Tiny microbes have a big impact on wine quality. Aria Hahn, CEO and co-founder of Koonkie, Inc., discusses the exciting work her bioinformatics organization is doing in the field of metagenomics. Hahn explains the differences between genetics, genomics, and metagenomics. She shares insights from a project studying yeast populations in British Columbia's Okanagan region, revealing the diversity and distinct clades found on wine grapes. The conversation also covers the broader applications of bioinformatics in agriculture, including regenerative farming, soil health, and potential bioprotectants against wine spoilage. Hahn underscores the impact of microbiome management on wine terroir and the potential of bioinformatics in understanding and improving winemaking processes.

Resources:        

• 201: Balance Hot Climate, High Sugar Wine with Green Grape Juice aka Verjus
• 243: Microbial Communities in the Grapevine
• 251: Vine SAP Analysis to Optimize Nutrition
• Aria Hahn – Google Scholar
• Aria Hahn – LinkedIn
• Koonkie
• Make Better Wines with Bioinformatics
• The Microcosmos - Discover the World of Genomics Apple App
• Whole genome sequencing of Canadian Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains isolated from spontaneous wine fermentations reveals a new Pacific West Coast Wine clade

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• Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate
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Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: Tiny microbes have a big impact on wine quality.

[00:00:09] Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with Vineyard Team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I am Beth Vukmanic, Executive Director.

[00:00:19] In today's podcast, Craig McMillan, Critical Resource Manager at Niner Wine Estates, with longtime SIP certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery, speaks with Aria Hahn, CEO and co founder of Koonkie Inc.

[00:00:35] She discusses the exciting work her bioinformatics organization is doing in the field of metagenomics. Hahn explains the differences between genetics, genomics, and metagenomics.

[00:00:47] She shares insights from a project studying yeast populations in one of British Columbia's wine growing regions, revealing the diversity and distinct clades found on wine grapes.

[00:00:58] The conversation also covers the broader applications. bioinformatics in agriculture, including regenerative farming, soil health, and potential bioprotectants against wine spoilage.

[00:01:09] Hahn underscores the impact of microbiome management on wine terroir and the potential for bioinformatics in understanding and improving the winemaking process.

[00:01:19] We know your customers are looking for sustainable wines. In a recent review of 30 studies, Customers reported a higher preference for eco label and social responsibility labels compared with nutrition labels. Achieving SIP certified gives you third party verification that your vineyard winery or wine has adopted and implemented stringent sustainable standards. Apply today at SIP certified. org.

[00:01:46] Now let's listen

[00:01:50] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Aria Hahn. She is the CEO and co founder of Koonkie, Inc., a bioinformatics organization, business, doing all kinds of exciting stuff. Thanks for being on the podcast, Aria.

[00:02:02] Aria Hahn: Yeah, so excited to be here. Thanks for

[00:02:04] Craig Macmillan: We're going to get into the thick of it But we were attracted to some work that you folks and your colleagues have done with bioinformatics and yeast, wild yeast. But I wanted to drop back. A little bit first to kind of give some context. All of this kind of comes under the umbrella of metagenomics, correct?

[00:02:21] Aria Hahn: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:02:22] Craig Macmillan: and what is metagenomics?

[00:02:24] Aria Hahn: I'm going to take further step back and talk about genomics um, maybe the distinction between genomics and genetics.

[00:02:32] So genetics is something I think most people kind of understand. They have this intuitive sense of it. um, that make up ourselves and all living creatures. But it actually turns out that in most organisms, and not bacteria, and we'll get there in a Most of your DNA is not in genes. It's in between genes. And so genomics is the study of genes and all of the things that are in between genes. So that's kind of the distinction between genetics and genomics. And then metagenomics is when we do that at the community level.

[00:03:02] so you could do metagenomics of humans, but metagenomics refers to populations of bacteria, uh, microbes, archaea, viruses, things that you cannot see and I'll say interact with directly.

[00:03:17] Craig Macmillan: And then bioinformatics is a subset or is a technique, is that correct?

[00:03:23] Aria Hahn: Yeah, it's a technique, you know, it used to be even 10, 15 years ago that everyone kind of did their own bioinformatics. And so really what that means is when we sequence DNA or read that DNA, so it's only four letters, ATCs and Gs, we extract the DNA the sample is, could be the surface of grapes, uh, a human, anything.

[00:03:42] Um, Then we put it on a sequencer. There's a bunch of different sequencing technologies right now. Um, But you end up with these like very gross files that aren't openable on regular computers and they're literally just ATCs and Gs. And so bioinformatics is the cross section of high performance computing and biology. And so we develop algorithms and processes and pipelines to really take those gross huge files of ATCs and Gs and make them human readable. make them interesting, figure out, you know, what are the genes that are there? Who is there? What are they doing? And who's doing what?

[00:04:19] Craig Macmillan: Okay, and I think that's the important part here is you would take a sample from the environment. We'll talk about this one more in a second, but there are particular sequences that may be associated with a certain type of microbe or even a particular genus or particular species of microbe that can be detected.

[00:04:39] Aria Hahn: Yes, absolutely.

[00:04:40] So a genome is all of the DNA that makes up that organism. So you and I have distinct genomes, but of course, our genomes are going to be pretty similar to each other compared to a human genome, to a fish, to a plant, to a

[00:04:55] Craig Macmillan: why the focus on microbes?

[00:04:57] Aria Hahn: Yeah, that's a great question. It depends how philosophical You want to get You know, people are generally

[00:05:02] familiar with the concept of like the Higgs boson particle. It's like the God particle that makes up everything and that's great and the physicists are gonna come for me. But when we think about our planet Earth, I always say like If there is a god particle on this planet that is alive and that we interact with, like, it's a microbe.

[00:05:21] This is their planet. They were here long before us and they will surely be here long after us. So we think about microbes in terms of they are the destroyers of higher level populations. They keep us healthy. They make us I'm going to say it's a great example, but it wasn't a great thing.

[00:05:40] So caveat that. But COVID was a great example about how this is not our planet where we had an of a virus in one location in a very particular place in the world. And all of a sudden it was across the planet. We are vectors for them.

[00:05:58] You know, looking at those maps and showing the spread and how quickly it happened, I like to use that often in visual presentations to say, if you don't believe me, like, look at this. It's spread through us.

[00:06:10] Craig Macmillan: Right. And I think also this gets to some other things we might talk about later on, but there are communities of microbes that are associated with certain macroorganisms.

[00:06:23] Aria Hahn: uh, so are, they're everywhere, they're on your um, there's lots of research in the cosmetic industry that's looking at that. There was this crazy CEO years ago where he was I'm gonna slather this microbial laden cream on my skin and then I'm never gonna shower again and I'm not gonna smell. Not necessarily like my cup of tea, I love a good hot shower. But, you know, it can be there. The soil is the microbial diverse environment on the planet. , But your gut, like you, you as a human being, can't actually digest your food without those microbes. You can't get those vitamins and nutrients that you need without that community in your stomach.

[00:07:03] Plants work the same We say charismatic macrofauna, eagles, whales, things that are very Um, They, they don't to, you the seaweed and the weeds and the grass and kind of everything in between. it's All supported by the microbiome, by these microbial communities.

[00:07:20] Craig Macmillan: so let's talk about one microbiome in particular, and that would be populations of yeast that we find on wine grapes.

[00:07:29] Aria Hahn: Yeah, yeah. So we've looked at yeast and bacteria and they're both cool.

[00:07:34] Craig Macmillan: That is super cool. And so this one particular project where you looked at yeast on wine grapes in British Columbia Tell us a little bit about that project

[00:07:41] Aria Hahn: there's, So I live in I'm, I'm right in the thick of, you know, BC wine country, which is a fantastic place to live, we were fortunate enough to work with the Wine Research Institute out of the University of British Columbia, Vivian Mease Day's group. them and They do very, very cool work, but they were trying to look at the yeast populations in wineries across the Okanagan region.

[00:08:02] We know that the history of lots of commercial. Yeasts are actually from oak trees in Europe. So that's very cool. And what we wanted to see is how are the yeasts that are being used to produce wine in the Okanagan region distinct and similar to commercial yeasts and yeasts that have been characterized from across and so We did just that and we were actually able to sequence a whole bunch of yeast. And so, again, that's like reading the genome effectively there. so we found four distinct clades, um, in the Okanagan region. And a clade is they're related groups, and so it's not like you and you're a twin where you might have an identical, uh, genome to a twin.

[00:08:50] It's more like you and your cousins and second cousins and second cousins twice removed and, you're, you're kind of vaguely related to each other. You kind of cluster over here, but you're not necessarily super We've kind of found four clades that the 75 yeast strains that we studied in that particular piece of work Really related to, then we looked at like what is different in their genomes.

[00:09:12] So they're all the same species. That's the first thing to, to think about here. So just like you and I are the same species, they're all the same species, but just like you and I, we have different areas of, of specialties. Some people podcasters. Some people are, artists and scientists and, um, kind of everything in between.

[00:09:33] And we need everybody. So, we're all the same species, but we have different specialties. And the yeasts work very similarly to that.

[00:09:40] Craig Macmillan: all right, so this is interesting to me so You go out and you you said when you looked at 75 species of yeast or different types of yeast Those are ones that you, you found. It wasn't like you went in and said, I want to test for each of these 75. You got information, you got data in and said, Oh, look, here's 75 different types of

[00:10:01] organism. Yes, that's a, that's a great Um, so, we And we uh, the ferment or the, the yeast skins and we extract the DNA and then we get rid of the great DNA, which could probably also be really cool, but we didn't look at it in this case. And kind of threw that into the and then said, okay, we're just going to focus on the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Latin term for a very common yeast strain, um, used in wine. And we said, we're going to look for it.

[00:10:30] Aria Hahn: Then we found actually hundreds and . And then, um, and I didn't do this work, I don't do a lot of lab work myself, so, uh, this part is kind of the edge of my knowledge. But there is some ways to kind of do microsatellite clustering. And so you look, and you look for tiny differences in the genome, and you say, okay, maybe we found 500, but we actually want to look at ones that are distinct from one another. So we don't want to randomly pick 75, we want to pick 75. strains of this yeast that are different from one another.

[00:11:01] And so you could use some lab techniques to make that happen. And then you take those hundreds and we say, these are the 75 that we know are different. We're going to dive deep into those 75 so that we can kind of get this breadth of genetic diversity from the region.

[00:11:18] Craig Macmillan: And that was something I was thinking about. You mentioned you took samples from either fermenting wine or recently fermented wine or from skin material. How exactly is this collected so that you know that you're getting just

[00:11:30] what you want?

[00:11:31] Aria Hahn: Yeah. Painfully is the answer. So like when you do soil sampling, it's actually really And we tell people all the time sampling for yeast or microbes is not that complicated. I say every single time we talk to a client, I'm like, look, wash your hands with ethanol, you know, hand sanitizer, essentially between rinse your tools. And mainly you can't mess this up as long as you don't spit in the bag or bleed in the And I say this every time, and I will say one out of every few hundred samples is full of blood. Hands down like you always think we always the that and then hands down. We're like, this is full of And I think it's just like a matter of working in the field like people nick themselves They don't really realize that but really that kind of thing is really easy

[00:12:15] When it comes to sampling a ferment that can also be fairly easy.

[00:12:19] You have a lot of it You can kind and put it in a jar, but I will Um, Jay Marknack, who's done a lot of this work and developed a lot of these methods, he actually developed this method that is painstaking. Um, But you have like, he's got this method where he takes the grapes really carefully without touching them off of the and then washes just like very carefully with these like rinse solutions to really just get the microbes and yeast that are on that surface without touching it, without touching other surfaces. It's really just what was there in the field. And rinse all of that off. And you can imagine that's not that fun of a Um, And, and, and so, and it wasn't like he did it on his first try either. So he's now developed that we're copying and using, thank goodness. Uh, But it can be like that kind of painful where it's like washing individual grapes, collecting that rinse water, and then filtering that rinse water, like onto a physical filter, then extracting the DNA from that filter.

[00:13:18] It's not fast.

[00:13:19] Craig Macmillan: Nope, that's what I wanted to know. I've collected a lot of soil samples in my life for looking at soil microbiome. And you know, technique is everything. You know, contamination will mess you up pretty badly.

[00:13:29] Aria Hahn: We had this one study I felt so bad, but they had collected these samples. They sent us the samples and we get the data back and it's, they're soil, they should be teeming with life, right?

[00:13:38] And there's like one species basically in this thing, like there's a handful, but like one is dominating. So we go to them and we're like, what is going on here? And they're like, well, I don't see how that could have happened. , we've been storing these in a dark closet for a year. And we're like, that's why. You are studying bottle effects right here. And they're like, oh, we thought it'd be fine because it was dark and cool. And we're like, yeah, but it's not open to the air, and it doesn't have the plants and animals and bugs. You grew one guy.

[00:14:07] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. We've been talking about bacteria, or the yeast. Are there other types of organisms, microorganisms, that you can use this technique with?

[00:14:14] Aria Hahn: Totally. So you can use this technique on basically anything that's alive. So you could target viruses, uh, not something we've done on wineries, but could absolutely do it. You can target, , archaea, which are very similar to bacteria in that there are a single cell. But they are similar to eukaryotes.

[00:14:32] So things that are bigger, um, like us, like mammals, like fish, Uh, but they are kind of small and invisible, , to the naked eye like bacteria. So those, we can, we can do that all the way up to, any animal that we can see, feel, touch, , and kind of anything in between. So it's a really powerful technique. As long as it has DNA, we can make this work.

[00:14:53] Craig Macmillan: So you found these 75 types? of yeast organisms, but they fell into groups, they fell into clades. And I thought that was one of the most interesting things about this. Can you tell us a little bit about the natural history of behind these clades and kind of what that means?

[00:15:09] Aria Hahn: We found these 75 different strains and they did group into four clades. So four kind of groups of more or less related organisms. So you can think of them as like clustering based on similarity.

[00:15:22] The first one was one that is well known and well studied. So that's wine and European. And so those strains are more similar to these that we see in wines out of Europe and commercial strains.

[00:15:35] And then the second clade we saw was the trans pacific oak. So a lot of wine yeast are very closely related to yeast that are found on oak trees. And so actually think that, , the original, , European wine yeast strains from, you know, the 1800s are from Mediterranean oak trees. And so it's not uncommon that we see these strains related to oak.

[00:15:59] So that was the trans pacific oak. Then we see another group or clade that we called beer one mixed origin. And so we saw similarities to known previously studied yeast strains that are related to beer, sake, so other kind of fermented drinks. also kind of expected.

[00:16:18] And then what was really exciting is that we found a new clade that we've designated the Pacific West Coast wine clade. it's always neat when you get to discover something new, of course. And so it has high nucleotide diversity. And so what that means is that even within this clade we do see a lot of genetic diversity kind of in there.

[00:16:38] And what we do know is that that whole clade shares a lot of characteristics with wild North American oak strains, but, and this is kind of where like it all kind of comes full circle, but we also see that it has gene flow from the wine European and Ecuadorian clades. It can mean a couple of things. So it could mean that There is just so much selective pressure when you're, when you're trying to make good wine that these genes that are found in European wine strains, commercial wine strains, they're present in Saccharomyces cerevisiae in general, but then when we try to make good wine, we select for strains that have these, genes, , that we know produce good wine, because they produce good wine everywhere.

[00:17:27] And so it could just be this process of natural selection. It also could be that most wineries , are not purists. It's not that. never in their history have other wine strains visited their their vineyards. They might have tried a commercial strain. They have wine from others, you know, people track things in, animals track things in. And so it could just be that there is this gene flow, quite literally from, from Europe, from these wine strains that just kind of comes into our population here in the Pacific West Coast.

[00:18:00] And so there's kind of these, these two ways that we could have got these things, We do have some evidence to suggest that they were actually transferred in.

[00:18:07] So it's called horizontal gene transfer. And my go to example on how horizontal gene transfer works is always , The Matrix, like the movie with Keanu Reeves. But what I've also learned is that if you talk to people that are like younger than me, they don't know that movie anymore, so this only lands with like a certain age of

[00:18:23] Craig Macmillan: Right, I know, I know,

[00:18:24] Aria Hahn: You know The Matrix where they like plug in and then they have all these new skills?

[00:18:28] Bacteria can kind of do that, where you can just take genes from, , a relative, has to be like kind of closely related, and we take them and then we just put it into their genome, and in many cases, not all, but many, they're able to just kind of start making use of those genes right away.

[00:18:43] And so that's horizontal gene transfer, which is pretty cool, because for us, the second that sperm hits the egg, that's it. That's all your genes. You're not getting more. You're not losing more. Like you're, you're set. But bacteria are more fluid.

[00:18:57] So there is this cool thing called the wine circle, and it's a cluster of five genes that are associated with making commercial wine.

[00:19:05] And we do think because we see this wine circle and these particular five genes in so many wine strains, and because of their location and a whole bunch of other kind of genomic characteristics of them, Um, we think that they are horizontally transferred. And so we do see this wine circle of these five genes in the majority of this new clade of British Columbia strains.

[00:19:33] Craig Macmillan: So just talking about moving things around the world, you said like people have things on their bodies and whatnot. I, I was fascinated by the Ecuadorian group. And is that literally like it was growing on plants in Ecuador, kind of native to that area that is found its way up the West coast of North America.

[00:19:53] Aria Hahn: that's really what we thought happened. I know it is amazing, right? Like does the amount and transfer and you know how you go through the airport and they're like, you and It's like the end of the world. It's like I get it because we don't want to like do that on purpose, but also the ecuadorian yeast like it's coming up here

[00:20:12] Craig Macmillan: right, right. Exactly.

[00:20:14] So what I think is of interest to winemakers, and also has potential beyond that that I'll ask you about winemakers are looking for increased complexity in their wines, and they're also looking for a sense of place. And I'm really happy to hear more and more people talking about terroir, not just in terms of rocks, but in terms of the whole picture.

[00:20:33] The soil microbiome, the practices that are done, as well as light and climate and all those kinds of things. What are some of the things about what you found that indicate or that suggest a uniqueness to that Okanagan area that may make it stand out as different than other locations? How does this translate into sense of place?

[00:20:54] Aria Hahn: That's a fantastic question. I'm going to give two answers first on the east side. We see that many of that nucleate. don't have all five of those wine circle genes. And so we see a lot of British Columbian strains have that, but there's this whole clade of these natural yeast used in wine that don't have all five of those.

[00:21:17] So then you just have different genes to work with. And since you have different genes to work with, it's not just those genes, but it's all of the genes, and it's the rate that those specific strains are able to break things down.

[00:21:28] You do get this added complexity when you're not using a standard commercial yeast. You just have this bigger variety of genes to choose from, and That's going to make the flavors more specific, and different.

[00:21:44] It also introduces a certain, the disadvantage of using these is that, you know, they are gonna vary year to year, month to month. Uh, Potentially, and, and so you might get really, really amazing results one year and not the next year, and understanding why, why that might be is a whole exercise in and of itself, probably doable, but it's really exciting to think that these yeasts that are there naturally , they just have that genetic diversity and they want to live in these diverse communities, and so you are going to get that difference and terroir.

[00:22:16] The other piece that was really exciting and was a different piece of work, but very similar groups and very similar, , samples, was looking at the microbiome, so the bacteria on the grapes. And we kind of found two things, and so there is some literature that shows if you look at a single farm, a single vineyard, and you look at different red varietals of grapes, you see actually a fairly similar microbiome signature on all of the different varietals.

[00:22:46] Okay, but if we look at three distinct vineyards that are all within , one kilometer radius of one another. So they're very close. They have the same rock, to your point. They have the same weather. They have the same climate chaos happening,

[00:23:01] but they're managed differently. We actually see very, very distinct signatures on all three that persists year after year. So we looked at two years, , this was again, Jay Martinek's work, , and we see that each one of those, even though it's the same varietal of grape, it is more similar to itself, year over year, than among the three farms. and and that's very interesting because what that suggests is Exactly what you're saying.

[00:23:29] It's not the rock. It's not the climate that's driving the microbiome there. It's actually the practices of that vineyard that are changing that. And to me, that's so powerful, because what that means is that there's so much of that craft and art in the management of the vineyard that's then going to go and affect the terroir. , I know that's not the yeast answer, but that's the bacteria answer, and it's like, the power's in your hands.

[00:23:54] Craig Macmillan: I'm on the Central Coast of California, and we've had some very hot vintages in this last , 2024 season. We had, and it was 2022 as well, we had these really hot stretches of over 100 Fahrenheit. Not very friendly to yeast in general.

[00:24:09] Probably friendly to some, but not to others. And I had conversations with winemakers along the lines of like, could you even do a natural fermentation this year, a native fermentation? Are they there anymore? Or have they been selected against due to the heat? And I now have a total reset of the microbiome, the microflora in my world. this is the kind of thing that bioinformatics would be able to determine.

[00:24:34] Aria Hahn: yeah, for sure. So we love that. We love when we get the baseline. We're like, show us your year that you were like, this is my typical year. This is my regular year. We'll live for that because as soon as you have the baseline, then we can go and answer those questions. So we can say, okay, great. We know what your baseline is when you typical year.

[00:24:52] Now you have this heat wave that comes in. , Let's go and look. Let's go see who's survived. And I know I anthropomorphize all of these things a ton, but it really is, like, who's there, right? , is it the same bug, but very decreased? Are we getting different E strains coming in? are we seeing less overall diversity?

[00:25:13] Do we see the same diversity, but Their population is a quarter of the size, and how does that affect the dynamics? Like, what do we see? And bioinformatics can absolutely absolutely answer these questions. And that can be really powerful.

[00:25:26] Craig Macmillan: In my research I didn't pick up on this Can bioinformatics put a quantity on things? Can you quantify the relative size of these different populations?

[00:25:34] Aria Hahn: We can, yes. So, you have to use some kind of special techniques. There's a couple of main ways we do them. One is called qPCR, so quantitative PCR. And so we literally take the DNA and we can count the copies of it in a very quantitative way. That's straightforward, pretty inexpensive.

[00:25:52] Another way we can do it is a little bit more sophisticated, , but you don't have to know what you're looking for. So with quantitative PCR, we have to know, like, we want to go count saccharomyces cerevisiae. But if we don't know all of the microbes that are there, all of these that are there, then we can't go and target it with qPCR. So then what we have to do is use a spiken. the concept is pretty simple. You put a known quantity of a piece of DNA that we would not expect to appear in nature. And then when we sequence it, we know how many we got back. So if we know we put in a hundred copies of it and we get 200 copies back, now we have a pretty good idea of like, everything there was, sequenced twice or if we get 50 copies back, we're like, okay, well, however many we have, we're going to double that and we have a good idea and we do do this in like a little bit more sophisticated way where we put in like a whole bunch at different quantities so we can double check our math and make sure that it's all good.

[00:26:49] But that's the concept is with a spike in so you can do it quantitatively.

[00:26:53] Craig Macmillan: Talking about all the things that are out there, there's a lot of interest right now in bioprotectants for fermentation, where you introduce non fermentative yeast, and they kind of take up the ecological niche against foliage organisms, and then you can add a Cerevisiae strain to do that, to do your fermentation.

[00:27:10] Would you be able to pick up those other genus, of yeast in a bioinformatic way and gives us a sense of what else is out there.

[00:27:18] Aria Hahn: Yeah, for sure. So we sequence the whole community and then we kind of in a. Like a puzzle. I'm going to put together the individual genomes of everyone who's there. And so we can look at not just the targets, but the unknowns as well. And so often, especially in soils, what we get is sometimes up to 80 percent of the genomes that we're able to recover from that sample are totally novel.

[00:27:43] So they're new to science. It's really exciting. and we hate it. We love it and we hate it. So, we love it because it's really fun. You, you discover these new species of bacteria, of yeast, or these new strains, and, and you get to name them. You don't have to name them after yourself anymore, you have to name them about the place that they're there. Which is a totally logical thing. But, would have been fun. ,

[00:28:06] So we get to name these things, it's really exciting.

[00:28:09] But it also means it's so much work. Because now you have this genome that's so new. And so now you're trying to figure out. What are all the genes? Do we know the genes it has, but just not quite the way that they're arranged? Do we not know what many of these genes do? And if we don't know what these genes do, like what kind of uncertainty and questions does that bring up? And so it can be really exciting, that discovery phase, and also quite overwhelming, honestly.

[00:28:36] Craig Macmillan: what other applications might there be for bioinformatics in wineries or in vineyards?

[00:28:41] Aria Hahn: Yeah, that's fantastic. So definitely monitoring. You know, regenerative farming is a really big thing right now. how can we introduce additional species, cover crops, , you know, planting additional or different plants in between. Like, what can we do to really increase the soil health, sequester carbon, the biodiversity of the soil, of the land, and how does that affect it? So we can monitor all those things with environmental DNA or eDNA.

[00:29:09] One thing that we've been thinking about a lot is this concept of smoke taint, which I think has kind of affected the whole west coast of North America.

[00:29:18] Are there microbial treatments that can kind of mitigate smoke taint, , can we feed bacteria, the bacteria that we know

[00:29:29] can kind of break down those volatile phenols that cause the smoke taint. Get them to kind of break that down first before we make the wine. Like we're kind of looking at applications like that.

[00:29:40] Obviously those are, I would say further out in terms of technological development biodiversity, which we can absolutely go and do today. , but there's interest in that smoke taint. Application, and we're really interested in that.

[00:29:52] Then there's also kind of everything in between. So can we the harvest? Can we increase the quality of the grape? Can we help with years that are dry? Can we help with years that are wet or cold or hot? as we, kind of committed to a certain number of effects of climate change, we have to start thinking creatively.

[00:30:14] I was on this call with an unrelated company. They wanted to do similar things but in the mining space, in the reclamation space. And I don't know how it happened, but I was on this call with this man. It was his last day before it was dark where he was. He's in Quebec. He's three hours ahead.

[00:30:29] , You know, it was winter. So it's very, the mood was very, like, dark and somber, and this was his final call of his final day of work. And he was so hopeful about microbes, and he spent his career working with them. And just before he signed off the call, he says, I hope microbes save us all.

