Be sure to attend our Fall meeting at Wine Thieves Sunday at 3:00 PM. As is our custom several of our kind members usually bring an hors-d’oeuvre tray or three to accompany the fine wine provided by our other kind members. We hope it stays nice and warm as it has been but bring a jacket just in case?
David Hicks, President
Hi winemakers, Next Sunday is our Fall meeting at Wine Thieves lower courtyard. We will be discussing this years harvest with a Q and A as well as any other wine and grape topics and questions you may have. Bring a bottle of your finest wine to share along with friends and guests who love wines and reconnect with other members whom you have not seen due to the covid pause. We will be having snacks for all. I look forward to seeing all or you there. David Hicks, President
Hello everyone:
By now, you should be mostly done with harvesting this year. And what a year! The drought, the heat and everything else.
I hope that you had a successful harvest and by all accounts, wine in the tank/barrels fermenting away for another future release of enjoyment!
As you know, every year we like to accumulate the data on our LWGA harvests.
Can you please email me the gross weight of your harvest by varietal. We will not distribute your personal information to anyone.
Thanks again and happy winemaking!
Daniel Howsepian
5powderhounds@gmail.com
Good evening Lamroinda Wine Makers. We will be having our Fall meeting as guests of Dave Rey and Wine Thieves from 3 to 6 PM Sunday Oct 23. Dave is again kindly providing us with the patio area just outside of his wine storage facility. He has requested that you please park on the street as parking behind the store is limited. Please bring a bottle of your favorite wine to share with others? There will be nibbles. Since many of us have recently completed picking and are in the process of wine making we will have some discussions about picking and winemaking as will have several of our more experienced growers and winemakers to answer questions and lead discussions. We will additionally focus on the social after our long hiatus.
We’ve set the date of December 6 for our resumed Holiday Season Fiesta to be held at the Lafayette library great room from 6 to 9 PM. Stay tuned for more info to come.
See you all at Wine Thieves on the 23d?
David Hicks, President.
Carbon sequestration, higher yields and better tasting wine?!
https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/regenerative-farming-California-vineyards-17444507.php
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
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
Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan invites you to a closed event on October 17, 10:30am to noon. She is hosting a panel discussion about sustainable winemaking and winegrowing at Retzlaff Winery in Livermore.
You will hear about
· government programs and grants that can support your efforts to adopt more sustainable practices,
· current state of water and the future of water in California,
· and from winegrowers and winemakers who have made the transition to an organic vineyard and sustainable winemaking, respectively.
Formal invitation emails with additional details are forthcoming. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Best regards,
Marilyn Cachola Lucey, M.A., Deputy District Director (pronouns: she/her/hers)
California State Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (AD-16)
Please note new District Office address and phone number:
12677 Alcosta Boulevard, Suite 395, San Ramon, CA 94583
(925) 244-1600 FAX: (925) 244-1606
Email: marilyn.cachola.lucey@asm.ca.gov| Website: http://a16.asmdc.org
Facebook: RBKcalifornia | Twitter: @BauerKahan
Hello everyone.
What a nice meeting we had on Sunday! Great tastings of the award winning wines and seeing everyone again!
Someone forgot their wicker basket at our house. If it’s yours, please call me at 925-858-7000 to arrange a return.
daniel howsepian
This has been our usual start time. Sorry to have omitted it in the last message. DH. President
Just a friendly reminder that our summer meeting will be next Sunday July 24th at Daniel Howsepian’s house at 3345 Hermosa way in Lafayette at # PM. [Please note the address correction from prior notice]. We ask that you bring a bottle of your own wine or if desired one that you purchased that you would like to share. As is our custom we ask that folks bring an appetizer to folks to share. Three of our skillful members will be pouring their award winning wine for your pleasure and they will have print outs and a presentation on the making of their wines. We hope to see a lot of you on the 24th? Regards, David Hicks President
A REMINDER: The July 31st meeting couldn’t be held on that date and was moved to the prior Sunday July 24th. It’s still at Daniel Howsepian’s home at 25 Hermosa Way in Lafayette at 3PM. Just drive up Reliez Valley road, over the top, down 1/3 of a mile on right is Hermosa. This will mostly be a social meeting for folks to mingle and discuss the season, how vineyards are doing, plans for your winemaking and other wine stuff. We will be having a special treat in that several members will be pouring their award winning wines for our pleasure. They will also provide us with print outs about those wines and an oral presentation of its history. We did this type of meeting prior to the shut down and it was a big success so I urge all of you that are not off on vacation or at summer homes to attend as our organization moves back to a non covid world. Look forward to seeing lots of you there? David Hicks, President.
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