Managing vineyards organically, without chemicals is better for the health of vines, the environment, and important pollinators, such as bees, butterflies and humming birds. I am also convinced that grape flavors are materially improved by eliminating the use of any weed killers and only using natural organic products to control powdery mildew, instead of chemical fungicides.

So my question for you all is does anyone use or know of a vineyard manager who uses organic or chemical free approaches? If so, please email at gerardvs1@gmail.com or call me at 707-758-7441.

Once we identify organic management options, we will share this information with all members, so everyone has the option at least to consider this.

Carbon sequestration, higher yields and better tasting wine?!

https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/regenerative-farming-California-vineyards-17444507.php

This climate-friendly farming approach could also make better-tasting wine

Esther MobleySep. 16, 2022Updated: Sep. 19, 2022 9:15 a.m.Comments

In Paso Robles, one winegrower wants to prove that regenerative farming isn’t merely the right thing for the planet. He believes that this ecological philosophy can also make better-tasting wine.

Regenerative farming refers to a set of practices that are distinct — and, arguably, more rigorous — than those encompassed by more familiar sustainability buzzwords, like organic and biodynamic. By incorporating compost, cover crops, grazing animals and more, it reaches toward a single goal: to use agriculture to reverse, rather than exacerbate, the effects of climate change.

Caine Thompson wanted to introduce regenerative farming when he joined Robert Hall Winery in Paso Robles (San Luis Obispo County) as managing partner two years ago. But instead of converting the entire estate vineyard all at once, he decided to reserve a 5-acre block as a control. This smaller section would be farmed the same way it was before, using nonorganic herbicides and pesticides.

Less than two years in, Thompson said, the differences are stark. The regeneratively farmed vines yield more fruit, and its resulting wines are lower in alcohol. The grapes themselves are noticeably tastier, he believes, than those from the control block.

It’s just one vineyard, observed over a relatively short period. The findings so far are hardly definitive. “We’re trying not to get too excited,” Thompson said. “But we were so encouraged by the results.”

Regeneratively farmed grapevines, on left, and conventionally farmed grapevines at Robert Hall Winery. Nic Coury/Special to The Chronicle

Thompson is part of a growing chorus of California winegrowers advocating for regenerative farming. The movement is still small; so far, only four California wine companies — Tablas Creek, Solminer, Truett Hurst and Bonterra — have completed the certification process that allows them to print the term “Regenerative Organic Certified” on their wine labels. But the ideas that regenerative farming represents are increasingly at the center of wine-industry conversations, and many advocates of the approach say it’s the industry’s future.

Winegrowers are hardly the only ones exploring regenerative farming’s potential. The philosophy is gaining traction among all sorts of farmers, from dairy ranchers to cattle herders, and is likely to pick up even more adopters thanks to a carbon-capture tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act, which the U.S. Senate passed in August. California has awarded more than $40 million in grants to incentivize carbon reduction among the state’s farmers. Further support for these efforts comes from nonprofits like the Bay Area’s Zero Foodprint, which generates funds via a 1% charge on restaurant bills, then uses the money to help farms transition to climate-friendly practices.

Building healthy soils is the core of regenerative farming. This is accomplished in several ways. At Robert Hall, Thompson started applying compost directly to the soils. He planted cover crops like legumes, oats, rye and clover among the vines to add biodiversity. And Thompson unleashed 500 sheep, who got to work eating weeds and cover crops — thereby reducing the need to mow or remove weeds — and pooping out some all-natural fertilizer.

The approach also encourages farmers to keep their tilling to a minimum, so as not to disrupt the bacteria and fungi living within it. Some believe this helps soil retain more water, and also — crucial for climate-change-mitigation purposes — that untilled soil can sequester more carbon, thereby reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Those seeking the Regenerative Organic Certified status, administered by an organization in Graton called the Regenerative Organic Alliance, must also show that they treat their workers fairly. One aspect is paying workers a living wage, calculated based on an area’s cost of living. (Robert Hall is working toward the certification and expects to complete it in late 2023.) In Paso Robles, the alliance’s formula puts that at $20.31 an hour, Thompson said, higher than the area’s minimum wage of $15. To get to this new wage, Robert Hall had to increase its vineyard workers’ wages by 20%.

Indeed, as with organic or biodynamic approaches, nearly every aspect of this agricultural regimen ends up costing more than so-called conventional farming. Mixing the compost preparations, using labor-intensive discing to remove weeds rather than spraying herbicide, taking care of all those sheep — the costs add up.

