Sustainable Winegrowing

Like with many projects on a sustainable farm, composting at Niner Wines Estates began with a problem; what could be done with all the pumice from the winemaking operations. Patrick Muran Winemaker at Niner Wine Estates started experimenting with thermal aerobic composting in 2016. With a 200-acre property, the farm has a diverse array of plant material coming from the restaurant garden, cover crops, and vineyards. Patrick explains how they turned a waste stream product into a valuable commodity including what temperature a compost pile must reach, what plant material to include, how to inoculate a new pile, and how long it takes to make top quality compost.

References:

• 1/20/2023 REGISTER: Improving Soil Health with Compost & Vermiculture Tailgate
• 53: Producing Compost and Carbon Sequestration
• 106: What? Bury Charcoal in the Vineyard?
• 151: The Role of the Soil Microbiome in Soil Health
• 153: The Role of Nematodes in Soil Health
• Aerated Compost Tea
• Composting Handbook
• Compost Use for Improved Soil Poster Series
• Improving and Maintaining Compost Quality
• Niner Wine Estates
• SIP Certified
• Testing Composts
• Tipsheet: Compost
• Vineyard Team – Become a Member

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Transcript

Craig Macmillan 0:00

Our guest today is Patrick Moran, winemaker at Niner Wine Estates in Paso Robles, California. And today we're going to talk about composting. Welcome, Patrick.

Patrick Muran 0:07

Thank you, Craig. Happy to be here. And to talk about some compost today.

Craig Macmillan 0:11

Yes, we are. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I want to let everybody know that Patrick and I work together. So this is not the first time that we've talked about this. So I know about what we do. But we're gonna try to get into the details here and try not to forget anything. It's a really cool project that you, you kind of you founded. Correct. You kind of got this whole thing going, right?

Patrick Muran 0:31

Yeah, it was birthed out of a problem of what do we do with all this pumice waste and ruin to kind of a passion project of figuring out how to unlock the keys and composting all this waste that we had?

Craig Macmillan 0:49

So when did it start? How long have you been doing this?

Patrick Muran 0:52

So this started late 2016, early 2017, we start building piles, Gosh, 5, 6 years now?

Craig Macmillan 1:01

Yeah, in a minute. So the idea here was that you had a lot of waste that was coming in, or grape material that was coming in and you wanted to do something with it. What were you doing with it prior to accomplishing with it?

Patrick Muran 1:12

I mean, I've been at this now, gosh, almost 24 years, you know, when I started, we had our big 40 yard roll off dumpsters getting dropped off and are filling them up with grape waste and pumice and stems and all that kind of stuff. But you know, we're scheduling trucks and paying for these trucks to be on the road and do all this material and material is getting stinky out there in the yard, flies are starting to fester, we had, you know, a similar problem here. Here I'm paying for a truck to come drop off this dumpster that's going to kind of make a mess and in our yard for weeks on end. And then pay to have that material removed. It was a kind of an, I love elegant solutions in this was elegant solution to a problem where we can turn a waste stream product into you know, a valuable commodity.

Craig Macmillan 2:04

Did you have an experience with composting prior to that?

Patrick Muran 2:07

No, not to the degree of what we're doing now. My notion of composting was probably like most people's it's like, oh, just chuck it in a in a black container or something in the yard and forget about it for six months and then come back later. And all of a sudden, it's it's all done. That was more or less my notion of what composting was. But when you're talking thermoaerobic composting, to the NOP like organic standards, it's a little bit of a different feel.

Craig Macmillan 2:36

How did you educate yourself about this? This is interesting to me this is you went from zero to now 100.

Patrick Muran 2:41

Yeah. With Cal Poly, actually Cal Poly had an extension program. And they brought in Dr. Elaine Ingham, and she did a seminar on composting, thermalaerobic composting in particular. And it just blew my mind like because I'm I'm microbiologist by by schooling, you know, I spent my year in college studying microbiology, and she was talking my jam, like she was talking all the biology in the soils. And in this compost that was promoting plant growth. So she she really kicked me off on this path. And, and so I just started educating myself on how to do it properly, and how to the biology and the ecology that supports your plant that you're trying to grow.

Craig Macmillan 3:33

So did you already have a plan for what you were going to use this stuff for?

Patrick Muran 3:37

No, I just knew if it was done properly, we could definitely use it all over the place. Like all of a sudden you've got this thing that can grow. But we did have a target because we have were growing grapes in a world. Our compost is going to help support the life that grapevines.

Craig Macmillan 3:56

When you started, were you using just pomice or were you adding other material to it?

Patrick Muran 4:02

No, I learned pretty early on that the more diversity of your ingredients that go into that compost pile, the more diversity you'll have as far as microorganisms, bacteria and fungi and protozoa and all these these different layers of of organisms. And I figured out pretty early on that we're going to need a diverse stream of sources to kind of hit our target.

Craig Macmillan 4:28

And where did you source that stuff from? Was it from the property? Did you bring stuff in from the outside?

Patrick Muran 4:33

Yeah, I mean, we've got over 200 acres here. So with a with a garden, cover crop growing, you know, we've got kind of a diverse array of materials, it was just a matter of collecting them your and making sure they're kind of staged and ready to go.

Craig Macmillan 4:54

What's the timeframe from when you have let's say pomice from harvest until you have something that you can use?

Patrick Muran 4:59

Yeah, so the ideal timeline for promised to complete product is about 60 days minimum is 15. But 60 days is the point of which you get that rich, organic material that's consumed all it's easy foods, and you get a little more diverse array of microorganisms in there.

Craig Macmillan 5:20

Are you measuring the microorganisms? Are you sending samples out or something to get an idea of what's there?

Patrick Muran 5:26

Yeah, we were doing both I do it here, or I was doing counts like bacterial counts, and, and fungal counts kind of fungal biomass and bacterial biomass. It's a little labor intensive. And after doing it enough times, you can kind of get a good sense of what the populations are, by easy look under a microscope, we are also sending out to an outfit called Earth Fort where they'll do the assessment for us, and then just kind of give us the results.

Craig Macmillan 5:56

So is that how you know when it's done? Or is there other cues to you? You go, hey, all right, we're there now?

Patrick Muran 6:02

Yeah, the cues that I use really are color temperature and and sort of the touch and feel of it all he can you get a sense of that digestion is complete, and you get into a form that really does look, I mean, it looks like 70%, dark cocoa chocolate bar, you know, hit that. And the whole pile has a very consistent makeup. So it's just there, you know.

Craig Macmillan 6:30

So you mentioned easy foods, what would those maybe be in those are things that the microorganisms are consuming? Is that right?

Patrick Muran 6:37

I would go back a step, I think of this is a lot like making wine, you know, you have the materials, you're starting kind of an inoculum, or a biomass that is going to grow, that's going to consume the nutrients that are available. You know, as a winemaker, there's a lot of parallels in composting as there is to making wine, you know, tank size or vessel size can inform you on how much heat will be generated and how fast fermentation may complete. Same goes for composting, the size of the compost pile will dictate kind of the thermal insulation that can take place. So you can kind of create a lot of thermal mass and a big pile. The next step is food. You know, we think of these two simple nitrogen compost, you think the carbon to nitrogen ratios. So again, nitrogen is your food source, those readily consumable foods, sugars, for example, really, you know, feed into the bacterial populations that just want an easy hit of sugar, and they go, so those are going to be the easy foods, the more complex foods, and it's again, similar to, to fermentation, you've got diammonium phosphate, you're now your DAP is like just putting gasoline on a fermentation. And you have more complex organic foods like for fermato or whatnot, yeast derived but they're much more complex or not as readily available, and they'll take longer to digest and release that energy. So then you got your food source. So I think carbon to nitrogen ratios, composting, I think of yeast to simple nitrogen and fermentation.

Craig Macmillan 8:23

So you're using a lot of the same kind of conceptual ideas that you use for making wine for making compost, it's there's some similarities in terms of kind of functionality in your mind.

Patrick Muran 8:32

And figuring out the proportions of those different components. And kind of the momentum, you know, that can be generated by it is really the key to unlocking a successful compost operation, as it would be with a successful fermentation operation too.

Craig Macmillan 8:50

When I was first learning about this topic, there was like a recipe that you were supposed to kind of follow. And one of the elements there was manure, so you had to have manure in the mix doesn't sound like you're doing that because there's not cattle on site.

Patrick Muran 9:02

That's right. And we've stayed away from manure for the moment because we'd like to use whatever's available on the property. And high nitrogen can come from other things other than manure, which includes things like alfalfa, all your nitrogen fixing plants, alfalfa, some clovers, but also seeds have a fairly high nitrogen content, just so happens to be got a lot of those coming out of these fermenters. So we use seeds as a high nitrogen component, they act a little differently because they're kind of a slow burn as opposed as opposed to a fast burn. They definitely will contribute to that heat to that energy release that temperature zone that you're trying to hit.

Craig Macmillan 9:49

Do the seeds breakdown because I've seen pomice compost piles before where the seeds just didn't change. Do they break down for you?

Patrick Muran 9:56

Yeah, they do break down they're not they're not fully in kind of destructured, you know, they're still like this funny shell, they almost look like a popcorn, they swell a little bit and kind of spilled some of their guts, but kind of the shell sort of remains of the seed. So they definitely have a different look and feel than when they started. But they do add a nice volume filling component, something like perlite or something like that, you know, they kind of fill, fill out the compost, make it a little fluff here.

Craig Macmillan 10:29

So even though there's this material left behind actually has a role that actually does something for the way the pile behaves, and what it will do eventually, it sounds like. On the manure topic, we have a new aspect to the system, the ecosystem at Niner. And that's chickens. Have you thought about or are you using manure from the chickens?

Patrick Muran 10:48

Not yet, just because we haven't needed to. This is what the beauty of this whole system is, you're getting rid of this waste as it is, you know, you're getting rid of garden waste, when you throw it in a green waste bin or you throw it in a, you know, a compost pile, we're getting rid of chicken manure as you clean up the chicken house and things of that nature. So you're collecting it, so why not use it. So all of these different streams are going to come into play in the chicken manure will come into play as well. It's just a matter of getting the material there staging it to making sure using using the right proportions at the right time, we just so happened to have worked out a formula with what we have currently. That's really nice and consistent. And chicken manure will change it a little bit. So we'll have to tweak it a little bit to get everything just right.

Craig Macmillan 11:38

Another thing that I believe you've been bringing into the system is chipped grapevines, and also material from landscaping. Again, I was under the impression that things with high lignin did not compost very well. Have you started with that material? Or is are things happening? Are you looking at stuff what's happened in there?

Patrick Muran 11:54

Yeah, so the high carbon source. So that's things like any sort of wood material, wood chips, hedgings anything that's going to have a lot of that cellulose hemicellulose. Like those really difficult to digest components, those can definitely be incorporated. And we like a nice proportion of those because they are great fungal foods, and we're trying to grow fungi as well on these compost piles. Those are a great source of fungal foods. And those do decompose, they take a little longer, we can give a little more time to the compost piles in terms of digestion, because you'll get that fungal push towards the latter half of composting. As they start speeding off of those partially digested woody components and high carbon sources.

Craig Macmillan 12:50

Do you have to inoculate the piles?

Patrick Muran 12:52

You can totally kick them off if you make compost teas. And so basically you take a finished pile, make some tea, and then use that tea to inoculate a new pile that's like Like imagine and throwing it in, it's really kick things off. The other way is to simply just take a finished compost pile and use a small amount as an inoculum. Like you would fermentation an inoculant you with the yeast and innoculate you with all the stuff that I've grown up with this previous pile to get you started right away, or like a native ferment and you can kind of sit around and wait for it to it's kind of naturally get some momentum, it takes a little longer certainly get that going as well.

Craig Macmillan 13:38

What is your method here? So you're collecting material, and then you have to make it into a pile of some kind. And then you have to manage the pile? Right? So there's things like moisture and temperature, correct. What specifically are you doing to manage the pile? And specifically, what are you looking at in terms of the variables that tell you oh, I need to do this or that.

Patrick Muran 13:55

To start wit we start with about four different streams of materials. We're starting with wood chips, or woody material, high carbon source, we're starting with green waste, which is anything that was cut green. So garden waste that was cut green, we even took grass clippings from you know, when they mow or around here as long as it was green. That's going to be one stream. The other stream is going to be rake. So anything that came out of destemers, it's going to kind of live in one vein. And then lastly, we're going to do the skins and seeds. So anything that came out of a fermentation tank that was fully fermented so they don't now we have our seed component. So we just treat each one of those streams as a different source. And we'll compose it's about 40% of woody material and we consider the rake is of woody material. So we'll go rake plus wood chips that's going to compose about 40% of the material. The green waste stream is going to be about 30% of that material. Okay, so that's going to be in those green waste, clippings and whatnot. And then lastly, we'll use the last 30% of the seed, and skin material, all the pumps that came out of tanks as a string. So we're going to take those components in those proportions and assemble it and kind of mix it up, we make windrows out of this, and they're roughly four feet tall, four to five feet tall, and about eight feet wide, we're gonna try and mix this as well as you can, and get moisture in there. Moisture is really the thing that sets this whole stage up to digest. I mean, you like any living organism, like you can't live without water, neither can these organisms. And moisture really is the key component to keeping that. We're going to try and strive for about 40% humidity or 40% moisture content. That's a touch and feel thing. Like you can really get scientific on how much moisture goes into a pile. But really, once you learn touching, feeling, squeezing the material, you'll get a sense of moisture, Woody materials really difficult to soak up. So we try and pre wet that a little bit. Seeds and green waste usually has sufficient moisture content to get things started. So mix it into a pile, mix it into those windrows. And then we no longer have covering piles at this point. So we just let them be out there. But if you have the right components in the right size, moisture, and composition, they'll kick off, I mean, we'll be up to 130 in gosh, within three days, certainly, we'll be right into a nice thermal compost, and then we're going to be turning it and we use a bucket on a tractor. It's not ideal. Ideally, you have a compost turner that aerated and really does a nice job of mixing. But we felt we got we can get by with a with a bucket on it on a tractor. And we do it by just simply folding that pile laterally. So if you think of a windrow, like pointing down, basically, one direction, we're going to come in perpendicular to that windrow, take kind of the outside piece, we're going to fold it up over the top, then we're going to kind of try and pull the core which is the hottest piece. And that's going to be become kind of the back end of that windrow. So you're kind of taking these in different sections. A better way to put it is if you think of a triangle, cut it into four parts. So you're going to have like the two wings, the top in the core. So you're trying to get the inside core cycled out, and you're trying to get the wings, whether it's the top or the outside sides to become the core, say you're just trying to fold union. So you're cycling the material through the core, that's basically the key. It is temperature and moisture determined. Typically were like every three to five days, but you'll find it needs more rigorous turning in the beginning. And then you can kind of back off towards the tail end.

Craig Macmillan 18:18

When do you get the water in? And how do you do that? I've seen different solutions to that problem. What do you put it in? How do you do it?

