Maple, Markets, Drones, Blends, and Forty-dollar Chicken

This week’s favorite stories about food, wine, and culture

Welcome back to The Salt, my weekly curated collection of essays, articles, and marginalia at the intersection of wine and food. These are the stories that caught my attention, conveyed new insights, and sparked creative thinking.

Indigo Bunting

Drones in the vineyard!

Simon J Woolf visited Jerez to watch organic producer Raúl Moreno using his drone to spray vine treatments. Moreno has found drones offer myriad advantages over tractors, including speed, water efficiency, and zero soil compaction. There are some downsides. Operators must pass rigorous exams before flying. “The training is pretty much identical to what you need to do to become a helicopter pilot,” Moreno told Woolf. Spraying in windy conditions can be problematic, as seen in Woolf’s Instagram video. And the European Union forbids aerial spraying at high concentrations. Still, “Might they be a better solution than driving heavy, polluting tractors through the vines?” Woolf asks. “Could they sit side-by-side with the ethics of artisanal organic, biodynamic, and natural growers?” Steiner, in his lectures, actively encouraged farmers to go forth and experiment; I think he’d approve.

Sweet success

Maple sugaring season has ended in northern New England. Mud season was brutal, truly interminable, and we endured long stretches of sniveling cold punctuated by false springs that teased us with mild sunshine before shoving us back into winter’s bitter embrace. This did not get my juices flowing, but it did wonders for maple sap, which requires cold nights and mild days to start running. In Vermont, many producers reported a strong season, with a total production estimate of three million gallons. According to Anson Tebbetts, secretary of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets, that’s over half of the production of the entire United States. Vermont: small but mighty.

A new AVA

Speaking of Vermont, last week I attended the annual meeting of the Vermont Grape and Wine Council (on which more later) just as news broke that the federal government is on the verge of approving the state’s first sub-AVA, Champlain Valley of Vermont. Local indy news site VTDigger wrote about the proposed rule, which is currently in a comment period. If approved, the valley’s wine producers will at last be able to list their vineyard and locale on the label, which is forbidden for state-appellated wines. Vermont wine pioneer Kenneth Albert, founder of Shelburne Vineyard and a former president of the VGWC, submitted the original petition in 2022. “It gives us validity,” he told VTDigger. “We’ll finally get some respect.”

Song Sparrow

Brace yourself, Vermont

Regional regulations bring pluses and minuses. On the one hand, they offer assurances a wine is authentically produced, sourced from the defined area and made within certain strictures. But they also stifle creativity and hamstring innovations that may be sorely needed, especially under rapidly changing climactic and economic conditions. Andy Neather lays out the issues and highlights many examples of makers purposely going off-piste, especially in natural wine. He thinks it’s time to break the rules.

The art of the blend

Jason Haas, general manager of Tablas Creek Vineyard, in Paso Robles, reports on last week’s blending sessions for the 2025 white wines. He’s encouraged by the quantity and quality of the vintage, and this year they’ll be able to make varietal bottlings of Picardin, Clairette blanche, and Bourboulenc—grapes that never get bottled varietally in their native Rhône—along with good quantities of their flagship white blends. Haas’s text is long and wine-geeky, but if you have ever wanted a peek inside the vinous sausage factory, or pored over a tech sheet wondering how two percent in a blend could possibly make a difference, this post’s for you.

Eastern Bluebird

Wine’s structural economics

Brett Vankoski has spent nearly two decades building and scaling national wine brands, riding the industry’s ups and downs. But last week, after conducting a deep dive into wine retail trend data, he confessed his shock at the degree of the recent decline. In his latest post, he deconstructs the three-tier system, taking it apart like a machine to find the sand and broken cogs. His piece is required reading for anyone managing flow at almost any scale. “What the industry needs is not perfection,” he concludes. “It needs to work well enough to direct capital to the right places, give genuine ideas enough runway to prove themselves, and preserve what drew most of us here and keeps us here still.”

Natural language query

Importer Steven Graf digs into the semantics and semiotics of the term natural wine, what it means and what it signals, and how its use and interpretation (unremarkably) say more about the speaker than the style. “Over the course of some years, the term has been stretched and strained, but that does not detract from its essential usefulness nor practicality,” he writes. Graf cautions us to evaluate process and product independently, separating makers’ stylistic and philosophical intentions from their specific outcomes, which are highly contingent. (It is wine, after all.)

“If you don’t want the chicken, don’t get it”

In early April, New York City councilman Chi Ossé took to Instagram to rant about a wine bar’s $40 price tag for a roasted half-chicken with potatoes. Said wine bar, Gigi’s, in Greenpoint, is not even in his district. Commenters showed up with pitchforks and torches, and the brouhaha spilled into the streets of mainstream media, picked up by The New York Times, Bon Appétit, and Today. Emilie Abel of Pour Things thinks everyone’s missed the point. “I get it. I really do. New York pricing fatigue is real,” she writes. “But here’s what nobody is saying: Yes, the half chicken is $40. But you can also get a whole bottle of wine for $40. Or choose any of 300 bottles for under $100.” In other words, the wine bar part of the machine is functioning as intended, encouraging exploration and discovery. She confirmed this when she sat down with the bar’s manager and wine director to talk about their strategy. “Within about thirty seconds it’s clear: the place is designed to make you curious.” And thirsty.

See you next week.

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Paintings ©2026 Meg Maker