Planting a vineyard anywhere, and in any way, is surely daunting. Planting a vineyard on a frontier is something additional to that. A frontier is a physical place, a place away, on the edge, outside, isolated, disconnected. A frontier is also a cultural place, unestablished, undefined, lonely. A place that has yet to be answered. A place without a recipe and without road signs. Living on a frontier means, not knowing where you are going, and not knowing how long it will take to get there. It also means not knowing who will make it there with you and who won’t.

After planting vines a certain way in 2018, 2019 and 2020 I feel like I might be starting to learn. This year only 57 vines were planted in the original vineyard site plus 16 in a new spot a few miles away. That’s less than 100 vines compared with the 13,000 plus we have planted over the last few years. One small step in the right direction takes us closer to our goal than a thousand steps in the wrong direction. I have abandoned the idea of grafted vines from a large commercial nursery, and instead this year I rooted my own vines from cuttings and planted them directly. I have changed the vine spacing from 4 feet by 5 feet to 10 feet by 10 feet. I have moved on from cabernet sauvignon and instead am aiming towards a field blend of Portuguese red grape varieties. This year we started with 7 varieties and will be adding many more next year. Below is a list of the varieties we planted this year plus the varieties we will receive cuttings from next year.

The cuttings that I rooted indoors over the winter are alive!

This is my friend Trevor. Trevor was very nice to come out and help me plant this year. Trevor and I were the only two planters. Look at those roots! Another difference from previous plantings is that this year we transplanted green vines, rather than planting bare-rooted dormant vines.

This is biochar. Biochar is burned biomass which can be added to soil for the purpose of adding stable organic matter. We received this biochar as a gift from Trevor. Thanks Trevor!

I mixed biochar, old horse manure and water together in a pile and then let it composted for about a month. We filled our planting holes with this mixture plus a mycorrhizal fungi inoculant. Our soil is so rocky that it has been very challenging to keep the soil immediately surrounding the roots of newly planted vines. Filing our planting holes with this carbon-rich mixture should help keep considerably more moisture in the root zone and supply nutrients to the baby vines.

A vine literally being planted in between a rock and a hard place.

I used a piece of twine to train the new vines to grow up the posts. We have switched to metal posts because the wooden ones did not prove to be durable enough to withstand our tough environment.

This particular Tinta Francisca vine is particularly vigorous.

The vines look so healthy in this new planting scheme. They are already as big as the vines that remain from the 2018 planting.

This is the only surviving patch of vines from the original planting in 2018. I have placed a bed of wood chip mulch around each vine to help retain moisture and prevent native plants from growing too close to the vines.

This is the beginning of the new vineyard, about 5 miles as the crow flies from the original vineyard.

Lulu inspecting the vines in the new vineyard.

The new vineyard will be planted in the same arrangement as the 2021 plantings at the original vineyard except the grape varieties will be white. Below is a list of the varieties.

One of the most exciting parts of 2021 for Alta Marfa has been finally having wine to share with everyone. In May we bottled three wines made from grapes sourced from the Engle vineyard in New Mexico which is owned and farmed by Noisy Water Winery and was planted in the early 1980’s. More information about these wines can be found here. I took these wines on the road in June and had a great time selling them to 25 bars, restaurants, and wine shops in Marfa, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Bryan. At many of these outlets, the wine sold out in under an hour. The pinnacle of this sales trip was a release party we had at Montrose Cheese and Wine in Houston. We sold about 15% of these three wines to wholesale accounts and the rest is now for sale online by allocation. If you were subscribed to our blog as of July 14th you should already have received an email with a link to purchase wine. If you did not receive an email and think you should have, please check your spam folder or send me a text or email. As I’m writing this about 50% of the wine has already sold. For those who are not subscribed to the blog who would like to purchase wine, you can do so by signing up for the waiting list here. I will be sending allocation emails to the waiting list on Monday, October 20th.

Our wonderful label artwork was created by Alan Johnson, one of my best friends from high school. He has created some small limited edition hand-drawn posters of the label art that can be purchased here. All proceeds will go to the artist.

Big thanks to Edward and Paulina for helping me bottle these. About 150 cases or 1,800 bottles in total.

Big Lunch Poster. These are numbered 1 through 12 and signed. The color is screen printed and all of the line work is drawn by hand so each piece is unique.

Evan dressed up as a sad Texas wine clown and poured a giant bottle of champagne for everyone at the end of our release party at Montrose Cheese and Wine.

Pam and Evan. Evan learned how to make balloon animals specifically for this party.

Thanks Pam for taking this goofy picture of me and the biggest, hugest thanks to Lauren Hunter Lee for making this whole party happen for us. It was such a great experience and I had a blast.

Our wine production space is currently under construction in Marfa. We are hoping to be moved into our new winery this winter.

The walls, roof, the smaller doors and the air conditioning and insulation are all in!

AZ, Ross and Cooper from the Austin Winery graciously helped me bottle 65 cases of sparkling wine just at the beginning of the harvest season. I’m very excited about this wine. It might be ready to sell before the end of the year . . .

The start of our garden this spring. Now that we are living in West Texas full time, things like this are possible.

My crop circle of corn with winter squash planted around the outside.

The produce of our garden was bountiful!

Katie and one of our male ducks. Our two male ducks became delicious food soon after this.

A giant dog in a tiny truck at Robert Clay Vineyards in Mason, TX.

In 2020 we received about 5 inches of rain for the entire year. 2021 has been incredibly different, the trans-pecos area of west Texas has become a green wonderland. We have received over 20 inches of rain and are closing in on 30 inches! I can hear thunder rumbling in the distance as I write this.

This picture is taken from the top of the hill at the vineyard. The river running through the pasture below is a flash flood. The sound of the water moving is deafening. This sudden river is probably 50 feet wide and 3-4 feet deep.

These new vines, and our garden, suffered two serious hail storms this year and still pulled through.

This was one of the first rains of the year. The ground was still parched and very dusty. The rain and wind were very intense and stirred all the dust up into the air. The view of Blue Mountain is totally obscured.

The sky here is incomparable. This is the view of Blue Mountain that is obscured in the previous picture.

If you have been reading the blog for a while you are probably starting to notice a pattern. This is the part at the end of the post where I show you a bunch of sunset pictures.

Why aren’t all nachos made this way? Every chip is the perfect bite and there is no pile of crumbled plain chips leftover at the end. I love these. These are from the bar Planet Marfa in Marfa, TX.

42. 2021 A Wine Odyssey