[00:30:50] And then he kills the call. And, and, for, the next few years, I titled every single talk I did, Microbes may save us all because I just, the weight of that conversation was so big and I know that's not what we're talking about here in terms of

[00:31:08] smoke taint, but I do think, you know, to bring us full circle to this like omnipresent godlike presence of microbes that there's something to that idea in that I think that they have this potential to save us from ourselves. If we can learn more,

[00:31:25] Craig Macmillan: I think what we're talking about is bioremediation and the potential there. And bioremediation would work by identifying an organism that's going to play a certain role and then actually introducing it into the environment. For instance, like introducing it to wine that may have smoke taint, for instance.

[00:31:40] Aria Hahn: , so there's a three main approaches to that.

[00:31:42] So the first is exactly what we're talking about. You introduce a micro that we know and you, and you put it in there. The main challenge of that is this, this word we call engraftment. We actually steal that word from organ transplants. So, when you put in a new heart, not that I know anything about heart transplants, but when you put in a new heart, you have to engraft it.

[00:32:01] And so people need to be on immunosuppressants, is my understanding, to make that heart transplant like stick in their body, have their body accept it. Kind of the same challenge when you introduce a microbe into an open, wild environment where you need that new species to engraft in that community. If you can't do that, you just have to keep adding it.

[00:32:21] You have to keep adding it, keep adding it, it's time consuming, it's expensive, all of these things. So engraffing is still a challenge in that field. But that is one way.

[00:32:29] The second way is to bioengineer. And so the concept here is that you take species or strains that are naturally occurring, so they do well in that environment, and you change something in their genetics and then reintroduce that. It does get around the concept of,

[00:32:50] of engraftment in theory. The major issue with it is, there's not a lot of people or companies that feel ready, I think, to take a biologically engineered synthetic genome and introduce it into the environment en masse. We just don't understand the risks of it, or, or not, we don't know, but I think that's the point, is that we don't know, and so people are a little bit like, Maybe we're not quite there yet.

[00:33:19] And then the third way is to say, I'm going to look at who's already there. And I'm going to understand what they like to eat and what their competitors like to eat and I'm going to try to starve their competitors

[00:33:31] and really feed the ones who have the capacity to degrade those volatile phenols. I'm going to like try to get their population to do super well and thrive. and and try to kind of starve out and make the populations that can't do the job that I want lesser and less prevalent in the community.

[00:33:51] And that approach I think is kind of one of my favorites where we understand and then we put some selective pressures. So this could be adding more nitrogen, adding different carbon sources.

[00:34:01] It could be watering less to create a more aerobic environment. It could be you know, kind of drowning them to create an anaerobic environment. It's kind of those bigger controls that we have working with the microbes that are already there.

[00:34:17] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, in the same way that we're not afraid to play with plant communities in agricultural systems, with cover cropping or intercropping or anything like that, same kind of idea, where maybe I plant something that I think will out compete a weed.

[00:34:28] Same kind of idea. And we're pretty comfortable with that.

[00:34:32] And also things will have a way of finding their stasis, finding their, their It's just getting it kind of pushed in the right direction. I think that he's super, super cool.

[00:34:44] A lot of interest and work in the soil microbiome in terms of soil health. We mentioned regenerative agriculture. I have put my toe in that, in, in my professional world extremely difficult, extremely confusing, lots of holes you know, and, and trying to find markers or metrics has been. challenging for instance, I was trying to figure out how healthy some soils were. It, healthy in quotes, and I wanted to do analysis of respiration. And this very good soil ecologist said, well, that tells you how many folks are in the room, but it doesn't tell you what they're doing or who they are.

[00:35:21] And I was like, that's a really good Point I could have a lot of respiration from organisms. I don't want and I wouldn't know what was who and who was what? What world can bioinformatics play in that

[00:35:33] Aria Hahn: , that's a great question. So I would say it's the opposite in general, without the spike ins and kind of specific things, what? we can tell pretty inexpensively, 50 to 100 a sample, is basically who's in the room and in what relative abundance. So it is come down a lot in price. It doesn't tell us a lot about their genetic capability.

[00:35:55] So if we know them because they've been previously studied, then we can say like, oh, yeah, these guys are known to do X, Y, and Z.

[00:36:02] If we don't know them, for that kind of price point in those methods, we're kind of just like, yeah, we know their names. But that's it.

[00:36:08] Then we can do kind of a deeper dive, , to a different type of sequencing called whole genome sequencing. And you get the whole genome. And so there we can actually say not only who they are, but what they're doing. Or what they have the ability to do. And so that's where the limit of DNA is, is that it can tell us the potential. They can potentially do this, but it doesn't actually tell us if they're choosing to do that, so to speak.

[00:36:33] There are other techniques that are very related. Metatranscriptomics, it's looking at the RNA, and you could do metabolomics. So you can actually look at the metabolites that they're producing, and then it tells you what they actually did. But we often can start at that base layer of DNA. and build up. So those questions we can answer.

[00:36:51] And I think you're right about there are a lot of holes and it's confusing and it's complex. And we say this to clients all the time, like, if you know way to solve a problem, do that. Biology is messy.

[00:37:03] But if you don't, like let's look at biology and let's enjoy the mess , there's a lot of beauty in that mess. And that's one of the things we've actually loved about interacting with wineries they are incredibly scientifically minded folks. They're data driven, the amount of innovation and technology they're using. never fails to impress, but you also get that love of the art and the craft from them. We love that. We see art and science as like in a circular spectrum. And so we love when, our clients in the, in the wine start talking to us about kind of their secret sauce and the things that they've tried and how, and they always get a little bit nervous.

[00:37:49] And they would, if they always kind of start, they were like, you know what else I do? And we're like, tell us. And then they tell us something and they're like, we just know from experience. Experience that this works that this changes the ferment, but we don't have any evidence for that And and I think they're worried we're gonna judge them but we're like no that is like their science is all way of knowing but

[00:38:09] my friend says art is science and love and and I love that idea that is something that's been really really fun about working with wineries and vineyards is they kind of get that they're like, yeah, this is the love piece here

[00:38:22] Craig Macmillan: That's cool I think there's beauty in the mess. I might adopt that if you don't mind I mean, I may use that for some of my own stuff. I think that's great What is one thing you would tell growers or wineries, ,

[00:38:35] Aria Hahn: their choices are directly impacting the microbiome, so that's the bacteria and the yeast And that that is going to affect the terroir, the complexity, the quality of the wine, and it is knowable.

[00:38:50] Craig Macmillan: there we go. And we also know that some of the things that we do may affect that and that is part of what makes us special. Where can people find out more about you?

[00:38:58] Aria Hahn: We have a website, it is koonke. com, K O O N K I E dot com. can also look me up, Aria Hahn, , and on Google Scholar, the internet, I feel like I'm very findable.

[00:39:10] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, you are very findable and we will have a lot of links and other things on the show page. So please check that out. Really fascinating stuff going even beyond this. I want to thank you for being on the podcast.

[00:39:21] This has been a great conversation.

[00:39:22] Aria Hahn: Yeah, thanks for having me. Super fun.

[00:39:25] Craig Macmillan: So our guest today was Aria Hahn. She is CEO and co founder of Koonkie, a bioinformatics company, and is doing some really fascinating stuff, not only around yeast, but lots of other topics.

[00:39:35] And I just got lost down the rabbit hole when I took a look at that website, all the different things you folks have been involved in, and it was really fun.

[00:39:48] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening.

[00:39:49] Today's podcast was brought to you by Sunridge. For over 45 years, Sunridge nurseries has supplied premium quality grapevines. to grape growers worldwide. A pioneer in the industry with a focus on clean quality vines and personalized dedication to their partnered growers has led them to be the largest, most well respected grapevine nursery in the United States. Sunridge Nurseries continues to lead the industry having undergone several expansions to their modern state of the art facilities and is the first and only grapevine nursery to have implemented the most advanced greenhouse Horticulture water treatment technology in North America.

[00:40:26] Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Aria, an article titled, make better wines with bioinformatics plus sustainable wine growing podcast episodes, 201 balance hot climate, high sugar wine with green grape juice, 243 microbial communities in the grapevine. And 251 vine sap analysis to optimize nutrition.

[00:40:50] If you liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend, subscribing and leaving us a review. You can find all of the podcasts at vineyardteam.org/podcast, and you can reach us at podcast at vineyardteam. org until next time, this is sustainable wine growing with the vineyard team.

 

Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

Winegrowing regions in Washington State have many unique challenges from salty soils, to low organic matter, to nematodes. Devin Rippner, Research Viticulture Soil Scientist with USDA-ARS and his colleagues at Washington State University are developing a research vineyard to study soil health building practices.

They are testing a variety of management strategies including adjusting irrigation volume to correct for salt build-up, mowing for weed management, compost applications and synthetic fertilizers, and different cover crops. The team is tracking the cost of each practice and will ultimately evaluate wine quality in the coming years.

Taking a deeper dive into the future of soil sampling, Devin explains X-ray CT imagery. He has used this technology to evaluate the structure and organic matter from soil columns and aggregates. X-ray CT imagery has also been used to evaluate the impact grape seeds have on tannin flavor profiles.

Resources:        

• 80: (Rebroadcast) The Goldilocks Principle & Powdery Mildew Management
• 90: Nematode Management for Washington Grapes
• A workflow for segmenting soil and plant X-ray CT images with deep learning in Google’s Colaboratory
• Devin Rippner, USDA ARS
• Functional Soil Health
• Healthy Soils Playlist
• Red Wine Fermentation Alters Grape Seed Morphology and Internal Porosity
• Soil Health in Washington Vineyards
• Vineyard soil texture and pH effects on Meloidogyne hapla and Mesocriconema xenoplax
• Washington Soil Health Initiative

Vineyard Team Programs:

• Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate
• SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet  
• Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year
• Vineyard Team – Become a Member

Get More

Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.

Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.  

Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: Wine growing regions in Washington State have many unique challenges from salty soils to low organic matter to nematodes.

[00:00:13] Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, Executive Director.

[00:00:23] In today's podcast, Craig McMillan, Critical Resource Manager at Niner Wine Estates, with longtime SIP certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery, speaks with Devin Rippner, Research Viticulture Soil Scientist with USDA ARS.

[00:00:41] Devin and his colleagues at Washington State University are developing a research vineyard to study soil health building practices.

[00:00:49] They are testing a variety of management strategies, including adjusting irrigation volume to correct for salt buildup, mowing for weed management, Compost applications and synthetic fertilizers and different cover crops. The team is tracking the cost of each practice and will ultimately evaluate wine quality in the coming years.

[00:01:08] Taking a deeper dive into the future of soil sampling. Devin explains X ray CT imagery. He has used this technology to evaluate the structure in organic matter from soil columns and soil aggregates. X ray CT imagery has also been used to evaluate the impact that grape seeds have on tannin flavor profiles.

[00:01:28] Now let's listen in.

[00:01:29] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Devin Rippner. He is a research soil scientist with the USDA agricultural research service. He's based out of Prosser, Washington, and he's also an adjunct in the department of crop and soil sciences with Washington state university.

[00:01:46] Devin, thanks for being here.

[00:01:48] Devin Rippner: Absolutely. Pleasure to be here, Craig.

[00:01:50] Craig Macmillan: You are on the leadership team of the Washington State Soil Health Initiative. I think it's a pretty cool little program. Tell us what it is and what it's all about.

[00:01:59] Devin Rippner: Yeah, absolutely. So the Washington State Legislature allocated funding to study soil health and soil health building practices in a variety of agricultural systems and so to access that money a number of groups put in competitive proposals at the Prosser Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center, we put in a proposal to study soil health in wine grape systems.

[00:02:24] Originally, we actually had it in juice grapes as well, but we were not able to get enough funding for both. Juice grapes are actually a big product out of Washington.

[00:02:32] Craig Macmillan: I did not know that. That's interesting. What varieties?

[00:02:34] Devin Rippner: Mostly Concord?

[00:02:36] I'm less familiar with it. It's something I would, I would like to work in cause they have different constraints than wine grapes.

[00:02:41] Ours is focused on wine grapes, but there are systems looking at tree fruit, at potatoes, at small crane cropping systems. There are a variety of systems that are being evaluated.

[00:02:54] Craig Macmillan: I looked at a flyer that kind of outlined some of the ideas and issues around , the Wine Grape part. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:03:01] Devin Rippner: we have fairly unique soils. We have pretty alkaline soils here in Washington. We're on the arid side of the Cascades. So think Reno rather than like Seattle. we tend to accumulate salts. We also have very coarse textured soils. So a lot of sands to sandy loams or loamy sands. Very little clay.

[00:03:23] We have typically under 10 percent clay in a lot of the grape growing regions of washington. we also have low organic matter, because it doesn't rain much here. There has never been a chance for a lot of plants to grow. And so we just have never really built up organic matter. So we typically have about, let's say, maybe 1 percent to 2 percent organic matter in our soils.

[00:03:44] That's about half a percent carbon to 1 percent carbon, which is typically it's pretty low for a lot of soils.

[00:03:50] Craig Macmillan: It is.

[00:03:51] Devin Rippner: those are some of, some of the like unique challenges around soil health. There's also problems with pests. Haven't had too much of an issue with Phylloxera. That's changing.

[00:04:01] There are a variety of nematode pests that cause problems in grapes here. When you plant a vineyard into an old vineyard, you're basically putting baby vines into a place that might have a bunch of pests that aren't a big deal for really mature vines.

[00:04:14] But as soon as you put a baby in that environment, it does not thrive.

[00:04:18] Finding ways to deal with nematode pests, things like that over time , is really important. So those are kind of the things that we are, we are looking at, at our site.

[00:04:27] Craig Macmillan: What kind of practices are you investigating to address these things? I hadn't really thought of that about it till now, but nematode is a good one. that's a tough pest.

[00:04:37] Devin Rippner: funny thing is this is a long term site, right? So, so our practices for those will really come later. I had a nematologist that worked for me. And she evaluated our soils for for the pathogenic nematodes for wine grapes, and we don't really have them but the thing is they build over time, right?

[00:04:52] Just because there might be a few in that soil But when they start colonizing the grape roots over time, they can become problematic We functionally have a rootstock trial at the end of all of our experimental rows and, and rootstocks have been found to be very effective at preventing nematode problems or decreasing the severity of nematode problems.

[00:05:13] We will be able to kind of look at that with our rootstock trial.

[00:05:17] Craig Macmillan: Do you have any of the GRN stocks in that?

[00:05:19] Devin Rippner: We don't, so we have own rooted vines and then we have Telekey 5c 1103p 110r. Let's see then I think St. George

[00:05:30] I'm trying to remember what, what the last one is. It's escaping me right now. I apologize.

[00:05:34] Craig Macmillan: Well, no, it's all right. Some of the more common root stocks, basically the ones that are very popular.

[00:05:39] Devin Rippner: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:41] The reality is that a lot of the like vitis rupestris, vitis riparia, , they are less prone to nematode parasitism. Than Vinifera. , that's the reality of it.

[00:05:50] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. Less susceptible. I think it's probably the best way to put it. Nothing's bulletproof when it comes to this, this problem.

[00:05:57] Devin Rippner: And Michelle Moyer in Washington has been doing a lot of work with this, with Inga Zasada, who's a USDA scientist. And their, their results are really cool. They're finding that when you try to fumigate, it helps for a little while, but the rebound is bad, and it's just easier to just use rootstocks.

[00:06:15] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. Talk to me a little bit more about, you said salinity can be an issue

[00:06:19] Devin Rippner: Yeah,

[00:06:20] Craig Macmillan: So here's the, the back and forth on that. You would think that a, a coser, your textured soil salinity would be less of an issue, but you don't get the rain to take advantage of that. Is that , the issue here?

[00:06:30] Devin Rippner: 100%. That's exactly it. We build up layers called caliche layers, which are evidence of a lack of water moving downward.

[00:06:38] So it's, it's really evidence of water moving down and then back up due to evaporation. We get big buildups of carbonates in our soils and carbonates are a type of salt.

[00:06:48] So as you apply other chemicals, Salts, a salty irrigation water , we tend to build up salts in our soils. A lot of our irrigation water comes from the Yakima River or other rivers in the area, columbia River. But there are places where people are on deeper wells and they are seeing salt accumulation in their vineyards.

[00:07:06] And it's, it's really challenging to deal with.

[00:07:09] Craig Macmillan: Do you have any strategies that you're looking at? Anything you're trying out?

[00:07:13] Devin Rippner: at our site over time, we're going to look at higher irrigation volumes versus lower irrigation volumes and seeing if that will change the accumulation of salt at our site. , that's kind of the main experiment around that with our soil health vineyard.

[00:07:27] Craig Macmillan: Obviously you're doing this with some pretty salty irrigation water and you're comparing that to less salty water. At one site, you're only gonna have one type of water, right?

[00:07:36] Devin Rippner: Right. That's not something that we'll be able to do, but one of the interesting things is we are applying compost and. Our compost can be pretty salty.

[00:07:45] So we'll, we'll be getting compost. That'll be kind of four decisiemen per meter. I I'm sorry to use those units and so that, so that is salty.

[00:07:54] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, it's salty.

[00:07:55] Devin Rippner: Young grapevines, if they grew only in that, they would really struggle. It's over the, the two deciSiemen per meter kind of threshold for grapevines. That's something where we're, you know, we are using clean irrigation water, but some of our amendments coming in can be saltier.

[00:08:10] When we have kind of a, a low and high irrigation treatment, we can evaluate the salt accumulation in the root zone. From that particular amendment, right?

[00:08:19] Craig Macmillan: What about other types of fertilizer? Are there organic fertilizers or something like that that might be less of a salt contributor than let's say a traditional nitrate based fertilizer?

[00:08:28] Devin Rippner: As it turns out, at least for us, we don't apply. a massive amount of nitrogen to our grapevines, so we're often applying between 20 and say 60 pounds of N per year which is not a lot compared to say corn or, tree fruit or, or hops or things like that.

[00:08:45] And so we, we don't, Exactly. Expect to see a buildup of, of those salts over time. Honestly, some of the organic amendments end up being saltier than our fertilizer.

[00:08:55] That's something when we do a high and low for irrigation, we will be able to look at the accumulation of, of nitrates and things like that.

[00:09:02] Cause in our arid environment, you do get accumulations of nitrate, which is kind of funny.

[00:09:06] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, that's interesting. You also mentioned the soil pH, alkalinity. What, what's going on there? How bad is it in different spots? What can you do about it? I, I'm fascinated by this because like when you look at viticulture, you have like a lot of knobs on the mixing board, right? You got a lot of sliders and, Soil , you can't slide it very well. It's like very hard to make changes to soil over time.

[00:09:33] Devin Rippner: it is.

[00:09:33] Craig Macmillan: very slow and very difficult. So I'm very interested in , this issue here.

[00:09:39] Devin Rippner: It's funny at our site, the soil pH isn't too bad. It's about 8. Across the board, from the, from the top that so, so we've been measuring from the top of the soil down to about 90 centimeters. About three feet. We do see a pH tick up in our sub soil, but still it's, it's around the eights.

[00:09:56] We actually have a lot of carbonates in our soil. There's only more organic carbon in the top six inches of our soil. And from that point on, most of our carbon is in the form of carbonates.

[00:10:06] Which is kind of unique. And so once you get down to like 60 to 90 centimeters, so two to three feet in the soil, functionally, 90 percent of the soil carbon is carbon from carbonate.

[00:10:16] So dealing with that in the region there's wide variation, so people that are planting into old wheat ground where they've used a lot of ammonium based fertilizers or urea, the pH can be in the fives. And then I, I mean, I've measured soil pH is up to about 9. 8 around here. So, so quite high.

[00:10:35] Those soils are hard to deal with. So these are carbonate buffered systems. So to try to lower the pH, you basically have to get rid of all the carbonates. And that is not really feasible. We do see in some of the vineyards that we work in. And again, a lot of this data is preliminary.

[00:10:51] I'm trying to get stuff out right now. Getting the vineyard set up has been a massive undertaking. And I've been lucky to work with a great team to, to get it done, but it has taken a lot of my time.

[00:11:01] Um, but we, we do see seasonal fluctuations with irrigation. So soils might start off with a pH around eight drop over the course of the growing season into the sixes and then as they dry down for winter time. So we cut irrigation. The pH will start to rise back up as the carbonates move from the subsoil to the surface.

[00:11:21] Craig Macmillan: Interesting. Interesting. Let's talk about your vineyard. If I understand correctly, you have a research vineyard there in Prosser that you are building from scratch or have built from scratch. Is that true?

[00:11:30] Devin Rippner: Yes. . It is a new vineyard to study soil health building practices. We just finished our second season. And we were very lucky. Vina Matos which is a company out of Portugal. They mechanically planted it for us.

[00:11:45] Scientist, so it's, it was, yeah, it was a bit of an undertaking. Even now I've gotten a lot better on a tractor than I was. And, you know, I like to run, like, I'd like to do x ray stuff. And then I'm out there on a tractor, like, yeah, doing stuff. It's a unique challenge.

[00:11:59] So we do have a vineyard manager Dr. Liz Gillespie is the vineyard manager. , she honestly does most of the tracker work. I only sub in when she's down with an illness or something like that.

[00:12:09] It's been a team effort for the last couple of years.

[00:12:12] Craig Macmillan: What are you doing in there? You've talked about a couple of topics, but, and how big is this, this vineyard?

[00:12:17] Devin Rippner: It's not that big. It's about 4. 1 acres. ,

[00:12:20] Craig Macmillan: that's, you know, for research, that's good.

[00:12:22] Devin Rippner: yeah, yeah, it is good. We functionally have a business as usual. So we call it our Washington 2021 standard. So it's kind of what growers just do. So that's spraying undervined for weed control and then just let resident vegetation pop up where it may and mow it down.

[00:12:39] Most people don't spray or till , their tractor rows. They just. Kind of let it go. We don't get that much rain. You end up selecting for annual grasses it's actually a pretty good weed composition for a tractor row. So then we start building from there.

[00:12:52] One of our treatments is what if you just mowed everywhere, right? The goal is to select for annual grasses everywhere over time.

[00:12:59] And then we have another treatment where we're mowing everywhere. But we're applying compost for fertilization. Our other treatments get synthetic fertilizers for fertilization, and then we have our compost treatment where we're mowing.

[00:13:12] Then we have an undervined cover crop, so that's like our cover crop treatment.

[00:13:16] We're curious about undervine legume cover crops. So we have a short subterranean clover that , we've seated in to hopefully eventually start adding nitrogen to the system and, and hopefully we'll be able to back off on more of the synthetic fertilizers over time in that system, but we'll let the vines guide us, right?

[00:13:35] Craig Macmillan: What species of clover is that?

[00:13:37] Devin Rippner: I'm not sure the exact, so it would be like Dalkey.

[00:13:39] it's a clover that basically has low flowers and shoots seed downward. And so , that allows it to replant itself really effectively.

[00:13:47] The flowers tend to be below the foliage. So we won't have to worry about mowing them down too badly. , they stay low. And so that's why we selected that. just to try to keep the flowers low and keep foliage away from our vines.

[00:14:01] Craig Macmillan: Anything else?

[00:14:03] Devin Rippner: Yeah, so then we have our aspirational treatment, which is kind of a mix of the subterranean clover cover crop. And then we have compost fertilization and then kind of breaking the full factorial. We're actually changing what's in , , the tractor row. We're planting an intermediate wheatgrass.

[00:14:20] We started with crusted wheatgrass. It's so funny with these experiments. , we seeded in crusted wheatgrass a couple of times and just did not take it's not very effective for competing against other weeds, and it's not very good with traffic. And so now , we're seeding in intermediate wheatgrass.

[00:14:35] , it is more traffic tolerant and is more weed tolerant. So we're hoping that we'll be able to outcompete all the other annual grasses and just have kind of a perennial grass cover crop.

[00:14:46] Craig Macmillan: Is it on these courses? So is this camp is compaction less of a problem? I would think.

[00:14:53] Devin Rippner: We do have some compaction. That we've seen out there. Certainly mechanical planting can cause some extra compaction. It, it takes a lot of force to, you know, rip a giant hole in the ground to drop the vines into. And so we do see some compaction from that.

[00:15:06] We have taken bulk density cores from all over the vineyard. And we're hoping to see changes over time in that compaction. So we've done bulk density course from under vine and then in the tractor row. And so we're hoping that over time, these various practices will alter the bulk density, hopefully lower the bulk density in the tractor row.

[00:15:27] Craig Macmillan: And then I'm assuming that you're also keeping track of costs for these things.

[00:15:32] Devin Rippner: yes, we have been keeping track of costs. We are keeping track of the hourly labor , for mowing. Honestly, we've, we've purchased some undervine mowers and , we have really struggled to find a good solution for our young vines.

[00:15:45] We're going to, Purchase another one soon. The biggest thing is that if you have a swing arm on it, it's got to be gentle enough that it, it'll push out of the way , with a bamboo stake in the ground.

[00:15:55] And a lot of the existing swing arm mowers for orchards and vineyards it takes a lot of force to move that swing arm.

[00:16:03] It's been a real challenge for us. So, so we ended up having people go out with weed eaters, which is super expensive and is actually something that some vineyards do either biodynamic vineyards in the area that they'll send people out with weed eaters to go control the weeds under vine.

[00:16:17] I don't want this to be just like a hyper specialized science experiment. If we're sending people out with weed eaters, it sounds a little bit ridiculous, but there are folks in the industry that do it. So it's not. It's not that ridiculous.

[00:16:28] Craig Macmillan: It's not that ridiculous. It's legitimate.

[00:16:31] Whatever tool that you can make work, depending on the size of your vineyard and depending on what your conditions are. But yeah, you're in row mode. That's going to be an issue until these vines are mature to no doubt about that. I hope you still have a vineyard after knocking down these bamboo stakes.

[00:16:44] You don't have like real results yet. You've only just gotten started.