But at Robert Hall, those costs are mostly negated by the plants’ increased productivity, Thompson said. He calculated that regenerative farming costs 10% more than conventional farming at his vineyard — $6,833 per acre per year for regenerative compared with $6,204 for the control block. But because of the regenerative vines’ higher yields, the farming cost per ton of grapes was actually 4% lower.

“If regenerative farming is to change the world, we can’t only produce wine for the wealthy,” Thompson said. “We need to be thinking: Can we produce wine in this way at a $20 price point?” The winery’s current bottles range in price from $18 to over $60. (The first wines produced from Robert Hall’s regeneratively farmed vines are still a year or two away from being sold to customers, and the winery hasn’t yet determined the pricing.)

What’s even more thrilling to Thompson, though, is how much better the wine tastes from the regeneratively farmed vineyards.

He first had an inkling that the wine would taste different because of how much larger the regenerative section’s canopies were than the control block — that is, the vines had more leaves.

“In Paso, when it gets so hot, those (leaves) provided little umbrellas for the fruit, so we had significantly less shrivel compared to the control,” he said. That increased sun exposure meant that the control fruit reached higher sugar levels, resulting in a higher-alcohol wine — 14.6% compared with the regenerative fruit’s 14.2%.

Once plucked from the vine, Thompson continued, the grapes themselves tasted wildly different from each other. The fruit from the regenerative side showed “freshness, vibrancy, aromatics,” he said. The control fruit tasted “ripe to the point of almost overripe, jammy, touching on stewy.”

The results from the first year were so positive that Thompson convinced Jeff O’Neill, who owns Robert Hall, to let him convert the remainder of the vineyard’s 130 acres to the regenerative protocol — while retaining the control block. Thompson believes it’s important to keep the experiment going in order to prove to other winegrowers that regenerative farming is in their interest financially.Climate change and wine

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Robert Hall’s parent company, O’Neill Vintners & Distillers, buys grapes from more than 200 other vineyards throughout California — 15,000 acres worth — and he’s especially keen to prove the point to them. “If we do want some of our growers to farm this way, we’ve got to understand it ourselves,” Thompson said. “Not just what effect we can have on the storage of carbon, but also cost, quality, yield.”

Undoubtedly, convincing all those growers to radically change the way they farm will take time. And it may take longer still to effectively communicate to wine drinkers what “regenerative” means — and why they might want to seek out wines made this way. But Thompson thinks it’s only a matter of time before the ever-harsher effects of climate change begin to force the choice. 

“There’s a lot of rigor behind this way of farming,” he said, “but I think it could become the industry standard.”  

Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley

Unfortunately, we are going to grow grapes this year, again, in drought conditions. Current soil moisture levels, again, are well below historical averages, which means that ground water available for your vines is probably already very low, unless you already have started to irrigate your vines. Unless you know that your soils still have adequate water, most LWGA vineyards should consider commencing irrigation.

The youtube link below contains quite a bit of interesting information on soil moisture and makes the argument that insufficient soil moisture at bud break can negatively affect production and vine health for the entire growing season. The most interesting parts about soil moisture are near the end of this presentation.

Every vineyard has different soil depths and profiles and soil water retention abilities, so the following recommendations should be tailored to your experience to your soil water and irrigation needs. That said, for our vineyard, we have been using in ground soil moisture meters to determine when to irrigate and how much to irrigate. Following are my recommendations on irrigation for a drought year such as this year:

• If your vineyard had low production last year, it quite possibly was due to insufficient irrigation.
• First and foremost, look closely at your vines for signs of insufficient irrigation, such as tendrils that are flopping down or dried out. Also monitor for signs of excess irrigation. The LWGA website has previous presentations with visual guides for this.
• In a hot/drought year, your vines and landscaping will need more water. This may be 20 to 40 percent more water than a typical year.
• Start irrigation before bud break and as early as you see your cover crops beginning to turn yellow from lack of water
• Vines need more water as the growing season progresses. Increase the duration of your irrigation each month through harvest.
• Run extra irrigation before major heat waves, ideally 24 hours before high temperatures.

Very general heat wave suggestions:

• If temps will reach 95 degrees, give .2 to .35 gallons of extra water per foot of canopy length per day
• If temps will exceed 100 degrees, give .5 to .65 gallons of extra water per foot of canopy length per day
• Example: for 6 foot canopy length per vine, give 1 to 2 gallons/vine/day before 95 degree day, 2-4 gallons/vine/day before 100 degree day

In order to build Lamorinda’s reputation for top, and even world class wines, we need to be winning top awards at the highest regarded wine competitions. And even if one doesn’t yet win a top award this year, getting feedback about our wines from professional judges is invaluable to learning how to improve our wines in the future.

