EPISODE #14 LUCIE MORTON

Fine Wine Confidential Podcast

Lucie Morton is recognized today world wide as one of the foremost Viticulturist and Ampelographer in the Wine Industry. She started in winegrowing back in 1971 when her Dad asked her to take a gap year as she was finishing up grad school to be his farm manager and look into planting vines at Morland their family farm. She never looked back. She would later go to France to gain her formal education in winegrowing. Eventually, her career would take her to California where she consulted from many clients. While in France she was fortunate to make friends with Pierre Galet, the worlds' leading Ampelographer and later on she would translate his book from French into English, Pierre Galet's: A Practical Ampelography: Grapevine Identification, which was published by Cornell University Press. She has written several other books and many articles on grape growing. Among the many awards she has received she was voted Virginia Wine Industry Person of the Year in 1999 and the Virginia Wineries Association Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018.
There is a significant amount of valuable information packed into this Episode and her accomplishments are too many to list, but here are some of the Highlights.
a). Lucie talks about how why she chose to go to France to gain her formal education in winegrowing.
b). she opines on why Philip Wagner was so important in the early days of winegrowing here in the Eastern US and recounts an interesting story about how her mother and her had it in one hand and in the other they were pruning her grandmothers old Concord vines.
c). She speaks of her affinity for hybrid grapes and why she believes they are still important to winegrowing in Virginia and the East Coast.
d).She was the first women and American in the program at University of Montpellier in France and what she dealt with in that environment.
e). She outlines some of her early clients back her in Virginia and what the early days were like in the 1970's.
f). Lucie explains her ability to distinguish the differences in grape wines and the varietal just by the tips of the leaves of the vine.
g). we discuss how she discovered a grape disease which would later be called "black goo."
h). She recounts how she met Leon D. Adams and was his driver for a road trip to explore all the winegrowing areas on the East Coast.
I could go on and on. As I said there is a lot packed into this Episode . Listen for yourself or read the transcript attached. Enjoy

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