[00:16:47] Devin Rippner: We've only just gotten started you know, some of the results that we got were prior to our planting, there were no differences among our treatment blocks for our treatments across the site. So that's nice kind of starting at a, a pretty even baseline.

[00:17:03] We're going to track the changes over time. Honestly. I hate to speculate, we don't have the data for it yet, but we've been applying, our synthetic fertilizers based on our like compost mineralization rate. And one of the things that's pretty obvious when you walk out there is that weed competition is brutal for young vines.

[00:17:23] So where we're spraying with herbicide under the vines, there's less weed competition. Those vines are just bigger.,

[00:17:28] we're going to up the amount of fertilizer that we apply next year to try to, like, get around that. And it's one of the challenges at our site is that for long term research, we have to manage our vineyard in a way that kind of limits how many comparisons that we can make. Functionally, two out of our three rows are buffers. It just eats up an enormous amount of space and I'm, I'm hesitant to start putting other treatments into those areas. Like, oh, what if we vary the fertilizer rate to see what the effect is with relation to mowing, right?

[00:18:01] So can we get over the weed pressure by, Applying more fertilizer. One of my main takeaways is that a lot of the recommendations that you might get for like, for conventional management won't necessarily work if you're trying to change your system

[00:18:16] That's where, you know, growers are going to have to play around and understand that if they're mowing under vine, there is going to be more weed pressure and those weeds take up nitrogen.

[00:18:27] You may have to fertilize more. I mean, that, that's just a consequence of, of weed competition.

[00:18:32] Craig Macmillan: yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. And in irrigation water too,

[00:18:37] Devin Rippner: Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. They use a lot of water. There's no doubt about it.

[00:18:42] Craig Macmillan: Which actually brings me back to the clover. I planted crimson clover in my yard once and I irrigated it and it was really pretty and I actually put two and a half foot, three foot high risers off of my lawn sprinklers to get a sprinkler high enough that I could keep growing it. And I was able to grow it up to about three feet tall and it was gorgeous. It was absolutely amazing. But it does make me wonder if, what's a subterranean clover? It's a low growing clover, but how much effect does irrigation have on it in terms of making it taller or taller?

[00:19:13] Devin Rippner: That's a good question. I haven't looked into it that much. I consulted with some colleagues here. Who've done work with a variety of cover crops, and they were the ones that recommended the subterranean clover. It has a short stature and part of it is because of how it flowers and seeds, it can't get that tall because it's, it pushes its seeds into the ground.

[00:19:32] And so there's no real benefit for it getting taller because then it will be farther away from where it needs to put its seeds.

[00:19:39] That's a real concern. I mean, I've learned so much by , having a vineyard gophers, voles, rats, mice, they can be problematic. Right. And if you have a tall cover crop, that's getting into your vines, like that's an easy pathway up.

[00:19:52] Keeping the, those undervine weeds and cover crops short is really important.

[00:19:58] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. It's also really important for the success of your predators.

[00:20:01] Your barn nows and whatnot. They can't really do much when things are tall. So keep going, keep good luck. You're in it. You're in it now, Devon,

[00:20:09] Devin Rippner: Oh, yeah. No, that's what it feels like. I feel like I jumped into the deep end of a pool, but didn't realize it was so deep. And so, yeah, I'm learning.

[00:20:17] Craig Macmillan: Because prior to a few years back, cause you were, you were at Davis and you were at the Oakville station. Is that right? For a little while.

[00:20:24] Devin Rippner: I pulled some samples from Oakville, but no, I was mostly on main campus. I'm a soil chemist by training. Grapevines are relatively new for me. I worked for Andrew McElrone, who , does some great work a lot of my previous work did not involve grapes, and it was mainly, like, tomatoes or other annual crops, and often, like, pretty lab based stuff.

[00:20:47] And so this has been a real deep dive for me to do something different.

[00:20:53] Craig Macmillan: which is an excellent transition to some of your work which you did at other crops, but you also did some other interesting things related to vines and to soil. And that is x ray CT imagery. You were the first person to introduce me to this concept. I I had no idea I guess I should say X ray micro CT imagery. What, what are the exact terminology? What is it? What can it do? What can we learn?

[00:21:20] Devin Rippner: Thanks for bringing this up. Let me just try to keep it simple and I'll build out from there. Just like a doctor's office where you can get an X ray you can actually X ray soils. And plants and look inside of them. X ray computed tomography is where instead of just taking one x ray, maybe you take 1000 x rays as the sample is slowly moving. And what you end up with is the ability to make a three D reconstruction of that sample. Where you're able to look inside of it.

[00:21:50] Materials that absorb x rays look different than materials that don't absorb x rays. And so you're able to start Teasing apart structures that are inside of plants and soils

[00:22:01] There's different levels to that. Humans have X ray computed tomography done on them, right? You can go in and have that procedure done to look inside of you. It's very much like an MRI there are some tools that it. look at very big volumes. And then there are some tools that look at very small volumes.

[00:22:19] That's where there's the x ray microcomputed tomography is looking at very small volumes. And a lot of times those instruments they're low often located. With synchrotrons. So a synchrotron is a particle accelerator that moves electrons at about the speed of light. And then as they're going at the speed of light, , it bends them, it shifts the path of the electrons.

[00:22:43] And in doing so , Theory of relativity says that when you have a big shift , in the direction of these electrons they must lose energy. And so they lose energy as the brightest light that we know of in the known universe. And so some of that light are x rays and those x rays are very tunable, and there's a lot of them.

[00:23:03] And so we can basically focus on a really tiny area. And still have a lot of x rays. That lets us look at really small things and still have like good contrast and be able to image them relatively quickly. This field is advancing quickly. I know it sounds pretty crazy to talk about x raying soils and plants and things like that.

[00:23:23] But the reality is these x rays can also be used to identify elements. And so you can do elemental speciation. So you can be like, Oh, all of the phosphorus there is as phosphate rather than some other form or it's calcium phosphate, not magnesium phosphate. That's called x ray adsorption, near edge structures.

[00:23:42] That's how people do that. A long time ago, these instruments used to be unique. You do like a tomography and then you do like these Zains do elemental information, but those things are converging. Now it's possible to do like x ray CT and also do elemental analysis and speciation on the same sample.

[00:24:01] in 100 years, that may be how we do our soil testing is you literally have one of these instruments on the back of a tractor. You pull a soil core. You do a quick scan and you say, here's our structure. We can also see the organic matter inside of the soil column. And then by inference from the outer edge of the soil column, we can get What elements are there and what form they're in and then make predictions on their availability.

[00:24:27] Were very far from that, but that's like the vision that I have in my head is that at some point, , these will be sensors that people can just use in the field. Will they use an enormous amount of energy? Absolutely. Technology has, shifted in my lifetime and a lot of things that have seemed absurd in the past are now commonplace.

[00:24:47] Craig Macmillan: What kinds of things, and it can be other crops as well, but in particular, there was one you did with, I think, grape seeds. Those are the things that can do what, what have you actually. Zapped

[00:24:59] Devin Rippner: Yeah.

[00:24:59] Craig Macmillan: a better word.

[00:25:01] Devin Rippner: You know.

[00:25:01] Craig Macmillan: mind here. Okay. So

[00:25:03] Devin Rippner: Yeah. So I work with a lot of folks at different national labs. So the Pacific Northwest National Lab is a lab I work at a lot. And we've done a lot of imaging of soil cores and they're big soil cores. So three inches by 12 inch soil cores and to look at soil structure and we're working on segmenting out organic matter from them.

[00:25:22] That's something that was not previously possible, but with modern neural networks and deep learning, we can actually train. Neural networks to identify specific compounds in the soil and identify them. We've done it with soil columns. I've done some work with soil aggregates.

[00:25:38] So we can look at very small things as well. I've looked at grape seeds, so we had a little study where working with some folks at Davis they pulled out grape seeds, before, during and after fermentation, functionally, and we looked at how the structures of the seeds were changing.

[00:25:58] The idea here is that grapeseeds provide a lot of tannins and they're not necessarily like the best tannins for wine, but they do provide a lot of tannins.

[00:26:07] People have always wondered like, why do grapeseeds kind of supply a constant amount of tannins during the fermentation process? And as it turns out, it's because the structure of the seeds is changing during fermentation,

[00:26:18] They start cracking. And so the internal structures become more accessible during fermentation.

[00:26:23] And so that's what we were seeing using x ray tomography is these internal changes that were happening inside of the grape seeds that could potentially promote tannin extraction.

[00:26:32] Craig Macmillan: That is fascinating. That explains a lot. I'm just thinking through, Tannin management. The date currently is in the beginning of November 2024. So we're just wrapping up a harvest here in the Paso Robles, central coast area. And so I've been thinking a lot about tannin management last couple of months on behalf of my friends who make wine, not myself. That's not entirely true. Is there a practical application to that in terms of like timing or conditions or things that would contribute to the, the cracking breakdown of these seeds that you identified?

[00:27:05] Devin Rippner: We weren't able to go like that in depth and it's some, it's an area that I would like to build on. But the idea is that. The fermentation is a pretty harsh environment. You have a massive change in pH. Microbes are working hard. You have the production of ethanol, which allows the extraction of different compounds.

[00:27:24] The seeds are seemingly being modified during fermentation. There needs to be more work done in this area in terms of seed tanning management. We now have kind of a, the more physical. Explanation for why those cannons are coming out of the seeds.

[00:27:39] If you are able to pull your seeds earlier from fermentation, I mean, that's like a ridiculous thing to say, but you know,

[00:27:45] Craig Macmillan: no, I mean, winemakers are very clever there's a lot of techniques that have become more prominent, I think, in the last 10, 15 years in terms of things like pressing off early, so getting your extraction fast and then finishing out the fermentation off of skins, off of seeds, you know, that's one way that you can do it really using seed maturity as a major variable in your pick decision is another one that I've seen people really draw to.

[00:28:09] I remember people crunching on seeds and going, yeah, that's mature. Now I'm seeing people reject a pick date based on that.

[00:28:17] Like we were going to wait for these seeds to mature fully before we pull because of, because of these issues with a seed tannin. So just knowing that I think is fascinating.

[00:28:28] And if we can put some time and pH things on that, that would be really cool. Are you going to be using this technology with the with the research plot for anything?

[00:28:36] Devin Rippner: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, we

[00:28:39] already have started that. We've already started down that route. Shortly after planting we collected soil cores from, , the vine row. And then from where the, the planter tires were functionally running just to look at changes in bulk density. So like kind of how compressed the soil is and then trying to get at changes in porosity.

[00:28:58] We looked at these cores relative to , a field next door. That has had very relatively little disturbance in the past, like 4 to 10 years. It's kind of variable but has had less disturbance than say, like, right after planting a vineyard mechanically. Some of the things we see are you know, when you mechanically plant a vineyard, the bulk density , in the vine row is much lower than where the tractor tires are running that intrinsically makes sense.

[00:29:26] And they're kind of both different than a place that's been no till or low disturbance for four to 10 years. Some of the things that are most interesting, and, and again, this is preliminary, it's got to go through peer review. . But when we look at the CT scans, you can actually see where worms have been moving,

[00:29:45] In these, like, low till and no till plots or this field that has just not really been disturbed.

[00:29:51] , so worms are actually making sizable holes in the ground, and those holes contribute to the porosity in these, like, low disturbance soils compared to these very disturbed soils. And that was a really interesting thing to visually see. You can see the worm castings in the scan.

[00:30:10] I don't know if you've ever seen worm castings before, but they kind of, they're these little, like, kind of football shaped Things that are all clumped together our soils don't really aggregate.

[00:30:20] We don't have enough organic matter and we don't have enough clay. And so that's like driving force behind aggregation in our soil seemingly is worm castings. For me, that was just mind blowing.

[00:30:31] I was not expecting to see that. I think I was expecting to see a lot of roots or like root channels and they're there, but the worms are like following these roots and root channels around.

[00:30:41] I'm a very visual person. And so when I do CT stuff, it's like, Oh, wow. Like I can see it with my eyes. If I can't see it with my eyes, it's hard for me to believe. But when I see it with my eyes, , it's believable.

[00:30:52] Craig Macmillan: We've done a number of interviews recently around so the microbiome and just soil biology kind of in general, , is that gonna be part of your analysis as some of these projects go forward?

[00:31:03] Devin Rippner: Yeah, absolutely. So we've done something called phospholipid fatty acid analysis.

[00:31:09] So that gives us an idea of kind of, The microbial consortium that's there right when we sample phospholipids don't really stick around in soils. They're quickly degraded. We would like to do some sequencing challenges. We don't have a microbiologist on the team. And, and so we would, we would have to pay for the sequencing.

[00:31:28] And even then sequencing is really interesting because, you could be like, oh, we did say 16 S-R-R-N-A sequencing. And that's like, that's a particular like region or a particular type of sequencing that is, that only picks up on say bacteria.

[00:31:47] Whereas if you want to see fungi, maybe you need to do something called ITS sequencing. And so unless you do like all of the sequencing, you can get an idea of what's happening to the bacterial communities or the fungal communities. But unless you do all of them, it's really hard to get a more holistic picture.

[00:32:05] And then, a lot of the sequencing that we do or is done we're missing things. If the regions analyzed aren't big enough, like we can be blind to specific things that we know are there. And so things like my understanding is that fungal mycorrhizae can actually be hard to detect by sequencing.

[00:32:21] And so even if you visually see them in the roots by staining, you may not pick them up by sequencing. It is a challenge. Now, I, you know, I think that certainly studying the microbiome and understanding its relationship , with vine performance and soil health is, is crucial and is really, you know, one of the things that it's kind of the Holy grail

[00:32:41] Craig Macmillan: Yeah.

[00:32:43] Devin Rippner: We're trying to get there.

[00:32:44] Craig Macmillan: We're trying to get there. That is definitely the message, but it also, there's definitely the potential. I think that there's a lot of people working on this. I think we're going to get there. It's, genomics is so big. I've talked to people that are like, at some point we, we, we will probably be able to get down to species, so we will know the bad actors from the good actors, we'll get a sense of what the real ecology is.

[00:33:05] That's a decade plus away still, but we're going there. Right? We're we're gonna figure it out. We're gonna figure it out at some point. We're gonna get there.

[00:33:14] Devin Rippner: Yeah, I agree. And there's, there are some techniques. There's some really cool techniques. So Jennifer Petridge at Lawrence Livermore lab does a lot Carbon 13 labeling of root exudates. So she basically gives plants, she treats them with carbon 13, enriched CO2. And then she looks at how much of the carbon 13 is then incorporated into the DNA of microbes to try to get at how well associated they are with plants.

[00:33:41] I think that work is just incredible. And there's some folks at Davis that are, are working that in that area as well. That's kind of the stuff that gets me really excited to seeing when people are trying to really tie it into what's feeding on root carbon, , who's getting these exudates, things like that.

[00:33:59] , that to me is one of the, One of the ways that we'll be able to, like, get at these questions is to, to start differentiating, the bulk soil microbiome from like the, the real rhizosphere associated microbiome.

[00:34:11] Craig Macmillan: so you got a lot going on. You got , you got a bunch of different things happening. What's the path ahead look like for you?

[00:34:17] Devin Rippner: Sure. So, and with with the soil health vineyard. I mean, I'm very excited to keep that going. We'll do another large sampling event in 2027 or 2028. We'll start making wine from our grapes. Not next year, but the year after that. So we'll be excited to see how our different management strategies influence our wine.

[00:34:40] The wines that come out of the vineyard, or the wines made, made from the grapes that come out of the vineyard. So those are some of the things , I'm most excited about with regard to the vineyard.

[00:34:50] Otherwise, I have a lot of data that I need to process and get out. That's something that's next.

[00:34:56] I, I'm collaborating with some folks from the University of Illinois in Berkeley lab to look at changes to the Moro plots in Illinois over time. So that's the oldest agricultural experiment in the United States. The plots there have been in experimental treatments for 149 years.

[00:35:15] And the reason I'm involved is because vineyards can be very long lived things, right? I mean, there are vines in California 100 years old.

[00:35:23] This is one of the few experiments to me that's like comparable to what we see in vineyards. And so I'm really curious about, you know, how do, how do management practices influence soil structure, microbiome, the metagenome, the metabolome, things like that, on these century long timelines.

[00:35:43] That to me is like some of the really interesting questions. If you have a vineyard for, for a century, or if you want a vineyard for a century, what do you need to do? How do you make that work? Knowing that it's going to take 20 years to have your vineyard be profitable.

[00:35:57] I mean, you're already on a different timescale than annual crops, right? yeah. And so it's just like, how, how do we make our, our vineyards as sustainable and long lived as possible? Because , that, that initial investment is huge. It is so much money.

[00:36:13] Craig Macmillan: I think that's really great. I think coming up with findings on other crops, but with practices that could be transferable is really great. You know, we don't need to be in our little grape silo. All the time. And in fact some of the soil microbiome stuff have been with interviews with people that had no connection to vineyards whatsoever. And it was great. The things that they were learning, they were absolutely transferable to this crop as well. That hasn't gotten that kind of attention. Grapevines are tough little suckers, really from an evolutionary standpoint, they're pretty rugged and so we can kind of get away with a lot just because of that.

[00:36:48] And now I think the margin for error is less and less, especially when we get into tougher and tougher sites like you're talking about and different conditions, especially if you've farmed it for a while and things have changed. Being able to look at other, other systems and see what's there.

[00:37:03] What is one thing that you would tell growers around this topic of research?

[00:37:09] Devin Rippner: vineyard is very informed by grower practices. We have a grower board that like helps us make decisions. A message that I will say is like science is science and science is often pretty, you know, Like straight laced and rigid because it must be. know, We're going to find things and those results hopefully will be interesting.

[00:37:27] But it's not the be all and end all . of science and research. Growers continuing to try innovative things push the boundaries of what they think is possible is really how we get progress. And I am hopeful , once this vineyard is more established to start going back out and working with growers.

[00:37:48] When I first started in Prosser, I sampled from probably 40 different vineyards around the state just to get an idea of what the soil properties were like. And we've done some, some experiments with that. Some of our results are that permanganate oxidize oxidizable carbon. So this POC C classically it's been called active carbon.

[00:38:08] There's some new research that suggests that it's, that's maybe a misnomer and it's really, often plant derived carbon.

[00:38:15] It seems like there are some effects from that, that suppress disease. And I think that , that's an area where growers can really kind of play around and see if there's , waste from their vineyard and applying it to their vines trying to look at what that does to their, POC C values and also try, just getting in trying to look at some of the past issues that those vines may have and see if there's any decreases.

[00:38:41] A lot of observational science is really important. I like hearing from growers that, yeah, I did this thing and it looks like it made a difference. There's a lot of value in that and, and I don't discount like grower knowledge in any way, shape, or form. Like it is deep knowledge growers know things that I don't, and I find that out all the time.

[00:39:02] I value those observations. They they give me guidance on how I want to do my work. And we do try to incorporate that stuff into the soil health vineyard. Over time we are going to have to figure out like, You know, can we sustain funding for a vineyard for, say, 50 years if all we're doing is like a cover crop, some compost, and then a mix?

[00:39:23] That seems like it's maybe not the most sustainable thing. Science requires that type of stuff, but it's just not that sustainable. So finding ways to make use of our, border rows and stuff like that is going to be important. And a lot of the research that we do is going to be informed by grower observations.

[00:39:39] Craig Macmillan: Yep. Yep. Exactly. Where can people find out more about you and your work?

[00:39:44] Devin Rippner: Sure. So you can look me up online. Devin Rippner a lot of stuff will pop up. There's a USDA website that has a listing of my publications and things like that. I also have a personal website. So those are some places to, to check out my work.

[00:40:00] I try to make sure that my stuff is open access and usable. So, like the deep learning code, the image segmentation code that I co developed for X ray ct work is now being applied to like other types of imaging on. So people are using it at hops and a variety of other things on.

[00:40:18] So that code is online. Like you can find it it's associated with my papers. You can play around with it and try it with your own stuff. Mhm. And, and, and that's a big thing for me is like open data. I, I love sharing a lot of the, the data that I have and the code that I have so that people can, repeat what I did.

[00:40:35] Look me up online and yeah, you'll be, you can find that, find those resources.

[00:40:40] Craig Macmillan: we will have links to a lot of that on the show page. So please visit the show page and check this stuff out. I was really happy to hear you use the word repeatability.

[00:40:49] Devin Rippner: Yeah,

[00:40:50] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. And I also was really, it's hard. it's very, very hard and it's often overlooked. You know, the, , the scientific methods we know today was all built around the idea of repeatability. That's how you demonstrate whether something's real, real, or if it's only real under certain conditions, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's really great. I'm glad you're doing that.

[00:41:08] Well, I want to thank you for being on the podcast. This is a Devin Rippner. He is a research soil scientist with USDA agricultural research service and an adjunct position with the crop and soil science department at Washington state university. Really fun conversation, Devin, lots to think about. I will be following this closely. Or annually, probably

[00:41:31] Devin Rippner: Cool.

[00:41:31] Yeah.

[00:41:32] Craig Macmillan: these things are slow. I'm not going to be checking every week. But I just think it's really cool project and is real inspiration. And I would love to see the same kind of thing replicated in other places.

[00:41:41] Devin Rippner: Great. Thanks Craig. That was really fun.

[00:41:43] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening.

[00:41:49] If you enjoyed this podcast, Vineyard Team has a couple of in field tailgate meetings coming up this year that you won't want to miss.

[00:41:56] The first is on February 20th in Paso Robles, and it is a dry farming grower around table. Now you don't need to be a dry farmer to enjoy this event. There'll be a number of different growers here talking about their experiences, trials, challenges, and successes.

[00:42:13] The second event is on March 12th, and it is Grazing as a Sustainable Practice for Vineyards, taking place in Los Olivos, and we hope to have some adorable sheep on site.

[00:42:24] Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Dev lots of research articles, plus, sustainable wine growing podcast episodes, 80. The Goldilocks principle and powdery mildew management, 90 nematode management for Washington grapes, plus a whole healthy soils playlist.

[00:42:42] Now for the fine print, the views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the speaker's own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of the USDA ARS. As such, the views, thoughts, and opinions. Presented by the speaker do not constitute an official endorsement or approval by the United States Department of Agriculture or the Agricultural Research Service of any product or service to the exclusion of others that may be suitable. The material and information presented here is for general information purposes only.

[00:43:14] If you liked this show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend, subscribing, and leaving us a review. You can find all of the podcasts at vineyardteam.org/podcast. And you can reach us at podcast@vineyardteam. org.

[00:43:28] Until next time, this is Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team.

 

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[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: If one of your resolutions is to ramp up your sustainability messaging, let the SIP Certified Marketing Tips inspire you.

[00:00:07] Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know that customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, these monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.

[00:00:26] All year long, we'll be sharing actionable tips, relevant statistics, and inspiring stories from other sustainable wine brands so that you can become fluent in sustainability and learn how to share your message.

[00:00:38] There are two ways to get the marketing tips. Number one is to keep listening here to the Sustainable Wine Growing Podcast. The second is to get our monthly newsletter. Simply go to sipcertified. org and click stay up to date in the upper right hand corner.

[00:00:54] Each article comes with links and visuals so that you can really embrace the marketing tip.

[00:00:58] Now, if you're wondering what the hottest tips of 2024 were, we combined stats from our podcast downloads and webpage visits to bring you this list of the top five.

[00:01:09] number five is episode 230, sustainable and organic. What is the difference? If you've ever asked this same question, this article will show that there's a lot of overlap between the two programs. The beauty of sustainability is that it addresses all aspects of. The wine growing business from soil health to social equity.

[00:01:29] Number four is episode 228, Viticulture with a Vision, Oso Libre's Dedication to Social Responsibility. Oso Libre's founders, Chris and Linda Behr, started their Pour Vita Foundation in 2011 support causes that are near and dear to their hearts. By using funding streams for multiple winery activities, Oso Libre and their guests give back to these deserving causes too.

[00:01:52] In fact, last year they supported our Juan Navarez Memorial Scholarship, a program that helps children of vineyard and winery workers pay for higher education through one of their Angus events. You can read their short story on our website and also look for the 2025 issue of Grape and Wine magazine. titled Blending Wine and Philanthropy at Oso Libre, The Social Impact of Sustainable Wine. And here's another plug for checking out these articles on our website, sipcertified. org, so that you can link back to each of those stories. Number three is episode 236, Safely Keeping Birds at Bay, Presqu'ile Vineyard's Sustainable Story.

[00:02:31] Birds like finches and starlings are common vineyard pests. They damage fruit canopies and will even create nests in the vines. To protect their crop, vineyards typically use bird netting. While effective, netting comes with unsustainable downsides. They break down in the sun, installation and removal, requires a lot of labor, and they create waste over time, as nets must be replaced every few years.

[00:02:55] Presqu'ile knew there was a more sustainable way to handle their unwelcomed feathered visitors. So they're utilizing a new technology, a laser.

[00:03:03] Listen into this episode, or go to the show notes to find a link to read the article.

[00:03:07] Number two is episode 220, how to Talk Sip With Six Wine Consumer Segments. Every wine enthusiast has different preferences, behaviors, and levels of investment in their pursuit of great wine.

[00:03:20] Wine Intelligence identified six distinct consumer segments in the U. S. market. We saw this article and wondered, how can we tailor a message of sustainability to align with these differences?

[00:03:30] Learn how to tailor your own message when you read or listen in to this short episode.

[00:03:35] And the number one. Most popular marketing tip of 2024 was episode 240, stacking energy savings at Niner Wine Estates. Electricity use in the winery accounts for a large proportion of the end product's energy demand from keeping buildings and tanks at a proper temperature to powering equipment and lighting. Energy use in the winery adds up quickly.

[00:03:58] Niner Wine Estates anticipated and adapted to increased demand and cost. Their efforts have even earned the business two symbols of sustainability achievement, SIP certified and LEED certified silver level. want to know how they did it, out the show notes to read their sustainable story or look for episode

[00:04:17] If you are a listener on California's Central Coast, you do not want to miss Reciprocal February 2025. This month long event connects wine enthusiasts like you with sustainably minded brands through reciprocal club tastings all month long.