Patrick Muran 18:25

We've tried multiple solutions to this, the ideal is very small droplets. Like that's the ideal if you can get up a fine misting spray, that would be the best solution. Getting moisture in we use a fire hose, a water wagon. And that fire hose is able to emit you know a fine spray. So we go in with a water wagon, fire hose and a pump just basically wet out all the outside and then immediately turn it that's kind of the key is not set. It's just trial and error to figure out how much water do I apply? You know how what does this need to get? And that just has taken us a little bit of time to understand. You know, in the beginning it is more difficult to wet up. In the end. It's it's much easier to wet up knowing when and how much to apply is kind of that's what's taken us time to learn.

Craig Macmillan 19:21

Yeah, practice. You mentioned temperature you mentioned 103 degrees Fahrenheit, what what are the temperature bounds? What do you have to hit? Why do you have to hit it? What's too hot? How often do you measure that? How do you measure it?

Patrick Muran 19:33

temperature requirements are over 131. 131 to 170 for a minimum of 15 days. And you have to turn a minimum of five times in that 15 days. We use just a long stainless temperature probe. It's three feet, even a PVC sleeve and basically inserted into the core each day just to see where you stand. And then you're we do that kind of along the windrow in different spots, and kind of get an average of what's happening throughout the pile. And then secondly, we dig a little gopher holes into it like basically trying to dig down, or to get a sense of what the moisture content is like. And so we'll go dig through these piles, see where they stand, see what the moisture contents like, and then make a determination as to whether it needs water and turning and whatnot.

Craig Macmillan 20:31

You just dig in there with your hand, you already have a tool?

Patrick Muran 20:35

Now, I mean, it's it's, like I said, it's kind of nice. It's a touchy feely kind of thing. And you get a real good sense of what the moisture content and the different layers you can you'll find like moisture sort of will reside on the outside, but the core can become kind of dry, because that's the hottest spot. So just using your your old hands to kind of get in there is sufficient.

Craig Macmillan 21:04

Oh, when I forgot ot ask, What do you been using the compost for? Where's the finished product been going?

Patrick Muran 21:09

Right? Yeah, that's kind of going both into our garden or vegetable garden that we use for the restaurant and out in the vineyard. So they're applying it both aspects. And then I'm also making some compost tea or extract that I'm using to apply in the vineyard as well. The whole idea is, is really biology, you're trying to build the biology to support the plant that you're wanting to grow. And this is a great way to get the microorganisms that do the nutrient cycling and promote water holding capacity of the soil, suppress weeds. I mean, it's it's there's so many wins in the successful application of compost in those microorganisms to the soil. It's pretty cool stuff.

Craig Macmillan 21:57

Are you measuring that to see if there's changes over the time? Like maybe you're doing some kind of trial or experiment?

Patrick Muran 22:03

Yeah, yeah, we're working on on trying to assess this from a biological standpoint, what we're doing, what type of impact is that making? And how do you quantify that? There's a lot of discussion on that right now, what organisms matter what organisms don't matter? What is that nutrient cycling? Like? are you introducing harmful organisms to the, to the process? Yeah, we're trying to get answers both from a metabolic standpoint, just like metabolically, what's the activity in that soil, and then we're also doing it just by cell counts, and biological counts out there. Ultimately, we'd like to see long term what the impact is on the vine, as well. So we're trying to segment out different different blocks in our vineyard and assess what the yield is like what the cane weights are like what you know, the growth is like, and possibly even water holding capacity of the soil in the future.

Craig Macmillan 23:08

What is the number one like challenge or obstacle that you've had to overcome with this whole program?

Patrick Muran 23:12

It's like anything, just just getting off the ground, you know, like trying, failing, trying and failing. Doing it over and over again, it did take some time to get comfortable with like these types of assessments because I don't have like the analytical tools like to do it. So there is a little bit of a touch feel component. So just being comfortable going out there and saying, we need moisture, we need 200 gallons on this pile, you know, it needs to be turned today, you know, that sort of stuff, keeping things from going anaerobic is is really key that promotes a loss of nutrients, organisms that that are not going to help your plan all these things and keeping things in an aerobic manner on that aerobic side is, is very important as well. So it's just trial and error and getting those compositions moisture and size.

Craig Macmillan 24:11

That sounds like patience is an important part of this little in the willingness to keep trying, which I think is an important.

Patrick Muran 24:17

Wine making should be a good base of knowledge because it's also an act of patience. You know, these these compost piles will take a couple of months. I mean, fermentations and aging takes a couple of years.

Craig Macmillan 24:30

I do love the overlap. I've never thought of it this way. But I really do love the love the idea that the kind of the training and experience in one field can apply to another than some of the same kind of concepts in terms of like, hey, I have something that's alive, and I need to keep it alive. And I need to be patient as it does its thing. It reminds me of like a sluggish fermat you just have faith. You're gonna get through it. You know, just keep keep trying and try different things. Is there one piece of advice that you'd give someone who to start producing compost on site, either at the vineyard or the winery.

Patrick Muran 25:03

Yeah, I mean, I, my advice would really be just to start, like just getting a sense of even a small pile, like something you can manage and screw up and not have much consequence, just start small. It will help inform you on, like how you can shift the dynamic, based upon what you add to it, you know how much moisture it takes to kind of get this thing together. And then also recognize when you scale, things are going to change a little bit, because the size is going to change and the whole, the whole dynamic is going to change when to scale to like a windrow size. Just as get started, like we started with wire, mesh kind of hardware cloth piles built on pallets basically and, and just learn from it. And it was a bit of work. But I mean, you could do a really small one in in the yard, just to get a sense of it, keeping it aerobic learning the kind of the warning signs of when things go anaerobic, keeping consistent moisture content, that kind of stuff, you'll know if you got it right, or you got it wrong. I mean, it's, it's pretty apparent. And we and we screwed plenty up and re composted, um, you know, a few times over each time you learn a little bit from the process.

Craig Macmillan 26:22

Where can people find out more about you and more about what you do.

Patrick Muran 26:25

I mean, as far as education goes, I would really reach out to either Davis or Cal Poly, find out what they're doing, they'll give you a nice baseline where to start, and maybe the education that can help you not learn the hard way, I would really go to those groups first. Obviously, there's a lot of online type of stuff. And this is this is a dangerous thing. So I would really pick maybe some organic standards, there's some good worksheets on making organic compost put out by the NOP like National Organic Standards and, and things of that nature, that would be a good place to start. Because you could go down a YouTube rabbit hole with thermal composting and the different ways I think that was my struggle to begin with was the subjectivity it became a subjective form. And it's like, wow, no, I think that there's a little more, there's a little more precision here that than just again, throwing it in a bucket and leaving it for six months. And coming back, there is a little more science to it.

Craig Macmillan 27:30

And I do want to underline that there is so much so much more information and much higher quality information than there wasn't even 10 years ago. And so there's a lot of resources out there. And I think you're right, you have to be selective and decide what stuff is useful. And going to folks that have you know, the background and the science behind it. And there's a lot of that there. And so that's, I think we're living in what's going to become a golden age of composting here. There's more and more people do it. And there's more and more experienced this more and more ways of trying it. I think that's really exciting. And I really compliment you for the work that you've put in and sticking with it because like you said, you have to be patient and you have to try things and you're gonna fail and you have to just keep going. That's how you learn. You know, you gotta you gotta crawl before you walk, walk before you run. But that's our time for today. Our guest today was Patrick Muran, winemaker at Niner Wine Estates where he's been composting material on site for quite a while now has learned a ton and I really appreciate you being on the podcast, Patrick.

Patrick Muran 28:22

Absolutely. Craig happy to happy to be here and happy to be supportive of anybody out there trying this and want to reach out to me do whatever I can to help steer you out of the potholes.

Craig Macmillan 28:35

Well, we will have a lot of information also on the end links on the site. So there's a lot of resources out there.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

"In North America, and the U.S. particularly, sustainability has grown from a nice-to-have to a key trigger for consumers," according to Food Business News.

Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know 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 winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.

Today we share three places where you can create a story narrative around your sustainable practices to drive sales.

1. Online

Consumers are increasingly using the internet and social media to find and share their favorite brands. So, bolster up your website like these two brands.

Castoro Cellars has a dedicated page on their website complete with a video showcasing their solar arrays, an image of their recent environmental award, and an explanation on what sustainable agriculture is.

Another great example is the Farming for the Future blog post by Pisoni Vineyards. This article includes beautiful photography of their insectary, the tools they use to reduce water, and how they care for their team by providing competitive wages, health insurance, and excellent training.

Your website is the perfect place to showcase the sustainable practices that you use. Talk with your farmer, winemaker, owner, and the whole team to gather up stories that are specific to your brand. Pair them with nice photography to give your customers a peek behind the scenes of your great wine. If you are SIP Certified, you can also include the logo on your website with a link to the SIP Certified website to encourage shoppers to learn more about your practices and the requirements for certification.

2. Off-Premise

You can also showcase your sustainability off-premise. These channels include any place your wine can be seen outside of your winery or tasting room.

With so many consumers purchasing from physical retail outlets and online stores, it's clear that promoting your message of sustainability on your physical product or at the store shelf is vital. Work with retailers to set up a sustainable wine section or to add shelf hangers with information on sustainability below your bottles. Of course, if you are SIP Certified you can include the logo on your wine label as well.

Food and Beverage Insights reports third-party certification is increasingly important with consumers; "The idea of 'responsible consumerism' is growing as Americans are turning their dollars toward companies and brands that are backed by a commitment to bettering the planet for generations to come."

3. Staff Training

Don't forget to train your team. Your customer-facing staff are the front lines for consumer education.

Training them to speak about your sustainable actions is easy! We offer a free online training course that anyone can complete to brush up on all things sustainability. It even includes a fun quiz to test your knowledge.

If you love these episodes, they are another great way for your team to learn about effective ways to incorporate the message of sustainability into everyday customer-facing conversations. If you did not know, we also offer these in a newsletter format so you can sign up to get marketing tips delivered right to your inbox twice a month.

If you want to learn more about how storytelling can help you sell more wine, check out our interview with Kathy Kelley of Penn State University. She explains how understanding why people drink wine allows you to use their attitudes and behaviors to improve your marketing to keep your customers coming back.

Check out the show notes for a link to the interview with Kathy Kelley, links to this article, research on consumer purchasing preferences, to download the seasons of sustainability PDF, and sign up for our biweekly Marketing Tips newsletter. Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.

References:

• **SIP Smart Training online course
• 161: Use Storytelling to Sell More Wine
• Cover crops make vineyards more sustainable; strategy can be marketing tool
• Kathy Kelley
• Identifying wine consumers interested in environmentally sustainable production practices
• Marketing Tips eNewsletter
• Penn State Extension Wine Business Management and Marketing
• Seasons of Sustainability
• SIP Certified
• What Sustainability Means to Consumers by Morning Consult
• Wine consumers' willingness to adopt environmentally friendly packaging practices at tasting rooms: An ECHAID analysis

Understanding why people drink wine allows you to use their attitudes and behaviors to improve your marketing to keep your customers coming back. This research is exactly what Kathy Kelley, Professor of Horticultural Marketing and Retail Business Management at Penn State University loves to do. In her studies, she has found that sustainability is very important to customers however it can mean different things to different people. While 7 out of 10 adults in the United States consider purchasing food and beverage with a sustainability component a priority, one-fourth of these respondents could not articulate sustainability. This gives the industry a great opportunity to better communicate what sustainability means.

Communicating sustainability should be incorporated into a brand's DNA from point A to point B through all marketing channels including face-to-face, social media, print, and website. Storytelling is a great way to convey your brand values because consumers are more likely to remember stories. By describing specific practices and why they are important, you set yourself apart from the competition and create an emotional connection with your consumers. Kathy's research on sharing cover cropping practices found that customers were willing to pay one to four dollars more per bottle after learning about the specific sustainable practices. Listen in for more tips on how to determine your customer demographic and refine your marketing.

References:

• Cover crops make vineyards more sustainable; strategy can be a marketing tool
• Kathy Kelley
• Identifying wine consumers interested in environmentally sustainable production practices
• Penn State Extension Wine Business Management and Marketing
• SIP Certified
• Vineyard Team – Become a Member
• What Sustainability Means to Consumers by Morning Consult
• Wine consumers' willingness to adopt environmentally friendly packaging practices at tasting rooms: An ECHAID analysis

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

Craig Macmillan 0:00

I'm your host, Craig Macmillan and with us today is Kathy Kelly. She is professor of horticultural marketing and retail business management at Penn State University. Kathy, thanks for being here.

Kathy Kelley 0:08

Thank you very much. I appreciate the invitation.

Craig Macmillan 0:11

Tell us a little bit about the work that you do and where your kind of research interests lie.

Kathy Kelley 0:15

So I've been a faculty member at Penn State since 2001. And I have a teaching extension research appointment, all three of my aspects deal with some sort of marketing component. And my research, I really became very interested in learning about why people drink wine, how to kind of use those attitudes and behaviors to help smaller producers, medium sizeed wineries, focusing on the consumer and use that to their their benefit. So I've really kind of done a bit of research in the mid Atlantic area to understand why we buy and then what type of product characteristics and tasting room components really make that an experience for consumers that the want to come back again and again to the facility.

Craig Macmillan 0:58

That is super interesting. So based on consumer research, how much do consumers care about the origins of the products they consume in terms of sustainability.

Kathy Kelley 1:06

So sustainability is very important to consumers and more so with the younger generation, then maybe generations that are a little bit more mature. But sustainability can mean quite a few things to many different people. Sustainability not only refers to the environment, but to the social, and the economic sustainability pieces of that three piece stool, but within one economic sustainability. One person may consider sustainability and include organic or certified organic foods, and another may not. So there is an interest in say sustainability. But there's some confusion as to what it really means. Talking with the students in my class, who are Gen Z's young millennials, you know, they really are interested in sustainability. But like the consumers at large, they might not be able to articulate it. We also have this component where consumers are not really that knowledgeable or a portion of consumers not really that knowledgeable about how their food is grown. So when you put the two together, you can see that the confusion grows even more. In Pennsylvania, for example, because of our excessive rain and humidity, it may not be possible for us to grow grapes organically. But we can use other certain types of sustainable measures, like cover crops to control weeds, and use other production methods to control diseases. Or we could use lighter weight glass bottles or be a recycling center for consumers to bring their wine bottles back to and then we use those pieces to inform consumers that we do partake, and we do incorporate certain sustainable activities in the wine production for the industry. And then we need to craft the message that it makes sense to the audience. But I do have to point out that there's been quite a few reports published recently about how sustainability is becoming more important to consumers, and one if I could point it out as morning consult, and they published a report in September called what sustainability means to consumers. And they divided the report up into different types of chapters, if you will, based on the topic and for food and beverages. They found that 7 in 10 us adults would consider purchasing food and beverages as a priority if it has a sustainability component to it. However, when they asked survey participants to describe what it means to be sustainable, one in four said that they didn't know they couldn't articulate it. Others referred to the packaging with such as reducing the amount of filler or the the types of components used to package the product to ship it to the store to the consumer. And others talked about how it was recycling that the facility recycled materials that they didn't use, or any scrap or call material was recycled rather than thrown in the trash. And then some talked about how it was less waste when growing food. So there's quite a bit of difference as far as what consumers say sustainability is. But we know that there's interest, it's just that we need to do a better job of communicating to consumers what sustainability means in the food and beverage space.

