Making the Movie - Part 2
There's no turning back now!
If you haven’t yet read Making the Movie - Part 1 you can find it in the Archive.
Just by chance…
As the spring of 2018 turned into summer I became fully immersed in filming the world of backyard viticulture and home winemaking. The 20 different vineyard owners and stewards I had identified as possible subjects for the film didn’t disappoint, and my true cast of characters began to emerge. One of the most colorful was a gregarious man named Peter Stanford who I first encountered in a somewhat auspicious way.
I was trying to film a group of volunteers working on the tiny, city-owned vineyard on Leveroni Road. My goal was to film them from the air using my drone, but it was complicated by the fact that Sonoma banned drones within its city limits—a boundary which happened to run right down the middle of Leveroni Road. The vineyard butted up to the northern side of the road and hence was entirely within the city, but there was a gated house which sat right across the street to the south, and was therefore outside of the town’s boundary.
Drone law often mitigates the contentious issue of who owns the airspace above private or restricted property by stipulating where you can take off and land your drone. Simplified (which it never is!), it means that if I launch my drone outside of a restricted area I can can often get away with flying into that area as long as I don’t land there. I must fly back out in order to land. And I must have direct permission from the land owner outside of the restricted area on whose property I do take off and land.
So, I drove up to the locked gate of the house on the south side the street and pushed the intercom button. A low voice with just a hint of New York accent answered and I explained my predicament. I had noticed a fairly wide driveway inside the gate and asked if I might launch my drone from there in order to fly across the street to film the group in the vineyard. My rather long-winded request was met by complete silence and I was just about to back up and go try the house next door when I heard the voice again, this time requesting my driver’s license number “just in case something goes wrong here.”
Then the gate swung open and out of the house strode Peter Stanford, a big man with an equally big streak of curiosity. We sized each other up, and I explained again what I had in mind. Convinced (and relieved, I’m sure) that I wasn’t there to mug him, he enthusiastically gave his okay. I unloaded my drone from the car, launched it, and flew up and over Leveroni Road into the vineyard to get the footage I wanted, all while Peter watched with great excitement as it was being displayed in real time on the drone’s control unit. I then flew the drone back over to Peter’s and as it hovered a hundred feet above his property I asked him if he wanted to have a go flying it around.
Twenty minutes and an additional battery later, Peter was a convert and wanted to know where and how he could buy a drone of his own. He also wanted to know more about my film project, somewhat shyly mentioning that he too owned a tiny vineyard. “Well let’s have a look at it,” I declared, becoming amused by his enthusiastic personality. We strolled around to the back of his house and I found myself standing in a teensy-weensy version of The Biggest Little Farm, Sonoma style. Bee hives, raised vegetable beds, pepper patch, edible cactus garden, blueberry bushes, olive trees, fruit orchard, stone pizza oven, bocce ball court, sculpture studio, wine gazebo, and yes, an absolutely perfect tiny vineyard just coming into its first harvest season. “Would this qualify for the film?” Peter asked.
Uh… Yeah!
So what to drink during all this filmmaking?
A chance encounter at a Sonoma Home Winemakers meeting led me to being introduced to Walt and Annie Baccala, who own one of the prettiest tiny vineyards in town and make a classic Bordeaux blend they label as… well, Bordeaux. Now technically that isn’t really allowed, as appellation d'origine contrôlée law dictates that only wines that come from the Bordeaux region of France can be labeled as such. If you’re making a similar blend in California you can legally call it a Meritage, but never a Bordeaux.
Of course, once you get to know Annie and come to appreciate her independent streak you quickly understand that she’s not going to let a silly little convention like that stand in the way of what she wants to call her wine. So Bordeaux it is, and with a classic blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petite Verdot and Malbec—all estate-grown right there in her backyard—it’s as true to the French version as anything coming out of Bordeaux, the region.
Along with being great content for my Tiny Vineyards film, Annie’s defiance got me thinking about blends for the first time—particularly the classics like Bordeaux (Meritage here in California), Côtes du Rhône (made from Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre and known as a GSM blend outside of the Rhône Valley), and the more recent California signature blends incorporating primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Zinfandel, and often a splash from any number of other grape varieties.
