Blood Into Wine Page #3

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an initial interest in the fruit

because I got excited about the idea

of getting some of these heirloom apples

that I'd come across in my hikes,

hiking them out,

pressing them andmaking an apple wine.

I took the apples,

went through the whole process,

and I'll never forget

the first whiff I had of that apple wine.

It brought me back there.

I could smell those grasses.

I could hear the little babbling brook.

I could smell the ponderosas.

And it was really epiphanous for me.

This was the moment

that made me into a winemaker.

Winemaking is something

that helps us understand

our relationship

with the earth and with each other.

There's a lot of situations

where we disrespect the earth.

We manage our resources poorly.

We litter.

We over-extract resources.

It all comes down to whether

we really understand

what's going on around us

and whether we're sensitive to it.

Do we have a responsibility to the earth?

Do we have a responsibility to ourselves,

to attune our senses

to all these things around us?

And I know this almost seems hokey,

but that sense of taste and smell

brought me to a deeper level

of understanding

of myself and the planet.

It's like somebody saying

God spoke to them.

And to me, the earth

is really kind of my church, is my God.

And that was my religious experience.

My name's craig Martinsen,

and I'm the vineyard manager

here at Page Springs.

When we prune the vines,

we're really setting up

the vineyard for this next year.

I know I want to set about three tons

of fruit per acre in this section.

And so, based on vine counts,

if I leave two buds per spur,

and I space the spurs about the distance

of my hand apart,

I know I'll get that.

l'm also pruning the vines,

and I'm leaving my buds here.

They're all concentrated

right along this cordon.

Sometimes we'll taste--

Like, here it's bleeding.

Taste that to see if it's sweet at all.

There's no sugars

really flowing in the vines, and...

I guess that's the Farmers'Almanac way

of testing things,

seeing how far they're along.

My name is Feather Jones,

and I am an herbalist,

a land journey guide,

and a ceremonialist.

Grandmother, Grandfather,

Great Spirit,

and Spirit Keepers of the Four Directions,

I honor you and I acknowledge you

for your many gifts.

This is a prayer the indigenous people

use in order to move into a place of power.

And the vortexes are places of power.

A vortex is kind of a cool, groovy name,

but it was not known

with the ancient people.

Sacred places of power.

And they knew them all.

And these places offer

a very strong earth resonance,

where the electromagnetic energies

are concentrated.

So it's easy to walk into them

and feel the energies.

I am a vortex.

I'm a mobile vortex.

I don't have my costume on right now,

but I normally have, like, a--

It's a big V with a cape.

I am--I am a vortex.

Well, you should dispute this

with the Sedona map

because you're not on the map.

Well, it's because I didn't donate

to their chamber of commerce.

They took me off the map.

And it was hard.

They just kept having to reprint it.

Every time I moved,

they'd have to reprint the map

because I'm a moving vortex.

Let me say something to you.

Please.

The blood of christ is essentially wine.

Correct.

Who are you to put that in a bottle?

I don't know. That's...

There's a couple things we know about life.

Could we just open one? Or...

- Okay, go ahead.

- Listen, it's a free country. Openthe wine.

If he wants to open the wine so much,

he's probably an--

- He probably has a problem with alcohol.

- I would just, you know--

- If you were running your own talk show--

- You're right. This is your--

At that point, you could say

"I'm going to interview you,

then we're going to open the wine,

then we're going to talk about the wine."

Okay? But that's not really

what's happening here.

Right now we're trying to figure out

why the hell Keanu is not here.

What kind of name is Keanu?

That's an interesting thing.

What is this now?

It's just an opener.

- What do you do with that thing?

-You open the wine.

Come on.

Seriously, what do you do with it?

You open the wine.

You use it to open the wine.

And you make these things?

This is just a wine opener.

Now, if you were the inventor

of a metal fish like that...

- Dennis, we gotta get the guy on the show--

-Now we're talking.

...who invents the wine opener.

- Get him booked.

- That's a blast.

That looks like it's

a lot of fun there, man.

Yeah, it's great.

If I hadthat thing, I'd buy

the cheapest wine, and I'd open it up.

It would be a blast.

I'd have my sons join me in that pursuit.

And then I'd just pour the wine

down the drain

because I would never drink wine.

You don't like wine?

I would not know, sir,

because I also have never drinken piss.

So I wouldn't know what that tastes like,

but I certainly wouldn't drink it.

Douche bags.

Isn't that a neat little device?

This is the theory of civilization

according to Tom.

Most people accept the idea...

that civilization as we know it

grew up in the Tigress-Euphrates area,

and that the main civilizing factor

for man was wheat.

Primitive wheat,

before man got his hands on it,

kind of looks like Bermuda grass.

You get this little stalk

with these tiny little seeds on it.

And I said to myself,

if l'm a caveman back in the day,

and I'm dragging my lady

around by the hair,

and I got a club in one hand,

and I see Bermuda grass,

and I see a grapevine...

I mean, you know,

which one am I going to go for first?

Well, of course I'm going to go

for the grapes.

As it happens,

the Southern caucasus,

in what used to be

the old Soviet Republic of Georgia,

is the origin of vitis vinifera.

They have moved around the planet

by the simple process of man saying

"I like those.

I'm going to take some with me."

So it moved down the hill,

worked into the Tigress-Euphrates,

and then slowly spread,

especially throughout the Middle East,

over into Persia, into what is now Iran,

and became the center

of the grape-growing regions.

The Greeks got real good

at carrying the grapes around.

But the kings obviously were the Romans,

being the engineers that they were,

introduced these grapevines

all over the Western world.

And what they're now finding--

They can do DNA analysis

on residue that they found in amphora

in sunken ships in the Mediterranean,

that they found in burial tombs

that they found in the pyramids in Egypt.

And guess what.

All those guys were drinking cabernet

and the same grapes that we're drinking.

So my thinking is that

actually civilization arose

because of these guys saying

"You know, those taste pretty goo."

And then, you know, one day,

they had a bunch of grapes,

and they stuck them

in a container of some kind

and forgot about them for a while.

Well, then they just got better.

Hey, Maynard,

could you tell us a little bit

about what you guys are doing today?

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