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| First Person |
Vintner with a Mission
Ted W. Hall
06/01/2004
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But making our point will take a long time. I’m still considered
the new kid on the block. We always laugh at that, because we launched our
venture more than 15 years ago, and I’ve been making wine since 1971. We have
now produced 10 vintages at Long Meadow Ranch, but in the wine business it takes
at least 20 years to develop a reputation. If you have designs on crafting a
fine red wine, eight years will pass from the time you first break ground until
your first bottle is on the market. Then the wine will need to age for several
more years before anyone can really assess it. After 15 long years, we are just
now entering the period when people can really judge our success.
 | | “OUR FARM has literally hundreds of interrelated loops that operate in a
virtuous cycle of life. It’s simply a return to
a centuries-old system of family farming that was continually self-sustaining.” |
At Long
Meadow Ranch we rely on an integrated, sustainable, organic farming system to
accomplish our goals. The ranch is a tightly interwoven system of
interrelationships. We produce grapes and wine, olives and olive oil, grass-fed
Scotch Highland beef, vegetables, eggs and flowers. We even breed Appaloosa
horses. Each part of the system contributes to the whole. For example, producing
grapes and olive oil together creates many shared benefits. We harvest grapes in
September and October, and we harvest olives in November, December and January.
Then we prune grapes in late January and February, and we prune olives in March
and April. By May we are back working in the vineyards, suckering and performing
weed control. Because these two principal crops are so complementary over the
course of a year, this creates a level workload for our farmhands. Thus we don’t
rely on seasonal farm workers: We suffer no seasonal turnover, no loss of
valuable training and no uncertainty about whether someone is going to show up
next season.
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