Before moving from Colorado my buying/drinking experience had been somewhat limited to single-varietal-driven wines like Malbec or Rioja, and I made it a personal challenge to find what I considered “good” everyday wines for under $10 a bottle. I was not alone. According to a 2018 US Portraits report by Wine Intelligence, searching for deals in that price range pretty much defines 46% of America’s 84 million U.S. wine buyers. And moving to northern California, with its wide variety of locally produced, inexpensive blends, only expanded the options.
I soon discovered Bogle’s Essential Red—a jammy blend of Old Vine Zinfandel, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petite Syrah made by a 50-year-old winery in Clarksburg, California, that was recently designated Wine Enthusiast’s American Winery of the Year. I knew Essential Red was probably considered a bulk wine by most folks, but it tasted really good and soon became my go-to vino. And I could buy it at a volume price from Safeway for around $8 a bottle!
Aware of my newfound interest in blends (and probably hoping to evolve my tastes to a sightly higher price point!) Deb bought me a blending class for my birthday, taught at Dry Creek Vineyard in the famous Dry Creek Valley AVA near Healdsburg. The winery is known for its emphasis on Bordeaux-style blends and its early involvement in founding the Meritage Alliance, which describes itself as an association of American vintners who identify and promote handcrafted wines blended from the traditional "noble" Bordeaux varieties: “The pioneers in this movement created the term "Meritage" to identify wines that represent the highest form of the winemaker's art—blending—and distinguish these wines from the more generic moniker, "red table wine." Meritage, pronounced like "heritage," is an invented word that combines "merit" and "heritage"—reflecting the quality of the grapes and the ancient art of blending wine.”
We had a blast taking the class and creating our own versions of Meritage after discovering how the individual varietals lend specific characteristics to the blend. I was beginning to realize that up until now my eyes had been wide shut about wine—not to mention my nose, my taste buds and my general attitude. I was just entering the “more I knew, the more I knew what I didn’t know” stage!
The film festival
You can’t live in Sonoma for too long without hearing the acronym SIFF bantered about in excited and even reverential tones. But as a newbie, until you finally swallow your pride and get up the nerve to ask someone what the heck SIFF stands for it might be a while before you learn it’s the Sonoma International Film Festival, one of the truly great home-grown institutions of this little hamlet.
Named “One of the 25 Coolest Festivals” by MovieMaker Magazine and one of America’s Top Ten Destination Film Festivals by USA Today, SIFF was entering its 22nd year of existence when I was wondering what I had gotten myself into with the Tiny Vineyards film project. Little did I, or the folks at SIFF, know it was a marriage made in heaven!
I already had two feature-length documentaries and two TV series under my belt when I started Tiny Vineyards so I was a somewhat seasoned pro (victim?) of the film festival scene. Simply put, film festivals are very exciting, oftentimes essential for a film’s success, and damn hard to get into… at least the good ones. And the more I learned about SIFF, the more apparent became that it was a good one.
I’ve gotten into a dozen film festivals with my films, but it’s never easy. You’re always competing with hundreds of other filmmakers, and what you think is an obvious reason why your film should be selected by a certain festival might not be shared by the person(s) making that decision. But then I found myself doing the math: I’m making a film about a unique aspect of winemaking plus I’m in a town that’s literally defined by winemaking plus the town hosts an international film festival with a decidedly wine-oriented theme.
You can imagine how, with my proclivity for the occasional unrestrained display of ambition, it wasn’t long before I set my sights on getting Tiny Vineyards into SIFF 2019.
Surely someone I had recently met knew someone who knew someone at SIFF. And sure enough, several people came through. I wasn’t beneath a little groveling here as I asked (okay, begged) for an introduction. No way was I just going to enter my film via the conventional online submission portal; I wanted to meet whoever was in charge and make my pitch directly to them.
Turns out that opportunity was right around the corner. Ken and Cynthia Wornick were hosting an outdoor movie night for SIFF at their beautiful little vineyard/ranch compound Hydeout. All of the SIFF brass were going to be there and Ken promised to introduce me to Kevin McNeely, SIFF’s legendary, colorful director.
I was stoked, and more than a little nervous, but when I finally connected with Kevin on that beautiful Sonoma evening he couldn’t have been nicer or more attentive. He had already heard about my film project (thank you to those who know who you are) and said he thought it would fit nicely with the festival’s upcoming program. “Just keep it short, and get it in on time,” he admonished, as our conversation dissolved into the inevitable party discourse of a dozen other people vying for his attention.
