The Problem and the Way of Things

These last few weeks have been filled with the word "agronimo". In English, this is an agronomist, a man (in this case, anyway) who knows about land. We have previously blogged about a piece of land we are interested in, in spite of the site requiring bridge building. We have met the land owner several times, have been upfront with him about not having cash laying around to purchase the land, but that our plan was to go back to Canada to execute on a plan with our existing real estate to make the purchase of land here possible. He is interested enough in our project to consider waiting. As such, he has allowed us to take samples of the land and have it analyzed to determine its feasibility for grapes. After some typical Oaxaca research, an agronomist comes to us through a friend's wife. Ralph heads out to the land with him, they spend 90 minutes digging. Our agronomist speaks no English. Ralph explains the plan: grapes, small casitas or cabanas, as they are called here, a casa principale with the living and dining areas, a pool, parking...


The soil samples are taken and we get the call. This work took 6 days. He is ready with our analysis. We head over to a cafe, and in typical Oaxacan fashion there is a miscommunication about the meeting time. We eventually meet. The soil is bad, not favorable for grapes. We are saddened. He suggests we meet with the "technico", a man from Zimatlan, in a wheelchair, who has maps and could give us a better idea of where we should look. He has an office around the corner, where he comes a few days per week. We are excited about meeting him, so the agronomist calls and happily discovers that he is on his way into town right now, he'll be there in 30 minutes. He commits us to going.

If I have learnt nothing else here in 5 months, I have learnt that you need to just go with things. There is an energy to things here that is not like any I have experienced in all my other travels in the world. If the happy coincidence is that you come across a friend in the street and there she is going for coffee and invites you, you should go, always. Call to cancel whatever else you had to do, or invite whomever you were meeting to now join you both.

Ralph cancels his root canal appointment and we walk over to meet the "technico". What a meeting! We explain what we want to do, we explain that we are not concerned about water as we plan to collect rainwater, there is a well on the land and we plan to reuse the grey water from the casitas and the main house. El Technico is getting more excited. As soon as we tell him we have no export desires and we want to make wine for ourselves and the local community, he is committed to the project. He explains that he is concerned with climate. The issue, he says, is that it does not get cold enough here. Not cold enough. Hang on. Did he just say what I think he said? Yup. Not cold enough. Now, try telling two Canadians, some may say two crazy Canadians, that we can't grow wine because it's just not COLD enough here. Well, that did not go over too well!

After some discussion, he agrees that we could technically trick the vines into dormancy, and worst case, we could get a grape that does well in this tropical climate and graft whatever grape we want onto the root stock. Now he's talking a language we like to hear. The language of possibility. We head home full of ideas, and research for the next few days centres around wine grape growing in tropical climates. Brazil. Vietnam. Cambodia. We are pioneers in this particular region, but if we don't let anybody scare us out of it, I think we'll go just fine growing wine and drinking it here in Oaxaca. Cabernet, here we come!