Craig Macmillan 3:59

And that sounds like a larger scale, picture communicating just kind of in general, what about a specific company or brand? Obviously, differentiation in the marketplace is crucial to the success of any brand. And this is often done by a compelling story to the consumer about the brand. We also might be telling a story from an industry standpoint, why is it important for a winery or vineyard to include the sustainability related aspects of their business in their story?

Kathy Kelley 4:24

So I'm a real proponent of of storytelling. Storytelling is a great way to convey to consumers the business's purpose or its why, who they serve and the solutions they provide. And we are more likely to remember stories than facts. So if a wine brand has a compelling story to tell about what they're doing to minimize their impact on the environment, they should certainly use it and they should share that information. But the store needs to be authentic. If a brand's story is not genuine, and it is clear that the sustainable efforts are implemented merely to boost their profitability, consumers can tell and could likely decide not To pursue that brand. But brands who make sustainability a central part of their business need to identify consumers with the same interest and learn more about these consumers, these likely buyers, so they need to learn about their needs, their wants and behaviors that can help them develop the narrative, it would then be ideal to ask likely buyers with an interest in sustainability to react to the story, so that it does make sense to them so that the words that are used are appropriate. And then this information can help wine businesses determine whether the message resonates with consumers. And when it does, it becomes more powerful than just providing facts.

Craig Macmillan 5:38

Now, is that a face to face human to human kind of communication? You mentioned that you have to have some response from the consumer or are there other communication at a distance ways that you can engage to other consumers interested or how to get through them?

Kathy Kelley 5:52

Absolutely. So in the tasting room it makes sense that it would be somebody behind the tasting bar sharing the information, kind of striking up a conversation, seeing what's important to the consumer talking about certain sustainability efforts that the wine brand is doing. But also social media is really key with the ability to have you know, images and video, and even you know, one and two way conversations with you know, different platforms, it should be incorporated into the brand's DNA from point A to point B, which would be the consumer, it really has to flow through, it has to be authentic, there's just so many ways to kind of focus in on what that component is that that is so meaningful to the brand. And it's an emotional thing to you know, consumers are so emotional, emotional beings, that when a wine brand is able to convey the emotion as to why sustainability is so important to them, then that builds a stronger connection between the wine brand and the consumer. And the consumer is more likely to respond in a positive way. And you know, frequent that brand tasting room or purchase that brands product.

Craig Macmillan 6:58

That's a question I hadn't thought of until you just mentioned it. And that is emotion, do we know very much about what kinds of emotion are a tap to sustainability products or how emotions are attached to a company, and it's talking about sustainability.

Kathy Kelley 7:12

So I don't have that particular data set in front of me. But emotion is very important to any type of purchase that we make. 94% of our decision making processes based on our emotion that we use emotion in some capacity to make a decision whether we're going to particular pharmacy to just get medication, because it's an absolute need, or something like wine, where it's more of a pleasure seeking type of product, or we're seeking pleasure by purchasing it or as the after effect of of making that purchase. Emotion is very important. There is research that shows that about 64, 65% of both men and women have stated that at one time, they've either developed an emotional bond with a brand, or an emotional bond with a brand's product. So emotion is very important in our decision making process.

Craig Macmillan 8:02

Is it a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling of happy, positive feelings is it a feeling of obligation? Like, how do I know what I'm feeling? I just feeling? What is it that I'm feeling kind of specifically, I guess, do we know do we have any idea?

Kathy Kelley 8:20

So I don't have access to the literature. And I haven't really looked at the exact emotions that sustainability. What particulars of an emotional branch of state sustainability resonate with consumers, I can take a guess. But that's about it.

Craig Macmillan 8:34

That's exactly I can take a guess I feel the same way. I've had a lot of experience working in tasting rooms, including recently. And when you communicate with the customer, sometimes you get a really clear picture of kind of what they're about. And other times you really can they're very opaque. And yet you know, that those processes are going on? It's just hard to tell. And it's hard to tell which what processes can interfere with other processes and which ones are gonna be most effective. So you mentioned a little bit about social media, website, stuff in the tasting room. Does describing specific sustainable farming practices make a difference in consumer attitudes towards a product do you think? And are consumers interested in specifics?

Kathy Kelley 9:12

So I believe that describing the specific sustainability practices used in the vineyard to grow grapes is important for a few reasons, it's likely that you'll be able to educate consumers about a topic that they may not be familiar with, or it kind of sparked some interest in them where they you've used some key words, and they understand that because that's in their vocabulary, and also provides a level of transparency. You're not just saying that you're sustainable, but you're talking about the different steps you're taking to be sustainable, and it's part of the storytelling process. So for example, we conducted a survey and we published the results in the International Journal Wine Business Research and 2021. And we had identified wine consumers who were likely to sample wine from vineyards using cover crops as a way to suppress weeds and reduce herbicide applications. And we felt it was important that our survey participants responded to questions based on a specific scenario. We just didn't want to say that the wines were sustainable. We wanted to talk about what we were doing in the vineyard to make them sustainable, so that we will get more accurate data. So we did not want them to just make assumptions about why we use cover crops, but we told them specifically that they were to suppress weeds. So before they responded to questions about their likelihood to sample such wines, they read a short passage about herbicides being used in the vineyard, and that they were used to maintain a weed free zone under the grape vines, but that herbicides could potentially leak in the groundwater and cause soil erosion that by planting cover crops under the grape vines, we may be able to control weeds and reduce chemical input or eliminate herbicide use overall, this is something that's being used by Makayla Centinari. She's an Associate Professor of viticulture at Penn State University. And this is what a good portion of her research is on how do you suppress weeds in a vineyard using cover crops. We were also interested in investigating what consumers are who as a consumer group, we're willing to sample wines made from these grapes, but also pay $1 to cover the costs of implementing the cover crops. Because we know that based on some cost of production materials that we had, and some statistics, that it was more expensive to plant cover crops and to maintain them as opposed to applying herbicides to control the weeds. So we did have to provide that information to consumers. Because it's very much part of the purchasing process. Not only is it what the label on the bottle, the wine looks like but it's also the price that the wine sells for. So we did find consumers who were not only just willing to pay $1, more for that bottle of wine, because we had told them about the benefits of using cover crops in the vineyard. But we actually found segments of consumers who are willing to pay up to $4 more for the bottle of wine. So for us, we think it's very much that we have to provide the situation for the consumer, not just for the study. But for other studies as well, I don't think that we would get as rich have a dataset, if we just did sustainable or grown using x, we have to explain why that is. And again, it's a little bit of understanding what the consumer want. But it's also a little bit of explaining to consumers what what the product is. So it works for research. And that's something that I would strongly suggest wineries do as well, being very transparent. Talk about the specifics. Again, there's many different benefits to the business as to why you would want to do so.

Craig Macmillan 12:33

you know, probably don't have that on this. But just just to kind of talk about it for a minute. How much energy do you think a consumer is willing to put in to understand or conceive or think about these kinds of things? And the reason that I ask is, I think most of us at least being for myself have a relatively short attention span. And so I might seek out a product or try to find a product with a particular set of qualities like oh, this is, you know, less impact on the planet, or there's a social justice component to it. Personally, I'm only willing to go so far to put in so much energy. What is your take on that? How, how much energy do you think people were willing to put in? And so I guess what I'm asking is, how much of a window do we have? Either in terms of text or time or imagery, or ease of access to information? What's the what's the window like? Do you think?

Kathy Kelley 13:20

Yeah, so I think that's a pretty important question to consider. Because when I'm thinking about the students in my class, and there's data on this, that somebody has suggested that the millennials have an attention span of 12 seconds, Gen Z, the young, who are younger than Millennials have about eight seconds, as far as an attention span. And then when it comes to the internet, both groups having shorter attention span, so it kind of goes along with the what do you do as far as promoting your product to your core group, your target market, first of all, you have to identify them. So if I was going to craft this sustainable message for a winery, I would first of all understand what wine consumers like dislike, and then find that segment within those consumers that are interested in sustainability. I'm never going to get everybody to want to buy sustainable wine. So I have to focus on those where it makes the most sense the likely buyers, and then I have to talk to them about how do you learn about particular types of issues? How do you learn about sustainable? How interested are you? What are your habits. Do you recycle? Do you not do X, Y or Z because of some sort of limitation or barrier and me as a winery, if it deals with wine? Can I make that offer you a solution for that. The students in my class again, those millennials, those Gen z's, they they really can flip the switch really quickly on whether the information is going to grab them or not. So with social media, luckily, photos do such a great service to us to convey a message so it's very much about crafting a visual that that is going to capture their attention and then hopefully be the hook for them to read more either in the description the caption or another website, the frequency of how how many times you send that message out, you've got to kind of think about what the social media suggestions are for number of Instagram posts, when to post them. It is a mix of knowing who your audience is knowing what words or emotions to use in the message, and then knowing how to craft that message so that it hits the right target audience at the right time, and is compelling enough to convert them to a buyer or to seek you out for more information.

Craig Macmillan 15:25

How do I find out who my consumer is?

Kathy Kelley 15:29

So there are acouple of resources online that are free. Some have particular types of data that's behind a paywall. But there are certainly ways to find information about consumers without mentioning a particular type of association or organization that provides information for free. Certainly, if you search the web for in quotes, wind marketing, wind consumer, or you set up Google Alerts to find that information for you, you'll find that there's information that is even published in our mainstream wine business, wine marketing journals. A good deal of information is published by the restaurant industry, or you know, you may not be just looking at wine data, you may want to seek out data about consumers of all alcoholic beverages or spirit drinkers or beer drinkers different information is out there, just take a little hunting then to find the specifics. But then once you find those resources, I think that you, you just continue to return to them. Certainly other options include paying a consultant to do research. But also winery should invest their time into, you know, looking at their list of subscribers, if they have a news, e newsletter, or if they have some sort of membership club and really using that those names and surveying them, asking them to learn more about specific topics. And not just sustainability. But other types of topics that will if they had that information, and they gathered it from likely buyers, would help them in being more economically sustainable.

Craig Macmillan 17:02

That's encouraging, because I was afraid I was gonna have to spend a year and a half with focus groups. Other people take care of that for us. Thank goodness, that's great.

Kathy Kelley 17:13

And so the data might be skewed to perhaps California just because of the size of the population. But you can then use the information kind of think about it, see what could potentially work for your business and then query your own consumers to learn about their their attitudes and behaviors.

Craig Macmillan 17:31

Well, I guess today has been Kathy Kelly. She's professor of horticultural marketing and retail business management at Penn State University. This has been great thank you for for sharing all of this work and knowledge that you have. Where can people find out more about you or related topics?

Kathy Kelley 17:45

Well, thank you again for inviting me. My information is published as far as the types of articles that are right based on research that we've done, and then just general articles about wine marketing can be found on the Penn State Extension website. Our grape and wine team has a number of articles from viticulture technology to the ones that I write on marketing and business management, and then others that kind of fall in between those three main topics, feel free to reach out to me anytime.

Craig Macmillan 18:13

Fantastic. And we will have those links in the episode page on our website. So please check it out. Again, Kathy has been great.

Kathy Kelley 18:21

Thank you very much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Understanding why people drink wine allows you to use their attitudes and behaviors to improve your marketing to keep your customers coming back.

Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know 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 winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.

Today we bring you a sneak peek into next week's full-length episode to share the marketing strategy you're not using.

Defining consumer purchasing behavior is exactly what Kathy Kelley, Professor of Horticultural Marketing and Retail Business Management at Penn State University loves to do. In her studies, she has found that sustainability is very important to customers however it can mean different things to different people. While 7 out of 10 adults in the United States consider purchasing food and beverage with a sustainability component a priority, one-fourth of these respondents could not articulate sustainability. This gives the industry a great opportunity to better communicate what sustainability means.

Communicating sustainability should be incorporated into a brand's DNA from point A to point B through all marketing channels including face-to -face, social media, print, and website. Storytelling is a great way to convey your brand values because consumers are more likely to remember stories. By describing specific practices and why they are important, you set yourself apart from the competition and create an emotional connection with your consumers. Kathy's research on sharing cover cropping practices found that customers were willing to pay one to four dollars more per bottle after learning about the specific sustainable practices.

The Seasons of Sustainability: Winter

Here are some great practices you can share with your consumers to tell that block-to-bottle story. Use these activities to create blog posts, social content, and tasting room talking points. It's this type of content that captivates and educates.

Here are some sustainable practices SIP Certified brands do during the winter:

• Plant cover crops to prevent erosion, help rain penetrate, and provide natural fertilizer.
• Spread compost to release fertilizer and inoculate the soil with beneficial microorganisms.
• Prevent erosion with straw or hay bales.
• Compare water bills and look for increases or anomalies.
• Taste and top tanks and barrels, update post-fermentation analysis, and regularly monitor Free SO2 and Volatile Acidity levels.
• Schedule bottling and begin blending trials.

Tune in on December 15 to hear the whole interview and get more tips on how to determine your customer demographic and refine your marketing.

Check out the show notes for links to this article, research on consumer purchasing preferences, to download the seasons of sustainability PDF, and sign up for our biweekly Marketing Tips newsletter. Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.

References:

• **SIP Smart Training online course
• Marketing Tips eNewsletter
• Cover crops make vineyards more sustainable; strategy can be marketing tool
• Kathy Kelley
• Identifying wine consumers interested in environmentally sustainable production practices
• Penn State Extension Wine Business Management and Marketing
• Seasons of Sustainability
• SIP Certified
• What Sustainability Means to Consumers by Morning Consult
• Wine consumers' willingness to adopt environmentally friendly packaging practices at tasting rooms: An ECHAID analysis

Now in its eighth year, the California Green Medal Sustainable Winegrowing Leadership Awards provide recognition to vineyards and wineries that are leaders in implementing the Three E's of sustainability (environment, economic and social equity).

Welcome to Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team where we bring you the latest in science and research for the wine industry. I'm Beth Vukmanic, Executive Director at Vineyard Team, steering committee member and judge for the California Green Medal Awards. Applications are open now through January 30, 2023. As a listener to this podcast, you could be a perfect candidate to receive recognition for your good work.

The Green Medal Awards inspire others in the industry and highlight the benefits of participating in a sustainability program. It's a great opportunity to showcase the amazing commitment many California growers and vintners have made to protecting the environment and enhancing the communities in which they live and work. We're proud to count a number of SIP Certified members among the winners including Jackson Family Wines, Monterey Pacific, Inc., Pisoni Family Vineyards, Sheid Family Wines, and Trinchero Family Estates.

We wanted to highlight last year's winner of the Leader Award, Wente Vineyards in Livermore. So, our host, Craig Macmillan, Critical Resource Manager at Niner Wine Estates, with a long-time SIP Certified vineyard and the first ever SIP Certified winery, took a few minutes to talk with Nikki Wente. If you attended our Sustainable Ag Expo in November, you had a chance to hear from Nikki about their use of autonomous and electric vehicles. In this interview, she talks about their no-till system, use of sheep in the vineyards, oak forest land, electric tractors, and balancing capital investments. Listen in to hear her number one piece of advice for sustainable winegrowers.