[00:04:33] If you are a member of a participating tasting room, you will receive two complimentary tastings at any other participating location. This is a great opportunity. to try new wines and learn how they practice sustainability. You can find a full list at sipcertified. org forward slash reciprocal 2025.

[00:04:54] Until next time, this is Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team.

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In the face of climate uncertainty, growers wonder which grape varieties will flourish in their regions in the future, or if any will grow there at all. Joel Harms, Ph.D. student in the Department of Bioresource Engineering at McGill University in Australia is using artificial intelligence to simulate the potential to grow pinot noire in different regions of the world that are currently considered too cool. The project mapped 1,300 varieties to 16 different points of climate data including temperature, precipitation, and growing degree days. The findings could play a crucial role in identifying the winegrowing regions of tomorrow.

Resources:        

• 207: Managing Catastrophic Loss in Vineyards: Lessons from Cyclone Gabrielle in New Zealand
• Cal-Adapt
• Development of a generative AI-based model for guiding grape variety selection under contemporary climate dynamics
• Generative AI for Climate-Adaptive Viticulture Development
• Joel Harms Google Scholar Page
• Mapping Global of the Potential for Pinot Noir Cultivation under Climate Uncertainty using Generative AI
• University of Adelaide Wine Economics Research Center

Vineyard Team Programs:

• Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate
• SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet  
• Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year
• Vineyard Team – Become a Member

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: In the face of climate uncertainty, growers wonder which grape varieties will flourish in their regions in the future, or if any, will grow there at all.

[00:00:13] Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, Executive Director.

[00:00:23] In today's podcast, Craig McMillan, Critical Resource Manager at Niner Wine Estates, with longtime SIP certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery. Speaks with Joel Harms, PhD student in the Department of Bioresource Engineering at McGill University in Australia.

[00:00:42] Joel is using artificial intelligence to simulate the potential to grow Pinot Noir in different regions of the world that are currently considered too cool.

[00:00:52] The project mapped 1, 300 varieties to 16 different points of climate data. including temperature, precipitation, and growing degree days. The findings could play a critical role in identifying the wine growing regions of tomorrow.

[00:01:07] Want to be more connected with the viticulture industry but don't know where to start? Become a member of the Vineyard Team. Get access to the latest science based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both infield and online education so that you can grow your business. Visit vineyardteam. org and choose grower or business to join the community today. Now let's listen in.

[00:01:34] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Joel Harms. He's a PhD student in the Department of Bioresources Engineering at McGill University. And today we're going to talk about mapping global future potential for Pinot Noir cultivation under climate uncertainty using generative AI.

[00:01:51] Bye. Bye. This is a really interesting topic. I came across an abstract from a recent ASEV meeting and I was like, I just have to know more about this. This just sounds too interesting. But welcome to the podcast, Joel.

[00:02:04] Joel Harms: Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

[00:02:06] Craig Macmillan: What got you interested in this topic in terms of this wine grape region? Stuff.

[00:02:12] Joel Harms: I think it was more about I wanted to build models that are useful, I guess, broadly useful in vineyard management and like establishing new vineyards and like kind of covering some of the base problems. Initially, my thought was, how can we. see which grape varieties are alike.

[00:02:32] How can we like make a representation of them in like a latent space. But then I found out , if I do that, that's, you know, somewhat useful, but if I take that just a step further, I could just connect it with climate data already. And then we would have a model that could, be used for prediction and it would be so I guess. How do I say like broad or general enough so that you could apply it in any environment. So like any climate can be used to predict any grape suitability matrix, which is quite nice. And so then I thought, no, let's do it. Let's try that.

[00:03:11] Craig Macmillan: So your colleagues and yourself did some simulations, as we just mentioned specifically around Pinot Noir and the potential to grow it in different parts of the world that currently are considered too cool. Tell us exactly how you went about this.

[00:03:25] Joel Harms: The abstract is kind of a case study on one application of, These models that we built. So we built very general grape variety recommender systems based on climate. And so we wanted to show a cool application globally. This can be applied to find regions that will be too hot in the future.

[00:03:43] So we built the AI models first starting from looking at where grapes are grown and tying that together with what climate is there regionally. Unfortunately, you know, we can't use like very precise climate data because we don't have the exact location of each grape variety in each region.

[00:04:02] Craig Macmillan: hmm. Yep.

[00:04:03] Joel Harms: Yeah. So therefore, we use larger climate data. So like at 50 kilometer resolution, which is still helpful to, I think, gather overall trends, not so much, you know, to plan an individual vineyard probably, but just to see like in which areas maybe there would be. in the future interesting vineyard sites.

[00:04:23] Just like kind of as like a pre guidance sort of model. And then we, tested it. We tried to validate this model and then we presented a first case study with Pinot Noir because we were presenting in Oregon at the ASEV conference. So I figured, you know, might as well do Pinot Noir if we're already in Oregon.

[00:04:43] Craig Macmillan: Can you explain to me the artificial intelligence piece of this? I mean, you hear about it and you know, kind of what different types of AI do. I don't think a lot of people realize that, you know, that's a very general concept and people have designed particular tools for particular reasons.

[00:05:01] So, in this case, what exactly was the AI component? What's inside the box, basically? How does it work?

[00:05:07] Joel Harms: First off, I guess to explain for listeners , cause AI does get thrown around a lot and it's hard to know what that actually means. So when we're talking about AI, it's usually we're tying some sort of input data to some sort of output data. And we're teaching a very complicated mathematical function to map one to the other.

[00:05:25] So like kind of a correlation. But it's not a simple correlation. That's why we need these models and that's why they're pretty fancy.

[00:05:31] So in our case, we're using an AI that was inspired from the community of medical science, where similar models were used to connect, for example, the ECG measurements of a heart with like scans of the heart.

[00:05:50] And then Trying to tie both of those datas together and to reconstruct them again to see if, like, you could find correlations between those and maybe if one of them is missing, you could, , predict what it would look like. And so, since this is a very similar problem, , and we have similar input data in the sense of, we have grapes, which grapes are grown where, and we have what is the climate there, roughly.

[00:06:13] So we can tie that together and try to connect both of those types of data and then get an output of both of those types of data so that we can go from grapes to climate and climate to grapes in the same model. So we have these , you could say like four models. that are tied together at the center. So input grapes, input climate, then in the center where they get tied together and then output grapes, output climate. And so we train it to, reconstruct it from this combined space where we like, Scrunch it down, which is what the autoencoder does.

[00:06:48] Craig Macmillan: So if, if I understand correctly, what we're talking about is , we know that we have the data and we know where wine grapes are grown, different types for different climates. Then we have the climate data in terms of how things may change over time. And then we're creating a prediction of. How those climates change, and then translate that into what we already know about wine grapes.

[00:07:09] Joel Harms: Sort of. Yeah. But in our model for training, we just use the existing ones. So historical climate data and historical grape variety data. Once we have that model trained, we just apply it for new climates that come from like other climate models. So we don't do the climate modeling ourselves, but we extract that information and feed that into it and get the grape varieties output.

[00:07:31] Craig Macmillan: So you look specifically, at least reported on areas that currently are considered too cold for growing a high quality pinot noir or growing wine grapes in general. What did you find out? What Parts of the world might be the new leading Pinot Noir regions.

[00:07:46] Joel Harms: . So that depends a little bit on the exact scenario and how much the climate is supposed to warm. We have like two scenarios is what we looked at. We looked at a 8. 5 scenario and a 2. 6 scenario and going by the 8. 5 scenario, some of the regions that are improving are for example, Western China. And also Southern California, actually, and Quebec, , like Southern California is in Santa Barbara. I guess that's technically Central Coast,

[00:08:17] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, well, that's interesting There's a lot of Pinot Noir in Santa Barbara County in the in the coastal zones Any other regions that popped up?

[00:08:26] Joel Harms: Yeah, a lot of Australia seems to be doing better and like Northern France,

[00:08:31] Craig Macmillan: Yeah pushing it to the north. Did England pop up?

[00:08:35] Joel Harms: England, yes, but England seems to like stay the same in compared to historical. So not like as if it's improving, at least like from this, like rough map that we made. What we want to do is do it a bit more finely. The, this prediction, because we currently just used regions where wine is already grown, but then try to like interpolate just for calculation efficiency. Outward. So like our maps are created not only by the model itself, because that would be too calculation intensive. So for the, for the sake of simplicity, we did it like this, but we're still writing the final paper. So, you know, don't invest just yet, wait a little bit and then,

[00:09:17] Craig Macmillan: I was gonna bring that up. Where should I put my money?

[00:09:19] Joel Harms: Exactly. So don't do that yet. Wait for the final paper and then we will double check everything over. Oh yeah. Arkansas was one that was improving too. Very interestingly. Yeah.

[00:09:28] Craig Macmillan: I was kind of surprised because having talked to guests, many guests from, you know, New York, from Texas, from people who consult in the Southwest Northern California, which can get quite warm. What we've talked about is the question of it getting too hot to grow quality wine grapes.

[00:09:49] You know, wine grapes will grow to tolerate quite high temperatures. So, for instance, the San Joaquin Valley in California, produces a lot of wine grapes. They're not considered to be very high quality compared to coastal zones. So the vines do great and produce good crops and all of that. So there's concern that areas that have been kind of in the sweet spot, kind of in the, we call it the Goldilocks phenomenon where climate, soil, time, everything just all kind of fits together.

[00:10:12] It sounds like this idea would be applicable to predicting what areas might become too warm for high quality wine

[00:10:19] Joel Harms: Yes. Yes. It's definitely the case. Yes. And in our maps. You can see both at the same time because it sees like relative change, positive, relative change to, to negative. Some areas that look like they're not going to do so well in the future or less good in the future, even though they're like really good right now is like Oregon, unfortunately.

[00:10:39] And the Azores or Northern Spain, even in Eastern Europe, a lot of areas. Seem to be warming up like in Romania at the coast. Not necessarily just the warming up part, but also because we consider 16 different climate variables, it could be the warming up part, but it could also be, you know, like the precipitation changing things like that, you know.

[00:10:59] Craig Macmillan: You said 16 variables, we talked, you got temperature, you got precipitation, what, what are some of the others?

[00:11:04] Joel Harms: Yeah, we got the growing degree days, the winter index, we got the Huggins index, we have radiation. Diurnal temperature range, the annual average temperature, for the precipitation, we have it like a three different scales, in the harvest month over the growing season and also throughout the whole year same for the temperature. And then we have the, growing indexes

[00:11:26] Craig Macmillan: do you have plans to do this kind of thing again? Or publish additional papers from the work you've already done, because I think, it sounds like you've got a lot of interesting findings,

[00:11:35] Joel Harms: Oh yeah. Yeah. The results only came in like right before the conference. We're still analyzing everything, writing everything. So the first thing that's coming up is a paper just on , how did we build the model and like all the validations and does it make sense with like expert classifications of how experts classify suitability for grapevines and things like that in the past to see if. That lines up as it should yeah, and then after that we'll publish some of these predictions and what we can learn from these and more detailed than how we did it right now where, most of it's like interpolated because we couldn't predict for every location, so like we predicted for some locations and interpolated. Just for computational efficiency, I guess, but you know, we're, we're getting there. Unfortunately, academia is quite you know, a slow profession. takes a lot of time.

[00:12:24] Craig Macmillan: Yes, yes it does. And then getting it published takes a lot of time with reviews and whatnot. And so I just want to put a time stamp on this. This is being recorded in October of 2024. So, Give it some months, at least several, several, several, several. But it's exciting. This stuff's coming out. It'll be in, be in the literature. That's really, really great.

[00:12:43] Joel Harms: And soon what we're trying to do is also release like a tool or something that, you know, where people can input their location and we can, our climate data, like call out the climate data and see what, what some of the predictions would be. Yeah.

[00:12:57] Craig Macmillan: Oh, that's neat.

[00:12:59] Joel Harms: I might've done that for Niner Vineyards just now to see, to see what, what's a suitable there, but only the current ones.

[00:13:08] So I mean, it's kind of is exactly what you're growing.

[00:13:10] Craig Macmillan: Funny. You should mention that. There is a a website called CalAdapt that allows you to put in some ranges and some variables specific to your location, you put your location in, and then there's a number of different models that you can run. Some are very conservative, some are not in terms of what the predictions are for climate change globally.

[00:13:31] And then gives you a nice report on what the average temperature change might be in degrees Fahrenheit or Celsius also takes a stab at precipitation, although I talked to somebody who was connected to that and they said the precipitation is always kind of questionable. And also looks at things like heat waves, how many heat waves days over 100 or days over 95, you might expect because those can be quite fluctuating.

[00:13:55] damaging. Even, even though vines can tolerate heat, if they're not acclimated, getting these big stretches of over a hundred, for instance, can be kind of stressful. I did that and kind of looked at it myself and thought, huh, I wonder if we had better, more, um, detailed information, what that might look like.

[00:14:12] Another tool that was mentioned that you used was a deep coupled auto incoder networks. What are those?

[00:14:18] Joel Harms: So that was what I described earlier, like these component models , where we have a. The encoder and decoder part, the input part is the , encoder and the output part is the decoder. And in the middle of these we have a latent space and then the coupled part means that we're having multiple of these that share their latent space.

[00:14:38] So that's , where we're tying them together so that we can input either climate or grapes and get as outputs either climates or grapes. So it's like very, very flexible in that way and so I quite like that. And it turns out it does better than even some more traditional approaches where you just feed in climate and get out grapes like from a neural network or something like that.

[00:14:59] Just like a neural network, because we have technically like four neural networks and all of them have three layers. So that's three layers or more. And so that's what makes them deep.

[00:15:08] Craig Macmillan: Got it.

[00:15:09] Is this your primary work as a PhD student?

[00:15:13] Joel Harms: Well, as a PhD student, I'm still working on modeling. But not so much with grapevines, unfortunately. I'm looking at still climate models. How can we adapt for example, now we're looking more at the Caribbean. There's flooding issues. Particularly in Guyana. And so we're trying to, you know, help maybe the government to plan land use better in order to avoid, you know, critical areas being flooded, agricultural land being flooded and these type of things.

[00:15:41] So it's more looking at flooding modeling, there's definitely some overlap in that sort of work, it's definitely still like in the area of using data science to help decision making which is the overall theme of this work.

[00:15:55] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, and that was something that also came up in my little mini project was the potential for massive storms and also the potential for drought. Which, wasn't part of your work at this stage. Is that something that you would be able to find a way of including in your modeling that might give you some idea of how things might change?

[00:16:15] And it's specifically what I'm thinking of is Cyclone Gabriel, I believe it was called, Gabriella just devastated parts of New Zealand. And raised a lot of concern about how, you know, when we were in these coastal zones, we go, Oh, yes, it's mild. It's great. But we're right near the ocean.

[00:16:33] Right. And in October between 24, we've seen a very active hurricane season in the Caribbean and on the East coast and the Gulf. Do you think there's potential for this kind of thing to give us more of a heads up about what might be coming our way in terms of massive storm events? Cause that might affect how and what I do.

[00:16:52] Joel Harms: I guess this wouldn't depend really on the grape variety itself. That would be more like a citing issue, right? Like where do you plant?

[00:16:58] That's what we're looking at now with the like flooding mapping if there is a storm, where does the water collect? Which roads are cut off? Or, I mean, I guess in the case of vineyards, you could look at like, what would be the likely damage would there be now saltwater maybe even if you're depending on where you are. That's definitely something to look at.

[00:17:17] All you need is sufficient, like past data points. So you can calibrate your models and then. You know, look at different future scenarios and what will be important to for the future is to look at what's kind of the certainty of these predictions, right? Like, what are your error margins? What's your confidence interval?

[00:17:33] Because that might drastically alter your decisions. If it says, oh, it's probably not going to be too bad, but you're very uncertain about that, then you're probably going to take some more precautions than, you know, not because usually now we have A lot of models where their prediction is very, like is deterministic.

[00:17:50] So they say, this is how it will be. And it's hard to tell where, you know, where those margins are of error, which is something to look at in the future for sure.

[00:18:01] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, that is a challenge in the the model that I did for a Paso Robles vineyard Precipitation didn't really change very much which I was surprised by so it wasn't gonna become like a drought area completely but the potential ranged from five inches of rain a year to 60 inches of rain a year, which is why I was asking about these massive storms.

[00:18:21] Maybe our averages, continuous to what we have now, but it may be a bunch of craziness year to year around that. And I think that is interesting and useful to know. So you prepare for it.

[00:18:34] Joel Harms: that's something people are looking at, I think cause you can use some models to calculate sort of new climate indices. To see like from daily data train, like new climate indices to see these big storm events and things like that, and maybe incorporate that. That could help, , maybe with that sort of analysis of where even if it's the same average, the index is different because it measures something else.

[00:18:59] Yes, I wouldn't know what they're called, but yes, I believe this already exists and is being improved. .

[00:19:05] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. Yeah. With your experience so far, what do you see? Because everybody's talking about this. It's like the future in a world of artificial intelligence and this and that. In this particular area where you're, you're tying one set of variables to climate variables and also to historical weather.

[00:19:23] In the big picture, beyond just wine grapes, but in the big picture, any topic, where do you see this kind of work going? You touched on it a little bit, when you close your eyes and open your mind what does the future look like? What, kind of tools are we going to have and what kind of things are we going to be able to find out?

[00:19:38] Joel Harms: Yeah, that's interesting. I think it, it really depends on the data we have available and it looks like we'll have more and more data available.

[00:19:47] So better disease models, location specific disease models to plan spray schedules better and things like that, they seem to be coming. I think I've seen parts of that already from some companies rolling out.

[00:20:00] It's all about kind of the creatively using the data that you have available, because a lot of like my data, for example, that I used for this. This isn't necessarily new data, right? This comes from the University of Adelaide who collects where, which grape varieties are grown all over the world.

[00:20:17] And then just historical, climate data. It's not very new, but just to put these together in a meaningful way with AI, that's going to be the challenge. And then also to test, is this reliable or not? Because you could theoretically predict almost anything, but then you need to check, is it just correlation?

[00:20:39] Am I taking all the important variables into account? And we're developing AI very, very fast. But maybe we need to spend a bit more time, you know, trying to validate it, trying to see how robust it is, which is a major challenge, especially with these complicated models, because, I heard about this example.

[00:20:57] Where in the past, for some self driving cars, their AI that recognized stop signs could be tricked if there was a sticker on the stop sign, and it would ignore the stop sign. Even though there's not a big difference, but you can't test for, you know, all of these cases, what might happen. And that's kind of the same for, , what we are doing.

[00:21:17] So improving the testing, that would be, I think, a major A major goal to make sure it's robust and reliable or that it tells you how, how certain it is, you know, then at least you can deal with it, you know, and not just make a decision off of that. Yeah,

[00:21:29] Craig Macmillan: Yeah. What the level of uncertainty is. That's always the getcha.

[00:21:33] Joel Harms: yes,

[00:21:34] Craig Macmillan: That's always the hard part. If you had one thing that you would tell growers on this topic, what would it be? Mm

[00:21:43] Joel Harms: Specifically for my models, it would be to take the current results with a grain of salt. And then to sort of use this to, narrow down like a selection of grapes and to still run tests and things like that. Cause it's regional data, right? It's not going to tell you exactly what you should grow in your location.

[00:22:02] Cause it's, you know, the weather data is based on four to 50 kilometers around you. You know, that's where we're like assembling the data from.

[00:22:10] Craig Macmillan: that a 50 kilometer quadrant?

[00:22:12] Joel Harms: yes. Yeah.

[00:22:13] Craig Macmillan: Yep. Okay. Gotcha.

[00:22:14] Joel Harms: Yes, exactly. So this tool is mainly used or useful if you use it to like pre select some varieties so you can see what might be good, you know, and then decide for yourself what you want.

[00:22:27] The take home message is like, it's not supposed to take away grape growing experts and things like that, or replace them in any way, but it's supposed to like support it because. There's so many grape varieties and if climate regions or like regions where we're growing grapes are changing, where the climate is changing, we want to get the best choice.

[00:22:47] And so we should probably look at all of them, all of our available options and see what we can do. It will narrow it down for you. And then, you know, you'll still have to see what works exactly for you. What wine do you want to produce? I mean, it doesn't take that into account, right? It just gives you what probably would grow well here.

[00:23:03] Craig Macmillan: .

[00:23:03] Yeah, then I think that there's going to be a future also in bringing in some either hybrid varieties or varieties that are not terribly well known. I've talked to people from Texas and from Michigan Pennsylvania, where the traditional vinifera only varieties don't do pretty well. Terribly well, often because of cold hardiness because of cold winters, they don't handle it, but there's hybrids that do great and make interesting wine.

[00:23:27] And I think that would be an interesting thing to include in a model or if it came out kind of like the winner was something we don't normally

[00:23:33] Joel Harms: Right. Usually we have a lot of hybrids in this because we have 1, 300 varieties.

[00:23:39] Craig Macmillan: wow. Oh, I didn't realize that.

[00:23:41] Joel Harms: so I think we have most of the. commercially used grape varieties, like in all aspects.

[00:23:48] Craig Macmillan: yeah, probably, probably.

[00:23:49] Joel Harms: Yeah. So it's quite, quite far ranging. We only excluded some where it was never more than 1 percent of any region, because then like our model couldn't really learn what this grape variety needs.

[00:24:00] Right. Because it's like too small, even in the largest region where it we cut those out. So, cause else we would have 1700. But then like the 1300 that actually get used commercially at a significant scale. Those we have. The model is actually built like we have a suitability index.

[00:24:18] But we're still trying to, , fine adjust so that we can rank not just what's popular and like how much will grow. Cause then you'll always get, you know, the top, the top 10 will look very similar for any region. But then through the suitability index, we actually get a lot of these smaller varieties that would fit very well also ranked in the top 10 or in the top 50 of varieties.

[00:24:41] Craig Macmillan: They've mentioned fine tuning the model at this point. Is this particular project or this particular model, is this gonna continue on into the future? It sounds you have ideas for improvements. Is this number one gonna continue on into the future and is there gonna come a point when This will be available for the industry, industries internationally to do their own trials.

[00:25:03] Joel Harms: Yes, I think so. So I think when we're publishing the paper latest at that point, we'll have the tool set up where people can try it out, put in, in their location. And I guess we're publishing the methodology. So you could build like a version of this yourself. It's not too crazy. Probably code will be published too.

[00:25:24] So, you know, you could build this yourself if you wanted to, or you could just use the models we have trained already. Okay. And just apply them to your case. That's what the tool is for. . Right now it's like all code based. So like, it's not, not so easy where you just, drop your pin, like where you're at and then it gives you some predictions, , that's what we're aiming for.

[00:25:44] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. So our guest today has been Joel Harms. He is a PhD student in the Department of Bioresource Engineering at McGill. University. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. This is really fascinating. I'm really looking forward to how this work progresses. And I think it's very eyeopening for us.

[00:26:01] Again, you know, one of the things I thought was fascinating is I've had all these conversations about areas that would no longer be suitable, but a flip on it and say, well, areas that might be suitable in the future. I hadn't thought of that.

[00:26:12] Joel Harms: Why not? You

[00:26:13] Craig Macmillan: why not? You know, that's, that's, that's a very interesting question, and it applies to other crops as well.

[00:26:18] I just had never really thought about it like that. You know, maybe you can grow oranges in Iowa at some point.

[00:26:23] Joel Harms: That, that would be nice. I guess.

[00:26:25] Craig Macmillan: maybe

[00:26:26] Joel Harms: maybe see.

[00:26:28] Craig Macmillan: we'll see. We'll see. You never know. Anyway, Joel, thanks for being on the podcast. I appreciate it.

[00:26:33] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Today's podcast was brought to you by Cal West Rain. Since 1989, Cal West Rain has served growers on California's Central Coast and the San Joaquin Valley. As a locally owned, full line irrigation and pump company, they offer design and construction experience in all types of low volume irrigation systems, whether they're for vines, trees, or row crops.

[00:27:03] In addition, CalWestRain offers a full range of pumps and pump services, plus expertise in automation systems, filtration systems, electrical service, maintenance and repairs, equipment rental, and a fully stocked parts department. Learn more at CalWestRain. com.

[00:27:23] Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Joel, his research articles, plus sustainable wine growing podcast episode 207. Managing Catastrophic Loss in Vineyards, Lessons from Cyclone Gabriel in New Zealand. If you liked this show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend, subscribing, and leaving us a review.

[00:27:44] You can find all of the podcasts at vineyardteam.org/podcast, and you can reach us at podcast at vineyardteam.org. Until next time, this is Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team.

 

Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

In the wine industry, it is difficult to plant to demand. At the time of this recording in December 2024, the industry finds itself in a state of oversupply. Audra Cooper Director of Grape Brokerage and Eddie Urman, Central Coast Grape Broker at Turrentine Brokerage discuss the challenges ag faces from a lighter crop to regulatory restrictions to inflation. To remain viable, they stress the importance of farming a quality product that can be made into good wine and sold profitably to continue to support all aspects of the industry.

Resources:        

• 185: Why You Need to Talk About Sustainability
• 221: Future Proof Your Wine Business with Omnichannel Communication
• Turrentine Brokerage
• Turrentine Brokerage - Newsletter
• United States Department of Agriculture Grape Cruse Report

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• Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate
• SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet  
• Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year
• Vineyard Team – Become a Member

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Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.  

Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: In the wine industry, it is difficult to plant to consumer demand. At the time of this recording, in December 2024, the industry finds itself in a state of oversupply. Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry.

[00:00:23] I'm Beth Vukmanic, Executive Director at Vineyard Team. And in today's podcast, Craig Macmillan, Critical Resource Manager at Niner Wine Estates, with longtime SIP certified Vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery, speaks with Audra Cooper, Director of Grape Brokerage, and Eddie Urman, Central Coast Grape Broker. At Turrentine Brokerage,

[00:00:45] They discuss the challenges ag faced in 2024 from a lighter crop to regulatory restrictions, to inflation, to remain viable. They stress the importance of farming a quality product that could be made into good wine and sold profitably to continue to support all aspects of the industry.

