Ripeness is Everything
Day 2: Viticulture - Managing Vines and Producing Grapes
A vine is a translator. Its roots reach down into the earth, its leaves reach up into the sky, and somewhere in the middle, it turns those inputs—soil, water, sunlight, temperature—into fruit.
Viticulture is the craft of shaping that translation. It’s the set of choices that determine how the vine mediates between place and grape, long before a winemaker does anything. Everything downstream—alcohol, acidity, flavor, structure—is basically a record of what the vine experienced, and how humans guided it.
The Growing Environment
Grapes respond acutely to their surroundings. Heat, light, and water availability determine how quickly they ripen, how much sugar they accumulate, how acids degrade, and how flavors develop. If it’s too hot, sugars spike before flavors develop and acids find balance; too cool, and the grapes may never fully ripen, leaving green, leafy flavors and razor sharp acidity.
Viticulture describes these conditions in three nested layers:
Macroclimate: the broad regional pattern (Burgundy vs. Sonoma).
Mesoclimate: the site itself (hillside vs. valley floor, proximity to bodies of water, wind exposure).
Microclimate: the immediate environment around the vine—how the canopy is trained, how much sunlight clusters receive, how air circulates between leaves and fruit.
Each layer influences ripening in different ways, and together they define the baseline character of a wine. This is what we talk about when we talk about terroir; it’s the sum of these environmental factors and how the vine interprets them.
Ripeness Is a Choice
One of the most consequential decisions in winegrowing is when to pick.
As grapes approach their maturity, three things happen simultaneously:
Sugar levels rise, increasing potential alcohol.
Acidity drops, changing the wine’s structure and freshness.
Flavors evolve, moving from green and herbaceous to ripe and sometimes overripe, depending on the variety and climate.
Harvest too early and the wine will be lean, tart, maybe a bit green. Harvest too late and you’ll get higher alcohol, lower acidity, and riper, sometimes jammy flavors. The ideal picking window—the “sweet spot”—is where sugar, acid, and flavor development align, but where that point falls depends on the producer’s philosophy, the region, and the intended style.
Soil, Slope, and Canopy
While climate and picking decisions do most of the heavy lifting, vineyard variables fine-tune the outcome:
Soils influence drainage, water retention, and heat. Rocky soils warm quickly and drain well; clay retains water and stays cooler.
Slope and aspect determine sunlight and air movement—south-facing slopes in the Northern Hemisphere, for example, promote faster ripening.
Canopy management (how leaves are trained and pruned) affects how much light and air reach the clusters, which impacts both ripening and disease pressure.
None of these elements matter in isolation. Viticulture is about how they’re balanced together to shape the raw material.
The Role of Vintage
Because vines are so responsive to their environment, every growing season tells a different story. A sudden rain, a heat spike, or a cool harvest can shift the balance dramatically. When people insist on talking about vintage variation, it can sound performative and snobbish; and sometimes, it surely is. But those who really understand wine, understand that nature is a co-author of what’s in the glass. The same vineyard can yield radically different wines from one year to the next.
Viticulture is the part of wine knowledge that almost never gets explained clearly outside of certification courses, but it’s a powerful lens for understanding style. Once you start seeing wine through the vine—its environment, its ripening arc, and the choices guiding it—everything else starts to click.
Tomorrow, we move into winemaking: what happens when those grapes hit the cellar, and how human technique shapes everything from fizz to funk.
If there’s a part of the vineyard story you’ve always found confusing—or a bit of received wisdom you’ve never been sure you actually believe—hit reply or drop a comment. I’ll weave some of your questions into future lessons.
And if you’re already wishing all of this lived in one clear, structured place: that’s exactly what the Wine School course will be. Founding Members get full access as it rolls out.