Caught up at first in the romance of vineyard life, I didn’t anticipate the hard work, worry, and disappointment that comes with growing grapes, particularly in the oft-frozen climes of Grey County. Like Heinricks, our vineyard has been attacked by everything from raccoons to powdery mildew to Asian ladybugs with drought, frost, and black spot thrown in along the way.

And still, as I write these lines, I look out at orderly rows of tied and pruned vines, lush with another season’s promise.

I’ve met Geoff Heinricks once. It was at a grape-growers seminar in Prince Edward County where, according to wine-writer, Tony Aspler, he has become “the county’s soil guru and viticultural conscience.” A free-lance writer, national affairs editor for Frank magazine, Heinricks has lived in Kingston, Ottawa and Toronto where he worked in the newsroom of CityTV. Nearly ten years ago, Heinricks and his wife Lauren purchased 40.41 acres of Hillier Clay Loam, a terroir characterized by its underlying limestone.

Now, nearly a decade later, “our first commercial barrel of Pinot Noir is safely housed at a friendly Hillier winery, slumbering inside a one-year old Francois Freres Allier oak barrel.” The fruit did not come from Heinricks’ vineyard, now named Domaine La Reine. Instead, it was grown in a neighbour’s plot. But that is the story of A Fool and Forty Acres.

Heinricks was far from wealthy when he moved to The County, as Prince Edward is locally known. Entranced by Pinot Noir, the so-called “heartbreak grape,” he looked far and wide, studying Ontario soil maps before settling on Hillier. Life at first was lived in a rented house in Consecon while riding a bicycle miles to the test plot each day. With pick and shovel, Heinricks carved holes in the rocky soil, spending back-breaking days planting 120 vines.

Then 1,000 more. “Very swiftly I found that when you have thousands of Pinot Noir vines to dig and weed with a spading fork, you soon learn just how much you can do in a day before collapsing. Strangely enough, it turns out to be about a tenth of an acre. An ouvrée.”

And so it begins. The vines grew in spite of having to haul water by hand or watching the thermometer plummet towards –30. And in spite of voles, birds, wasps, yellow jackets, stinkbugs, sphinx-moth caterpillars, raccoons, too much rain and low Brix readings, Heinricks never lost faith. Even when his entire vineyards was nearly wiped out by Phylloxera vastatrix – the devastator. By book’s end, Heinricks has replanted.

Like the author, over the years I have read my way through a few shelves of books and pamphlets on viticulture. Filled with technical terms, chemical formulas, enigmatic discussions of hybrids versus vinifera and sometimes contradictory advice on all matters related to pruning, fungicides, and winter protection, I often wished I had something readable by someone who has done it – grown grapes in a cold climate. A Fool and Forty Acres is that book.

Heinricks tells two stories; one is of a county lost in time while the other is about the passion and hard-earned wisdom that a grape grower needs to succeed.

A Fool and Forty Acres starts and ends with Prince Edward County. When Heinricks discovered it, the county had a population of 22,000, a 19th century heritage of table grape growing, rocky soils, and only a few other dreamers, putting in the first of the scores of acres of grape vines that now accentuate the landscape.

There is much about the county here; its history, people, and architecture. Like many of us who move to the country, Heinricks finds himself an outsider slowly moving toward becoming accepted. Readers are also introduced to the changes that are about to envelop Prince Edward County – wealthy retirees, Tudor mansions, and palatial wineries that sell themselves as tourist attractions rather than sources of quality wine.

The County has yet to prove itself as a viable viticultural zone. Monster frosts these past two years have destroyed grape yields there as elsewhere in Ontario. What wine I have tasted made from county grapes is questionable, at best. But there is always hope.

And that is the practical side of this often-lyrically written book. Heinricks offers his personal experiences as benchmarks to follow. He has gentle advice on everything from choosing grape stock, soils, organic growing, pruning (his methods have been called Picasso vines by noted wine maker and County viticulturist Deborah Paskus), disease control, winter protection (berm or die) wine yeasts and wine making, weeding and trellising. In A Fool and Forty Acres, there is something for everyone; gob struck beginners or seasoned veterans.

And that’s not all. There is an introduction by the legendary chef, Jamie Kennedy who has purchased land next to Heinricks’ vineyard. And a wonderful chapter on a visit with the Ameliasburgh poet, Al Purdy (“I am picking wild grapes last year in a field, dragging down great lianas of vine”).

There are few books on growing grapes quite like A Fool and Forty Acres. Maybe Marq de Villiers’ The Heartbreak Grape comes close. But it’s about California, not Ontario. But you really don’t have to know a floraison from a vendage to enjoy this book. It is a universal read filled with humour, intelligence, wonderfully drawn characters, and an extraordinary sense of place. And after you read it, lift a glass of superior Ontario wine in salute. It’s that good.

www.littlefatwino.com