[00:01:04] Do you want to be more connected with the viticulture industry, but don't know where to start? Become a Vineyard Team member. Get access to the latest science based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both infield and online education so that you can grow your business. Visit vineyardteam.org To become a member today.

[00:01:25] Now let's listen in.

[00:01:31] Craig Macmillan: Our guests today are Audra Cooper and Eddie Urman. Audra is director of grape brokerage with Turrentine brokerage. And Eddie is a grape broker for the central coast, also with Turrentine. Thanks for being on the podcast.

[00:01:42] Audra Cooper: Thank you for having us. We're excited.

[00:01:44] Eddie Urman: yeah, thanks for having us, Craig.

[00:01:46] Craig Macmillan: What exactly is a wine and grape brokerage?

[00:01:49] Audra Cooper: It's a really fancy term for matchmaking and finding homes for supply. Whether that's through growers having fruit available and needing to sell in a specific year or finding multi year contracts, or that's bulk wine that has been made in excess or maybe a call for a winery needing to find a way of A pressure release valve.

[00:02:11] Craig Macmillan: And so you match buyers with sellers, basically.

[00:02:13] Audra Cooper: Exactly.

[00:02:14] Craig Macmillan: On both sides of the fence. Both the wine and the grape side. Do you have specialists for the grape side? Specialists for the wine side?

[00:02:21] Audra Cooper: We do. , you're talking to our newest hire on the grape side, Eddie, who's going to be focused on the Central Coast. We also have Mike Needham in the Central Valley on grapes. Christian Clare in the North Coast specializing in Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino on grapes. And then we have three bulk wine brokers, Mark Cuneo, William Goebel, and Steve Robertson.

[00:02:40] Craig Macmillan: Your world is very dependent on the marketplace. Obviously, that's what you do. You're brokers. The simple model of quote unquote the market. I think for most people is that you have a consumer who buys wine, wineries make wine, and they sell it to those people who buy it. Vineyards grow grapes up to wineries.

[00:02:57] So if there's more demand from consumers, that means there's , more grapes in demand, there's more wine in demand, and there should be higher prices. Or the opposite. That's probably really oversimplified given the unique nature of the wine industry, because , it's not a widget, you know, I don't make a widget, sell it, then go, Ooh, I can make more widgets.

[00:03:16] So because of the nature of the business things are on much larger timeframes, right? Audra,

[00:03:23] Audra Cooper: They are. I mean, agriculture by nature is, a little bit more of a, what we call an on ramp and off ramp. There's kind of that distance from the time that something is needed versus the time it can be produced. And in the wine industry, it's really difficult to plant to demand. And oftentimes we miss the boat regards to meeting demand with our current supply needs.

[00:03:44] So it's really difficult to not only predict, but figure out where consumption is going. And you talked about kind of the simplicity of it and it is true. You can kind of look at the macro market in a very simplistic way, but the reality is in particularly with California, it's very segmented. From value tier up to premium to ultra premium to luxury, and all of those different tiers have different timelines, and some of them converge at moments, depending upon whether there were oversupplied or undersupplied, . So yeah, it can get really complicated and very, very multifaceted.

[00:04:18] Craig Macmillan: What's your comment on that, Eddie?

[00:04:21] Eddie Urman: Well, I think Audra summed it up pretty well, but yeah, it's a very complex integration of all these things, and planting grapes oftentimes, like Audra said, we tend to overdo it. And we then tend to overdo pushing them out. And it's just kind of a cyclical thing through history where we go from undersupply to oversupply. And right now we're obviously in a pretty large state of oversupply.

[00:04:44] Craig Macmillan: Over supply in terms of grapes?

[00:04:46] Eddie Urman: Correct

[00:04:47] Audra Cooper: and bulk wine.

[00:04:48] Craig Macmillan: And bulk wine

[00:04:49] what are the kinds of things that are going to lead to a market correction there? Are people going to have to pull out vines? Are they going to have to say, Well, I was planning to sell this wine for 20 bucks a gallon, now I'm going to sell it for 10.

[00:05:00] What are some of the dynamics that are going to happen during this time?

[00:05:04] Eddie Urman: Well, I think the third rung is consumption, right? Unfortunately the trend over the last two years is consumption is going down in general. And we don't see any signs of it at this time. That's showing it's necessarily going up. We're optimistic and hopeful that it will. And we look forward to seeing the data after the holiday season, but that rung is going to be really important.

[00:05:25] The other part is still supply. So pushing vineyards. And we are seeing a lot of people push vineyards. There's no clear number yet of what's been pushed or what will be pushed, but it does seem like there's a lot of parties that will be either ceasing to farm or will be removing vineyards.

[00:05:41] Craig Macmillan: This is for either of you to pick up. Are there particular segments where we're seeing this more than in others? Premium versus luxury example.

[00:05:48] Audra Cooper: The removal seemed to be really heavily weighted towards the Valley specifically, more of the value tier, because that's our largest volume by far. So we see a lot of removals, particularly in the South Valley that really started to occur even before we felt really oversupplied, and then it started to move north from there, pushed into the Central Coast and even to some degree the North Coast as well.

[00:06:10] So you're seeing removals throughout the state of California, and you could even argue that you've seen removals in the Pacific Northwest as well, there's been an oversupply position there, particularly in Washington, and the only two areas that we don't see that dynamic is perhaps Texas to a degree, as well as Oregon.

[00:06:27] But there again, they're starting to feel oversupplied as well. They're kind of on the back end of this

[00:06:31] the Central Valley is the furthest ahead. And so we may actually see a little bit of a slowdown in removals. They're coming up after the 26th vintage. However, it remains to be seen. I mean, water , constrictions and regulations are going to play a huge factor in that as well, as it will be in the central coast in the near future.

[00:06:48] Craig Macmillan: Are there alternate or other crops that may go in, into place instead of grapes?

[00:06:53] Audra Cooper: Unfortunately, right now, there's not a good answer for that. In the past, you'd say yes. And there were several alternative crops, particularly in the valley and the central coast, especially when you think of Santa Barbara and Monterey County. Paso Robles is in a little bit of a different position without, you know, a true crop to turn over to. But all of agriculture in California is struggling and has been really affected in the last 24 months,

[00:07:16] Craig Macmillan: why the last 24 months, do you think?

[00:07:18] Audra Cooper: you know, that's a good question. Part of it is kind of weather patterns in regards to some larger crops and oversupply consumers have certainly had some. Tighter budgets in a lot of respects to the economy. Inflation has played a huge role in that. When we talk about the wine industry, the wine industry is not a necessity as far as the goods. There is certainly a movement towards, you know, what they call no amount of alcohol is healthy for any individual of drinking age. So that certainly has affected our industry, but it's also affected other crops as well and other, other beverages, specifically alcohol.

[00:07:53] Craig Macmillan: Eddie, in the Central Coast, what, what have you been seeing?

[00:07:56] Eddie Urman: As far as vendor removals or as

[00:07:57] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, as far as vineyard removals, things like that.

[00:08:01] Eddie Urman: I mean, there are a large number of vineyards that are being pushed out. It's substantial both in Monterey County in Paso Robles, there's parties we're talking to that are also talking about pushing. This upcoming year and not replanting for a year or two. Some are potentially considering alternate other options where they can. But to segue on that, unfortunately it is exceedingly difficult right now to go to any other crop. Cause none of them are necessarily performing super well.

[00:08:28] Craig Macmillan: Right. One thing that I'm kind of surprised by based on what you said, Audra, was that we're having the most removal in that value segment where we have the most supply. It would seem to me that if demand out there in the marketplace and folks don't have a lot of money, it seems like there'd be more demand for those value products.

[00:08:48] Like, I would think that the contraction would be at the higher level, the expensive level, as opposed to the lower price level. Is there a mechanism there that I'm missing?

[00:08:56] Audra Cooper: I think there's not necessarily a mechanism per se. I think there's a layer of complication there that doesn't make it a simple apples to apples position in regards to where consumers are spending their money. A lot of consumers who are brought by, you know, ultra premium to luxury, they may have not been as affected in a relative sense by the economy and inflation is someone who is perhaps playing in more of that value tier.

[00:09:21] Okay. Whether it was bag in a box, larger liter, whatever it may have been, you know, that tier that's 12.99 and below had already started to see some impacts during pre immunization. And that was from 2012 until about 2020. And then it's just been really wonky since 2020 in our industry and really difficult to read the tea leaves and as far as where things were going. And I think a lot of the new plantings that we did, In 2011 through 2016 really came online in the central valley as well. So it just, it was almost a perfect storm, unfortunately, for the value tier. But that's not to say that these other tiers haven't been impacted as well, just to a lesser degree.

[00:10:01] Craig Macmillan: Right, exactly. Is this also true on the bulk wine side, Audra?

[00:10:04] Audra Cooper: Oh, certainly. I think anytime that you look at our industry, the bulk wine market actually leads the trend in regards to the direction we're going. So anytime we start to see multiple vintages, Or one vintage really start to increase in volume and availability in all likelihood. We're about 12 months, maybe eight behind the market with grapes.

[00:10:25] So bulk will start to kind of slow down, stack up on inventory. Prices will start to drop. We'll still be doing just fine on grapes. We'll get multi year contracts. Prices are at least sustainable, if not profitable. And then suddenly we'll start to see the same trend on grapes.

[00:10:39] Craig Macmillan: How many, or, and Eddie might be able to answer this for the Central Coast. How many folks on the grape side are having wines made from their grapes? Like under contract strictly for bulk. I've got a hundred tons of Sauvignon Blanc unsold. That's a lot, but unsold. I'm going to go ahead and take my chances on the bulk market.

[00:11:00] Eddie Urman: you're saying Specking it.

[00:11:01] So yeah, crushing it and specking it on the bulk market. Surely there are parties that did that, but I would say there is definitely a lot less parties that did that this year. In 2024 specifically. multiple reasons. One, specifically in Paso Robles, the crop was quite light which increased some late demand for some Cabernet specifically.

[00:11:22] Sauvignon Blanc was one of the other varieties that was , in demand because of how light it was. Monterey in Santa Barbara County, it seems like there were parties that decided to just leave grapes on the vine. even in internal vineyards for companies that produce their own wine rather than turn it into bulk. And Audra, please add anything if you feel.

[00:11:43] Audra Cooper: I think from a specific standpoint, you know, that was a great way of answering that. I think one of the things to keep in mind is I, I know that we should definitely be mindful of educating and being informative in a general sense, right? The rule of thumb when you're a grape grower and you're trying to sell fruit is if it is difficult to sell as grapes, It will typically be exponentially more difficult to sell as bulk wine.

[00:12:07] And so taking that position as a way of bringing profit back , to your vineyard, nine times out of 10 is not going to work out. And that one time is technically a lightning strike and it's extraordinarily difficult to predict that

[00:12:20] Craig Macmillan: So not a lot of folks wouldn't be wise to do that for a lot of folks.

[00:12:23] Audra Cooper: generally. No, I mean, I think most growers, particularly independent growers do not have the wherewithal or the risk adversity to be able to play the bulk market in any significant way. Okay. Mm

[00:12:37] Craig Macmillan: Well, let's talk about wineries playing the bulk market. I've got extra stuff. Now, if it's all internal, if I'm growing my own grapes and turning them into my products, it sounds like I would want to maybe leave things on the vine, or just simply not put my investment into producing those wines. Where do bulk wines come from if they're not coming from spec grower spec operations, if they're coming from wineries in particular?

[00:13:01] Things that are cut out for quality, things that are cut out for volume

[00:13:04] Audra Cooper: Yeah, a multitude of reasons. I mean, the wineries typically use the bulk wine market as what I had alluded to earlier, which is a pressure release valve, right? When they are short or they are long, they're looking to the bulk market, whether that's to buy or sell. Now, that's certainly not every single winery that does that. Particularly some boutique operations, or even a lot of the DTCs would prefer not to play on the bulk wine market, but at times dabble in it.

[00:13:27] Another reason to go to the bulk wine market as a buyer is to start a program. If you've gotten, you know, interest from a retailer, for example, for, you know, a control label that's an easy way to research whether or not it is an economic profitable project for your winery, as well as whether or not you can actually find the varietal. And the volume needed for that project.

[00:13:49] So there is a multitude of reasons for the bulk wine market to essentially exist and be utilized. But the traditional model is to sell excess on the bulk wine market to someone else who actually needs it. The challenge right now is, we hit about 29 million gallons of actively listed bulk wine for California back in April or June, and that number really didn't decrease until recently. It's the highest inventory that we'd ever seen going into harvest, and when we have those dynamics, that bulk wine market's utilization becomes a little bit, shall I say, sludgy, in the sense of, Most everyone's trying to sell they're not trying to buy.

[00:14:29] Craig Macmillan: Eddie, do you have anything to add?

[00:14:30] Eddie Urman: no, I think Audra summed it up pretty good. I mean, you asked, how does it end up on the bulk market? I don't think at this point, there's a ton of players that are planning to put it on the bulk market per Audra's point, but wineries are in their best faith trying to secure the amount of fruit they need to then make wine. That they have a home for IE sale, you know, some sort of sales, but as we've seen contraction in sales, unfortunately for some parties, they're forced to make decisions to put it on the bulk market. That'd be correct. Audra.

[00:14:59] Audra Cooper: be a correct way of saying it. And also to have to remember, we're essentially making wine for the future when we're harvesting fruit, right and putting it in tank. And so it's really difficult to predict exactly how much 2024 someone's actually going to be able to put out on the shelf and ship. So I think that's the other element to is, by their model , what they purchased and what they received now, of course, 24 is going to be a poor example of that with how light the crop was, but in general, they're buying for what they predict to be their demand and needs

[00:15:30] and in all reality, when it's bottled. Packaged and shipped out, those numbers may look dramatically different. Hence the reason why it's going to end up on the bulk market. If it in fact is already in excess. There are some negotiants that may actually in some years where they think the market's pretty good and they can be profitable, we'll go out and spec, but that kind of business model is few and far between compared to say 15 years ago,

[00:15:54] Craig Macmillan: Interesting and that kind of leads us to where we are now. You've already touched on it a little bit. We just finished, this is November of 2024, we're just wrapping up the harvest in California. Obviously it's a crystal ball thing, but basically, at the moment, how are we looking? It sounds like we had a light harvest. I'm going to ask you about that. A light harvest. And it sounds like that was pretty much true throughout the coast of California. Is that right?

[00:16:20] Audra Cooper: generally, yes, there were regions and AVAs that did better than others. For example, parts of the North Coast with the exception of Sonoma and Napa, so Mendocino Lake and Sassoon, they were not as light as, say, Paso Robles on Paso Robles Cabernet or Sauvignon Blanc, but they were still below expectations in most cases. There's just certain areas that were impacted further. far more and may actually be at historical low yields. And I'll let Eddie touch upon kind of his experience specifically in Paso, because I think it's one of the more impacted regions in California.

[00:16:55] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Eddie.

[00:16:56] Eddie Urman: Yeah. I think kind of extrapolate on what Audra was speaking to. Paso Robles was exceptionally light last year. I think, you know, our numbers are fluctuating and we'll, we'll see what was actually processed, but potentially 50 percent down from the five year average on Paso cab. And potentially one of the lightest crops we've seen in, potentially 20 years, or at least for sure in my career. Luckily 2024 for Paso was light. And because of that, there were people trying to secure extra cab and South Blanc towards the end of harvest. Unfortunately to, to Audra's point, the rest of the state wasn't as light in other areas. It's going to be pretty interesting to see how it all unfolds because it's probably more regional.

[00:17:39] Craig Macmillan: And so we're saying fortunately light because the longterm impact would be that we will have less wine going into an already crowded marketplace.

[00:17:50] Eddie Urman: But we also came off 2023, which was probably historically one of the largest crops we've ever seen in the state. So if we would have had a crop like that back to back, that would have been devastating.

[00:18:01] Audra Cooper: Yeah, man, that's, that's so very true. And I think it's really important too, to hit upon, you know, the late season purchasing and the run that we saw on grapes. specifically in Paso for Cabernet and to some degree Sauvignon Blanc as well. But I'm going to really kind of lean towards Cab and even some of the red blenders. A lot of that was replacement demand. So it was demand that had been met by a current contract, but because the crop was so extraordinarily light, It had to be made up for somewhere. So there was a need for the fruit that was contracted, but if we didn't have that dynamic with available grapes, we probably would have had grapes left on the vine.

[00:18:38] And we did to some degree, but just far less than what was predicted in 2024.

[00:18:44] Craig Macmillan: This reminds me also of the, the concept of volatility. How volatile is the bulk wine grape grape market? We talked about these long time frames, which means your price changes you would think would be slow. Is, is there a lot of jumping around just in the course of a calendar year?

[00:18:59] Audra Cooper: Yes and no. It really depends on the year. I would certainly say that in very light years we will see more volatility on price. Then in years where it's way oversupplied, or we have a large crop that creates more stability, good or bad, with a heavier crop. But it's not as volatile as maybe some other markets that people are trying to, you know, short on, for example, with the Wall Street guys. It's not quite like that either. So there is a little bit more stability built into it.

[00:19:27] I think the challenge Happens often is a lot of people build their business models off of the district averages and the district averages don't show as much volatility as the, you know, yearly spot market does.

[00:19:40] And unfortunately, it used to be a rule of thumb that about 10 percent of California supply was on the spot market every single year. Now I think that's closer to probably 30 something percent. I mean, it's really jumped in the last few years.

[00:19:54] We have to remember our industry has been in a really interesting and an unfortunate position of retracting over the last couple of years with consumer demand declining, with the economic impacts with inflation, with lack of, you know, operating loans being readily available like they were.

[00:20:10] I mean, things have changed pretty dramatically. I have a strong belief. I won't even say hope because hope's not a strategy. I have a strong belief that, you know, as we go through some of these challenges, We'll essentially build back and we'll get to a healthier position. And I do think that some of the worst things are some of the bigger pain points we either, recently have gone through and are over with or that we're in currently. So I don't think it's going to get much worse, but it remains to be seen. That one's a hard one to kind of figure out. But my, my thought is that with the lighter crop, it's certainly going to help the bulk wine market, not stack up, you know, a large fifth vintage, cause we have currently five vintages stacked. Stacked on top of each other in bulk wine market, which again, is the most amount of vintages I've seen in the 18 years I've been doing this. And that does show, you know, we met with a client yesterday and they said, our industry is sick. And I think that's actually a really great way of putting it. We're we're kind of in a sick position and we just need to figure out how to get to a healthier spot.

[00:21:10] Craig Macmillan: five vintages stacked up that, so we're talking, there's like 2019 that are still in the market. Then

[00:21:16] Audra Cooper: There is a little tiny bit of 2019, there's a tiny bit of 2020, and then you get into 21, 22, 23, and then the 24s are starting to come on.

[00:21:25] Craig Macmillan: is there a home for something that's that old, even

[00:21:30] 2020,

[00:21:31] Audra Cooper: I mean, 2022 is about the oldest vintage back that I would say, in all likelihood, there's a reasonable wine based home, and even that's starting to get a little bit long in the tooth when we talk about 21 and 2020. Forget about 2019, that should have gone somewhere at some point long ago. Those vintages in all likelihood, again, they're smaller amounts, I think they're less than 100, 000 gallons each.

[00:21:57] They're gonna have to go somewhere, whether it's destroyed or they go to DM.

[00:22:01] Craig Macmillan: right? What's DM.

[00:22:03] Audra Cooper: Distilled materials.

[00:22:04] Craig Macmillan: There we go. Perfect.

[00:22:06] Eddie, if you were advising a grape growing, what is your view? Looking ahead, what's your crystal ball say as far as removals, planting, varietal changes, clone changes, rootstock changes, anything like that?

[00:22:20] Eddie Urman: Yeah, well we get that question a lot and it's pretty difficult to answer. At this point, you know, growers should really be considering which blocks they should be farming. They should be strongly considering pushing out blocks that are older or have no chance at receiving a price sustainably farm it. economically. And as far as planting goes right now, it's all over the board. It depends on the region, you know, where you're at within the central coast. That's which is my region specifically. And even then it's pretty hard to justify to somebody right now. It's a good time to plant.

[00:22:56] That's

[00:22:57] Craig Macmillan: that does make sense, I am thinking about other interviews that I've done with, with plant, plant pathology. Where it seems like everything is going to someplace bad in a hand basket because vines are dying. Do I replant that? You would think that diseases, like trunk disease, for instance, would alleviate some of this.

[00:23:15] Vines would need to come out of production. Do you see that kind of thing happening? Do you think people are picking not just older, but maybe damaged or diseased or infested vineyards, taking those out of production and then not replanting those?

[00:23:27] Eddie Urman: Yeah, they definitely are. The, difficult thing with vineyards compared to certain other crops is the fixed costs that go into installing a vineyard, which has gone up drastically in the last 15 years. So it's really difficult for a grower to push a vineyard you know, spend $2,000 an acre to push a vineyard or whatever it may be, and then decide, okay, we're just going to replant next year and spend 45, 000 or 40, 000. On reinstalling a vineyard. It's, it's a lot of money. Especially if it's on spec and, and honestly, sometimes it can't even get financing to do it.

[00:23:59] So unfortunately, a lot of these players will need to say, we'll try to stick it out and say, okay, what if we just weather the storm one more year, the eternal optimist, the eternal optimist. View. I think we're finally starting to see that some people are, are making some tough decisions and it's, it's sad to see, but it's what needs to happen as far as pushing some of these vineyards that are diseased or too old to be productive.

[00:24:20] Audra Cooper: I think he did a, you know, a service to everyone by talking about that, because the older plantings for as long as people had to hold on to them you know, we, talk a lot about, you know, oh, the 1990s plantings and they need to go away. Well, that's really easy to say it's a little more difficult to do, particularly again, if you're an independent grower. Relatively small, maybe your 20 acres, you know, the likelihood of you being able to get a planting contract and or getting financing to redevelop is slim to none. So you're going to hold on as long as you can. And that really has kind of added to the bottom line of supply as well. We have a lot of acreage that is finally starting to get removed that should have been removed years ago.

[00:25:01] Craig Macmillan: And again, thinking in like classical high school economic terms It seems like grape prices have been going up, at least on Paso and some of those kind of more luxury areas. Is that true? Or is there a real cap on price compared to what it could have been? Or are we in decline? What, what's, what's happening right now?

[00:25:24] Ha

[00:25:24] Audra Cooper: I think that's actually a very loaded question in some respects because

[00:25:30] Craig Macmillan: yeah, it

[00:25:31] Audra Cooper: It's highly dependent on what we're talking about, right? If we're talking about Westside and we're talking about some of the Rhone Whites that are now in vogue, yeah, their pricing has started to increase even in spite of the market, right? Because they are in demand, but they're more of a niche market as well. They're not part of the macro market. Whereas you look at Paso Cab, The district average was starting to kind of climb back up again, but if you look at the spot market, it has declined dramatically over the last two years. And I think we're in our third decline now, as far as per year per vintage you look at, for example, Monterey County, Pinot, and I think you can easily make the argument prices dramatically decreased over the last several years. You know, it had a great run post sideways and unfortunately we way over planted and we planted it in a time where there was a lot of virus material that unfortunately got put into the ground and then we oversaturated the market on the shelves as well from a national distribution standpoint, if you want to talk about maybe some cool climate, Sarah, yeah, pricing continues to go up, but they're again, very nichey. So I guess the long winded thing is macro sense. Prices have been on the decline. Niche, it depends on what it is and where it is.

[00:26:46] Craig Macmillan: And I, I got this from you, Audra, from another interview you did. What is the difference between a light harvest and a short harvest? And the reason I ask this is because it, on the wine side, talking to people, it's like, Oh, it's going to be a short harvest, coming up short. As in, I don't have enough.

[00:27:02] I'm coming up short. It's like, I don't have dollar bills in my pocket. That's totally different than having not a lot of grapes.

[00:27:09] Audra Cooper: Yeah, I mean, from a market perspective in which we operate, those two words have very different definitions. Light to me is regarding your yield per acre, your production. It's a light year. We're below average thresholds. Short on the other hand is more of an economic demand supply term that we utilize when The actual crop being delivered falls short of the actual demand. And that's a little bit tricky this year because a lot of people were saying the crop is short. Well, it was in only some cases. For example, Sauvignon Blanc, specifically in Paso, it was short. There's, I don't think there's really any arguing that. Paso Cab, I think it depends on what winery and which grower you are. There were growers who were sold out and fully contracted that were not able to meet their contracts and their wineries would have taken every single time they could have delivered. That's a short situation. Now, on the other hand, I've got some other stuff that say is like a 1997 planting that, you know, didn't have a whole lot of demand. They were light in their crop yield, but they were not short in their supply.

[00:28:18] Craig Macmillan: What are things that growers in particular can do to set themselves apart in the marketplace? You mentioned niche, we've mentioned county average pricing, wherever you would like to be selling their grapes for more than that. And they do. What are things that people can do to kind of set themselves apart? Eddie.

[00:28:35] Eddie Urman: That's a great question. It's a very difficult question. I think I'll start on the other end of the spectrum. You hear somewhat frequently people talk about minimal farming, or can they do just to get you by this year, get you into the next year what we've discussed with multiple people and what my belief is, unfortunately, if you decide to minimally farm or do the absolute bare minimum, you're boxing yourself into a area of the market. Where there's no chance you're gonna get a price that's really gonna even break even. I think most parties would agree to that. The best thing for our industry, and specifically Paso Robles, the Central Coast, is we need to continue to deliver quality products that, you know, a winery can make into good wine and sell at a good price. Right. So we need to continue to improve on our farming techniques, improve on our utilization of the resources we have to provide that product and reach a sustainable point of price to where vineyards can sustain, growers can continue to stay in business, and wineries can then take that product and sell it in a bottle profitably at a store or restaurant or whatever it may be.