You can apply for the Environment, Community, or Business awards and also the Leader award by going to greenmedal.org. Check out the show notes for a link, to read about previous winners and to learn more about Nikki. Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.

References:

• California Green Medal Award | Apply
• California Green Medal Award | Winners
• SIP Certified California Greene Medal Award Winners
• Wente Vineyards

Under vine cover crops can both improve soil health and control vine vigor. Justine Vanden Heuvel, Professor and Chair of the Horticulture Section School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University and Michela Centinari Associate Professor of Viticulture at the Department of Plant Science at Penn State University have trialed different cover crops to find the best plants for vineyards. By adding a cover crop under the vine, growers can impact the size of the vine by stopping vegetative growth at version. Ground cover has additional benefits on the soil including decreasing the impact of water drops, improved water infiltration, increased carbon, soil aggregate stability, and microbial activity. Listen in to learn which cover crops are best to improve the overall sustainability of a vineyard.

References:

• 25: Under-Vine Cover Crops (podcast)
• Floor Management for Soil Health | Dr. Craig Macmillan
• Hans Walter-Peterson Webpage
• Justine Vanden Heuvel Website
• Justine Vanden Houvel's Twitter
• Justine Vanden Heuvel's YouTube playlist
• Michela Centinari's Penn State Extension webpage
• Michela Centinari's Twitter
• SIP Certified
• The Centinari Lab at Penn State
• Under-Vine Vegetation Mitigates the Impacts of Excessive Precipitation in Vineyards
• 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

Craig Macmillan 0:00

Today our guests are Justine Vanden Houvel from Cornell University and Michela Centinari from Penn State University. And we're going to talk about some really exciting work they've been doing around the topic of under vine vegetation. Thank you both for being here.

Justine Vanden Houvel 0:14

Thanks, Craig.

Craig Macmillan 0:16

Tell us a little bit first of all about what under vine vegetation kind of is, to me that sounds like weeds coming from California. To me, that means weeds and it's gotta go. Your work is looking at some maybe some benefits of it and things that might help in the eastern United States at least, can you tell me kind of what the basic definitions of these things are?

Michela Centinari 0:33

I understand why you think you know, that the under vine vegetation should go because I'm from Italy. And also we don't like to see weeds. Cover crops grown under the vines, because it's a dry, you know, hot warm climate. Is a little different for us here in the eastern United States and the Northeast US, because we have a very different weather conditions, you know, it's more or less humid, wet, and we have fertile soil. So cover crops are weeds, even weeds growing under the under the vine can actually be beneficial for the vine and for the soil. And this is because our vines can be overly vigorous, because it's, you know, it's humid is wet, and the soil is fertile. And this competition provided by the cover crops to the vine for water and nutrients can actually decrease the amount of vigor of the vines. So that is seen as a positive traits in our region, at least some of the sites in our region.

Justine Vanden Houvel 1:31

I agree with what Michela said, and sometimes they are weeds. Sometimes they're specific species that we're we're cultivating. From a management perspective, it really doesn't make any sense in some of these eastern vineyards, not all of them, but in some of them to have this bare strip under the vines because we have to go through and hedge the top of the canopy two, three times in a growing season, we have to go through and do leaf removal once or twice in a growing season. You know, we're spending a lot of money in the industry, here on the East trying to manage the vigor of the vines. And those are Band Aid solutions, right, they don't really help fix the situation. Whereas providing that competition that Michela was referring to, can make a big difference in terms of reducing the available water and nutrients that the vine can take up.

Craig Macmillan 2:19

What kind of species of plants are we talking about here? You know, a weed is a plant at a place. Mint is often a weed but also if I have it in a container, and it's next to my front door, and I like to have my food and it's not a weed. What kind of plants are you talking about?

Justine Vanden Houvel 2:32

Yeah, we've been working with quite a few different plants. So some different grasses, buckwheat, chicory rosette forming turnip. We are having a problem with a lot of the brassicas though and that the groundhogs like to eat them, so we're kind of steering away from those ones a little bit. But we've worked with a wide variety of species and looked at you know, do we see a big impact on Vine size, small impact on Vine size, or no impact on Vine size, because we need to make sure we dial it in so that the grower has the amount of control of vigor that they want. We don't want to deviate the vines too greatly.

Craig Macmillan 3:10

In terms of monitoring vigor, are you doing this from pruning weights? Are you doing this from trying to weigh green mass during the summer, this is gonna be kind of tough, because if you're hedging something two, three times, you know, how do you get a number on that? So what's your metric? How are you getting the baseline metric here?

Justine Vanden Houvel 3:28

We mostly in my program, and Michela can comment on hers we use two methods. One is pruning weight dormant pruning weights, but the second is what we call enhance point quadrate analysis. So some of your listeners may know about point quadrate analysis which was you know, made famous by Richard Smart and sunlight into wine, my group added to sort of a calibration with a light bar in the middle of the canopy so that we can then look at actual numbers for how much light clusters are getting and how much light different leaves are are getting. And so we use those two metrics to really enhance point quadrant analysis. It's a proxy for vigor right, it doesn't measure actual growth rate, but we use that in pruning weight as our measures for this.

Michela Centinari 4:12

Yes, yes, I mean, definitely we measure printing weight because it's something you know growers are familiar with, and it's easier to quantify. We also have been looking at changing the fruiting zone, right light exposure and canopy density. We even, and that is very labor intensive, we looked if the cover crop can reduce the length of the growing season. Basically, in our region, we see the length of vegetative growth because in our region we see the shoots keep growing after verasion on and we want them to stop earlier. So we basically assess if the cover crops can you know stop this vegetative growth around veraison that you know helps in terms of fruit ripening.

Craig Macmillan 4:59

That's interesting. But one of the things I wanted to ask you about as part of all of this, and I think vigor may have something to do with it. The paper you're published recently had a kind of a focus on the effects of heavy precipitation. And the benefits of UVV, undermine vegetation, pardon me, jumped into lingo a little soon, and the effects of heavy rain events. That's interesting to me, because we don't have heavy rain events in California, where I'm from, and I can only imagine what it must be like. And so what are what are some of the benefits there? Oh, and actually, before we get to that, I got a question. In the east in Pennsylvania in New York, that those areas, how common is the use of under vine vegetation as opposed to a clean berm since we have an idea for how much adoption there is out there?

Justine Vanden Houvel 5:42

That's an interesting question. And it basically depends on on how busy the growers are, how many of them have wholeheartedly adopted under vine vegetation? That's a handful in New York, it's not a lot. At this point, I'd love to see more, how many of them will absolutely let the weeds grow and then not worry about it until they get too tall? Because they know it's helping to deviate their vine? That is a fair number.

Michela Centinari 6:06

Yeah, it's very similar here in Pennsylvania, you know, I have to say, growers are definitely interested, you know, we did lots surveys, and we see, you know, most growers want to try but then you know, they get busy. And it's hard, you know, for them to change, a management practice that is working right, you know, spray herbicide. So they need, you know, it's not always easy, right. But definitely, there is an interest, it's just not, a widely adopted practice.

Justine Vanden Houvel 6:34

We are starting to see growers in New York purchasing the undermine mowers so that they're able to maintain and under rvine vegetation and mow it reasonably easily. And so it's been great to see people making that investment.

Craig Macmillan 6:48

The reason I wanted to get to that was because this issue of precipitation, one of the things that I had never thought about that came up in your writing was erosion, and also so crusting and negative impacts on soil structure and aggregate formation and all that kind of stuff. Which is something yeah, very much an issue on bare ground. I had never really thought about it as an issue in let's say, July in a vineyard. Can you tell me what overall like when I've got a rainstorm like that, and I don't have under vine vegetation around what are the all the impacts that I'm looking at that I'm being affected by?

Michela Centinari 7:17

Yeah, I mean, definitely, we see that and we, you know, I even took pictures to show growers because we do see multiple negative impacts on the on the soil under the vine. We see increase on erosion, I mean, definitely most of our vineyards you know, sloppy, you know, on a hill, so we see erosion, even if they use cover crops in the middle row still under the vine, you see this erosion, water and nutrients, you know, in soil washing out from the from the vineyard, we also, you know, showed through an experiment mostly just sean studies that there is an increase in the leaching of nutrients, whether to agrochemicals into the underground water. So definitely leaving bare soil under the vine, create, the negative impact has negative consequences on several parameters of soil health. And since you know, we want the vineyard to last 20 plus years, hopefully, you know, it's important to maintain soil health and to reduce soil degradation and definitely under ine cover crops or weeds can really help in that.

Justine Vanden Houvel 8:20

And I'd also add that our comparison here is bare soil versus soil that's covered with vegetation, whether it's weeds or a species. Is some people will say, well, I cultivate so that's all right, but really the problem in agriculture is bare soil versus not bare soil, right? So cultivation isn't a practice that is able to help reduce a lot of these problems, like the leaching and the runoff in particular.

Michela Centinari 8:51

And even you know, as an as important sort of, for us to increase soil carbon, and definitely soil cultivation doesn't help with that, while you know, let some type of vegetation grow under the vine can be also use as a way to accumulate carbon in the soil in addition to the other benefits that we mentioned.

Craig Macmillan 9:12

There's also some things that you talked about that I'm super curious about, and that is other positive effects in terms of things like soil structure and soil health. What can you tell me about that? That's the cover cropping idea?

Michela Centinari 9:24

Yes, yes.

Craig Macmillan 9:25

So we're not simply covering the ground at this point, we're looking for other benefits.

Michela Centinari 9:29

So definitely, overall cover crops, no, just under the vines can improve many parameters of soil health, not just you know, decrease erosion. But for example, the biomass of the covered crop can reduce the impact of the raindrops that you know can really break the soil aggregates when you live you leave a bare soil under the vine on the middle row can also improve water infiltration. So you have less you know, water runoff can also as we mentioned, improve the soil carbon or the over nutrients in the soil, which you know are all good for the long term sustainability of our vineyards.

Justine Vanden Houvel 10:06

I'd add a couple of other soil health aspects to that is aggregate stability. So aggregate stability for soil is the ability of the basically the soil to withstand physical pressure from the outside. So usually rain in some of the studies that we've done in my program here, we saw a huge increase in aggregate stability of soil up to 80, something percent after three years, when we compared cultivation to weeds growing under the soil for those three years. We see an increase in soil respiration, which we assume means a healthier soil with more microbes. And we see an increase in microbe diversity as well. So we also did a study where we were comparing some different under vine treatments. And we saw that with each passing year, there was more diversity in the microbes when we had weeds growing under the vines than if we had bare soil under the vines. And we assume that helps in terms of nutrient turnover and, and other processes like those.

Craig Macmillan 11:10

I'm know you'd mentioned some species at the beginning, in your work, I'm assuming this work is experimental so that you're choosing what is going on going under the vine for these different trials. Or actually, I'm assuming it's actually experimental, you must have a randomized design or some kind of replicated design of some kind. So what are the plants that you're picking to plant as that undermine vegetation?

Justine Vanden Houvel 11:30

So my group is done lots of different iterations of these types of studies at this point, because we've done it in young vineyards and old vineyards and with hybrids or with vinifera. So they're always in replicated studies. What we basically come down to is we use usually sometimes cultivation but usually herbicide is our control for comparison, because that's what most growers here in New York are doing. And we use buckwheat as our cover crop that will usually have a very slight impact on vine vigor. So buckwheat establishes beautifully, right because it's only allopathic. So we don't tend to have a big problem with weeds, the height of it seems to be appropriate, we don't normally have to mow it, it doesn't get up into the fruiting zone kind of flowers falls over and there's not a lot of management there. And the most we've ever seen at reduced pruning weight might be by 10% or so. On the much more significant side we have chicory root. So chicory is pretty low growing, you can get a dwarf version of it. And I should mention, we normally work with annual cover crops because we hold up over the graft union to protect scion buds in the winter. Chicory is technically a biennial, but what we find is it just keeps coming back, coming back coming back. It can deviate a vine significantly. So we've used it in some of the bigger vineyards when we've wanted to really pull back on the pruning weight. Sometimes that's been up to about 30% compared to our control of herbicide, and then we found that different grasses are somewhere in the middle in terms of their impacts on vine vigor.

Michela Centinari 13:06

Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, it's the same for us, right, we try different type of cover crops, depending on the growers, you know, what they need, what they want to achieve. In addition to what Justine mentioned, we also have been doing some work with perennial grasses, because for some growers, you know, they like, they like to plant something perennial, right. So that reduced the amount of work that they have to do, you just planted once and if you plant a species that doesn't grow too tall, you don't even have to mow sometimes the grass, so it's kind of a lower maintenance. So again, depending on what the grower needs, and what is feasible for that site, you know, we try to match the cover crop with with the site.

Craig Macmillan 13:45

And I'm sorry, I might have missed it, what type species of perennial grasses are we talking about?

Michela Centinari 13:49

So we try and for example, the creeping red fescue, we also try other fescue mixes mix of different fescues including like tall fescue and and we try, you know, to look for species that grow well in a kind of shaded area, because it's not in the middle row. Like it's different. You have more sunlight there. So you want something that establish quickly so the weeds don't grow overgrowth in the grass, and also something that doesn't require too much management in terms of you know, more in like Justine was talking about, you know, buckwheet, chickory, because that is not something that the grower can easily do, like in the middle row, or not every grower can easily do.

Craig Macmillan 14:28

My next question is so how do you plant these grass seeds in the row? Grasses are tiny, they need to have a little bit of cover. It's not a planting grass is not a simple thing. Usually you have to prepare a seed bed. How do you how do you do it? I just am really curious about this.

Justine Vanden Houvel 14:46

So that's a good question. So Michela , and I both have grad students so for years it was our grad students.

Craig Macmillan 14:54

I was a graduate student once I see how this works. Okay,

Justine Vanden Houvel 14:58

Bbut no knowing that the growers were never going to want to do that, I worked with Hans Walter Peterson, who is the viticulture extension specialist for the Finger Lakes here for Cornell Cooperative Extension. And he designed basically a fertilizer spreader, he did a welding design that has two shoots that go off the back to put the seed under the rows. And we can just dump the seed in that drive down the row and set the spinning rate. Sorry, I'm not a good equipment person. So I'm probably not using the right names here. We set the spinning rate for how quickly we want the seeds to come out.

Craig Macmillan 15:31

The application rate.

Justine Vanden Houvel 15:32

And we have that you can look it up online he has a video on YouTube, if anybody's interested in who happily shares those plans so that growers can build their own.

Craig Macmillan 15:40

That's fantastic. That's fantastic. You said extensionist in the Finger Lakes region. And his name again was?

Justine Vanden Houvel 15:46

Hans Walter Peterson.

Craig Macmillan 15:47

Walter Peterson . And God bless you. Dr. Peterson.

Justine Vanden Houvel 15:50

Yeah. And he and Alice Wise, who's our extension specialist on on Long Island for Cornell, they've done a lot of work on how do we get growers to adopt some of these practices. So Michela and I have done basically the research that informs it, but they've looked at what are some of the obstacles? And how can we overcome those so that we can get rid of bare soil in the spots where we really don't need to maintain it here?

