Less is More!

This weekend, I had been to the Hunter Valley for a relaxing day of wine tasting and great food with my friends. Not just being satisfied with tasting different variety of wines, we decided to attend a behind-the-scenes wine tour at one of the vineyards for a chance to understand the wine-making process. It was a very informative tour as we got to see and learn various details that go into making that perfect glass of wine. Our tour guide was a very experienced wine producer and he told us a lot of interesting facts and stories. But, what interested me the most was his punch line that he used through-out the tour “Less is more”. I had heard that phrase being used in many other situations, but what surprised me was how it was related to the process of producing wine [Though the origin of this 19th century proverbial phrase is unknown, its often associated with the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who adopted the motto "Less is more" to describe his aesthetic tactic of arranging the numerous necessary components of a building to create an impression of extreme simplicity, by enlisting every element and detail to serve multiple visual and functional purposes].

According to him, the amount of vines planted within a hectare of land was inversely proportional to the quality of the wine that could be produced. Apparently, each particular piece of land can produce only a certain amount of good wine, irrespective of the total area planted. E.g: An hectare of land has only enough nutrition to either produce 10 kgs of quality grapes to produce a liter of high quality wine or can produce 20 kgs of low quality grapes which can still produce only 1 liter of high quality wine - Less is more!

He also used the phrase to explain how it is most efficient to grow only a few bunch of grapes per vine. This allows for channeling all the nutrients to a few bunch of grapes and thus get high quality and flavor rich grapes. Thus they regularly trim the vines to allow only a few flowers (which gets fertilized into a fruit)to grow per vine - Less is more!

I have used the phrase "Less is more" during discussions about improving process efficiency, lean production/manufacturing, product design and development etc., but it was a refreshing change to hear the same being used to grow grapes!