[00:29:45] So I kind of danced around your question, but my personal opinion is, if you want to be in this business and you want to create a product, you know, create a grape that people want to buy, you have to put the money into it to farm it. It sounds easy to say it's extremely difficult for the people making these decisions right now.

[00:30:03] Craig Macmillan: You may have to spend a little money.

[00:30:05] Audra Cooper: you definitely do. I mean, I think, Anytime that you slow down on what you spend, unfortunately you start to decrease your marketability. And that is so difficult in years like this, where as a broker, you watch someone cut their budget and their spending in half and you immediately notice, I can't sell your fruit. And that's a difficult thing because you can't necessarily guarantee that you can sell their fruit either. So how do you justify someone spending, you know, their normal budget?

[00:30:37] One of the things that growers specifically can do is they can identify their value proposition. And for many, it's going to be unique, and some of them are going to have similarities. Part of that is, and I'm probably going to get myself in trouble a little bit here, the old kind of lead with, you know, I've gotten these gold medals for the wine that I produced off of my vineyard at these, you know, county fairs or this competition. Unfortunately, they just don't count anymore with marketing winemakers that are, you know, new on the scene, or perhaps with a new corporation, or, Somebody who's been through kind of the ropes, these things don't have any weight anymore.

[00:31:17] But what does have weight is understanding what your buyer's needs are and how your vineyard actually fits those needs. So really understanding, where you fit into the market. Not everyone's going to have the best grapes in the region. And that's okay because maybe that is already oversaturated.

[00:31:34] Maybe you need to hit a middle tier winery that's selling at 15. 99 and you know that you can be sustainable at $1,500 because this is your budget XYZ and it fits. You know, you don't necessarily have to be the 3, 000 or 4, 000 guy on the west side in Adelaide or Willow Creek. That's not going to be for everybody.

[00:31:54] So really finding your position is really important and also what you provide to that buyer. And it's really simple, and I know it's actually probably very elementary to say, but what can you do to help make the people you work with at that winery make them look good? Because they'll also do that for you in return.

[00:32:11] Craig Macmillan: and specifically in your experience, especially to start with you Eddie are there particular practices management styles, management philosophies that seem to be attractive to wineries that they're more likely to maybe buy from that grower?

[00:32:25] Eddie Urman: Yeah, I'll just probably give a little more detail here, but my experience comes mostly from larger scale farming. At the end of the day, I think the more you put into farming it appropriately, IE you know, good pruning techniques good cultural practices, whether they be shoot thinning leafing, depending on your trellis style wire moves second crop drop or, or green drop. Those are all things that, you know, wineries are going to think are a positive thing.

[00:32:54] Now, is it going to match every single program to Audra's point? And you don't always have to be the person selling $3,000 per ton cabernet. Some people can make just fine in those middle tiers.

[00:33:03] And we need those people too, because there's bottles that need to go on the shelves there. So if you can have an open, reasonable discussion with your winery and what their expectations are and what you can actually provide at a certain price point and yield I think that's really important place to start.

[00:33:18] Craig Macmillan: Audra?

[00:33:18] Audra Cooper: Yeah, I think there's a couple things. Again, this is very elementary, but say what you do and do what you say. Following through with your word and what your plan is, is very, very important and being very consistent with your practices and the end product that you try to provide. I mean, consistency in agriculture, particularly in growing wine grapes, is very difficult, but those who achieve it are the ones that typically don't have as much volatility in their ability to sell fruit. on, you know, a term contract, typically.

[00:33:46] I think the other thing, too, keeping in mind is managing personalities, too, and understanding, you know, who's the right fit for each other. I think that's really important, I think, from a practice's standpoint and I think this is becoming more and more commonly acceptable, but shoot thinning, when I first arrived in Paso even Monterey County, for that matter, is, was not very common.

[00:34:10] It's becoming more and more common, and I think it's actually very important. And Eddie has kind of reaffirmed and reassured me since he started with Turrentine Brokerage, and I kind of failed to remember my basics. Pruning is everything. And I think sometimes often more than not, you know, pruning actually kind of gets It's in my mind kind of degraded and, you know, people try to make up for things later on and we start with the right foundation, usually have some consistency.

[00:34:36] Craig Macmillan: So that's somewhere you may want to pay more attention and spend some more of your money there than in some other things.

[00:34:42] Audra Cooper: Well, and your plan starts there, right?

[00:34:43] So whatever you start with at pruning, that's your beginning plan. In all likelihood, you need to write that out.

[00:34:49] Eddie Urman: , be intentional with your pruning plan. From the time you start the season, you should have a plan. Okay. This is what we're going to target this year and you got to stick to it. .

[00:34:57] Craig Macmillan: What about, , certifications? There was a time not that long ago when going for whether it's SIP or organic we've got regenerative now a lot of folks looked at that and said, hey, this is going to help set me apart. This is going to help and with buyers, buyers are going to be interested in wanting these types of products.

[00:35:18] Have you seen that take place?

[00:35:20] Audra Cooper: Yeah, I have a really, really strong opinion on sustainable certification. And I'm sure a lot of our clientele is probably tired of me hitting this drum too loudly, but the reality is at one point, sustainable certification, regardless of which it is. Was a nice to have and the occasional request now. It's a it's a need to have must have

[00:35:39] if you are not sustainably certified you are cutting your marketability I wouldn't say in half but pretty close now a lot of our buyers are requiring it and even if they don't require it suddenly asking at the end of harvest Oh, did they have a certification? and then the answer is no well now you may be on the chopping block of we may not re sign that fruit because Our retailers are asking us, what are we doing in regards to, you know, our kind of our social impacts in our economic and our environmental impacts? And it may not be on the bottle per se, but it's in the conversation. And so to be able to provide that information to the end user is really important

[00:36:19] when it comes to the other certifications. Certainly organic is trending. It is trended off and on in our industry. Unfortunately, we don't see a big premium being paid for, for grapes that are organically certified with some exceptions.

[00:36:33] And so that's really hard, I think, from an industry to, to really grow in that manner. Regenerative is certainly another trend. I think we're on the beginning cusp of it, so I don't see it as, you know, impactful as sustainably certified on macro level. As I do sustainable. So it'll be interesting to see where that goes.

[00:36:53] I think organic those probably going to trend a little bit more in 26 and 27 just based on the players that are currently asking about it.

[00:37:01] Craig Macmillan: What do you have to add, Eddie?

[00:37:02] Eddie Urman: Yeah, I think Audra's absolutely right. We are in a state of excess or oversupply. So wineries are more intensely looking at. How can we differentiate one vineyard or one grower versus the next? And sustainability comes up in most conversations regarding that. So it's turning more from an option to more of a necessity.

[00:37:24] I think one thing that there's a trend for unfortunately too, or it can be unfortunately for some people, is they're herbicide free. So there are some people that are interested in herbicide free. It's not a certification,

[00:37:34] Craig Macmillan: Yeah, just simply as a practice. Yeah, I, agree with you. I'm hearing more and more about that all the time. And that's a, that's a big shift for a lot of growers. That's a very costly change to make. But you're absolutely right. That is a topic of conversation. That is definitely something that people are talking about in, in the broader world. There's a lot of news attention to that, especially around places like France and stuff, or that's going to be kind of a requirement probably in the future.

[00:38:01] Audra Cooper: I just want to add really quick. One of the challenges that we see is Oftentimes wineries will come to the market requesting these differentiation points, right, in regards to practices, and it's really difficult because when they come to the market, a lot of these processes and procedures needed to have already been put into place, right? They would have already had to be intended or implemented in the field. And so we're, again, almost a bridge behind in regards to what demand currently is and, and this particular trend. Especially when we talk about organic herbicide free. These are very intentional, time intensive planning processes that we've got to get ahead of.

[00:38:43] And I don't have a great answer because the market doesn't support a higher price per ton right now. And the reality is there are capital intensive changes in farming, but we're going to need to find a solution here soon because I do see this as a challenge in the market moving forward.

[00:38:59] Craig Macmillan: and I think there's some research that kind of bears that out even at the consumer level where if I'm presented with two products that are the same price and one has a desirable quality, whether it's a practice or certification or something like that, you would say, you know, Which one would you like?

[00:39:14] You say, well, I want the sustainable one. And then you ask the consumer, well, how much would you pay? And there's very little willingness to pay difference in some of these studies. In others, they show a meaningful amount, but a lot of them, a lot of the studies don't. And so I think we're kind of moving towards a standard operating procedure that's gonna be around these things and that's gonna raise costs and that's gonna be a real financial challenge for people, I agree.

[00:39:38] Eddie, what is one thing you would tell growers around this topic of the market and everything else?

[00:39:43] Eddie Urman: I think it was , the statement I made earlier is be intentional, like have a plan going into this year. We farmers tend to be optimistic and we tend to just think, okay, well, this year it's going to turn, you know, we've had a couple of bad years. It's going to get better this year. There's no guarantee that's going to take place this year. And we'd love to sit here and say it will. So make sure you have a plan that makes sense. And has a reasonable chance at having a positive outcome. If it's farming your 30 year old vineyard, 35 year old vineyard, that's for sure, only going to get three tons an acre or less on a best case scenario, no weather influences, no outside factors, no heat spells, and it's going to cost you 5, 000 an acre to farm it. You're not going to make your money back in most instances, unfortunately, not even break even.

[00:40:29] Craig Macmillan: Audra, what is one thing you would tell growers?

[00:40:31] Audra Cooper: That's a good question. And I think it's highly dependent on the grower and the clientele and where they are and what they have. I think that planning for your future is critical right now, not taking it year by year. And making changes in advance of needing to make changes is a huge one. Honestly, it's really getting sharp with your business pencil and in your business intention, your business plan. It's not just farming right now. I think you have to plan on how do you survive the current marketplace and how do you get to the other side? And unfortunately, it's not a cookie cutter plan for everyone. It's very customized and it's very specific.

[00:41:11] And the other thing that I mentioned earlier, really understanding your value proposition in the market. That is critical because I can't tell you the number of times I've had people And very wonderful, good growers who are very intelligent, but they were very misguided by whether it was, you know, a real estate agent or a consultant or just people surrounding who also had good intentions, but they weren't knowledgeable about the marketplace. And, you know, those growers either planted wrong, entered the market wrong, had to have high expectations built into their budget on the price per ton long term, all these things matter. And all these things really matter for success.

[00:41:48] Craig Macmillan: Where can people find out more about you two? Audra.

[00:41:51] Audra Cooper: Yeah you can go to our website, www. TurrentineBrokerage. You can of course call myself or Eddie or email us. You'll often see us up on, you know, a stage or in a room speaking on behalf of the marketplace. I've got something coming up soon in February as well. Yeah, there's, there's a multitude of ways of getting a hold of us.

[00:42:10] Probably our website's the easiest because it has all the information.

[00:42:13] Craig Macmillan: Fantastic. Well, thank you both for being on the podcast. Really interesting conversation. lot to think about. A lot to think about. Intentional farming, I think that's one of the key things we're taking away here is what's your intention. And that's not always such an easy thing to decide upon. You know, it's tough.

[00:42:31] Audra Cooper: It is tough. We thank you and we appreciate it. It was a pleasure talking with you as well.

[00:42:36] Eddie Urman: yeah, thank you very much, Craig.

[00:42:37] Craig Macmillan: You bet. So our guest today, Audra Cooper, she is director of grape brokerage and Eddie Urman, who is central coast grape broker for Turentine brokerage. Thank you both for coming out and to our listeners, keep downloading those episodes. There's lots of great information there. Check the show page or there's lots of resources and look for other podcasts.

[00:42:55] We have tons and tons of episodes on all kinds of topics and please keep coming back and thank you.

[00:43:01] Audra Cooper: Thank you.

[00:43:02] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Turrentine brokerage crush reports, and sustainable wine growing podcast episodes, 185, why you need to talk about sustainability. And 221 future proof your wine business with Omnichannel communication.

[00:43:27] If you liked this show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend, subscribing and leaving us a review. You can find all of the podcasts at vineyardteam.org/podcast. And you can reach us at podcast at vineyardteam.org.

[00:43:40] Until next time, this is sustainable wine growing with the vineyard team.

 

Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

[00:00:00] As 2024 comes to a close, we want to recognize five ways certification made our brands the SIP this year. And even if you aren't SIP certified, there's lots of great ideas in this marketing tip that can help you promote your brand.

[00:00:17] Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know that customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.

[00:00:36] Now let's get into the five ways.

[00:00:38] Number one was providing regulatory relief for 161 vineyards. 2024 was the first year that growers on California's central coast had to submit total nitrogen applied reports to their regional water board. These growers must report how much water, compost, and fertilizer was applied to their crop, as well as the nitrogen content from each of these sources. Because SIP certified vineyards are already submitting this data to the program, we partnered with Preservation Inc. to complete and submit these reports on their behalf, saving them countless hours of administrative work. And Central Coast growers can participate again in 2025.

[00:01:18] Number two, six stories were released in Grape and Wine magazine. Each one of this year's issues told a unique story about how a SIP certified member practices sustainability. Their stories help spread awareness of what it takes to make sustainable wine.

[00:01:33] Number three is reciprocal club tastings for nearly 30 brands. In February, nearly 30 brands across four California counties And Michigan State enjoyed Reciprocal Club tastings during Reciprocal February 2024. This month long event helps connect tasting rooms with other like minded brands and wine enthusiasts who value sustainability. It's a great way to boost tasting room traffic during a historically slow month. And there are even more participants already signed up for Reciprocal February 2025.

[00:02:07] Number four is visibility on over 2. 7 million bottles. 20 wine brands help increase awareness of SIP Certified by putting the logo on their bottle. Having information about sustainability on your packaging shows customers that the wine was made with care for the people and the planet. That's it. Did you know that any wine made with at least 85 percent SIP certified fruit, whether estate or purchased, can apply to put the logo on their bottle? Make sure you check out our show notes to learn more.

[00:02:35] And number five, we completed nine in person sustainability trainings. We talked with hospitality teams about sustainability in the wine industry, And identified ways that they uniquely practice sustainability at their own operation so that they can feel more confident talking about their certification with customers.

[00:02:53] Now, if you want to learn more about any of these five highlights from 2024, make sure you check out the show notes. There's tons of links and contacts to help you get started telling your own sustainable story. Until next time, this is sustainable wine growing with the vineyard team.

Resources:

• *** Tell Your Sustainable Story Online Course ***
• 5 Ways Certification Makes Brands the SIP
• Apply for SIP Certified Wine
• Marketing Tips eNewsletter
• Sustainable Story | Print
• Sustainable Story | Electronic

Vineyard Team Programs:

• Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate
• SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet 
• Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year
• Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace
• Vineyard Team – Become a Member

Since the year 2000, wineries in the United States have grown from 2,000 to nearly 12,000. How can a brand stand out in the market? Dan McCole, Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University researches the impact of tourism on communities. He studied what makes brands that make the majority of their sales in the tasting room successful in new wine regions including Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Dan shares tips on how to sell new hybrid varieties, what messaging has the biggest impact on sales, and what customers are really coming to the tasting room for (it's not wine!).

Resources:        

• 222: How Sustainability Sells in a Tough Market | Marketing Tip Monday
• 246: 3 Ways to Make Your Tasting an Experience | Marketing Tip Monday
• Dan McCcole
• Exploring Winery Visitors in the Emerging Wine Regions of the North Central United States
• Market research reveals why consumers are drawn to wineries in Michigan
• Survey of Wineries and Non-winery Tourism Businesses in 25 Emerging Wine Regions
• The impact of different product messages on wine tourists' willingness to pay: A non-hypothetical experiment
• Understanding winery visitors

 Vineyard Team Programs:

• Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate
• SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet  
• Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year
• Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace
• Vineyard Team – Become a Member

Get More

Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources.

Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.  

Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: Since the year 2000, wineries in the United States have grown from 2000 to nearly 12, 000. How can a brand stand out in the market? Welcome to Sustainable Wine Growing with the Vineyard Team, where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, Executive Director, Since 1994, Vineyard Team has brought you the latest science based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry tools through both infield and online education so that you can grow your business.

[00:00:37] Please raise a glass with us as we cheers to 30 years.

[00:00:41] In today's podcast, Craig Macmillan, Critical Resource Manager at Niner Wine Estates, with a longtime SIP certified vineyard and the first ever SIP certified winery, speaks with Dan McCole, Associate Professor in the Department of Community Sustainability at Michigan State University.

[00:01:00] Dan researches the impact of tourism on communities. He studied what makes brands that make the majority of their sales in the tasting room successful in new wine regions, including Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

[00:01:15] Dan shares tips on how to sell new hybrid varieties. What messaging has the biggest impact on sales and what customers are really coming to the tasting room for hint It's not wine

[00:01:28] want to be more connected with the viticulture industry, but don't know where to start become a vineyard team member Get access to the latest science based practices experts growers and wine industry tools through both infield and online Education so that you can grow your business Visit vineyardteam. org and choose grower or business to join the community today. Now let's listen in.

[00:01:52] Craig Macmillan: Our guest today is Dan McCole. He is an associate professor in the department of community sustainability at Michigan state university. And today we're going to talk about some lesser known smaller wine regions and the challenges of marketing hybrid wine grape varieties to customers and some successes.

[00:02:08] So thanks for being on the podcast, Dan.

[00:02:10] Dan McCole: I'm happy to be here, Craig.

[00:02:12] Craig Macmillan: Before we, we get talking about wine in particular I'd like to kind of get oriented in your larger focus. You've done a lot of work in the world of natural resources and ag based tourism contributing to community sustainability. And I think that that's a really interesting topic just in general.

[00:02:28] Can you tell me a little bit about your work just in the broad scheme and kind of what kinds of things you're interested in

[00:02:33] Dan McCole: Yeah, sure. It's funny, I actually got into wine. I'm really a tourism scholar. And shortly after I arrived at Michigan State University, I was pulled into a project, that was looking at specifically at tourism. It was part of a larger project that looked at cold hardy wine varieties. So cold hardy hybrids.

[00:02:55] And there was a team of viticulturalists and enologists and economists. And I was sort of brought in there, for the business portion of the team specifically looking at tourism, but that also some consumer behavior questions that we had on that as part of that project. My focus within tourism is the impact of tourism on communities specifically.

[00:03:15] I'm not a hospitality guy. I look at the impact of tourism on communities. And so, you know, especially in areas like where I live in Michigan the industrial Midwest where, you know, the economy is shifting a bit. You have these places that sort of former manufacturing areas, former extraction areas for like lumber and coal and things like that.

[00:03:36] They're looking to new industries and tourism is a big part of it. And so we look at all the impacts on those communities, both positive and negative. We look at economic impacts, sociocultural impacts and environmental impacts.

[00:03:47] Craig Macmillan: it's exciting to see the growth in wine industries throughout the United States. I think that it's fascinating and it's only going to continue. In my opinion, I think we're going to see more of this, but again, then you're selling wines that are not commonly known. You're using the Frontenac one example. Marquette in particular was a variety that you had done some special work on. Tell me a little bit about what you did around that.

[00:04:12] Dan McCole: Just to echo what you're saying. First of all, about the growth in, in the number of wineries is crazy. In the year 2000, I think the U S had 2000 wineries. Now we're up to almost 12,000. That's just crazy growth. So it's not only interesting, it's just fascinating. And. A lot of that growth has happened outside of the traditional wine areas in the West Coast.

[00:04:30] It's happened, you know, in places like where I live in Michigan, but Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Texas, you know, Virginia, everywhere. And that to me is quite interesting because a lot of these wineries are, they're pretty small. And they sell a lot of their wine out of the tasting room which makes it a tourism product really, because they have to drive visitors to their tasting room.

[00:04:52] So that's, that's what got my interest. But in a lot of these areas, you can't necessarily grow the traditional wines that you can out in California, for instance, in the central valley or, you know, Napa, Sonoma. Here in Michigan, we do have some areas where you can go vernifera and mostly, you know, like German varietal, the Riesling is, is quite good here, you know, cool, cool temps, but they're really in small microclimates, but a lot of the areas I tend to work in, they rely on, you know, hybrid grapes, wine grapes.

[00:05:22] And, you know, these have just developed over the last 20 years, a lot of them or, you know, some of them are a little bit older but some of them are quite new, including Marquette, which is probably, You know, 15, 16, 17 years old since it was developed at University of Minnesota. And that wine in particular is quite interesting because when you're talking about, especially up here in the North where I work and with a lot of the wineries I'm at, they can do okay with white wines, but red wine has always been a bit of a challenge.

[00:05:48] And so Marquette comes along and it's pretty promising wine for making, you know, red wine. So everybody was pretty excited about it. We wanted to know a little bit more about what you tell consumers that will impact their interest in a wine. In academia, we talk about this concept called willingness to pay or valuation.

[00:06:09] Essentially what we're talking about is, how much does a product mean to somebody? And that they're willing to buy and how much are they willing to buy it for? So we did these interesting studies with Marquette looking at what can you tell somebody about this grape? That will increase their valuation of it because when we were talking to wineries, you know We'd ask them like what do you tell them about Marquette? And they said, well, you know, we tell them this and that. And as we had these conversations with a number of wineries, we could pretty much break down what they told about this grape into three categories.

[00:06:42] One was sort of these sensory descriptions, medium bodied wine, grandson of Pinot Noir and, with hints of, and flavors of such and such

[00:06:54] another category of information that they were talking about was, the local message, you know, everybody's into locally produced, locally you know, grown local, local, local. They talked about how the Marquette grape was developed sort of locally specifically for these environments. It doesn't require as many agricultural inputs you know, to be able to grow here. It, Helps local wineries to produce these kind of wines, et cetera, very local, local, local message.

[00:07:23] And then the third thing was they talked about how wines made with Marquette grapes had won competitions at international wine competitions. And so, you know, that was one of the things they told about them. And so we wanted to know, like of those messages, does anyone have. A little bit more bang

[00:07:38] Craig Macmillan: Right, right.

[00:07:39] Dan McCole: you know, that you have, and, and, you know, that could be communicated on the label or in the tasting room or in tasting notes or whatever.

[00:07:46] So, you know, essentially we did this complicated experiment and which is, you know, a whole other story on its own, but but it was kind of interesting, but essentially what we found was that one of those three messages didn't really impact people's willingness to pay. One of them did a little bit. And one of them did quite a bit.

[00:08:05] Craig Macmillan: I'm on the edge of my seat.

[00:08:06] Dan McCole: You're on the edge of your seat. Okay. I was wondering if you wanted to have a quiz. They didn't want to pay less, but they didn't necessarily want to pay more.

[00:08:13] The local message, people were willing to pay more for that, but not a lot.

[00:08:17] It was the awards, and it was interesting because we had people sample four different Marquette wines, and we didn't ask them about the specific wines, we just asked questions about Marquette wines. Here are four Marquette wines, you know, so you get a sense of this grape and the wines made from it.

[00:08:33] And we didn't say that these wines had won awards just that wines made with Marquette had won awards. But that made people pay a willingness to pay a lot more.

[00:08:41] Craig Macmillan: Interesting.

[00:08:43] Dan McCole: And, and I think that has something to do with wine itself as a product. Part of our other research shows that, you know, The people who tend to go to tasting rooms in these emerging areas don't necessarily have the same level of wine knowledge or wine experience or wine purchase behavior.

[00:08:58] And so they might be looking a little bit more toward people who are experts in this to tip them as to if they should like this or not. I mean, we're all kind of like that with, with wine, the points and things like that, you know, let's see what a, an expert tells us. And we're influenced by that.

[00:09:15] Craig Macmillan: That is interesting. It just made me think of diffusion of innovation, you know, where you have some folks that would be like, Oh, Marquette's delicious, fantastic, I want it. And then there's another population that's like, Well, let's, is it? If other people are indicating that it's good and that they like it, which is communicated through points in this case, then that opens the door.

[00:09:35] And then maybe you get some more momentum after that, some more momentum after that, momentum after that, you know, and wine regions have kind of developed along that same. Principle, the sense of place piece is also kind of interesting because a lot of wineries, I think are really focused on conveying these wines are a sense of place.

[00:09:52] And I was expecting that to be a real motivator because these are special places with special wines. But not necessarily.

[00:10:02] Dan McCole: Well, yeah, you know, wine more than probably any other product at least beverage is, so tied to the terroir, right? If you're thinking about a wine in Michigan or Iowa or, Missouri and you know, a little bit something about wine, you'd say, Oh, those aren't really wine areas. Are they?

[00:10:22] And you might be a little skeptical. Whereas, you know, if you're talking about, Oh, this wine is made in Italy or France or Chile or, California or, Australia, wherever people say, Oh, yeah, they make good wines there. Right? This tie to the terroir in the area is true. But think about like, yeah. craft beers. People don't really give it the same level of scrutiny where it's made from. If you go to you know, a place, I mean, we just don't have the connection, you know, Germany or Czech or, you know, places are known for certain kinds of beer, but you're not necessarily skeptical about a beer made in Iowa or Missouri or Michigan or, wherever.

[00:10:58] Same thing with spirits. We've seen a lot of craft distilleries coming around , and people think that's cool, . But wine, they're still a little suspicious of really. Could we really have a good wine made in this location or that location? So that sense of place is interesting. So I think with the, experiments we did, it was really that the reason there was a little bit of an increase, I think, is just people for. Mostly environmental reasons but you know, some other reasons to support local business you know, latched on to that local message. And we're willing to pay a little bit more for that, but not a lot more.

[00:11:30] Craig Macmillan: Right. And if I remember correctly the environmental aspects of this did play at least a little bit of a role

[00:11:37] Dan McCole: that that's exactly right. That is something that wineries do communicate about the wines especially made with hybrid wine grapes. I mean, first of all, the, the term hybrid grape is something that the industry uses and people like you and I might use but the average consumer doesn't know what that means.

[00:11:53] The average consumer doesn't know what Vitis vinifera is. They've maybe heard of grapes, but, you know, if you ask them if they've heard of Cabernet Sauvignon or Marquette, they might say, Oh, I've heard of Cabernet Sauvignon, and if they're from certain areas where Marquette is grown, they might say, Oh, yeah, I've heard of that too, to a lesser extent, but they're not gonna know that one's a hybrid grape and one's not.