Craig Macmillan 16:12

Oh, that reminds me of something else. So in Finger Lakes, Pennsylvania, I don't know very well, I don't know either region really? Well, I gotta admit, is all of the water coming from summer precipitation, or is there supplemental irrigation?

Justine Vanden Houvel 16:24

There's a handful of people with supplemental irrigation here, but it is not very common in the Finger Lakes of New York.

Michela Centinari 16:31

Yeah, neither neither for us. Mostly, like in young vineyards.

Justine Vanden Houvel 16:35

Yeah. I mean, we can give you an example. We got an inch and a half of rain here just yesterday. Alone. Right. We get a lot of precipitation. And in some years this year, started out dry. But then it's been raining pretty consistently for a couple of weeks. Now.

Craig Macmillan 16:52

Pardon my presumption is, but it sounds like the team should be working on fungal diseases. That's what's going on. That's a lot of rain. That's a crop killer.

Justine Vanden Houvel 17:00

Yeah, that's what the pathologists are working on. But we should actually mention. So there has been some good work on under vine cover crops done in Uruguay, where they looked at weather, botrytis, and I think some other fungal diseases, I'd have to refresh my memory on that, was impacted by under vine cover crops. And indeed, because of the reduced vegetation in the canopy, right, smaller leaves and just the canopy not being so thick, they did see a reduction in cluster rots as a function of under vine cover crops as well.

Craig Macmillan 17:31

There you go. That's fantastic.

Michela Centinari 17:33

Yeah. And that's great. Because actually, several growers here are concerned about growing under vine cover crop that will increase disease pressure, because they're afraid about you know, the humidity, increasing humidity in the under vine area. But like Justine said, We never observe or measure any negative effect of under vine cover crop on you know, increase in mold to other fungal disease. Actually, sometimes if there is an effect is a positive effect. What actually we don't know yet is, you know, if we can increase the presence of pests under the vine, right, like a course, some insects or other type of pests. We never had any issues in our vineyards, I mean, in vineyards, where we are conducting research, and that is something definitely that, you know, could potentially be a problem. We don't know yet.

Craig Macmillan 18:22

Okay, I'm gonna ask a tough question here. That's because we've kind of ended up here. I'm a grower, I'm worried about too much impact on vigor, I'm worried about the disease, I also might very likely have a gut wrenching fear of something getting out of control, and me not being able to control it or remove it. If I changed my mind, or I don't like what's happening. How do you put that fear to rest, that I'm not going to lose control of my floor, I'm not going to lose control of my row. It's okay. But this is goes back away. So Paul Annua, for instance, was one that a friend of mine was looking at as an underground vegetation in California. And I said, Hey, why don't we just use Bermuda grass, it's summer dormant. It loves the earth, it's great. And he was like, if you try to get anybody to plant that you're gonna get killed, you're gonna get shot in the head. Like, if you go around, recommending we plat Brumida, you're gonna get killed. When I had experienced with it in a vineyard where he had escaped. I had worked with it, but here was the thing. There was no getting rid of it there that we were that was it. We were committed, there was no getting away from it. And so I can see having the same kinds of fears about a species of plants that I haven't worked with before, for instance, or what happens over years and years and years. What are you going to do to help me sleep at night?

Michela Centinari 19:28

Wow, the tough question. No, I mean, definitely, you know, it's a tough decision and manufacturing needs to be taken into consideration. So I wouldn't just go and plant something right you need to do your research and work maybe with the extension or you know, with specialists even to make the right decision. Also, I recommend trying on in a small area of your vineyards. So no just you know, plant everywhere. If you have you know, 10 acres, or maybe try on a few vines and see how it goes right and see if you can keep it under control. If it's dry and there is too much competition for the vines, you know, maybe to be able to do a soil cultivation or kill your your cover crops, you know, plan or to head on options on what you can do to be able to manage, but definitely on choosing the right species is the first step, right.

Justine Vanden Houvel 20:15

Yeah. And I'd add to that, you know, where I could see it being a problem is what we call resident vegetation. So keep in mind, and in a at least here, we always have a cover crop between rows, right, we usually start with some sort of an orchard mix, and it becomes whatever and we really don't care, we're not going to bother replanting that. So we have that as a little bit of protection. But when we allow weeds to grow under the trellis, and then just mow them down, I know, I've heard that there's some concerns that we might have a weed there get out of control, and then continue to propagate itself. And that is a possibility. But what we actually find is that as each year progresses, we get more and more species in that undermine part of the vineyard. Right? Often we've started in vineyards where they've sprayed a preemergent in previous years. And the first couple of years, we have like two species four species, five species, and then in a few years, we're up to 30 or 40 different species of of weeds in there. And so it does give me at least some hope that it would be very difficult for something to get completely out of control. But what we usually tell the growers here is that if you were going to spray a herbicide anyway. And now you've tried to under vine cover crop, if you don't like it, you can hopefully get rid of it. Right. But the other thing we tell them is that we probably don't need the same cover crop under vine cover crop year after year, right? Because once you, for example, devigorate the vines a little bit and get them back to a more manageable size using chicory, for example, then you want to keep them at that size. You don't want to keep dropping the pruning weight year after year. So every year there needs to be a decision about what did I think of the vine size and the canopy characteristics last year? What's the predicted weather? And what am I going to plan to maintain under the vine for this year?

Craig Macmillan 22:05

We're getting close here to wrap it up. So there's two quick things I want to ask you what each for each of you will start with Justine, what is the one thing you would like growers to take away from your recent work on under vine vegetation?

Justine Vanden Houvel 22:16

Bare soil is not a good idea in vineyards environmentally, really, it's quite a poor choice. And there are options for if you have small vines or or young vines or a lack of vigor, vigor. There are some potential options out there. We haven't done all of the research on this yet, but that there are options to explore.

Craig Macmillan 22:40

Michela.

Michela Centinari 22:40

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I agree with Justine, there are options. Of course, we don't have one cover crop that can solve all the problems that definitely bare soil is no good, especially again, in our region. And our growers are also concerned about the cost of implementing under vine cover crops. And I'd say you know, for us, sometimes planting a perennial for example, grass is no more expensive. I mean, depending on depending on the year, how many times you spray herbicide and the effect of on the on the yield of the vines, but it's not necessarily more expensive than spray herbicide or sub cultivation. So hope they get cover crops a chance.

Justine Vanden Houvel 23:18

So Craig, we've mostly been talking about work here on the East Coast where we tend to have a lot of precipitation, but we have colleagues in in other countries and other climates that are doing work on under vine cover crops as well. And there's been some great work that's been done in the south of France, in Spain and in Australia. And so while Michela and I haven't focused our research, of course on California, there are going to be some opportunities for growers in warmer climates as well.

Craig Macmillan 23:46

And where can people find out more about you and your work Justine, go first?

Justine Vanden Houvel 23:50

Probably the easiest spot is on the Cornell webpage, or I am on Twitter. My one social media is Twitter. And my handle is @thegrapeprof. And I tweet about research and mostly in viticulture, but a little bit of a enology as well.

Craig Macmillan 24:06

Michela?

Michela Centinari 24:07

Yeah, I would say have a Twitter account. I'm not very active like Justine. I should. You know, I have a website if you Google actually Centinari lab, Penn State so we have you know our lab website where we post about research and also we have an extension web page prep and wind through Penn State.

Craig Macmillan 24:26

Fantastic and for audience, that information plus links to some other things will be in the show notes. Want to thank you both for being here. I guests have been Justine Vanden Houvel and Michela Centinari. They're doing fantastic work in an area that most of us in the West Coast certainly don't know about. But I know there's important for other regions of not just the United States but the world. You guys are doing great work.

Justine Vanden Houvel 24:45

Thanks, Craig. This was really enjoyable.

Unknown Speaker 25:07

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Over the past two weeks, we've looked at studies showing that people everywhere have been making more sustainable purchases, and how they are doing this by seeking out products with eco-certifications -- and wine is no exception! The wine market is steadily growing, and the majority of sales come from retail outlets. This is why putting the SIP Certified seal on your bottle is the best way to be sure your wine isn't being overlooked when shoppers are out looking for sustainable wines.

Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know 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 winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.

Today we share why our member get certified.

When wine enthusiasts see the SIP Certified seal on your bottle, they know they are looking at a wine that was made with conscious care for the people and the planet.

But don't take it from us -- here's what fellow SIP Certified members have to say about certifying their wines:

Sincerity, Vetting, & Media Coverage!

From consumers to employees, and from vineyards to media, Adam LaZarre, Director of Winemaking at Wine Hooligans, tells us that the rigid requirements for attaining SIP Certified wine have been well worth the time and dedication:

"For us, having our wines SIP Certified is easily the best way to let our entire audience know we are sincere about doing the right thing for the health of our vineyards, customers, and employees. The requirements for certification are pretty rigid but are easily obtained provided you maintain some detailed record-keeping. That is an important aspect actually because it ensures that the third-party inspector can vet the entire process completely. I know for a fact that this is a HUGE selling point for our wines and it also gives the media an extra topic of discussion that they and their audience can sink their teeth into. For us, it's been an extra paragraph or two in the magazines or another five minutes on the radio. It's clearly one of the biggest bangs for your buck and for many of our clients, just as important as the quality and price of what's in the bottle."

Sharing Common Goals

"The three pillars of the SIP Certified Model lays the foundation of our winery's values and drives our commitment to sustainability. By having our wines SIP Certified, our consumers are actively supporting a system of winegrowing that is done with conscious care for the planet. It is extremely beneficial to us to share this common goal with our consumers and continue to make wines with people, the planet, and prosperity in mind."

- Fred Delivert, Winemaker, Tolosa Winery

Fred adds that their tracking software, Vintrace, makes the process "very easy." All of the block-to-bottle documentation required for the audit process can be pulled from major tracking systems, meaning that if you are using winemaking tracking software, you likely already have all of the necessary records on file!

The Legitimacy of Well-Respected Third-Party Organizations

"We choose to have our wines certified because of the legitimacy of well-respected third-party organizations like SIP Certified. Designating our wines as sustainable brings a cache with it that the consumer finds really valuable."

- Tamara Bingham, Brand Manager, Cambria Estate Winery

Tamara notes that their auditor is helpful in guiding her and the winemaking team through the certification process, and that the process is painless and easy!

Get in on these benefits!

If you're making your wine with SIP Certified grapes, your brand can experience these benefits, as well!

Any wine made with at least 85% SIP Certified fruit -- estate or purchased -- can bear the SIP Certified seal. All you need to do is complete a Wine Application (page 35 of the Information Package) and send it to a Wine Inspector. The inspection is all done remotely via email exchange of chain of custody documentation.

Inspections range from 1 to 5 hours depending on the number of wines on the application. Fees range from $100-$175 per hour and are paid directly to your inspector. Certification rates are on an annual production basis and can be viewed here.

Visit our Get Certified: Wine page to read more about wine certification, and email mailto:[email protected] ?subject=SIP Certified Wines if you have any questions.

Check out the show notes for links to this article, research on consumer purchasing preferences, a link to get your wines certified, and sign up for our biweekly Marketing Tips newsletter. Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.

References:

• **SIP Smart Training online course
• Is Wine Certification Worth It?
• Is your wine being overlooked?
• Marketing Tips eNewsletter
• SIP Certified
• SIP Certify your Wines

Vineyard Team's Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship provides multi-year, higher education investments in the children of vineyard and winery workers on California's Central Coast based on academic excellence, financial need, and community involvement. The majority of awardees are first-generation college students. This funding supports students and their families in achieving their dreams of successful graduation from a trade, or two- or four-year school to pursue a professional career.

Vineyard Team's Executive Director, Beth Vukmanic, and milti-year scholarship recipient and Assistant Grower Relations Representative at Justin Winery, Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza talk about how the scholarship impacted her education and career trajectory through not only financial aide but industry connections. Evelyn gives her advice on how to succeed in college to new students and Beth shares how to apply for funding.

First-generation students have more barriers when it comes to attaining higher education – they cannot ask their parents how to navigate the system, budgets are often tight, and they can feel guilty for leaving their families. As a community, we can band together to better the future of the next generation. Multi-year recipient Alberto Gonzales says, "I am proud of breaking the cycle and being the change in my family as the first generation to go to college."

You can give the gift of higher education to students like Evelyn and Alberto this GivingTuesday. Our goal is to raise $75,000 by November 29, 2022. You'll be doing more than just donating — your kindness will make it possible for working families to send their children to two-year colleges, four-year universities, and trade schools.

References:

• Donate to the scholarship – help us raise $75,000 by November 29, 2022
• Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza – check-ins throughout her college career
• From the Crops to the Classroom – a story about Esteban Garcia
• Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship
• Meet three recipients of the Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship (video)
• Newsletter
• SIP Certified
• "The biggest inheritance that I'm going to leave you…"

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

Craig Macmillan 0:00

And today our guests are Beth Vukmanic, she's executive director of vineyard team and Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza. She is assistant grower relations representative with Justin Winery. Today we're going to talk about the Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship. Beth, would you tell us a little bit about how that came about? What it is what it does, and that kind of thing with the background is?

Beth Vukmanic 0:22

I would love to, but one of ours Memorial Scholarship is to benefit the children of vineyard and winery workers. For anybody who has been a fan of this podcast. You know, we talk about sustainable winegrowing. And a lot of the times that focuses on the planet part of it. So we're talking about soils and pests and irrigation, but people are our most valuable resource. And this scholarship program is a way for us to give back to the people who helped us make a wonderful industry.

Craig Macmillan 0:50

Who was Juan Nevarez?

Beth Vukmanic 0:52

Juan Nevarez was a winegrower, who started out in the Paso Robles area, he moved here to the United States as a teenager, I believe he was just 16 years old. He didn't speak any English. And he just learned everything from the ground up. He was a very, I guess you'd probably call it a gritty soul, he would always put in the time and effort to try to teach himself. So if somebody was putting in irrigation lines, he would go over and ask them questions. Or if somebody was planting vines, he would go in and ask questions about why they made that choice. And he over time really developed a successful management company called Nevarez Farm Labor, he helped establish a lot of notable vineyards, including Justin in the Paso Robles area of California. And then he actually developed his own vineyard property, too. And he unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago. And something that was really special about Juan is that he held that he was a self made man, he dreamed of higher education for his own children, his daughter, Mia said that their dad had just one require from them that they had to go to college. And his thought with that was that he felt like he had to work really hard to prove who he was and what he knew. And that an education would help his children get that foot in the door, so that they could more easily build a better lives for themselves. And so that's why we named the scholarship after him to honor that memory of somebody who really supported higher education and valued it, and wanted it for the next generation.

Craig Macmillan 2:24

I never met him, I never connected with him. But from what I've learned, over the years, talking to people, one of the things that made this such an obvious thing to do for the community to start this scholarship was he was connected to like everybody, like he knew everybody. Everybody knew him. Curious more about that this idea of community, because I've talked to so many individuals who had some kind of connection to him, was that part of how this all came about, as folks wanted to, you know, encourage this idea. But also, they all felt like maybe they had some kind of connection there, they had some kind of responsibility. Scholarship is not a simple thing. Like you have to get kind of a critical mass of people to do it.

