What is Research & Discovery?

By: Adam Casto

Atelier

The great photojournalist Robert Capa said when asked why he takes a photograph: “I take photos because I am afraid that if I don’t, you will never see it.”

There are innumerable moments in the winegrowing process that both fascinate and surprise me (moments made all the better when they also turn out to be delicious), but more importantly they remind me of why it is a thing worth doing at all. For many reasons these passing glimpses rarely make it to a bottle unmolested by the limitations of commerce and logistics. However, it is our conviction that engaging with wine on the terms that form its core value for all people, culture and time (no biggie) is the only way to ensure ongoing meaning we aspire for it, we have challenged ourselves to reimagine how we might bring others into the process, to share what we get to see. The reality is infinitely more compelling than the myth, it is our job to continue the work of illuminating it.

Winegrowing professionally is to be in a continual search for improvement, not just as a stabilizing force against the inherent volatility of nature but as a qualitative objective to better execute or translate value to the business, the consumer, ourselves and each other. We all dream, or at least we should, to produce greatness. We cannot ever believe though that we will knowingly attain it, simply because greatness is established only by time. Furthermore, in the case of winegrowing, it occurs for myriad reasons largely beyond control and owing to no single individual or factor. It would seem quite apparent then that it pays to be looking, to be exercising the various measures of consummate tinkering to best furnish the probabilities of a fantastic alignment. Done reasonably, worst-case scenario is you have only made something delicious. Best-case scenario, you have contributed meaningfully to history. It is said that over the course of a good career, a winemaker will only ever have about 30, maybe 40 harvests to try their hand at it – if they are lucky. Framed like this, the expedience and efficacy of the refinement process (or good questions asked early and often) is imperative to a successful and fulfilling run. Framed another way though, the prospect of enduring the unforgiving task of harvest 40 times throughout a life is at least equally daunting, so there is a balance to be struck somewhere to provide the drive necessary to sustain.

The specter of aberration is no small thing, and it ultimately is our explicit obligation to secure the investments made by the application of our skillsets. However, it is also our duty as creative professionals to defy the demands of vacillating influencers and hand-wringing financiers to challenge ourselves to stimulate the imagination and the passion that are in fact the cultural purpose of any creative work and produce the progress that we rely on.

To meet both ends requires careful consideration and diligent experimental design, one where the pursuit of one goal also meets the ends of the other. We must hold that approaching the work with wondrous curiosity is fundamental to success.

Wine is an infinite game, which means the purpose of play is not to reach a definitive end, but to keep the game going as the players and the field are forever changing. There is no terminus, just points in a continuum.

Delight doesn’t need to come at a premium. Join our community of like-minded adventurers to receive our (delicious) quarterly dispatches of Research & Discovery and see what we get to see!