There’s a fierce battle being waged over a patch of land in the heart of Northern California wine country, and it has the region’s normally laid-back denizens all kinds of fired up.

On one side is the Spain-based Codorniu, one of the world’s largest wine companies (they own Artesa in Napa, among other prestige labels). They want to clear 2,000 acres of redwoods and fir trees near the Gualala River to make room for vineyards, which will eventually be surrounded by 60 high-end estates.

On the other side are local environmentalists, a.k.a. the job-destroying devils of Michele Bachmann’s worst nightmares. These folks believe the proposed deforestation would be devastating to the area’s ecosystem, along the banks of one of the nation’s cleanest waterways.

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Sonoma Grape Camp is as educational or lazy as you make it

I went to Sonoma County Grape Camp to prove something to myself.

I wanted to prove that I really did love picking grapes. Harvest time? Hell yes, that was all me. How could it not be? I was not some ascot-wearing dandy wiping spots from my Reidels. I was a guy who wanted dirt under my nails. I wanted to be a part of the process.

I had decided that grape-picking was not for me in Barolo, the fabled town in the Piedmont region of Italy, where the fabled “king of Italian wines,” Barolo, is produced. The winemaker Gian Luca Viberti had invited me to his place during harvest and I practically begged him for a set of shears. Out I went on my first morning in Barolo, armed with a pair of gloves, a set of sheers and miles of rolling hills ripe with bunches of nebbiolo grapes hanging heavy on their vines. Earlier at least a couple of hours before I made it outside, a small tractor fired its engine beneath my window. It was idling its way up and down the rows, towing a tub that was filling up with grapes, when I arrived in the vineyard.

The workers—the real workers—gave me a nod. They did not know me, and probably did not know that I was coming. They went on working with little regard for me, as it to say, If you want to help us do our job it’s fine with us, knock yourself out. I bent and snipped for 10 minutes in the autumn sun of northern Italy. I took a break. I bent and snipped for 10 more minutes and took another break. Was this it? Bending and snipping on steep hillsides in silence as the sun continued to rise and bake? After an hour it occurred to me that yes, this was it—that harvest was not for me. Lunch and dinner were for me.

There was a rowdy tasting going on in a private room off the lobby of the main tasting room at Frank Family Vineyards on a recent, very hot Tuesday in the Napa Valley.

Harvest had begun on some grapes bound for sparkling bottles but most others would still be hanging for another few weeks. We had just sampled the Blanc de Blancs in an old stone building—listed on the National Register of Historic Places—while winemaker Todd Graff’s chocolate labrador Bristol darted here and there at our feet. From there Graff led us past that rowdy tasting and into a lovely back porch room of our own, windows on three sides. We tasted the 2007 chardonnay, 2007 pinot noir, 2005 cabernet and 2006 zinfandel.

Then the underwear chatter began.

The South Carolina wine writer Lain Bradford was quietly and efficiently Tweeting like an all-star to his followers, literally several times an hour, morning to night, and while we were sitting with Graff in that lovely room, Bradford relayed a Twitter question about the zinfandel.

“Why do they call it LPR?” a Tweeter asked Bradford, who asked Graff.

“Liquid Panty Remover,” Graff said. “They used the term in the tasting room but they can’t use it anymore. It’s taken on a life of its own.”

He seemed contrite, and eager to express the company message, which was, in essence: Liquid Panty Remover is not who we are. We are an elegant family winery. That is true in many ways. But tasting the ripe, lush zinfandel and looking back at my notes to see what Graff had said about the wine, pre-Tweet, I understood the racy moniker.