Beth Vukmanic 3:00

That's definitely true. Yeah. So when we first started the scholarship program, back in 2015, we were hosting our Earth Day Food and Wine Festival. And that was a way that we would take, you know, some of the proceeds raised by that to give back. And I think those first couple of years, that's the total amount that we were giving was, you know, maybe $5,000, to a few different students. Over time, like you said, because it is a community driven effort, as more people learned about the program, and especially a lot of our vineyard management companies that work with us, they will outreach the scholarship program to their team so that their students can apply for it. So they're really seeing this direct impact of helping their own employees, children attend school and earn that higher education. So I think that's really how the community build started. And it's just grown from there. This year, we gave out $62,000 to 14 different students. And it's just phenomenal. Like how much growth it's seen over the last so many years since 2015.

Craig Macmillan 3:58

That's fantastic. That's really, really wonderful. If I'm gonna apply, do they have to be a high school senior? Do they apply once they get one year of funding? Can they apply multiple times? How does how does the funding work?

Beth Vukmanic 4:10

The way that the funding works is they don't necessarily have to be a high school senior, although a lot of our applicants are that could be somebody who is already attending school, they can still be eligible to apply for the scholarship program as well. So far, the way that the scholarship has worked is that students would apply each year to get a scholarship. However, we just had an incredible investment from Must! Charities that's going to help us expand this program to a whole new level. They've raised $1.3 million dollars...

Craig Macmillan 4:40

What!

Beth Vukmanic 4:42

Which is a huge and so a big change that we're going to make that's going to be incredible is to provide multi year scholarships. Instead of a student needing to come back and apply every single year as they're going to into your school or trade school or possibly a four year school, we would be able to give them funding for that period. bit of time, if they beat the benchmarks of a minimum GPA, and then also checking in with our organization. And that's something that we found was sort of kind of happening already with recipients like Evelyn. But now we have to do that more intentionally.

Craig Macmillan 5:14

And let's ask everyone. So Evelyn, you are a multi year recipient, is that correct?

Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza 5:19

That is correct. Yes.

Craig Macmillan 5:20

How did you find out about it? What was the process like when you first connected with vineyard team in the scholarship program? How did how did this come about for you?

Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza 5:28

So I found out about the scholarship through my dad's job. So my dad is currently employed by messa vineyard management, he works as a tractor driver and Sierra Madre Vineyard, which is located in Santa Maria, I'm not sure who exactly approached him with information about the scholarship, but it was something through his work. And he came home one day, and he gave me the application. He's like, I think this would be great for you to apply to it's a scholarship. I know, you're always seeking scholarship opportunities, you should give this a try. And of course, I was like I, I will do it. You know, like I was always seeking these type of opportunities throughout my college journey. And so I went for it. And the process was very simple. It was great communicating with the Vineyard Team. If I had any questions, it was very straightforward and clear. The application process itself was very simple. And I'm just super grateful for it, I had no idea that it would lead to a multi year scholarship recipient outcome. And I can't express enough in words that I'm so thankful for that in the change that I made throughout my college educational journey was just undescribable. It was very impactful for sure.

Craig Macmillan 6:37

So the first award that got you started. And where did you go to school?

Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza 6:42

So I attend a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. First award, I believe I received in 2017. So it was during my sophomore year at Cal Poly. And during this time, I was pursuing a degree a Bachelors of Science degree in animal science. So that was my initial career direction. I would definitely say that the scholarship not only represented financial assistance for me to be able to afford my education at the time. But really the way I saw it was an opportunity to open up doors throughout my educational journey, and kind of helped me figure out a little bit more what direction I could take career wise connections through the Vineyard Team really kind of helped me land where I am today. And I can definitely talk more about that if you'd like me too.

Well. Yeah. I'm curious because first of all, Beth, students do not have to be pursuing a degree in an agricultural area. Right? They can they can be pursuing any career paths that correct?

Elizabeth Vukmanic 7:37

That's correct. Yeah. We're happy to support students that are pursuing any kind of career. So it doesn't have to be an ag, although sometimes we find ones that are still working and viniculture too.

Craig Macmillan 7:46

So Evelyn, but you were doing animal science?

Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza 7:49

Yes.

Craig Macmillan 7:50

How did you how did you move then into the viticultural world? How was what was that path link ? How did that happen?

Unknown Speaker 7:56

Yeah, I love sharing the story. Um, it's an interesting one. So animal science, for me started out with my passion for animals, I always kind of assumed, okay, I will have a career that has to do with working with animals and helping them. And it's one of those things that as I navigated Cal Poly with my animal science degree, I just kind of came to a point where I realized I was learning a lot of valuable information but I just didn't feel like my heart was in it. It wasn't speaking to me. And so I realized that this is probably not the field where I want to obtain a career that I would be content with. And so then I started to think about any other fields I could possibly explore that would interest me and I thought about my dad's job. He's always worked in vineyards for as long as I can remember, remember, ever since I was really young, I decided to explore that through a research project that was presented to me at Cal Poly. And that was my first exposure to vineyards, specifically, wine diseases is what I worked with, and I ended up falling in love with it. And I wanted more I wanted to dive in a little bit deeper into the viticulture industry.

Craig Macmillan 9:03

I think there were a lot of us that started doing something else and then got exposed and we got the bug. After that you kind of just can't look back. I know so many people have that story. So you completed your undergrad at Cal Poly? Is that correct?

Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza 9:16

Correct. Yes.

Craig Macmillan 9:17

And was at that point, was the wine and viticulture program happening? Or was this a fruit science degree? Where were you at?

Unknown Speaker 9:23

At that time, I finished off my degree in animal science just because by the time I realized I was really interested in viticulture a little too late to change my major. So I finished my degree animal science and then I decided to do a master's in agriculture with a specialization in crop science. That was the closest I could get to having a research experience related to viticulture, just because of the moment Cal Poly doesn't offer a specific master's program for wine and vit but it was a great opportunity. I decided to take that route just to kind of specialize a little bit more in my field of interest.

Craig Macmillan 9:56

And did you get scholarship money through your masters?

Unknown Speaker 9:59

Yes, I did get scholarship money from other vineyard organizations. The Vineyard Team scholarship specifically was throughout my undergrad journey, my undergraduate degree, which was an animal science. Needless to say, this scholarship did help expose me more to this industry through connections, talking to people who already were embedded in the industry. And it really did help me get my foot in the door in the matter speaking for kind of ended up where I am now. So.

Craig Macmillan 10:31

Were there things that the scholarship allowed you to do that you otherwise would not have been able to do? Because I remember talking to some folks who want it and they some of its tuition, but some of it's also things like rent and food or the ability to travel potentially, or something like that, or the materials that they needed. How did they How did the money help you? What did you What were you able to do that you would otherwise not have been able to do?

Unknown Speaker 10:52

Many things. And what was important for me is my parents at the time had other things to worry about in terms of expenses, and I have two older sisters. So they were also helping them get through their college journeys. And so the biggest thing for me was able to take a weight off of my parents shoulders in terms of having to financially support me. And this scholarship made a huge difference in me being able to take care of rent, take care of book costs, or any type of trips related to my classes, I was taking any extracurricular activities that kind of helped me dive deeper into my interest, career wise. So it definitely made a huge difference in being able to afford these opportunities and being able to become more involved in activities I was very interested in participating in for sure.

Craig Macmillan 11:44

Do you think you would have gotten into the vineyard industry without the scholarship?

Unknown Speaker 11:47

No. I think part of it was the research opportunity that I was presented at Cal Poly, but really this current job that I have now, I don't believe I would have attained it if it wasn't for this scholarship, because it was through this scholarship and having my affiliation with the Vineyard Team and their roots in the wine growing community here that really helped me meet, they introduced me to Molly Scott, Director of Grower Relations here at Justin. And it really just connecting the dots, it played a huge role in landing me where I am now. So I don't believe that I would be in the Viticulture industry as I am today without the scholarship.

Unknown Speaker 12:33

And so that is another part of the scholarship program where we've seen these connections being made, you know, over the years. And it's an area where we can further formalize this to with our new investment. We've had a few different students who've met different vitiulturalists at like, I remember barbecue or different video team events and ended up with jobs or internships out of them. And our membership is very supportive of the scholarship program. And not just in terms of donations. But going beyond that and wanting to offer internship opportunities wanting to offer job opportunities to the students who are recipients of it.

Craig Macmillan 13:06

Again, how many recipients per year does it vary?

Unknown Speaker 13:09

It does vary. Yes. So this last year was 14, we're going to be looking at adding in more because we have the capacity to add in more over the next few years. Another thing that's been interesting about the scholarship program, too, is we're really reaching for the most part first generation college students. So 98% have been first generation so far, by going into this next phase of the program, we're going to bring on an administrator who's going to help us oversee the whole program. And I think a really important component of that is kind of like a coaching element that they're going to provide, you know, not just processing applications, but actually doing active outreach to all of the recipients with tips and ideas like how to file the FAFSA form or, or college, you know, have you looked for these kinds of resources. So go into that next level of providing help support to help the students not just financially, but really get through the whole process of getting to college. A challenge that a lot of first generation college students run into is that no one of their families had this experience before, right. So they can't ask their parents, you know, like, hey, you know, how do I how do I get into school? And like, what do I do when I go to class? You know, a lot of times budgets are tight, or they might have maybe me feel guilty about like, you know, leaving their family, stuff like that. So I think having this scholarship administrator is going to provide a wonderful level of support for everyone who's a part of the program.

Craig Macmillan 14:31

98 percent first generation. It's not a requirement, though, isn't?

Elizabeth Vukmanic 14:33

No, it's not a requirement.

Craig Macmillan 14:35

What are some other examples over the past golly, how ling has it been now seven years of really interesting cases or success stories of folks that have gone out and done other things or would not have made it without somehow?

Unknown Speaker 14:45

I think an incredible story is Esteban Garcia. He was a young teenage dad, his family worked in the fields, his grandparents worked in the fields. He did the same thing too. And at a certain point, he thought, you know, is this what I'm just going to do is just sort of live this day to day, you know life or am I going to do something else. And he saw, you know, being in the United States as an opportunity to get a higher education. Later on in life, he went back to college with two children and a fiancee, works full time. Just a total Rockstar. Right now, he's been a multi year recipient, he went to Allan Hancock College, which is down in Santa Maria and then moved over to Fresno State, he actually is going into viticulture as well, and has a great job at Sea Smoke vineyards too. So that's another one of these kind of parallel stories maybe with Evelyn where he got the scholarship. And then by being involved with the Vineyard Team through us was able to make these other connections and move into a nice career as he graduates school.

Craig Macmillan 15:45

Evelyn, you're relatively early in your career. It sounds like this is a completely personal question. Where do you want to? This isn't like an interview question. Where do you want to be five years from now? Where do you want to be 10 years from now? How do you what do you see your trajectory being?

Unknown Speaker 15:59

Oh, man, yeah. I love to think about that all the time and plan. What I have clear right now is my interest in viticulture, anything related to wine grapes. Honestly, my biggest goal at this moment is to just advance in my career, I like to apply value to what I've learned and not only be able to apply that in a job, but also continue growing professionally. Five years from now 10 years from now I see myself without a doubt still being an agriculture still been in this industry. Who knows I may kind of divert a little bit from viticulture, we try horticulture, you know, even different avenue, but for sure still in the agriculture world. I know agricultural is for me, it's in my family. It's been for years. So this is where I want to stay for sure. Honestly, right now, I guess to put it in a clearer way is I'm open to opportunities that offer learning and growing. And that is really what I am seeking after. So.

Craig Macmillan 17:04

As someone who's come out the other side and have educational piece, what would you say? How would you mentor a young person who's just senior in high school or freshman in college, about how they should navigate all this and how they should look for help.

Unknown Speaker 17:17

My biggest point of advice would be take the time to research take the time to get to know and become familiar with opportunities are out there. For most scholarships that I received, including the Vineyard Team scholarship, I wouldn't have known if I didn't either hear it from someone that I knew or look more into it by doing my own research. So I know sometimes it can be like, oh, man, I don't know if I have time for this, you know, to write an essay or ask for a reference letter or a reference, but it's worth it. It's the few hours or even minutes that you put towards a scholarship application can result in something so big like landing an ideal career, you know, I'm opening the door to a route that really will land you where you want to be career wise. And that's what happened to me, and I can't stress enough. I always talk to my peers, and people that I know are currently navigating college and they say, you should, you know, definitely take the time to apply to scholarships, use your resources, talk to people, you know, and it will never have a negative outcome for sure. And you will always have something rewarding come out of that. So that's my biggest point of advice for people.

Craig Macmillan 18:31

And turning back to Beth, I think the idea of having an administrator who not only manages numbers, but also helps to managing council people is a really, really great thing. I think better, scholarships had that it would be more successful, not just in getting people but also the outcomes. I think that's really wonderful. Beth, how is it techniques and getting the word out to the community about the scholarship?

Unknown Speaker 18:53

A lot of times the scholarship gets sorted out by word of mouth. We also have a newsletter on our website, if anyone wants to sign up for that. And in there, we've been sharing some wonderful stories about students like Evelyn and updates on the scholarship program. And then a lot of it ends up going through like Evelyn said to through the vineyard management companies, because they're telling their staff about it, who's been telling their children about it to help them apply.

Craig Macmillan 19:19

Where do you see this going? You've talked about multi year awards. You've talked about getting to more students, what's your five year tenure plan for this scholarship path? Where do you see this headed?

Unknown Speaker 19:29

I will look forward to the next phase of the scholarship. We're going to be making some of these tweaks, I guess, to our current system so that we can really solidify a lot of these great things that were already naturally happening. I'm really excited about the multi-year scholarships. I think we can come up with a really good communications plan with the administrator for the students and really figure out like what their pain points are like, where are they struggling, where do they need more help? Maybe doing even more conversations with the students themselves with the question that you just asked Evelyn like what is your piece of advice you would give somebody who is in your shoes, you know that you were just issues a few years ago, I think all of those are going to be really, really valuable to everyone participating in the program.

Craig Macmillan 20:12

Which reminds me something. So who's on the selection committee? How are already selected?

Beth Vukmanic 20:17

So we have seven different members on the selection committee. And the way that the process works is once the applications come in, we blind them. So you know, so they don't know whose application they're reading. And all of the applicants, you know, give kind of like basic information about themselves, you know, where they are in school right now, what they plan on doing, but then they always write these wonderful, you'll have more personal essays where we get to learn more about them as an individual. And so this selection committee will spend their time reading through all of these applications, and then sort of discussing based off of need, which students will get a scholarship that year.

Craig Macmillan 20:54

And these are folks in the vineyard and winery industry. They are, what is the cycle? Where do students go to apply? What time of year does it take place? What's the timeframe? Like how does that work?

Unknown Speaker 21:04

Applications are going to be opening up in March for students, so they can be popping on vineyard team.org/scholarship, to see when applications go live.

Craig Macmillan 21:15

That's fantastic. I had been involved as well over the years, I think this is a fantastic thing. I have also followed some individuals through the process. And it's been very rewarding for me as a person. And I know it's rewarding for them, because I could see outcomes that happen that otherwise never would happen. I really am proud of you, Evelyn, I think you've done great. And I'm glad that you participated. And I'm super proud of you, Beth, for making this all happen over the years. This is not a small task, but it started. And then the successes, runaway and really, really exciting. What can people do to support? You mentioned the website? Is there anything else people can do?