Oh, boy…(spoken with concern), keep it short, hmmm… get it in on time, uh…huh. The 2019 SIFF was the last week of March but the film deadline was January—four months from now—and I had yet to shoot even one frame of harvest season, arguably the centerpiece of the film. Oh well…(spoken with a filmmaker’s inherent disdain for deadlines), guess we’ll cross that rickety bridge when we get there. At least there was now real incentive for Tiny Vineyards.
Harvest season
And suddenly, bells started ringing all over Sonoma Valley—an annual tradition that celebrates the start of harvest. It usually begins mid-August with Pinot Noir grapes being picked early for sparkling wines, followed by the “aromatic” white varietals like Sauvignon Blanc, Riesling, Pinot Grigio and Chenin Blanc merging into big harvests of Chardonnay. Then Pinot Noir again—signaling the transition from white to red grapes like Merlot, Zinfandel, Cabernet Franc, Syrah and Sangiovese. And it usually doesn’t end until mid-October with the big late-season ripeners like Malbec, Grenache and finally Cabernet Sauvignon.
For my Tiny Vineyards film it began on September 13th with John and Gail Diserens’s Merlot harvest and continued almost ever other day—for 18 different harvests—until October 27th with J.W. and Janie Nickel’s Cabernet pick. It was exhausting and exhilarating in the same breath, and provided remarkable content for the film. At the risk of injecting too many spoilers, here are just a few of the highlights:
I joined Sonoma High School students for a totally fun pre-dawn pick of their Sauvignon Blanc, and then Adele Harrison Middle Schoolers for a hilarious harvest of their Zinfandel. Both schools have their own vineyards and student involvement is high. Sonoma recognizes its agricultural heritage, especially viticulture, and there are many opportunities for kids to engage.
Up at their tiny vineyard on Sonoma Mountain I cracked up listening to Denise DeAcetis describe being attacked by bees during the previous year’s harvest and having to run shirtless out of the vineyard to safety, then teared-up hearing her Italian father-in-law recounting his early days harvesting grapes in the old country. I was privy to Les Bosche’s and John Diserens’s remarkable discussion about their different attempts at blending wine with marijuana—Les infusing port with his homemade cannabis tincture, and John fermenting Rosé with weed—both willing to describe their technique on camera.
And I followed Ken Wornick literally everywhere he went. From tracking down extra barrels he’d need for the banner season he predicted, to accompanying him through the first harvest and exciting crush of his own tiny vineyard of rare Sagrantino grapes, to an all-night harvest high on Bennett Valley Road, to checking Brix, tasting grapes, and ultimately harvesting the many tiny vineyards he manages for private clients—all of whom he makes feel like they are the lucky scions of winemaking dynasties. [FULL DISCLOSURE: Beyond his remarkable contribution to the film, Ken was, and still is, my grape guru. I rely on him constantly for the encouragement, advice and example he so freely gives, and I so desperately need, in my quest(ionable) to become a real winemaker. It’s like I fully expect him to say at any time, “Pay attention grasshopper, you must become one with the grape…”]
The challenges and the rewards of winemaking had a way of making these amateur oenophiles philosophical. The Greeks had a word for it, symposium, meaning a deep expounding where wine has loosened one’s inhibitions enough to speak freely. This seemed to happen most frequently during times of challenge in the vineyard or when the wine just wasn’t working out, or in moments of rapture when everything held great promise! Both John and Gail Diserens could wax poetic when the spirit moved them—John when their first harvest of the year was undertaken perhaps a bit too early, and Gail when subsequent harvests bore visual, tactile and gustatory magic.
When things go wrong
John Diserens’s soliloquy on dealing with what nature gives you each year and trying not to “get caught up in the rules” was downright inspiring. Tiffany Baumann was harder on herself when she forgot a crucial sulfur spraying to protect against mildew in her vineyard, and later when tasting her previous year’s vintage and declaring it undrinkable. And Ron Chapman and Lynn Luzzi became nearly inconsolable with what happened in the General Vallejo vineyard they both so passionately tended.
Party!