[00:12:13] And even if you were told, they wouldn't know what that means. Cabernet Sauvignon sounds like a hybrid. Between Cabernet and Sauvignon, right? So, like, they don't really make that distinction as much as the industry does.

[00:12:25] Craig Macmillan: Are there other varieties in the upper Midwest that have the same kind of potential, do you think?

[00:12:31] Dan McCole: There are several that people are interested. You mentioned Frontenac before. Frontenac's been around for a while and it's another one that makes a red wine. Petite Pearl is sort of another one that's a little newer than Marquette, which has some promise.

[00:12:45] On the white you have which has also been around for a little bit and you know, Brianna and La Crescent and, and some of those essentially what they do is allow for this growth that we've seen in areas where it was previously not feasible to, produce wine.

[00:13:02] People are ever going to get to the point where they prefer a Marquette over a Cabernet Sauvignon, I mean, some people do but in large numbers that could be a while. And it may never happen. To me, a lot of these wineries and these areas. They're, they're smaller wineries that sell most of what they produce out of their tasting room.

[00:13:24] And that's a pretty good model for them because when you're producing such a small amount of wine, the production cost per bottle is pretty high, so just to break even you might need to, you know, sell it at 15, 16, 17 dollars a bottle. If you want a little bit of a margin, you're going for 25 dollars.

[00:13:44] Now if you're in a wine shop And you have the choice between, a $25 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon or, go with something else like a you know, a Pinot Noir or something, and a $25 bottle of Marquette. It's gonna be hard for that Marquette to compete.

[00:14:03] Plus the winery's gonna have to pay the, middleman, the distributor and the retailer. They're cut too. Selling it out of the tasting room makes a lot of sense when it's that high. You don't have the competition, you don't have to give other people their cut. ,

[00:14:16] what we've found in these areas is that people aren't going to the wineries for wine.

[00:14:23] Our research clearly shows this. They're going for a wine based experience or wine themed experience, when we ask people why they came to the winery, the reasons given were, for a relaxing day out to socialize with somebody else to bond with friends or loved one or you know, a group of women who are getting ready and part of a bachelorette party or something.

[00:14:44] And, lower down the list is to learn more about wine and lower down is to acquire wine or build my cellar or things like that. They're not going there for that purpose. They're going for an experience.

[00:14:54] Now, if the experience is good and the wine is good enough, they'll buy some of that wine, again, because the context of a purchase. Makes all the difference in the world. For years, we've known this about consumer behavior, that the situation in which somebody buys something makes all the difference in their behavior, whether they're going to buy it. And we know this in the wine industry, right? Think about how much you're willing to pay for a bottle of wine at a restaurant versus at a store.

[00:15:24] Because the situation is different. And our right. Our willingness to pay goes up. Our willingness to buy one product over another changes. And by like the situation I'm talking the physical surroundings make a difference. The social surroundings, who you're with you know, at the time, the temporal perspective, meaning the urgency associated with it whether you have plenty of time to shop, whether you're in a hurry, What they call the task, which is like the reason for the purchase.

[00:15:49] So are you buying it for a gift? Are you bringing it to somebody's house? Are you getting it as a souvenir? And then, and this is, I think most important is something called the antecedent States. And this is like the consumers. Mood at the, at the moment of purchase, it's emotional state. And this has changed by, you know, what has happened immediately before the purchase.

[00:16:11] So if you're at a winery and you know, Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and. You're having a great time and you and I are there together. We're getting along real well, getting to know each other. We're having a wine. The wine's, you know, fine. It's pretty good. We talked to some other people. It's just been a great day out. The weather's been beautiful. There are beautiful views and we walked through the vineyard. We're in a good mood, and that's gonna change our purchase situation. All of those factors change the purchase situation. In some cases, the wine just has to be good enough.

[00:16:44] Now, if the wine is terrible and it's really a burden to drink, we're probably not gonna buy that wine.

[00:16:50] Craig Macmillan: A burden to drink. I love that. I've never heard that before. I'm going to use that in my real life.

[00:16:56] Dan McCole: Have you, have you had many wines that have been a burden

[00:16:59] Craig Macmillan: I I'm a judge for a home winemaking competition. So yes, many wines are a burden to drink.

[00:17:05] Dan McCole: Yeah, okay. Yeah, I've had a few, but generally I've got a pretty open palate.

[00:17:11] Craig Macmillan: I'm sorry. I interrupted

[00:17:12] Dan McCole: if we, found these wines to be, you know, not great, then we're not going to buy them. You know, it's going to dampen our experience, if the, the wine grapes that you were asking about, if they're good enough, they're good enough. There's a market there for that. They don't need to be the next, you know, Chardonnay.

[00:17:28] Craig Macmillan: Something else that you looked at that I found pretty fascinating was you look for commonalities or differences in wine consumers. I think it was in Michigan. You were connecting with people, I think at the winery And we're doing some survey work. And so I started some semi structured interview work. Is that right?

[00:17:42] Dan McCole: Well, not necessarily. We have done some structured interviewing, but I think what you're talking about. So we had a program that we did for several years, both in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where we developed a system to be able to intercept people at the winery very quickly. We didn't want to disrupt their experience at the winery, just very quickly.

[00:18:04] And we, we worked with wineries, they did these intercepts for us. Would you be interested in participating in a study that Michigan State's doing? If so, just give us your name and email and they will follow up with you within a week. So we got this, we worked with a number of wineries, so we, every week we would get, you know, a few hundred names and we would survey them. And we do this over, you know, a 16 week period every year.

[00:18:25] Craig Macmillan: wow.

[00:18:25] Dan McCole: We got in touch with a lot of people who had just taken a visit to the winery and we were able to ask a lot of different questions. One line of inquiry that we focused on was trying to get to know who are these consumers?

[00:18:39] This is where we first learned that the consumers who go to a winery are different from wine consumers. They're a form of wine consumer, but they're not the same as what most of the information, the trade information available on wine consumers is because that those air mostly in a retail context.

[00:18:58] That's where I told you earlier. We learned that, the visitors to wineries in these areas tended to be a little less wine knowledgeable, have a little less wine experience. Purchased a little less wine, you know, beforehand before, you know, coming to the winery and and there were also some differences state to state mostly that had to do with some spending, but some of that was explained geographically, how close the wineries were to major breweries. Population areas and things like that.

[00:19:29] One interesting thing that we learned. So in, Michigan, I, I mentioned this earlier, quite a , a lot of the wineries are in areas where they will produce wines with vinifera, grapes that we've heard of before. You know, Cabernet Franc Riesling, Pinot Grigio, some Chardonnay, you know, etc.

[00:19:48] And there are some wineries that that use cold, hearty grapes in Wisconsin and Minnesota. They pretty much all use these cold, hearty grapes. So we asked people, how familiar are you with cold, hearty grapes? And it was interesting in Michigan. They shared familiarity greater than the other two states.

[00:20:05] But when we asked them if they'd heard of these specific grapes You know, Marquette Marichal Foch yeah, Frontenac, Gris, Frontenac Brianna, La Crescent. We made up a few names of grapes that don't exist. And in Michigan, they were just as likely to say they've heard of those made up grapes as the real grapes.

[00:20:27] And in Wisconsin and Minnesota, however , they hadn't heard of those and they indicated that they've heard of the real grapes. And, and so what that told us was that if you, familiarize the consumer enough with these grapes, they'll get to know them and recognize them. And in Michigan they just hadn't because there aren't as many that use these cold hardy grapes.

[00:20:47] Craig Macmillan: Oh, that's, that's really interesting. We're talking about cold hardy's equality. I've done been doing a lot of interviews with folks from places like Texas. And also the Pacific Northwest, which are both areas that are very vulnerable to climate change. And in the case of the Northwest, that still might be vinifera. But for instance, the Willamette Valley may have to rethink Pinot Noir if things continue to warm. In Texas, it's about heat, where they're having just terrible collapses of vines. And there are, you know, these heat tolerant varieties that nobody's heard of. If you were to be called in as an expert and flown to Texas, what kind of advice would you give to the extensionists at Texas A& M or to the wine marketing associations or anything like that? Based on what you've learned in the Midwest.

[00:21:37] Dan McCole: I do work with some people from Texas A& M on different projects that we've been part of. So I'm a little bit familiar with their challenges, mostly they're viticulturalists they have unique challenges. The kind of things that, that I work with that really apply, even though most of my work has been done up here in the, upper Midwest and the great lakes area from the, small business perspective, they have the same challenges.

[00:21:59] I would argue that in fact, I published a paper on, proposing that there are really four different kinds of wine regions. One is sort of the famous wine regions we know about. Those would be the Napa and the Sonoma or a Tuscany and other places like that Burgundy and France. They produce a lot of wine and they have good wine tourism 'cause people want to go to these regions.

[00:22:22] Then we have regions that produce a lot of wine, but they don't necessarily have a whole lot of tourism. They don't rely too much on tourism. These are the bulk wine producing regions of the world.

[00:22:33] Then you have lots of regions around the world. Especially you think of like Eastern Europe, they have a long tradition of winemaking, but it's really just for local consumption, right? And and so they, they sell it locally. They don't really rely on tourism. People aren't going to these regions. , you can think of Bulgaria and. You know, certain parts of Austria or, you know, wherever.

[00:22:55] And then there's this newer fourth region. And these are wineries that don't have a long tradition of winemaking. These are like the wineries that have popped up all over the U. S. over the last 20 years, and they are entirely reliant on tourism. to sell their product because they're mostly selling out of the tasting room. And each one of these four regions has different business models.

[00:23:16] If a winery is in an area that relies on tasting room sales, either entirely or largely and or is making wines with grapes that people are less familiar with then they have similar challenges regardless of where they're located or what those wines are called.

[00:23:36] One of the things I would say is recognize that, people are there to buy an experience, not a product. And if they have a good experience, they'll buy the product. A lot of wineries I've worked with, they understand this, but they still consider themselves being in the, you know, primarily wineries and wine producers.

[00:23:55] And, and they are, and you can understand why they are that way. Their consumer's primary, you know, the product they're seeking the most is not a actual tangible product. It is that experience. And so realizing that that that you are really in that experience industry just happens to be wine themed and you also produce wine and you're going to sell that wine to them that realizing why people are there and then that they're Behavior, the things that are going to change their behavior, get them to buy more wine, et cetera is going to be different from most of the information that's out there about consumers realizing that the wine consumer behavior that's out there and all the trade magazines Is mostly for people at retail and they are very different there.

[00:24:40] They have a lot of commonalities And even if we're talking about the same people the situation is different and therefore their behavior is different So essentially they're a different kind of consumer, when they're there and then the last thing I would tell them is you know based on what I was telling you about the work we had done in minnesota and wisconsin is don't shy away from the name of the grape and, , just say that, and people don't care if it's hybrid or not, just push the name of that grape. So you get some recognition of it. And then people, especially if they're newer to , to wine, you know, they're gonna say, Oh, I really like this grape. I like wines are made with this grape. And, you know, they tell two friends and so on and so on.

[00:25:20] Craig Macmillan: Interesting. I don't think I saw this in your writing, but obviously you have some experience with this. Are there particular things, elements that a winery that's selling this experience, types of experiences, types of things that a winery would have the most success with or things that you saw that had the most popularity or the most success?

[00:25:43] Dan McCole: Yeah, we, we haven't done that work. We actually have a proposed in a grant that, hopefully will be funded coming forward. A colleague of mine at Cornell, Miguel Gomez, he did a couple interesting little experiments to, see what, generated more sales in, in one experiment, he found that essentially the, the more satisfied people were with their tasting room experience. The more wine they bought and the more money they spent on wine. So the more bottles, the more money they spent and the more bottles they purchased. And, and it was really clear. And if you could get somebody from being very satisfied to extremely satisfied, The amount of wine just jumped way up in the amount of spending.

[00:26:29] So trying to get somebody extremely satisfied with their tasting room experience. So that begs the question, what leads to satisfaction experience. And what was interesting is it wasn't the quality of the wines. It was things like, crowding if it wasn't too crowded decoration, the atmosphere that was created, whether it was a nice place the service. The you know, the people serving.

[00:26:54] I was at another conference where another colleague Zeta Vickers at University of Minnesota. She had done some experiments with tasting those. She was giving people wines to try and she would show them photos of people in different states of emotion. So some of them were really happy, some of them were angry, some of them were scared, some of them were sad, whatever. And she experimented with the same group of wines. And asked people to rate their level of satisfaction. And one of the things she learned was regardless of which wine followed, the wine after showing somebody who was happy, a picture of somebody who was happy, was always rated more higher than the other emotions.

[00:27:34] And so the lesson that she gave from this and fits in with Miguel's work is if you're hiring somebody to work in your tasting room and you have a choice between two people, one of them is incredibly knowledgeable about wine knows everything there is to know, but isn't the most . necessarily friendly, outgoing person in the world and the other one doesn't know much about wine, but is very engaging and friendly and outgoing. Train that person about wine, hire them and train them about wine versus the wine person what Zeta said, if people are in a good mood or they see somebody in a good mood, they're more likely to be satisfied with the wine.

[00:28:08] And if they're more satisfied with the wine and more satisfied with their experience, then they're, going to buy more wine.

[00:28:13] Craig Macmillan: Variable I wonder about is music.

[00:28:16] Dan McCole: Yeah,

[00:28:17] Craig Macmillan: I'm really curious about what impact that might have. And it gets to this emotional response piece, where if people are having a good time, you see people smiling, the staff are very friendly and smiling, that encourages you to Enjoy the experience be satisfied the experience then purchase product as a result

[00:28:34] Dan McCole: I would agree with that 100%. And I think that's part of being very satisfied or extremely satisfied with the tasting room experience. If there's either good live music or it doesn't even have to be that there's a, there's a little winery up here in Michigan that, in the middle of their tasting room, they have this, sort of classic Harley.

[00:28:52] And the music in there is always like classic rock, and it's turned up a little bit higher than you would normally expect. And they have a great view and it's a really beautiful winery and it's looking over Lake Michigan, it's really lovely you can't go there and not have a good time, you know, it's just a lot of fun.

[00:29:08] Craig Macmillan: yeah, that's interesting if there's one thing you were gonna tell folks regardless of where they were on this topic Making the sale of an unknown wine variety. What would it be? Just one idea one thing

[00:29:22] Dan McCole: Well, based on the research what we told people about the awards that were won, if your wine has won awards showcase them. Let people know that that they've won awards that that really does seem to make a difference. So to the point where once we, when we had our findings, we were reporting them at a conference of winemakers and, and somebody said, I'm really glad you said that because we did win awards, but we'd already had our bottles labeled.

[00:29:46] And so we were, printing off different stickers that we're applying by hand, bottle by bottle. And we were going to give up doing that, but maybe we should continue. And I said, yeah, I mean, that was the thing more than anything else. You communicate to people about the wines is that they'd won awards.

[00:30:01] Because if you're talking about people who everybody feels a little inferior, not everybody. We, we all know some people who are very. You know, feel like they know everything there is to know about wine, but a lot of us are, are a little inferior about whether we know as much as we should about wine to have experts sort of say that, you know, wine more than, more than a lot of things makes a big difference.

[00:30:23] And so awards are, are one of those things and enter those competitions. And, and if you win them make sure you communicate that to your consumers.

[00:30:30] Craig Macmillan: That's fascinating. Where can people find out more about you?

[00:30:33] Dan McCole: Well, they can go onto the, website or, or look me up, Dan McCole. You'll find some of the writings I've had on Google and there are two Dan McCalls out there. One's my dad, he's an artist in Boston. And then may just don't go for the watercolors, go for the stuff about wine.

[00:30:47] Craig Macmillan: And yeah, in the show notes, there'll be links to a number of your publications, which I found fascinating. And I think other people will too. Thank you so much. Our guest today has been Dan McCole. He's associate professor in the department of community sustainability at Michigan state university. Dan, thanks for being here. This has been a really interesting conversation.

[00:31:05] Dan McCole: Thanks a lot, Craig. I enjoyed talking to you.

[00:31:06] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening. Make sure you check out the show notes for links to Dan, a number of his articles on market research, plus Sustainable Wine Growing Podcast episodes, 222, How Sustainability Sells in a Tough Market, and 246, Three Ways to Make Your Tasting an Experience. If you liked the show, do us a big favor by sharing it with a friend, subscribing, and leaving us a review.

[00:31:34] You can find all of the podcasts at vineyardteam. org slash podcast. And you can reach us at podcast at vineyardteam. org until next time. This is sustainable wine growing with the vineyard team.

 

Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: It's one thing to be able to say that your grapes are grown sustainably, but to be able to explain to someone what that really means is a different story.

[00:00:09] Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with Sip Certified. We know that customers are looking for wines labeled as sustainable. While our longer form episodes help you learn about the latest science and research for the wine industry, These twice monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable wine growing.

[00:00:30] When it comes to telling your sustainable story, there's an easy framework that can help you. The seven values of SIP certified, which include social responsibility, water management, safe pest management, energy efficiency, habitat, business, and always evolving.

[00:00:47] You can use these seven values to talk about the real ways your brand practices sustainability at every level of your business.

[00:00:55] Dozens of SIP certified brands have already used this framework. In this week's marketing tip, we share the 2024 sustainable stories and invite you to be featured next year.

[00:01:06] Our first value is social responsibility. Oso Libre's Por Vida Foundation supports four causes that are near and dear to the owner's hearts. Veteran services, women's cancer research, animal support groups, and children and family support groups. In fact, this year, they donated funding raised from their July Angus event to the Vineyard Team's Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship, helps children of vineyard and wine industry workers pay for a higher education. By supporting Oso Libre, guests and customers give back, too.

[00:01:39] The second value is water management. At the heart of Bien Nacido Vineyard's sustainable farming ethos lies a diligent approach to water management. Their team of experienced irrigators tailor their irrigation practices to fit the land's needs by using weather data and plant and soil moisture data.

[00:01:57] Our third value is safe pest management. Presqu'ile Vineyard knew they could protect their vines from birds in a way that was more sustainable than non biodegradable labor intensive bird netting.

[00:02:08] Installing programmable bird lasers has protected their vineyards from feathered pests on top of having several other sustainable benefits.

[00:02:17] The fourth value is energy efficiency. From a hillside nestled production facility that utilizes gravity flow to solar panels that provide the majority of the energy needs for their building and EV charging stations for customers, Niner Wine Estates reaches a high bar for energy efficiency.

[00:02:36] The fifth value is habitat. The team at Ancient Peaks Winery and Margarita Adventures is dedicated to protecting the habitats of the various species of wildlife that inhabit the land and water on their property. If you want to learn more about the native life at the ranch, you can take one of several tours with naturalist Jacqueline, including nature photography, foraging, and my favorite, ziplining.

[00:03:00] The sixth value is business. As a business rooted in female leadership, Cambria Estate Winery shows their dedication to uplifting and empowering women in an incredibly impactful way. Every March for Women's History Month, Cambria selects an organization that aligns with their pillars of climate action and women's leadership and pledges $25,000 to support their efforts.

[00:03:26] And the seventh value is always evolving. Tolosa's Three P's Groups welcomes everyone on their team to participate in the business's value of always evolving. Employees get involved in a group, either people, planet, or prosperity, and work together to find ways to analyze and improve the business's sustainable practices.

[00:03:46] If you want to read any of these incredible stories in more detail, make sure that you go to the show notes and click on the link, how these brands grow grapes sustainably.

[00:03:57] If you're a SIP certified brand and want to share your sustainable story, let us know. Simply email Whitney at vineyard team. org with the value you want to share and how you fulfill that value. She will help you write your story. And we'll share it in a future marketing tips newsletter and podcast.

[00:04:14] Until next time, this is sustainable wine growing with the vineyard team.

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What causes the “red wine headache”? Is it sulfites? A histamine reaction? Andrew Waterhouse, Professor Emeritus of Enology in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis and Apramita Devi, Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis have identified a flavanol that can interfere with the metabolism of alcohol. That flavanol is quercetin, a natural product made in grape skins in response to sunlight. It is a natural sunscreen produced to protect the fruit from ultraviolet light.

This conversation covers why quercetin may be more prevalent in high end wines, how skin contact during wine production impacts quercetin levels, and why sulfites may play a role in “red wine headache”.

Resources:        

• 74: The Spirit of Wine
• Andrew Waterhouse
• Andrew Waterhouse | Google Scholar
• Andrew Waterhouse | LinkedIn
• Apramita Devi | LinkedIn
• Apramita Devi |Google Scholar
• Inhibition of ALDH2 by quercetin glucuronide suggests a new hypothesis to explain red wine headaches
• Why Do Some People Get Headaches From Drinking Red Wine?

 Vineyard Team Programs:

• Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate
• SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet  
• Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year
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• Vineyard Team – Become a Member

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Beth Vukmanic: What causes. The red wine headache? Is it sulfites or a histamine reaction?

[00:00:10] Welcome to sustainable wine growing with the vineyard team. Where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic executive director. I've been your team. Since 1994, we've brought you the latest science-based practices, experts growers and wine industry tools through both infield and online education. So that you can grow your business. Please raise a glass. With us as we cheers to 30 years.

[00:00:37] In today's podcast, Craig Macmillan, critical resource. Manager at Niner wine estates with long time sip certified. Vineyard and the first ever sip certified winery. Speaks with two university of California Davis researchers. Andrew Waterhouse. Professor emeritus of enology and the department. of, viticulture and enology. And. Oprah meta Debbie. Post-doctoral scholar and the department of viticulture and enology.

[00:01:04] They have identified a flavonol that can interfere. With the metabolism of alcohol. And that flavonol is called quercetin. A natural product made in the grape skins in response. To sunlight. It's a natural sunscreen produced to protect. The fruit from ultraviolet light. This conversation covers. Why quercetin may be more prevalent in high end wines. How. Skin contact during wine production impacts quercetin levels. And why sulfites may still play a role in that red wine headache.

[00:01:36] Want to be more connected with the viticulture industry. But don't know where to start become a vineyard team member. Get access. to the latest science-based practices, experts, growers, and wine industry. The tools. Through both infield and online education so that you. You can grow your business. Visit vineyard team.org. And choose grower or business to join the community today.

[00:01:57] Now let's listen. in.

[00:02:01] Craig Macmillan: Our guests today are Andrew Waterhouse, Professor Emeritus in Enology in the Department of Viticulture Davis, and also Aparmita Devi. She is a postdoctoral scholar, also in the Department of Viticulture & Enology Davis. Thank you both for being here.

[00:02:17] Andrew Waterhouse: Oh, we're glad to be here.

[00:02:19] Craig Macmillan: Today we're going to talk about a really interesting topic. It's the role of quercetin , in wine headaches. The two of you recently co authored a paper on this one particular mechanism that might cause some people to get a headache after drinking even a small amount of red wine. But before we get into that, I want to ask you, how did you get interested in this topic?

[00:02:37] Andrew Waterhouse: Well I've been talking to Steve Mathiasson. He's a Napa winemaker for actually quite a while, some years back. He suffers from headaches when he drinks certain wines. And we were chatting about possible mechanisms, and we even did a study many years ago with another postdoc in my lab to investigate a question we had or a theory we had, and that didn't pan out. But more recently we were chatting again, and I got interested in the topic again, and that's what got me interested, you know, just somebody knowledgeable who was suffering from headaches and. for listening. It was, it makes it more real and it's like, well, maybe we can figure something out. So that's what got us started.

[00:03:17] Craig Macmillan: Apramita , how same for you.

[00:03:19] Apramita Devi: Yeah. Same. Like I've been in touch with Andy and we have been talking about this project many years. So I was always interested because I come from biological science and metabolism and stuff I got interested after talking to Andy.

[00:03:33] Craig Macmillan: Well, let's start with some basics. What is quercetin?

[00:03:38] Andrew Waterhouse: Well, basically, it's a natural product made by grapes, but it's a very specific one. It's in the class of polyphenolic compounds, and it's in the class of flavonoids called flavonols. And what makes it interesting, I think, is that it is made By grapes, in the skin of the grape, and only in the skin of the grape, in response to sunlight. It's sometimes referred to as sunscreen for grapes. And it specifically absorbs UV light that would cause damage to, say, DNA and other macromolecules. So it's very clear that the grapes are producing this in order to protect themselves from ultraviolet light.

[00:04:22] Craig Macmillan: Right.

[00:04:22] Andrew Waterhouse: So the amount that's present in wine is highly dependent on the amount of sunlight the grapes experience. Not the vine, but the grapes themselves, And a friend of mine, Steve Price, was the first to note this. In a study way back in the 90s on Pinot Noir, he noted that there was more quercetin in sun exposed Pinot Noir grapes. And that observation has been confirmed many times now in different studies. where sun exposure is correlated with quercetin levels.

[00:04:58] Craig Macmillan: and this is true just for red grapes as opposed to white grapes.

[00:05:02] Andrew Waterhouse: Oh, no, no, there's more in white grapes. But when you make white wine, you throw away the skins. So there's no opportunity to get those materials into the wine. Now, an exception might be orange wine. But I don't know of any data on orange wine.

[00:05:21] Craig Macmillan: Apramita , maybe you can talk about the metabolism part, the biology part. So when people consume alcohol, it's metabolized down certain pathways. Quercetin is also metabolized by the body into other forms?

[00:05:33] Apramita Devi: Yeah, so the pathway for alcohol and quercetin are a bit different, but the location is liver, where it goes. So when people consume alcohol, it goes to the liver and then there are two enzymes which work on the alcohol. So the first enzyme is alcohol dehydrogenase, which convert it into alcohol into acetaldehyde. The acetaldehyde is the like the toxic metabolite in the body and it can have many side effects. That's why body has to get rid of it out of the liver system. So it has a second enzyme which is called the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. So that convert acetaldehyde dehydrogenase into a non toxic component, which is acetate or acetic system.

