Into The Quiet

After harvest, the cellar continues and another landscape unfolds.

INTO THE QUIET After harvest, another landscape unfolds. There is a particular moment after harvest when the aperture of the world opens again, strange and true. For six weeks our attention narrows. Weather. Fruit. Brix. What must be picked today and what needs to wait another morning. Whether there is room in the cellar. What needs pressing, what needs punch-down, what needs simply to be left alone. And then the last of the grapes come in. We've been waiting, slouching toward the finish of each block of grapes, crossing off each vineyard as we we pick that last bunch, a quick celebration, a collective, joyful shout into the sky, a ritual bouquet picked from the flowers and grasses that grow beneath the vines, each bouquet becoming more and more autumnal, until at the end, they are a clutch of straw-colored orchard grasses, cottony milkweed pods, the still green vines of vetch, virgin's bower that has transformed into old man's beard, chestnut-colored hazlenut leaves, and the dried seed heads of golden rod and aster.  The vineyards become quiet. At first, this feels startling. CAUGHT BETWEEN   There was one afternoon during harvest when two years seemed to occupy the cellar at once. We had brought in Marquette from Vergennes for Dark Country Sky. The fruit was beautiful—plump and flavorful and the darkest of blues—and instead of pushing it through the cellar, we let the whole clusters rest for four days. Cool. Waiting. The temperatures were such that fermentation had begun within the confines of the berries themselvesbut it was so delicate, a ghost. At the same time, we were bottling Dark Country Sky 2025. I remember looking at the bottles gathering on one side of the cellar while the new fruit waited on the other and realizing that one vintage was entering bottle just as another was beginning. A few days later, we climbed into the bin and foot-crushed the Marquette for nearly an hour. We tasted everything: the berries, of course, but also the stems: green tea, salt, strawberry tops, something almost like yogurt. Tiny impressions that might disappear later. Or might become part of the wine.   Harvest work is almost entirely physical—lift, carry, crush, press, clean, repeat. Then there are moments when everything slows down enough to notice how uncanny winemaking really is. Fruit from one year becoming wine while the next begins beside it. Nothing finished. Nothing quite known. Just one vintage passing into another.   THE PULSE OF THE CELLAR   Harvest does not end when the last grapes come into the winery. It simply changes landscapes. Some of the 2026 wines have already begun to find their form. The three Ci Confonde pét-nats—Rosé, Rosso, and White—are bottled. So are Grace and Favour, House Music, Vulpina and Lucky Star. There was actually time to make a small quantity of piquette. And various new pet nat experiements. One is called Queen Mab after the fairy regent in A Midsummer's Night Dream. Another called Love, Work, Mountain, a memory of a wine we made in 2020.   Other wines are still shifting like walking through light in nightime fog. Damejeanne is taking shape from another portion of Vergennes Marquette with a portion of West Addison La Crescent. Dark Country Sky began with whole clusters of Marquette and a small amount of skin-fermented La Crescent. Vinu Jancu carries West Addison La Crescent in another direction entirely. There is also the tiny fermentation of hedgerow grapes, still far too small and mecurial to call anything other than a question. The cellar now has its own weather. Fermentations shiver as the nights turn colder. Wines move from one vessel into another. We taste. We wait. We decide something and sometimes decide something else a few days later. During harvest, everything moves outward in concentric circles: people arriving, tractors moving, picking bins accumulating, presses running, meals appearing on tables. Afterward, the movement turns inward. The wines whisper their work .And we begin listening. WHAT RETURNS   The first evening after the last of the fruit was in and pressed, I walked outside at dusk. The mountains were covered in a blanket of the last light. Stars appeared through the bedroom window later that night, something I'd never noticed before. For weeks I had been looking mostly down—at grapes, hoses, buckets, tanks, the ground beneath my feet. Suddenly there was room to look up again. I have been thinking about thresholds. Harvest is full of obvious ones: the moment fruit leaves the vine, the moment juice becomes wine, the moment one vintage enters the cellar as another is leaving it. But there are hidden thresholds too. The first morning when the vineyards no longer require us to be there. The first evening when darkness comes and there is nowhere we need to drive. The first cold night when the fermentations in the cellar begin to slow on their own. A threshold is not quite an ending and not quite a beginning. It is the place between. And that is where we find ourselves now. The vineyards are withdrawing into themselves. The wines are still becoming. The gardens are folding back toward the ground. What felt urgent only weeks ago has begun to loosen its hold. There is still work everywhere. But there is also space around the work again. November is here. There are still sparkling wines to bottle. Barrels and demijohns to watch. Gardens to put to bed. Dahlias to dig. Labels to draw. A cellar to arrange before winter arrives. But there is also the return of time. A FEW DATES BEFORE WINTER   Before we disappear too far into the season of winter, there are a few chances to gather with us around the table and here at the domaine. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20 · JASPER HILL FONDUE NIGHT WITH LA GARAGISTA We’ll be at the Adventure Dinner Clubhouse in Colchester for the final evening of their November Jasper Hill Fondue Nights--a wonderfully retro fondue feast built around cheeses from Jasper Hill Farm with a welcome hour and snack tower farm salads, bubbling fondue pots, and something sweet to finish in the library. We’ll be there pouring La Garagista wines by the glass and bottle and talking wine throughout the evening. Friday, November 20 · 6 PM Adventure Dinner Clubhouse 70 Roosevelt Highway · Colchester, Vermont Tickets: $82.50   NOVEMBER 21 + 22 · SHORT VISITS And a little advance notice for Thanksgiving week: Saturday, November 21 · West Addison Sunday, November 22 · Barnard We’ll open the domaine for a small round of Short Visits—a chance to come by, taste with us, pick up wines for the Thanksgiving table, and see the vineyards as trhey settle toward winter. More details coming shortly.   Adventure Fondue Night Tickets SHORT VISITS IN W. ADDISON or BARNARD Sending good wishes from here, Deirdre and Caleb

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