And finally, when the last grape was picked and crushed and became complicit in the alchemy converting it from sweet sugary berry into devilishly delicious elixir, the harvest parties began. Righteous slabs of barbecued ribs and requisite ice cream at Annie Falandes’s and Rick Suerth’s vineyard; stone-oven pizza and Gayle’s killer desserts at Peter Stanford’s; bowls of “picki-packi” (pasta pomodoro), homemade sausages and the inevitable bars of chocolate at Sal’s; green chili and margaritas at Tiffany’s; and thick tenderloins with Caesar salads and grilled asparagus at Kashuba’s.
And always—always!—endless bottles of their wine, usually the previous year’s vintage, to wash it all down and ease the muscle ache of lugging 25-pound buckets of grapes.
Revelation
Spending seven months in increasingly close contact with my Tiny Vineyards subjects resulted in an “oenophilic osmosis” I simply couldn’t avoid and, near the end of harvest, a life-changing event occurred. I will tell the whole story in a future post, but the genesis lay somewhere in the “second pick.” Confused? Humor me just a few more lines…
The term “second pick” refers to a courtesy large vineyard owners sometimes extend to home winemakers for free. It means making a second pass through a vineyard after the commercial pickers are finished and collecting any fruit they missed or dropped. If a vineyard’s yield is sparse to begin with, then a second pick won’t be too fruitful. But if it is a banner year, like 2018 proved to be, then grapes are plentiful.
After wrapping up my final filming at Stone Barn Farm I was reminiscing with the owner, John Diserens, on how great it had been to film all his family’s grape-growing and winemaking activities over the past season, and I thanked him repeatedly for all the support he had shown me with the film project. I must have mentioned somewhere in there how I would like to someday pick some grapes myself and try making wine on my own.
“Well, mate, why don’t you do a second pick right now and see if you can find enough grapes to have a go,” he responded. “The commercial guys just picked the Cabernet vineyard out back this morning and there are probably still a few grapes we missed in the front.”
Well, damn! I borrowed a few buckets from John and in less than an hour had 75 pounds of grapes stashed in the back of my Subaru. It was enough to make five gallons of wine. It happened again later that week with Sal’s group as they were doing their final harvest of Cabernet Sauvignon from Sam’s vineyard. There were obviously more grapes this year than normal and something compelled me to ask Sal if I could pick a few buckets for myself. He begrudgingly agreed, keeping a sharp eye out that I wasn’t cherry-picking the vines or taking advantage of his largesse.
Suddenly, on a whim, I had committed to making my own wine. It was exciting and deeply satisfying, like eating an especially delicious unknown street food in the barrio of a developing country, with no idea or regard for the consequences. ¡Asi es la vida!
Now the real work begins
You’ve likely heard this before, but it’s true. The real work in filmmaking comes after the cameras have been put away and the editing begins. Because I was so crazed trying to keep up with everything happening during the harvest season, I had achieved very little in this regard. Now, as the newly fermented wine made by my film subjects was tucked away into carboys, beer kegs and small oak barrels, and the grapevines shrank in colorful exhaustion from their autumn fecundity, I found the time to review literally thousands of hours—or perhaps in more contemporary terms, 3.42 terabytes—of footage. And to do this step correctly you pretty much have to attack it in real time.
With harvest now over I had completed most of the principal photography except for one glaring omission. My idea for a story arc was to present the film in four parts, following the seasons of the year and beginning with winter. That is really when work like pruning and cover-crop cultivation happens, which will affect the following vintage. The problem was I had not begun filming until the previous April, so I had missed winter entirely.
My workaround had been to shoot the vineyard activities of winter 2019 and then put them in front of the 2018 seasons I already had in the can. No problem—barring any rare weather anomaly that might occur—as pruning and tilling look very much the same year-by-year and should have no material impact on the veracity of the film.
But then the 2019 Sonoma International Film Festival opportunity arose and—whoa!—it was already mid-November and my finished film was due in less than two months. Hmmm… Some would say glass half-empty here; I preferred glass half-full. The festival didn’t actually begin until March 27th—plenty of time to edit this monster down to size, select music, write a script and record a narrator, color-correct and sound-sweeten, and even shoot those evasive winter scenes. The finished product would be so much better for it!
I just had to convince the folks at SIFF of that.
Watch your email on February 14th for the final installment of Making the Movie, and soon to follow—a private link for watching the full film.