This is my entry in Jancis Robinson's 2022 wine writing competition, which gives details of the vineyard and it ultimate fate. We all stared, fixed on the computer screen displaying the rural Andalusian landscape – in Lucainena de las Torres, to be particular – from an aerial photograph. “This is protected forest,” declared the official from the environment department. The image exhibited in fine detail my farm’s long-treeless slopes pockmarked with occasional bushes, called retama, and lower vegetation, including fragrant native thyme and sage. “No, this is agricultural land, classified as vineyard,” shot back the agriculture official, whose office lay a few doors down the corridor in the squat, 1980s Junta de Andalucia government building. As far as I could tell, the two bureaucrats had never met before.
I had just delivered the paperwork declaring new vine plantings, an integral part of capturing a few approved hectares of Andalusia’s quota of Spain’s quota of the European Union quota for vineyards destined for wine production. Mine was one of two official Protected Designation of Origin sites in the perhaps ironically-named “Desert of Almeria” viticulture region of Spain’s most arid province. I had provoked the inter-departmental consultation and at that moment hoped that my over-cautiousness did not spell disaster for the first-year garnacha bush vines flourishing there. The controversy between native “forest” and vineyard, beyond its bureaucratic battlelines, crystalized the issues confronting my winegrowing efforts in 2017, including concern for the soil, the native plants, water resources, biodiversity, entrenched 20th century Spanish farming methods, and seemingly inevitable desertification pitched against the Andalusian government’s penchant for creating new wine regions (or reinvigorating traditional ones). The planting approval already granted, the vines already installed, I pointed out that both were possible: classified vineyard and classified “forest,” as it were. Neither saw my point, and the ag representative stormed out with no resolution, though now the government’s right hand knew what the left one was doing. Continue reading on JancisRobinson.com. . . .
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Charles LearyIn the 1990s I started Chicory Farm in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, becoming one of the state's first certified organic vegetable farms. I also opened an acclaimed Creole Vegetarian restaurant in Uptown New Orleans. From 2000-18, I was the Proprietor/ Chef of Trout Point Lodge of Nova Scotia, but also lived part time in Andalusia since 2002. My entrepreneurial endeavours have won accolades from the inaugural Tibbetts Award of the U.S. Small Business Administration to the inaugural Parks Canada Sustainable Tourism Award. ArchivesCategories
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