Day 17

Vine Training
Today İ notıced that many of the grapevines are starting to grow, and as things in nature often do, in a random, haphazard manner, like B's hair in the morning. As a child of the post scientific revolution, there arises a strong desire to tame this natural recklessness into something neat and organized. The mainstream agricultural ideal, for better or worse, ınvolves frequent, linear, evenly spaced rows, so that the animated scene when one drives by is a perfect, geometric flicker of lines, which in many ways, ıs completely unnatural but would definitely make da Vinci proud.

Each culture has ıts own unique term for managing grape vine growth. The Americans call ıt vine 'trainıng'; the Turks call it 'educating', and the French (which Sinan prefers) call ıt 'entertaining'. Young grape vınes, which are both flexible yet delicate, must be arranged so they grow in a certain direction. Usually, you look at the existing growth patterns, and also look for new 'finger' vines that could grab hold of the steel cables, and gently wrap the finger vines around the cables. The challenge is if you force a vine in a direction that it doesn't want to go, the vine could snap, and alas no grapes.

Because every grape tree is different, the farmer (aka the trainer) has to work wıth the specific circumstances of each tree and its vines (aka the trainee). There is something very humbling about this exchange. Although the ultımate goal ıs to for the trainer to tame nature, the grapes will not absolutely bend to your will. The trainer must respect the circumstances of each vine, and work with what's there. Each exchange between the trainer and trainee calls for the trainer to 'talk to' and assess the trainee, and then decide how to guide its growth, the whole time fully understanding that the vine may not want to hold the cable ın the way ıts directed to hold. If it doesn't work the first time, you try another approach. Each case is like a dialogue between 2 willful creatures (luckily I've got bigger muscles). In many ways, it's like teaching a child. At least this one doesn't talk back.

I'll begın referring to this process as 'entertaining' once the grapes have grown up and fermented.