if Susman and Pollack’s quest for a
happy, healthy life led them, along the
way, to provide the same for their animals,
Zaback’s route was a more self-conscious
one. He started out in college, pursuing
anthropology and environmental studies,
but he found the studies too abstract.
“it was very theoretical,” he says,
“and i wanted to do something with this
knowledge i was gaining about the need
for sustainability.” He discovered what he
was looking for at a farming intensive at
California’s Humboldt State university
and, later, on these rented acres in new
jersey, near his retired parents.
it’s not a bad place to test the market.
The Lawrenceville area supports some
of the most popular CSas in the country.
Here Zaback even finds a small market for
The Orb Weaver Farm owners produce award- winning cheese that’s true to their original plan to produce quality, not quantity. Right: Lassie (facing the camera) dines with her fellow cows in the farm’s barn.
guy—i do it all,” he says) of 76-acre Hermann j. Wiemer Vineyard, on the southwest shore of Seneca Lake, in new York’s
Finger Lakes region, an environment
perfectly suited to rieslings and other
cold-climate grapes. Merwarth’s rieslings
are astounding: crisp, fragrant whites that
rival the best of Germany’s traditional
varietal. and he makes them without the
help of herbicides, insecticides, chemical
fertilizers or even cultured yeast.
“We weed with a tractor and clean it up
with a hand hoe,” he says, walking amid
vine rows as an indigo evening descends
on the sloping land and the long, deep
claw mark of a lake below it. “To fertilize,
we use this fantastic composted mulch.”
Merwarth, as tall and thin as a trel-
lised vine, has worked 10 years in the wine
barn at the center of the winery, the steel
tanks contain nothing but grape juice fer-
mented naturally by the wild yeasts in the
surrounding air. Merwarth doesn’t have
to use the additives other wineries rely on
for flavor and color.
The Expression of a Vineyard
To Frederick Merwarth, the place he
farms matters, too, but not as much for
the local consumers as for the natural
landscape. Merwarth is the co-owner
(“and the winemaker and the vineyard
business, all of them spent right here at
Wiemer, where he apprenticed at the
shoulder of his predecessor, the vineyard’s German-born eponym. Wiemer, a
pioneer in Finger Lakes viticulture, also
was an early proponent of a now-growing
trend toward natural methods in american winemaking.
“Hermann grew up in [Germany’s]
Mosel Valley when DD T was being aerial
sprayed,” Merwarth marvels. “Talk about
pretty scary stuff.”
Wiemer rejected pesticides, but not
just because they are hazardous. Says
Merwarth, “it has to affect the taste.”
The same concerns inform the work
at Wiemer after the grapes have been
crushed. in the soaring, 100-year-old
lusher, more tropical. These are blended,
along with others, into a signature dry
riesling, with its orange-blossom aroma
and flavor of bright apricot. Complex,
balanced, crisp and clean, it’s a culmina-
tion of Merwarth’s symbiotic relationship
with the environment.
The Least-Deadliest Catch
Brendan Smith sees such challenges as
opportunities. He farms on what is pos-
sibly the last frontier of sustainability:
the ocean. on a brisk january morning,
Smith, the sole proprietor of the Thimble
Marjorie SuSMan