Unknown Speaker 21:51

We are fundraising for this. So although must has raised $1.3 million for the program, we actually have to match a chunk of that money in order to be able to apply it to the scholarship program. So matching funds are really, really important to to help us keep this going. People can go ahead and donate at being your team.org/scholarship And right now our goal is to raise $75,000 By giving Tuesday, which is November 29, 2022.

Craig Macmillan 22:18

That's fantastic. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I thank you both so much for being here. Beth Vukmanic, executive director of Vineyard Team and Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza, assistant grower relations representative for Justin Winery. Again, there's gonna be information in the show notes, look online, go to the links, get a checkbook, please support this project. This has done so much good for so many people and all of us very excited to say continue. Thank you both for being here.

Evelyn Alvarez Mendoza 22:46

Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Most wine shoppers purchase from retail outlets, whether online or in person. This means that the majority of your wine sales probably aren't coming from your tasting room or even your winery's website, where you have a controlled platform from which to deliver the message of your brand's sustainability. With the search for sustainable goods on the rise, you need a way to let wine enthusiasts know about the sustainability of your wine when you can't be there to tell them.

Welcome to Marketing Tip Monday with SIP Certified. We know 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 winegrowing so you can show your customers that you share their values.

Today we talk about how you can help your customers find your sustainable wine.

Can your wine be identified as sustainable?

Wine Intelligence and Full Glass Research conducted consumer and trade research on perceptions of sustainable winegrowing, certification, and practices. Here are five exciting insights from their research:

1. Consumers seek easy ways to find and identify sustainable wine, like clear and simple visual cues.
2. "Clear and highly visible labeling" on wine packages, back label information, and tastings or seminars were seen by the trade as the most useful in supporting the purchase of sustainable wines.
3. While winery websites and tasting events are more effective at communicating wine sustainability, wine labels and peer recommendations are the most frequently used sources for identifying sustainable wines
4. Sustainably produced wine has the highest future purchase consideration: 71% of U.S. wine drinkers say that they would consider buying sustainably produced wine in the future.
5. Among US wine consumers, $3 was the average extra value consumers indicated they were "willing to pay" for a sustainably produced wine.

Can consumers and the trade easily identify your wine as sustainable?

Data shows it: people buy sustainable products

The market is driven by consumer demand. The 2021 Sustainable Market Share Index found that sustainability-marked products were responsible for a third of the growth in consumer packaged goods from 2015 to 2021, and market share growth continues year over year. Randi Kronthal-Sacco, Senior Scholar at the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business states that their research "demonstrates the perceived consumer demand is realized by purchasing data, and growing."

Simon-Kutcher & Partners' 2021 Global Sustainability Study shows that 63% of consumers have made modest to significant shifts toward being more sustainable in the past five years. Purchasing behavior is a major player in these shifts, and 50% of consumers rank sustainability as a top 5 value driver across categories.

It's clear: consumers are looking for and purchasing sustainable products! Are you marketing your sustainable wine as such?

Don't let your wine be overlooked!

If you're producing wines made with sustainably grown grapes, putting the SIP Certified seal on your bottle is the best way to let it be known and increase sales with sustainably-minded consumers.

Any wine made with at least 85% SIP Certified fruit -- estate or purchased -- can bear the SIP Certified seal. All you need to do is complete a Wine Application (page 35 of the Information Package) and send it to a Wine Inspector. The inspection is all done remotely via email exchange of chain of custody documentation.

Inspections range from 1 to 5 hours depending on the number of wines on the application. Fees range from $100-$175 per hour and are paid directly to your inspector. Certification rates are on an annual production basis and can be viewed here.

Visit our Get Certified: Wine page to read more about wine certification, and email [email protected] if you have any questions.

Check out the show notes for links to this article, all the studies referenced, our previous Marketing Tip "Is Wine Certification Worth It?, and to sign up for our biweekly Marketing Tips newsletter. Until next time, this is Sustainable Winegrowing with the Vineyard Team.

References:

• **SIP Smart Training online course
• Is Wine Certification Worth It?
• Marketing Tips eNewsletter
• SIP Certified
• SIP Certify your Wines

As a vineyard advisor across the United States, Fritz Westover, Viticulturist at Westover Vineyard Advising and host of the Virtual Viticulture Academy, has the opportunity to see a lot of different vineyards, varieties, diseases and climates. Much of his work in recent years is in Texas. This large state about the size of France has a number of challenges including rain that is not seasonal, Pierces Disease, late spring and fall freezes, hail, and poor water quality. Fritz and Craig, both former staffers with Vineyard Team, discuss a variety of practices that impact the long-term sustainability of a vineyard including leaching salts, why irrigation systems are important in wet climates, and the number one way to manage disease.

References:

• 110: How to Develop a New Vineyard Site
• 121: Regenerative Agriculture (Rebroadcast)
• 137: The Pierce's Disease and Glassy-winged Sharpshooter Board
• Instagram @westoverviticulture
• SIP Certified
• Sustainable Ag Expo November 14-16, 2022 | Use code PODCAST for $50 off
• Twitter @WestoverVit
• Vineyard Underground Podcast
• Virtual Viticulture Academy
• Westover Vineyard Advising

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

Craig Macmillan 0:00

Our guest today is Fritz Westover viticulturist with Westover Vineyard Advising and the virtual viticulture Academy. Is that right?

Fritz Westover 0:10

That's correct, Craig.

Craig Macmillan 0:11

He's got some other things in the in the works that we'll maybe talk about a little bit later. Fritz and I have known eachother for a long time. And actually, we had the same job

Fritz Westover 0:19

That we did that we did that we did.

Craig Macmillan 0:21

He is based in Texas, lives in Houston. But he works in all parts of the country. You're you're all over the place. What different states do you work in in these days?

Fritz Westover 0:30

Yeah, Craig, thanks, again, for having me on the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast, love to be here. Actually, it's my second time. So this is really an honor to get to get invited back. I didn't screw it up too bad the first time. So I appreciate that. You know, to answer your question, I work primarily in Texas, that's where I'm currently office in Houston. Got a great airport. So I do go to other parts of the country. The second largest area working would be Georgia, primarily in the north mountains of the state of Georgia, I also do some consulting a little bit in some of the states in between Louisiana, Alabama, and some virtual advising that I've started doing, where I'm actually, you know, on site to see the site to understand it, but I'm not there on a frequent visitation basis, like I am, in, let's say, Texas, or Georgia. So those are the primary areas I'm working. And they have a lot of things that overlap. And they have a lot of differences. So the cool part is I get to see a lot of different scenarios, varieties, climate and challenges.

Craig Macmillan 1:26

So let's, let's start with Texas, obviously, we're very interested in sustainability, and sustainable approaches to problems, roadblocks, obstacles, issues, and every region that I'm familiar with anywhere, they have different sustainability issues and hurdles, you know, you say like, oh, here, we're doing this in a sustainable way to do it. And these other people, people are like ah that't not going to work for us. So they're trying to find a different way. So in the case of Texas, which I understand is now not just the hill country, it's quite a broad spectrum of climates and soils and whatnot. What are some of the challenges that Texas growers and these different regions are facing?

Fritz Westover 2:03

Yeah, great question. And, you know, if you look at Texas, it's a state roughly the size of France. So there's a lot of different growing regions in Texas, anywhere from the Gulf Coast region to which is you know, the eastern part of North Texas. Closer to Oklahoma, there's grapes grown that far north and Texas to hill country, which is outside of Austin, Fredericksburg, San Antonio, that's probably where the majority of wineries are, and also a large concentration of vineyards. And then the majority by far of grapes grown in Texas are grown on the High Plains region, which is West Texas, or northwest on the High Plains. That's about 3000 to 4000 feet above sea level. So we have a lot large range and climate and topography and rainfall. I mean, we can get 40 inches in East Texas a year and 10 inches in West Texas a year. And we haven't had that much unless Texas this year, there's been a drought that's affected growers,

Craig Macmillan 2:58

How much of that rain is during the growing season?

Fritz Westover 3:00

Okay, so in Texas, the rain can come at any time. It's not necessarily seasonal. So we don't have the luxury of saying, hey, you know, harvest is done, we should be getting some rain. Now let's plant a cover crop, and let the soil profile fill for the winter. In fact, sometimes we have to irrigate in the wintertime to keep our profile moist. In other times, it's raining, right at harvest or right before harvest or right at bloom when you don't want rain necessarily in a vineyard setting. But in terms of sustainability, if you start on the east part of Texas, and that's our example we're using now we have severe Pierce's Disease there. So there are only certain hybrids of wine grape that are resistant or tolerant Pierce's disease that you can grow there. So if you're growing those varieties, it's almost like here's this disease is not an issue, right. So you've kind of found a way around that. But then you get into the hill country more in Central Texas and we're growing vinifera there anything from Bordeaux varieties to Spanish or Portuguese varieties, Italian varieties are growing there as well. And so Pierce's Disease is a big issue with those varieties. And so is the erratic weather patterns, like seasonal rain, hail, things like that. I think the best example, though, would be to just jump right up to the high plains, because I can look back at my consulting in the last four years. And one year, we had a terrible, devastating late spring freeze. And that happens frequently, maybe two or three out of every five years, we have sites getting hit by late spring freeze, and it takes out a majority of the crop. So now you see these orchard right or other types of fans going up. And those are there for when we have, you know, a radiational freeze, we can we can hopefully skirt through that. So you put these expensive fans up, you solve the problem. And then the next year, you think you've got that you get through the freeze, there's no freeze at all late spring, right? And then all of a sudden, you're just at the point where you finish shoot thinning all of your vines and everything's perfect and set for the year. And then it hails and then you get a hailstorm takes up all of all of your crop for the year and set you back another year. So then what are we doing? We're putting up helmets and a lot of vineyards in West Texas now. So you put up the hill net And that solves with a physical barrier, the hill issue. So now you got the fans for the late spring freeze. You've got the netting for the hail, which also can protect from birds and other things. We're using that year round. So the next year comes up, we don't get away spring freeze, we don't get a hail. What we had instead was this freeze in the fall and early fall freeze, where it got down in October, late October, just after harvest got down into the 20s, which doesn't seem like it should do a lot of damage. But I mean, it will if vines are not cold hardy and ready for it. It's devastating. I wrote a little bit about that and wine business monthly for an article a few months ago and summarized it. But the summary here is that it wholesale killed vines, took vines down to the graft knocked out cordons, and there's a lot of retraining that needs to be done. So now the question is, okay, what's the variety of grape we can plant that's late bud burst right to get past the spring freeze late spring freeze that harvest early. So we had time to harden off for the winter and not get hit by that early fall freeze. And, you know, is bulletproof and doesn't get hit by hail? Right. That'd be nice. But that's,

Craig Macmillan 6:03

I was gonna say it's hail resistant. I can't wait to see the plant breeding on that one.

Fritz Westover 6:07

Yeah,right. Oh, by the way, consumers have to love the wine made from it, and it has to be a good yielder. Okay, is that too much to ask Craig?

Craig Macmillan 6:14

No,? the plant breeding community can take care of that I'm I'm concerned.

Fritz Westover 6:19

I hope you're right. We could use it. I'd like to get invited to their to their planning meeting, I can give them some input. Those are some examples. But you know, Pierce's Disease, water is a big thing. Just like in California, we you know, we have limited water supplies in certain areas of the state, I'm sure you'll you'll want to touch on that. And, you know, its water quality, too, is an issue in some areas. But the really the erratic changes in climate that we see from year to year, it's, there's, you know, there's always a surprise, if you don't like the weather, just wait an hour, and it'll change.

Craig Macmillan 6:51

I'm glad you brought that up. Because I am a big believer in if you plant the right plant in the right place. That's how you address a lot of sustainability issues. So for instance, California, what we've done is we planted lots and lots of Chardonnay in areas that are like perfect, prone for powdery mildew, you know, it's 75 or 80, every single day year round. There's coastal fog is just designed to have disease and you look at it and you're like, Oh man, what maybe we shouldn't be doing that we could cut our chemical load down and we weren't planting this plant in this environment. But the problem is it makes great wine wine quality, that's where you want to be, you know, and so there's some tension there. I am very interested in this variety selection piece. So for instance, I understand that I don't know in detail in Texas, I don't really do grow vinifera you mentioned but they also grow alleles hybrid. So things like Marechal Foch I think it's pronounced, Frontenac or sac showing my my lack of knowledge. Are those working out viticulturally and then are they also working out from a wine quality standpoint of wineries buying these making products that people are buying because that would be like this, your solution is finding varieties that are going to tolerate. Can you turn that around then into a product. How's that going?

Fritz Westover 8:07

to be exact in Texas, there's there are not a lot of hybrid vineyards, it's mostly vinifera. However, if you go to the Gulf Coast region, that is where we do, we do grow primarily Pierce's Disease tolerant hybrid. So that would be blanc Du Bois or Lenoir. And then there's some of the Andy Walker, Dr. Andy Walker, UC Davis, PD tolerant that 98% 97% vinifera varieties that are just now being planted. I mean, we're just at the pioneering stages for those in both Texas and in Georgia, where we have high PD or Pierce's disease pressure, the blanc Du Bois, the Lenoir, the things that have been growing for 25 years now or more have established a market and it took that time to do it. Right. So really, the question is, as these new varieties and the new breeding programs come out with grapes that have tolerance to Pierce's disease, or tolerance to cold, or tolerance to whatever it might be rootstocks that tolerate nematodes and salt, you know, that's, that's a rootstock issue. But when it comes to the variety of the thing that we're putting in the glass that we make the wine from these newer ones, are not quite as proven. So we're gonna have to have this learning curve of where they're best suited, because here's the thing. You take this variety of grape, that's mostly vinifera, and it happens to be have the single gene resistance for Pierce's disease. So you say okay, great, that's gonna work for now, let's put it in the vineyard in the gulf coast of Texas or West Georgia, or South Carolina or whatever, Alabama, you name it, wherever there's Pierce's disease in the southeast, and that's all good, and well, it probably won't die from Pierce's disease, but it's still going to get powdery mildew, which other hybrids are very resistant to, it's still going to get downy mildew, which we have various levels of resistance to it's still going to get black rot, it's going to get phmompsis and then it's all that all the trunk diseases. So I mean, you you think about hard places to grow grapes. It's like when I moved to California back in 2013 to work with the Vineyard Team I thought, man, how am I gonna help these grammars in California, you know, they've been doing this for so long, but they have problems just like anywhere else. In fact, I would argue I almost cringe at the say it, they have less problems. You know, the first as far as diversity of pathogens, at least, let's just say it's safe to say that than we do here east of the Rockies just because of those diseases that I've mentioned. Here, you solve one problem, and then you have five other problems that pop up that you didn't anticipate, and you then need to solve. So there's there's going to be, oh, five to 10 years before we know which of the UC Davis Any Walker selections are going to thrive in all these new environments that growers have not been growing grapes for very long and because of Pierce's disease, and now all of a sudden, you say, sure, you can grow grapes now, but there's a but but no one's done it yet. No one's done it yet. And you're gonna be a pioneer.