[00:06:24] So it comes out of the body. What happens when you consume quercetin along in the body, the quercetin also goes to the liver. Because quercetin adds too much quercetin as such is not good for the body and it has low bioavailability. So liver tag it in the form of quercetin glucuronide and then the body knows that it has to be flushed out of the system. So the interesting part is that when you consume alcohol and quercetin together, You are taking the both the metabolite acetaldehyde and quercetin gluconide in the same location inside the liver. And it gives the quercetin gluconide to interact with the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme. And that acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme now cannot work efficiently. to convert the acetaldehyde into the acetate. So basically you are building up acetaldehyde in the body and it's not coming out of the system and you are seeing all those negative effects of the acetaldehyde in the form of flushing or headache or not. The other systems like what's like sweating. so we think that there is a correlation between these two pathways, which might be associated in red wine system.

[00:07:47] Craig Macmillan: And how did you design your study?

[00:07:51] Apramita Devi: The first when I talked to Andy, like he told me that he thinks that this system is because of inflammatory pathways and inflammation system. So he was kind of like, there is something in red wine, which is Triggering this kind of pathways or there is some system so, but we were not sure what exactly are those inflammatory system.

[00:08:16] So we went back and saw some literature and we kind of find that there are some studies which told that quercitans inhibit the dehydrogenase enzymes and that what triggered us that okay alcohol is metabolized by these dehydrogenase enzymes. And wine also has these phenolics. So what kind of phenolics, other kinds of phenolics, or what types of phenolics can do this inhibition?

[00:08:45] The method was basically in, was based on having different phenolics, which are present in red wines more compared to white wines, select them. And then just, we find this enzyme kits in the market to do this dehydrogenase. Inhibition tests like you put the test compound and it tells whether the enzyme is the inhibited or not.

[00:09:09] So we just did that in a test tube system, like we added our phenolics with the enzyme, and we saw that which kind of phenolics are inhibiting this enzyme and screening them out. out of all. So while doing that, we screened different types of quercetin, like quercetin glucoside, quercetin galactosides, and other forms.

[00:09:32] Then we also tested other phenolics. I can for all my rest in and other stuff. And we also choose quercetin gluconide because that is the metabolite which is circulating in the body. And then we kind of screen them based on the in the enzyme system and we see how much inhibition is happening there.

[00:09:54] Andrew Waterhouse: Yeah. So what we did was a very basic test to experiment. We didn't test anything on people.

[00:10:01] We basically tested to see which of these compounds could inhibit that enzyme because we knew that if that an enzyme could be inhibited the acetaldehyde would accumulate and you'd end up with people in that condition would end up with Flushing, headaches, as Aparmita said, all kinds of other symptoms.

[00:10:20] Craig Macmillan: And this would vary by person. Different people may have a proclivity to produce more of certain enzymes than others. Is that true?

[00:10:29] Andrew Waterhouse: We don't really have any information about that. That's going to take a lot of more work to test you know, the, the details here. For instance. Some people get red wine headaches and some don't, but we don't know whether, for instance, perhaps their enzymes are more inhibited by quercetin glucuronide, or maybe they're just more sensitive to acetaldehyde.

[00:10:52] So that's going to take, you know, human studies where we measure a bunch of things. And try to figure out, try to sort through the, the details of how this impacts people individually.

[00:11:04] Craig Macmillan: What would a study , with people, investigating this, what would the design be like? How would somebody go about doing that?

[00:11:12] Andrew Waterhouse: Okay. So a human study. Could have a couple different possible designs. The one we'll probably use is we'll simply find two wines, two red wines, one that's low in quercetin and one that's high. And then those will be administered to people who get red wine headaches. We'll give it to them blind, they'll have to agree of course to participate in the study.

[00:11:37] And then we'll see if their experience of headaches is related to the quantity of quercetin. Now, there's some other designs we could imagine using, which might be a little more straightforward, but we're not sure how relevant they would be or whether we could get approval to do this. So, for instance, one approach would be to find a red wine that's low in quercetin and then simply add it.

[00:12:00] Now adding it is tricky for a number of technical reasons. Quercetin itself is very insoluble, so we would have to add what's called a glycoside of quercetin. So we'd have to get our hands on something that would dissolve, et cetera, et cetera. We're not sure we could get approval for that because we're adding a chemical to wine.

[00:12:21] Now, the chemical would probably be classified as a supplement, and so it might be approvable, as it were. And then another very simple experiment, which we thought about a while ago, you can buy quercetin as a supplement in the market. It's readily available.

[00:12:38] So, one possibility is to simply give our subjects a glass of vodka and give them pills that either contain quercetin or a placebo and see if there's a relationship between administration of quercetin and headaches.

[00:12:54] Now the, the quercetin itself, as I mentioned, is very insoluble. So we may have to get these more bioavailable forms of quercetin for that experiment.

[00:13:04] Craig Macmillan: That leads to a wine making question. So, if it's relatively insoluble is quercetin extracted from skins more in the alcohol phase at the end of fermentation?

[00:13:11] Andrew Waterhouse: Yeah. It's, it's, it's extracted fairly quickly because it's in the skin, in the grapes, it's in the form of what are called glycosides. So these, Has the quercetin molecule with the sugar attached. That makes all those forms very soluble.

[00:13:27] Craig Macmillan: Oh, okay. Okay.

[00:13:29] Andrew Waterhouse: There's actually an occasional problem with certain red wines, most commonly Sangiovese, where after bottling the wine has had a large quantity of quercetin glucosides. And after bottling, they break down, the glycosides break down, releasing just a simple a glycone, quercetin, and you get this disgusting looking gooey brown precipitate in the bottle.

[00:13:56] Craig Macmillan: ha

[00:13:57] Andrew Waterhouse: Every few years I know the folks at ETS in Napa get somebody showing up with a bottle of Sangiovese that's got this. Disgusting sludge in it, and they can tell them without analyzing that. Yes, another case, of course, it's in precipitate in the bottom.

[00:14:15] Craig Macmillan: Huh, that's interesting. I believe it was mentioned in the paper that , obviously different growing conditions are going to lead to different levels of quercetin and grapes based on how much sun exposure they have, etc. And that also different winemaking techniques would have an impact.

[00:14:29] If consumers are looking for products if they know they have a headache issue Is it possible they could experiment with different product types? Products that were made with different production methods if they can find that out that might Impact their sensitivity or might impact how often it happens

[00:14:46] Andrew Waterhouse: Yeah, it's a pity that. Consumers wouldn't have information on the level of quercetin. We would very much like to do a study along those lines, but we haven't been able to find any funding for that, just in case somebody wants to support that kind of work, we're happy to work with them. but anyway you know, it hasn't really been an issue for winemakers, so there isn't a lot of data out there.

[00:15:08] There are a few studies that published amounts of quercetin, you know, in wines from different places, but the data is very, very limited and not really useful in providing consumers guidance. The one thing we can say is because, as I mentioned earlier, sun exposure is very important, in general if you look at a particular type of wine, a varietal, say Cabernet or Pinot Noir, that the grapes that are grown on very large vines, will have less sun exposure.

[00:15:39] Essentially if you have a very highly productive vineyard making targeting an inexpensive line, you probably have much more shading of the fruit as a consequence of lower quercetin levels. Compared to a very high end vineyard, usually, the amount of sunlight is very tightly controlled, and one of the reasons for that is that there's very good data showing that wines that are high in quercetin have a better mouthfeel, better texture in the mouth. And it's not clear whether quercetin is directly responsible or whether it's a marker for something else that's produced under those conditions that leads to that. many years ago, we did a study looking at phenolics in Cabernet, and we observed that the very high end Cabernets that we tested were much higher in quercetin than the sort of average price type product.

[00:16:35] And I think that that was true then. It's probably true now that, you know, a very good cabernet is, is made with very tight control of sun exposure. And there is a fair amount, of course, it can't be a complete sun exposure, or they probably get raisins by the end of the harvest, by the time you get to harvest, but there's a very deliberate management of sun exposure in high end wines. And it's for a reason to, get to higher quality product.

[00:17:04] Craig Macmillan: Right, exactly! And, We know that the managed sun exposure, quercetin is a part of it but also it's connected to just total phenolics in general. Lots and lots of different compounds that are, you know, semi related. And I actually wanted to go back Aprametia you identified the quercetin glucuronide as being The highest in the ones that you tested, were there other things in that test and that assay that all were also stood out, maybe not as high as that, but really kind of stuck out as being different than the rest.

[00:17:39] Apramita Devi: Actually, the quercetin gluconide was a standalone as a very high, like it's like 78%. The other things were around in that 30 percent range, so I'm not sure how significant was the impact of that, but there were quercetin glycosides forms, which were like around 30 percent inhibition of the enzyme, but

[00:18:03] all others were very low.

[00:18:04] Craig Macmillan: yeah, so it really stood out basically as it was head and shoulders above it. I would like to put this work into context a little bit. I, I work with the public quite a bit as part of my job and I have for years. And this topic comes up. All the time. This information definitely helps me my goal, when I talk to a consumer that has an issue with, wine headache or whatever it's not that I'm trying to sell them a product as much as it is.

[00:18:29] They want to enjoy wine. They tell me this, they say, Oh, I love to have it. I just can't. Da da da. And then they'll say, it's like sulfites. And then I'll kind of explore that with them a little bit. Like, so can you eat dried fruit? Do you eat canned fruit? Do you have reactions to this or to that? Are you asthmatic?

[00:18:48] Kind of sort that out and go, okay, I don't think maybe that's it. Maybe it's not. The other ones that I just learned about about 10 years ago was a biogenic amines, which made a lot of sense to me in terms of things like histamine reactions. What is your feeling about sulfites is contributing biogenic amines.

[00:19:04] Maybe there's other things we haven't hit on, on this topic. What are your feelings about the, kind of the big picture of what potential for a diagnosing assist?

[00:19:15] Andrew Waterhouse: Why don't you talk about amines

[00:19:16] Craig Macmillan: Yes, please,

[00:19:18] Apramita Devi: Biogenic amines like mostly the histamine and tyramine are the main ones people talk about whenever they come with this headache stuff. So I think because it's formed in the wine during the fermentation process, and there are these spec microbes which can convert the amino acids into this, biogenic amines the histamines are part of inflammatory reactions. People know that in biology and immunology. So it's very easy to be people connected that it might be a reason why people get headache. But what I always focus is like, there are far more other food products, for example, fermented meat products, which has far more higher amount of these biogenic amines. do people get headache if they have something similar with alcohol eating together with alcohol or something like that? But there is no mechanism told till now, they just tell that, oh, since it's histamine and it's related to this inflammatory reactions, it might be the cause. But there is no solid proof that it is the cause.

[00:20:27] so I don't know whether it's there or it might be a pathway or not.

[00:20:33] Craig Macmillan: One of the things that I find fascinating is how we evolve our, Hypotheses about things over time, and somebody has an hypothesis and they test it out, maybe they find something, maybe they don't, but then that kicks off this whole set of what I call naive science making up stories about why.

[00:20:53] It's kind of a just so story. It's like, well, obviously then somebody comes along and checks it and says, Hey, wait a second. And we're no, or if this was true, then that would have to be true. And that's not true. You know, and that kind of thing and how we keep coming around to new ideas, which is what you folks have done, which I think is really, really cool.

[00:21:10] Andrew Waterhouse: I was going to answer your question about sulfites. It's a really big question actually. Partly because sulfites have so much visibility and there's so much concern about it. I think sulfites themselves Have been studied pretty carefully there's one study where if they gave subjects a very high level of sulfites in wine, it was like very small, but statistically significant increase in headaches.

[00:21:39] Or some adverse reaction, but other studies have shown no correlation. By the way, sulfites are antioxidants in case you hadn't heard that. So it seems very unlikely that sulfites by themselves are some sort of bad actor in this regard. Like you, I get these questions all the time. And what I heard so many times was. Oh, it's cheap wine. It gives me a headache.

[00:22:06] Craig Macmillan: Yes.

[00:22:07] Andrew Waterhouse: And have you heard

[00:22:08] Craig Macmillan: I've heard that many times. And then on the opposite side of things, I've heard stuff like, Oh, I get headaches from American wine, but I don't get it from French wine. Or I always get headaches from European wines, but I never from California wine. So I'm trying to figure out, is there something going on?

[00:22:26] Like, can you be allergic to burgundy? You know what I'm saying? Cause I mean, it could be, it could be something about burgundy. It's just stuff going on. And then the opposite. I had a guy who says, no, I don't have any that. But he says I was traveling in France, and we were drinking wine like it was water, and I never had a hangover symptom, and I did it, and I was like, I don't know dude, like I

[00:22:45] Andrew Waterhouse: Yeah. Well, there's, there's one answer to some of this, which is if you're on vacation and you don't have to get up early and you're relaxed and you probably don't get as many headaches.

[00:22:58] Craig Macmillan: Right.

[00:22:59] Andrew Waterhouse: So I think that's a large part of it, especially for Americans visiting Europe. They're on vacation. but I think there is something to the sulfites question. And that is that inexpensive wine often, not always, but often has more bound sulfites.

[00:23:18] Craig Macmillan: Yep.

[00:23:19] Andrew Waterhouse: And this is probably because those grapes have a little bit more mold on them or a lot more mold. And when they get to the crusher, the winemaker goes, Oh, there's mold on these fruits. So we're going to add sulfites to, to take care of the botrytis, right?

[00:23:34] We don't want the fruit to get oxidized and damaged. They had a bunch of sulfites. The consequence of that is that in the finished line, There's a lot more. Bound to SO2, which shows up in the total SO2 number.

[00:23:47] You know what it's bound to?

[00:23:49] Craig Macmillan: No.

[00:23:49] Andrew Waterhouse: It's bound to largely acid aldehyde.

[00:23:52] Craig Macmillan: Really?

[00:23:53] Oh! Well that would make sense. Yeah, that would make sense.

[00:23:56] Andrew Waterhouse: And the, the reason for that is that during the fermentation, the yeast are converting all this sugar the alcohol, but there's an intermediate step which is acetaldehyde.

[00:24:06] Craig Macmillan: Right.

[00:24:07] Andrew Waterhouse: If you have SO2 floating around, as you would if you'd added a lot of it up front, it binds that acetaldehyde before it gets reduced to ethanol, to alcohol. if you start a fermentation with a high level of added SO2, then you will end up with a wine that has more bound acetaldehyde. And that could be a marker, say, of less expensive wine.

[00:24:31] So it's possible that those people are, what they're experiencing is direct ingestion of acetaldehyde, which is being released into the blood and that that's causing them a problem.

[00:24:45] Now, I've looked and looked, and I cannot find any data on what's called absorption of acetaldehyde from wine, or from food for that matter. I keep, I'm going to keep looking,

[00:24:56] but for some reason or other, this hasn't been subject of a published study, although maybe I just haven't been competent enough to find it.

[00:25:05] Craig Macmillan: I doubt that.

[00:25:07] Andrew Waterhouse: Well, sometimes these are, you know, they're very specialized and they're indexed in funny ways. And,

[00:25:13] You know, and the other thing was, you know, when the study came out, I had all these questions. I was talking to this one reporter and she said, well, I can drink natural wine.

[00:25:24] It doesn't give me headaches. And I was like, oh boy, what's this about?

[00:25:27] Craig Macmillan: Yeah.

[00:25:28] Andrew Waterhouse: But thinking about that further when you make natural wine, you don't add any sulfites or at least you're not supposed to, Right. And consequently in the finished wine, the level of acetaldehyde would have to be very low or else it would smell like sherry.

[00:25:41] Craig Macmillan: Right. Right.

[00:25:43] Andrew Waterhouse: And yes, granted, many natural wines have funky smells, but they don't by and large smell like sherry.

[00:25:49] So it's possible that natural wines have in general, Much less acid aldehyde than conventional one. you know, all these questions have brought up some interesting issues, I think, you know, the industry should be looking into you know, these are these issues like how much acid aldehyde Do we want in our wine and how can we reduce it if we want to reduce it?

[00:26:15] I don't think anybody's really looking at that yet. I think that would be a very interesting question to pursue. Oh

[00:26:24] Craig Macmillan: you just, you just reminded me of, of something two things that I, I had forgotten about. One I used to teach like enology for babies, enology for dummies thing for the public. I am in no way qualified other than just experience to do that.

[00:26:39] But I broke it down in that I do that sugar aldehyde, alcohol arrows, and I'd say, okay, this, this acid aldehyde. Remember this one? This one's coming back. We're going to see this again later. So write this one down. We're going to get to that later. And sure enough, now it's just through the body and, and I think breathalyzers work based on that.

[00:27:00] Don't they? It's like density. Something like that. So the aldehyde, they're actually,

[00:27:05] I think so. I got to look that up again, but because by the time it gets to your breath, your body's, Processing it, right? Hugely important. Not just that compound, but aldehyde is just kind of a general well, maybe we should all invest in like some kind of, I don't know, AO unit or wine X ray or something at our house.

[00:27:21] And then we could get the totals and know before we drink it you know, maybe we could figure out if somebody could come up with a consumer friendly, you know, put it in a vial and shake it and it turns blue. Don't drink it kind of thing. I'm just being silly. I don't know.

[00:27:34] Andrew Waterhouse: idea.

[00:27:35] Craig Macmillan: You go to different like wine shops and stuff, and there's all kinds of stirs and additives and strainers and funnels and stuff that are supposed to take things out.

[00:27:45] And I've always really wanted to see what those things do. They do anything or not, or I don't know. I'd like to try it. Finally, is there one takeaway on this topic, this question to both you, one takeaway you'd like people to know, I

[00:27:57] Andrew Waterhouse: well, I think the key thing is that we haven't done any experiments on people yet.

[00:28:03] Craig Macmillan: Right.

[00:28:04] Andrew Waterhouse: And so what we have here is, I would call it a well founded theory,

[00:28:09] Craig Macmillan: Mhmm.

[00:28:09] Andrew Waterhouse: I think people shouldn't rush out and start changing the way they drink yet. They might want to try some experiments. But we don't have the final word yet.

[00:28:20] Craig Macmillan: Right, right.

[00:28:24] Apramita Devi: Same. Yeah. This is just very preliminary study. And we just have a theory out. So we still don't know, like, what happens in the actual body.

[00:28:34] Craig Macmillan: Well, I hope that we can do that.

[00:28:36] Andrew Waterhouse: We're always looking for support for experiments. If anybody wants to support that, get in touch.

[00:28:43] Craig Macmillan: You know, another creative thought that I have when I'm preparing for this is like, you know, , people either get headaches from wine or they don't. If I'm someone who wants to enjoy wine, but gets headaches, I would be really attracted to a product that had a back label if we could make health. statements, which we cannot, that would say now low in quercetin or, you know, headache free, you know, no, we would never get that through TTP, obviously, but but, but, you know, but we went round and round with that on sulfites, you know you know, organic waste, no added sulfites, you know, you can say that.

[00:29:14] Andrew Waterhouse: I think it would be possible to perhaps have a declaration on a bottle about the level of quercetin, whether it's high or low. I suppose. I don't know.

[00:29:24] One company did get a label through that had resveratrol levels on it, but then TTB stopped approving that. So only one company has that approval. But I think in that case the reason for denying the label is that it is a proxy for health claim. Thank you.

[00:29:44] Quercetin, you know, whether it's high or low is really, it's not, it's not making a health claim. We're not claiming that this wine is healthier for you than the other has to do with headaches or not headaches.

[00:29:55] And I don't see that as really a health claim.

[00:29:58] Craig Macmillan: Well, let's just see how this develops. You never know. Let's face it. I mean, we're talking about nutrition. This is August of 2024, the date for this recording. We're talking about having nutritional labeling on wine. Right? Which I think would be a very interesting nutritional label, quite frankly.

[00:30:13] I would, I would love to see that, you know. Zero percent of the RDA of everything, again, at the end of one of my lectures I'd introduce potassium, and at the end I'd say, so how much wine do you have to drink to get your RDA of potassium? You have to drink a gallon and a half of wine a day. So, maybe not a big contributor. Maybe not a big contributor. Where can people find out more about both of you?

[00:30:37] Andrew Waterhouse: Well, I think probably the best starting point would be our LinkedIn pages.

[00:30:43] Craig Macmillan: And those will be in the show notes.

[00:30:45] Andrew Waterhouse: and I do have a website at UC Davis called waterhouse. ucdavis. edu.

[00:30:52] Craig Macmillan: And that will be in there as well. What about you, Apremita?

[00:30:54] Apramita Devi: For me, LinkedIn page.

[00:30:58] And if people want to see about my research or my past research, they can go to my Google Scholar page to

[00:31:05] Craig Macmillan: Awesome. Thank you. Well, thanks so much for being here. Our guests today were Andrew Waterhouse, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis, and Apramita Devi, a postdoctoral researcher in viticulture and knowledge at UC Davis. Really interesting work.

[00:31:21] I'm glad that you folks are doing it. I've been a big fan of you, Dr. Waterhouse, for a long time, and now that I've seen your work, I'm a big fan of you. Apremita. You've done some pretty cool stuff in the last five years. So again, thanks. And thank you for listening to Sustainable Wine Growing with Vineyard team.

[00:31:38] Please keep downloading episodes. Please visit the show page. Lots of information there. And we also have a new publication, Understanding Wine Chemistry by Andrew Waterhouse, Gavin Sachs, and David Jeffrey. Is that correct?

[00:31:53] Andrew Waterhouse: That's correct.

[00:31:55] Craig Macmillan: This is out in the world now.

[00:31:57] Andrew Waterhouse: It's just out this month.

[00:31:59] Craig Macmillan: That sounds like a must have.

[00:32:01] Andrew Waterhouse: I agree.

[00:32:03] Craig Macmillan: That sounds like a must have. , I will leave the name out, but there was a very famous book written by a group of folks from CSU Fresno and some collaborators. And I don't have a copy because I bought five copies in my cellar. People stole them every single time. So, this is the same kind of book, folks.

[00:32:20] Maybe buy five copies. And just hand them out to give one to your assistant winemaker. Give one to your cellar master and just say, here, these are yours. I'm keeping my copy. Thank you very much. That's, that's really cool. And again, thanks for being on the podcast.

[00:32:33] Beth Vukmanic: Thank you for listening today's podcast was brought to you by wonderful laboratories. Wonderful laboratories operates two state of the art high throughput laboratories. He's located in Shaffer, California to support pathogen detection and nutrient analysis. The team provides full service support to customers with field sampling. Custom panels and special projects. They're. Customers include pest control advisors, growers, consultants, seed. Companies, backyard gardeners, ranchers, and more.

[00:33:10] Make sure you check out the show notes. To learn more about. Andrew. And Oprah meta. To read a great article about their research. Why do some people get headaches from drinking red wine?

[00:33:19] And if you're looking. Looking for. Some more fun wine at trivia to share at holiday parties this season. Listen into sustainable Winegrowing podcast episode. 74, the spirit of wine.

[00:33:31] If you liked the show, do. It's a big favor by sharing it with a friend subscribing and leaving us a review. You can find all of the [email protected] slash podcast. Podcast. And you can reach us at [email protected] until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team.

[00:33:49]

 

Nearly perfect transcription by Descript

[00:00:00] While, the year is nearing its end. There's still a lot of actibity and work ahead with the holidays. This marketing tip. We'll give you ideas for a greener holiday season. Use them in the tasting. Room. And at home. Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday. With sip certified. We know that customers are looking for wines labeled as sustained. Sustainable. While our longer-form episodes help you learn about the latest. Latest science and research for the wine industry. These monthly. Monthly micro podcasts will help you share your dedication to sustainable winegrowing.

[00:00:33] Now let's get into some. Some tips for greener gatherings.

[00:00:37] Consider getting a. A living tree rather than a cut or artificial tree. With the right tree and. The proper care it can survive the holiday season and then be planted on your property.

[00:00:47] Use led lights for decorating your space. They use up to 90%, less energy than traditional incandescent. Bulbs. And can last up to 25 times longer. At an. Average of 30 cents a kilowatt powering 500 incandescent. C9 bulbs, eight hours a day for 30 days. It would cost $294. While the same five. 500 led bulbs would only cost $37.80. That's also sustainable savings for your pocket book. Plus many led lights have features like dimming. Color adjusting and motion detection. So you can customize your look and. Use them for other occasions.

[00:01:27] Do you have holiday events on your calendar?. There are many options for biodegradable plates. Bowls and cutlery. Add them to your compost heap or. Send them to an industrial composting facility. Just be sure not to recycle. Recycle them organic materials can damage recycling equipment. And don't put them in the trash organic waste and landfills could produce methane gas.

[00:01:49] And who. Who doesn't love local goods. Invite local vendors into your retail space. Base. To give your guests some locally sourced gift options bonus. Points. If they use natural or recycled materials. Alternative. you could opt for the gift of a local experience like dinner for two a spa day or certificate to a local shop.

[00:02:08] Oh, the ribbons and bows, but where do they go?

[00:02:11] When it comes to sustainability over the holidays. Days we need to address packaging.

[00:02:15] For those of us who aren't the paper and ribbon collector. At the gift exchange, use. Just wrapping materials can be recycled. Plus some can even. And be composted.

[00:02:24] Make sure. You check out. At the show notes to link to this article called holiday marketing. Marketing tips. To review an awesome chart. To help you gift. Wrap the Greenway. It covers what kinds of wrapping paper? Tissue paper, gift bags, boxes, ribbons, and bows can. Can be recycled. Composted. Plus some creative alternatives like wrapping. Packaging in a tea towel. And making your own paper bows.

[00:02:50] Here's a bonus tip. Check out. Tip number two. In the five sustainable tasting room habits, marketing tip. To learn a few more responsible recycling practices.

[00:03:00] This February. We'll continue the celebrate. Celebration of sustainable wine and we'd love for you to come celebrate with us at reciprocal, February over 30 sip certified brands have. I already joined.

[00:03:12] And you can join to. Share. ReSIProcal club tastings with participating brands to increase your traffic and. Connect with like-minded brands and wine enthusiasts who value sustainability.

[00:03:21] Until next time, this is sustainable. Winegrowing with the vineyard team.

 

Nearly perfect transcript by Descript.

 

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