The Lamorinda Winegrowers Association Board recommends that all non-commercial and commercial members enter their wines into the upcoming Orange County Wine Competition. There are separate competitions for both categories of winemakers.

For non-commercial or home winemakers, the competition entry period opens April 1st and wines most likely can be dropped off at Oakbarrel Winemaking in Berkeley and possibly MoreWine as well. More details on entries and other details will follow. But at this time, please mark your calendars and figure out what to enter. https://www.homewinecompetition.com/

And LWGA also encourages every commercial winemaker to enter the Orange County Commercial Wine Competition. https://info.winecompetition.com/ Commercial wines must be entered and received by the Orange County competition by July 1st.

Let’s take LWGA to the next level! Over one thousand wines will be entered into the Orange County Wine Competition, and we should compare quite favorably.

We encountered some technical difficulties during the last Zoom meeting, so attached to this post are photos of their vineyards that members submitted for the meeting. This time of year, it is helpful to walk through your vineyards and look for areas wherein your cover crop is less healthy or yellowing. That often is a sign for areas with low soil nitrogen or soil nutrients. Also, if you have gopher activity, with the dry weather, now is a great time to trap gophers. Finally, I encourage you go stick a shovel in the ground in a few spots. A sign of healthy soils is if you have multiple worms in each shovel!

Bill and Penny Pence (Tempranillo), with their new bird-proof nets rolled under the vines:

Ewa and Derek Wojnar (Cabernet and Merlot):

Brian Cherry (Pinot Noir):

Marek and Petra Fibrich (Syrah):

Hello LWGA Wine Folk

During our next meeting this Sunday, we will be discussing in general, what to do in the vineyard this time of year. This will include how to prepare for the season and perhaps how to improve vine health or address deficiencies, such as soil nutrients. Also, it could be fun and interesting to have a short picture show of member vineyards, or any other pictures you wish to share with the group, such as flowers in bloom, birds or animals on your property, worms in your soils, how your vineyard ground/cover crop is looking, other plants or trees on your property, or whatever else you wish to share)

So, please take a picture or two of your vineyard, or whatever you wish to share with the group. And if you have an issue of concern or question, such as how to prune a certain vine or unhealthy looking weeds or cover crops, send a picture of that as well.

Please send your pictures to gerardvs1@gmail.com

In case you didn’t add mycorrhizal fungi when your vines were planted, the good news is that its not too late, and is easy to do with this water soluble formula. Mycorrihizal fungi send filaments off of plant roots to extend the water and nutrient uptake of roots. Cool stuff. https://www.pacifichorticulture.org/articles/mycorrhizal-fungi-natures-key-to-plant-survival-and-success/

Here is a wettable version for sale that is very popular with high end farmers and growers: https://www.groworganic.com/products/mykos-mycorrhizae-wp-22-lb?_pos=4&_psq=my&_ss=e&_v=1.0

And if you want to further improve soil health, adding humus can dial things up. The liquid form Humax is easy to apply around vines and plants.

https://www.groworganic.com/blogs/articles/how-to-use-soil-amendments-humates-humic-acids-and-humus?_pos=1&_psq=humus&_ss=e&_v=1.0

Do you have ideas for future meetings or events for our Lamorinda Winegrowers Association? Would you like to get more involved and/or help out?

Any member who is interested in helping plan educational topics and meeting plans for 2022 is invited to join the Lamorinda Winegrowers Education Committee. The Education Committee will be meeting in December by Zoom to brainstorm and develop plans for meetings and events in 2022. If you are interested in participating, please email gerardvs1@gmail.com

I learned about this interesting seed company during during recent regenerative agriculture course – that you can use to create a custom mix of cover crop seeds. Basic goal: the more diversity in your cover crop/weeds, the better for your soils.

Here is the website https://smartmix.greencoverseed.com/ And note, that its best to broadcast the seeds just before the first soaking rain, or rake the seeds fully in, otherwise the birds will dig them up and eat them.

Below is the mix just ordered for our new vineyard, all of the species may not take, but we are gonna give them all a go.

UC Ag Expert Talk: Grape Powdery Mildew Management and Challenges

Aug 11, 2021 1:00 – 3:00 PM

Zoom webinar 2 DPR CEUS applied for. Register at https://ucanr.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_R9j887HIQTSOvyaJ2D4Mcg

This 2-hour webinar will cover:

·       Biology and ID of powdery mildew

·       Sulfur use and role in resistance management

·       Sprayer settings, nozzles, assessing coverage

·       Effect of certain weather conditions on drift

·       Fungicide resistance

·       Efficacy of powdery mildew products for vineyards