couple breeders, I’ve gotten some exciting vines that aren’t available commercially, yet, as well as some brilliant new varieties and some tried and true classics (like the Frontenacs, Catawba, Concord, etc.).

There are at least three systems of married vines that we will implement. All of them elevate the vines to about 5 – 6 feet above the ground, so that animals can graze underneath without fear that they’ll eat the fruit or harm the vine or tree… and so that humans can walk through the landscape and immerse themselves sensually in it… like walking through an enchanted forest.

The simplest system is just a vine planted with a tree, allowed to fully express themselves, and just making sure they don’t out-compete or harm each other – basically a tree with a vine growing in it. In 15 years we’ll need a ladder to harvest them.

Another system replicates one that Wendy and I visited in Wales, where willow is trained into a living high-trellis row.  We’ll prune and train the willow each year when I prune and train the vines.

The third system will likely use sugar maples, and will grow initially like the first system – just a vine and tree doing their thing. But when the maples get big enough, we’ll cut them off at about six feet (pollard them), and then festoon the vines from tree to tree. The trees will continue living, and putting out new growth like an Afro at the top (and we’ll give them a haircut every couple years). But they won’t become giant maple trees and shade out the vines.

A fourth system we may try would be a curtain style, with vines growing all across the space between full-sized trees, creating a wall or curtain of vines. This can be used at property boundaries or to create private spaces, so it won’t be as practical on the Wineforest Farm.

More please… daffodils make a gorgeous understory in spring wineforests.

None of these systems are my idea. They are ancient techniques for growing married vines, and there are living examples of them in places like Turkey, Italy, Portugal, and now Wales. In fact, married vines are the oldest system of viticulture. They replicate the way humans first encountered vines, and they mimic the vine’s evolved adaptation for survival in a forest and forest-edge ecology. They evolved to do this.

If you have the time to grow and propagate trees yourself, these systems don’t require a huge investment of capital… just time and effort. They also don’t require the fossil-fueled, industrial system required to produce wire & post trellising. In fact, this living system sequesters more and more carbon every year.

Believe it or not, I’ve just scratched the surface of some to benefits of married vines. Pliny the Elder notably asserted that the best wine comes from vines grown in trees. We’ve lost so much of the knowledge about these systems, and I hope the Wineforest Farm allow us to begin recovering it.

I’m not crazy about the term “married vine” though, tbh. First of all, it is very viti-centric. Why isn’t it a “married tree”? But also, there are quite a few other relationships involved in this system besides the vine & tree: there’s an understory of plants and grazing animals and birds, there’s an underground network that feeds and is fed by all the above ground plants and animals. There’s us humans, and our influence and impact on these relationships and their health.

I think it’s important to see eco-networks and eco-systems – full communities – rather than individual organisms or partnerships. I don’t have a problem with anthropomorphism, but I want to use a term that’s a bit more polyamorous. Actually, some of the polyculture systems in which these tree-vine partnerships have been grown in the past were known as “promiscuous agriculture” …which sounds very different from the common understanding of marriage.

Secondly, marriage can have a lot of problematic connotations and baggage, depending on your experience and values. I sometimes make the joke that Wendy and I have a non-traditional marriage: we actually really like each other. The interesting thing is that this always gets a laugh… presumably because there’s some truth to it. My point is that marriage likely means something different to every married person, and it’s not always a positive thing. But I think “married vines” are super cool.

So if you have any ideas for catchy names for this kind of arbor-viti-polyculture, please let me know. Vinyorcharding isn’t bad. For now I just refer to it as wineforest farming.

Also, we could use your help! If you’re willing to come help with farm work (mostly planting) for a few days, room and board is on us. It’s a beautiful piece of land to explore (about 120 acres) too.

Just bring some gloves and hand salve!

Cheers,

Adam

Tucked in the hollow at Wineforest Farm.