ALTHOUGH WINEMAKERS are (overly) fond of proclaiming that “wine is made in the vineyard,” none of the professionals whose job actually requires them to be in vineyards every day ever said this to me. Perhaps they consider it a self-evident fact, or perhaps it’s because vineyard managers don’t tend to speak in sound bites.
Instead, vineyard managers talk about pruning and pest management, the difficulty of obtaining permits to plant vineyards and the ever-spiraling labor costs—not to mention a fear that their workers might...