Craig Macmillan 10:50

You're a visionary, or you're a crazy person, you know, depends on which way it goes.

Fritz Westover 10:54

Those crazy people, they help the next person learn what didn't work and what not to do.

Craig Macmillan 10:59

Just what we're talking about Pierce's Disease, Pierce's Disease has turned out everywhere to be a very difficult thing to manage in a sustainable fashion. First of all, why don't you tell us what Pierce's Disease is?

Fritz Westover 11:10

I'm so glad you asked Craig, I was gonna say we should probably talk about what Pierce's Disease is.

Craig Macmillan 11:14

I think our listeners are probably pretty sophisticated.

Fritz Westover 11:17

I think so too. I think so too. But here's for that new vineyard manager fresh out of a place that doesn't have Pierce's Disease. It is a bacterial pathogen, and it's Xylella fastidiosa is the name of the pathogen, and it's transmitted vectored I should say, and transmitted into the vineyard from native grape vines. But the vector itself is the most famous is the Glassy Winged Sharpshooter. These were introduced to California many years ago and became the target of a large campaign to eradicate Glassy Winged Sharpshooter. But there's other xylem feeding insects that can also transmit this disease. So basically, an insect feeds on a wild grape that has tolerance to this bacteria and the bacteria are then moved into the vineyard. When the insect then flies into the vineyard and Glassy Winged Sharpshooters can fly a mile or more, they fly into the vineyard and they feed on the the xylem of that the nifer a vine that's susceptible and they transmit this bacteria into the xylem. It's a xylem limited bacteria that kind of clogs the veins like gives the vine a little bit of a plumbing issue. And there's toxins produced by it that cause symptoms like leaf scorch. leaf blades fall off leaving matchstick petals or petals attached to the vine, there's uneven maturation of the paradigm. And then there could be fruit shrivel. So I usually look for two or three of those symptoms before we rogue vines and pull them out of the vineyard, there's no cure for the disease, you have to pull the vines out so it doesn't spread, either replant or deal with the missing teeth, so to speak out in the vineyard. So it's a very big problem in the southeastern United States, you need cold weather to kill both the bacteria populations. Also, I guess, really just the insect vectors, they're also affected by these cold temperatures. So we found that, you know, you get south of pretty much North Carolina, Georgia, these areas are kind of in that transition where a good cold winter or two in a row will knock it back. But a warm winter to it starts coming back out in the vineyards. And so we see it even in the north Georgia mountains almost as far as Tennessee, it's it's really something that's that's moved around and found its niche. It's kind of working in the background, they're waiting for the right conditions.

Craig Macmillan 13:26

So what kinds of things are growers doing in these high pressure areas? And there's super high pressure areas in California as well, because of riparian areas where the insects hanging out, what are people doing? What are people trying, I can think of a couple of things that you could try. But I'd like to know what people are actually doing.

Fritz Westover 13:39

The most obvious we already talked about as growing tolerant varieties that Pierce's disease might infect, but it doesn't move around in his island and cause vine death, like it would to vinifera. So growers are used if they're growing vinifiera, or susceptible grape varieties, there's the possibility to use insecticides to control the vector. So you're a medical imidicloprid based products that are designed for either a spray, or most notably through injection through irrigation. And that's going to give a little bit more longer residual activity to deter the feeding. So the really, the plan is to know when those vectors are coming in. And there could be about 30 to 40 vectors in the southeastern United States. It's not like California that's got one or two major vectors, we've got, you know, 30 at any given time, so the pressure is really high in comparison. And so those insecticides would need to be time for peaking when the populations come in. And then you got to make sure you're careful about pre harvest intervals and things like that. So there's knockback sprays. There's the soil application that's done. These are not restricted use products, but they're certainly conventional products. They're not organic. Some of my growers who are trying to spray less conventional will use products like surround which is a kaolin clay and there's been some reported efficacy on on his island feeding insects. It disturbs them and they don't like to crawl around in the clay also I have some revers using that in hot hot climates also just to keep some shade or sunscreen on the grapes in the fruit late in the season too. But you know, correct when it rains during the growing season, you could put kaolin clay up one day, and it rains off after an inch of rain three days later. So we have those challenges too. And then of course, you know, there's there's trap crops you could consider. But I haven't seen anyone really successful using that just elimination of host grape vines near the vineyard, just trying to make the habitat less thriving for both the vectors and for the bacteria that live inside the wild grape vines. So we put a lot of focus on looking at the surrounding environment in addition to what we're doing in the vineyards.

And so people can actually go into those areas and rogue out host plants are ones that are popular host plants.

If you own the property and there's some muscadine grapes wild muscadine or rotundifolia growing in the woods, and it's right next to the vineyard on a fence line growing along the fence line. That's probably not a good idea. So yeah, you would want to go in and rogue those vines that are around the perimeter at the very least.

Craig Macmillan 16:02

What about setback well Glassy Winged Sharpshooter, this clearly isn't going to work? And I don't know if that's the primary, you said you had like 3040 factors. But when ideally it was been kicked around was not planting close to habitat. So leaving large barriers, now you're losing land as a result of that. Sure, or people tried that. And we didn't get exposed to that?

Fritz Westover 16:21

Yeah, sure. When you're when you're choosing a site for a vineyard, Craig, you're always looking to distance yourself from any problems, whether it be a floodplain, or possible vectors of disease, or host plants. So sure, but the idea is that eventually, an insect that can fly a mile is going to find the vineyard, you just need to know the symptoms, know what to look for, and be proactive at removing it. And testing for it. If you need to test I've gotten to the point where I can look at it visually, and I don't need to do testing anymore, which might McGregor's love, because it saves the money. But occasionally, we test to just validate that because every new girl I work with, we always do a test to show Yes, this is absolutely positive, we see the symptoms, and we've tested it. And now we're comfortable with calling that by because there are other things that can look like Pierce's Disease. And you know, we always talk about these as educators, you don't just talk about the problem you talk about, what are the things that it could possibly be, you know, when someone sees a leaf scorch, you know, well, it could be drought, it could be wind, it could be heat stress, you know, you could lose the leaf and have a matchstick pedal. If you have deer going to your vineyard eating leaves, they leave matchstick petiole symptoms, right. But that's only one of the four key symptoms. So yeah, we're going to be looking for the symptoms, and we're going to be roguing. And we're also going to be distancing, and we're also going to be trying to rogue the problem from the surrounding environment.

Craig Macmillan 17:38

So you got a lot of options, rather than just trying to spray yourself out of it. Yes, we've got a lot of tools, and they're not all chemical. There's cultural practices. Vigilance is always again, probably one of the key pieces to any pest management issue in any sustainability issue. I want to shift gears and talk about water. You know, my career has been strictly in California, where it doesn't rain. It does, like it doesn't rain

Fritz Westover 18:03

It Just doesn't rain as much as you want it to exactly when you want it to right.

Craig Macmillan 18:08

It's actually raining outside right now, we're almost done with harvest, but not quite. I heard early. And usually we get rain. This is like a record rain right now. Not a lot, but enough, but a lot of these other places in the United States, they get some rain, I was talking to somebody the other day about using undermined vegetation as a way of managing the increases in the water from the rains and trying to, you know, kind of have a plant help you out. And to get this dried out a little bit. You mentioned that like in Texas, for instance, if I understood correctly, you know, rain can come in any time. How do you manage that when in terms of like disease pressure or find bigger things like that? What What can you do? Is there anything that you can do that any management strategies for that kind of thing?

Fritz Westover 18:47

Sure that you know, Craig, there's lots of management strategies and they all start at dormant pruning, just like you know, you know, any good vineyard management starts with pruning, to get the right spacing of your shoots and positioning. And then it goes into your thinning and other practices that we all know and love and viticulture, and if you keep on top of that, and can create a microclimate and when we say microclimate, we mean the real scientific microclimate that area right around the grape cluster, right? Not the site, not the misoclimate, like commonly is called the microclimate. But, but that area, right?

Craig Macmillan 19:21

I've given up on that. By the way. It's same thing I was trained and it's like it's not microclimate. It's a misclimate. It's a music climate. And now I'm just like, whatever.

Fritz Westover 19:28

Yeah, after a while you get kind of worn down. It's like trying to describe the difference between grape varietals and grape variety. Because, you know, yes. Oh, yeah, that drives you crazy as a plant person. So it's been I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. It's a variety of grape varietals. That's the wine. So we digress. We digress. We digress. I have to remind me the question now, Craig, you'll have to remind me.

Craig Macmillan 19:50

You get rain at different times of the year. Yeah, some of it during the growing season. This creates its own kind of management problems. What kinds of things can you do and I know it's going to depend on the storm and what's out there and when it happens, but I have no experience with this. I'm very interested in you just pray. I mean...

Fritz Westover 20:08

Well, let me give you an example. Yeah, the northern Georgia grape growers this year had over 50 inches of rain from bud burst. And they're in their inversion, the pasteurization, they're at 18 to 20 bricks, maybe two weeks away from harvest, they've had over 50 inches of rain during the season at random times, sometimes raining for five to seven days in a row, sometimes raining for 10 days in a row. And I was just there visiting all the vineyards looking at dissecting and reverse engineering all of their spray programs there canopy management, there are some venues I walked into that were completely clean. I mean, no fungal disease, no downy mildew, no powdery mildew, maybe a little bird pecking here and there. And then there were some that were absolutely devastated. And so you know, why? Why was that the case? Well, I talked about, you know, good canopy management pruning, it starts at the beginning of the season, you know, when you're working in an environment that absolutely has a high fungal disease pressure, which is the number one thing all other overlying factors aside that we talked about, like Pierce's Disease, or freeze or climate, if you have the right variety match to the right side, but you've just got to control these fungal diseases that grow in the leaves and fruit. It's all about the timing on the applications. And this is true, whether you're a conventional or an organic grower, or whatever you may practice, yeah, it doesn't matter. I mean, you have probably less modes of action as an organic grower because your products are not moving systemically into the plant or into the vine itself. So your reliance on maybe even more spraying, because context sprays like a lot of organic products, or they can get washed off. So what we really hone in on is the critical period for your disease, which is two weeks before Bloom to about six weeks after fruit set. And what we find is if you can control disease on the fruit and the majority of the foliage, and when I say the majority, I mean those bottom leaves all the way up to the top of your VSP wires, if you're doing vertical, shoot those first 10 leaves on the shoot, if you can get those through to verasion, and you can get the fruit through verasion and keep it clean, it'll typically stay clean, and the leaves will have this oncogenic or resistance to disease at that point, they get more leathery, right, they get more harder to infect by a lot of these fungal diseases. So if you can get to that point, you can kind of pull back a little bit and get to the end of the season. Well, timed sprays just before bloom, right after fruit set, keeping in mind matching the product to the disease, right? If we're trying to control detritus, we want to hit that before bloom, and right after fruit set, and then probably again, right before a bunch closure. And if we have challenging conditions from verasion to harvest, we might need another spray from verasion to harvest. And again, conventional or organic, whatever that product is, the timing is still the same. I think what the growers who are most successful have been able to do is really not drop the ball during that critical period, that eight week period, they learn the modes of action of all of their products. Is this systemic? Is it contact, how much rain will wash this off before I have to go out and apply it again, the number one question I get from new growers is, why would I spray right before the rain isn't the rain is going to wash the product off. And the whole point of having that product on before the rain, we always explain it so that it protects the plant tissue or the grapes throughout that wet period. So that an infection doesn't get established. Because once you have an infection in the vineyard established, it is so much harder to go in and eradicate you've got to use different strategies for that. And it cost more. And that disease can linger all the way through harvest, causing loss and leaf area that's going to cause delays and ripening possible quality issues and fruit, you name it. So that's really where I think the successful grower, the one who you know does all the things you're supposed to do in a sustainability program, for example, to keep good records, track the weather data, record how much rain you get, and when and then just be proactive about about the spray program not reacting always. And coming in after after you see an issue or after it's been raining already.

Craig Macmillan 24:04

Now, if I am in an area where I'm getting rain during the growing season, do I still need to irrigate?

Fritz Westover 24:11

Okay, so good question. And, you know, I always recommend vineyards in areas that don't reliably get their 20 to 30 inches of rain in a calendar year, which is, you know, common in the East Coast, for example, that they put in irrigation and I get some kickback from some growers thinking gosh, it rains here, I just want to turn off the irrigation and take the water and we were planting cover crops to remove water from the system. But the irrigation system is not just there for when you're establishing the vines. That's the number one thing if you have a drought year, the year you plant, you could be in trouble. It's a lot of work to water those vines. Number two, you're going to be able to put fertilizer out through drip irrigation system. So whether it be organic or conventional, again, doesn't matter. There's lots of products that are designed to go out and your drip irrigation and that's one of the most efficient ways to deliver a small amount of a product or fertilizer to a vine in a very precise and measured way, which will save costs in the long run and create less runoff and pollution, if you're targeting the grapes, so, so in terms of sustainability, that's really a big tool in my book, and I wish more growers would consider putting in irrigation early in the process. And especially if you're in a Pierce's Disease, high risk area, and you're growing vinifera, then that is one of the major ways to deliver some of our best control measures for Pierce's Disease.

Craig Macmillan 25:30

I'm going to put an irrigation obviously, I'm going to be drawing on some groundwater, groundwater quality varies infinitely from place to place. What are some of the experiences that you've had that caused viticultural issues down the line with different kinds of water quality problem? And were there things to do to improve those because again, well, I had a vineyard once where we were, we had a magnesium problem, we were watering off of a municipal watering system, which was great drinking water. Wonderful. Well, one day I get the report, and the magnesium level in the water was through the roof, not a threat to people, but I was just making a brick, right to the watering more and watering more and watering more, and it was just getting worse. What kinds of things have you seen? And what could you kind of do about it?

Fritz Westover 26:13

Yeah, it's a really good question. As you know, I'm familiar with the a lot of the problems on the central coast there where were you and I both worked, you know, in terms of getting into some Paleolithic waters, that earthquakes now have changed your your water quality and your site that was very good before that occurrence happened. So you have boron, you have high salts, sodium and other salts as well in Texas. And I'll come here because this is the area I live in work in the most, we see issues that are pretty similar. We see boron being high. In some areas, certain aquifers and water sources are high and boron, we see high SAR sodium absorption ratio, that you know, if your SAR levels above six or seven, and you're relying on irrigation water, you're gonna see issues in the leaves, saltburn and decline of the vines, and we can hit 20 or 30 on a SAR in some areas of North Texas. And I've seen in drought years, this was a drought year for Texas. This is a real I mean, it rained in October, November of 2021. And then didn't rain in parts of Texas until about a month ago. And so right now, as we're recording this, we're in September. So until really about variation, no rain. So if you didn't have good quality water, and you're relying 100% on your irrigation and didn't have any rain in the wintertime to flush out salts or leach boron or other things that are a problem that build up in the soil, especially from frequent shallow irrigations. It was a problem. So boron symptoms were showing on leaf margins. So some growers were trying to capture rainwater to alleviate their irrigation issues. But if it didn't rain, that approach did not work. So they're trying to do longer irrigation set so that they don't build up salts in the shallow part of the soil. So that's one strategy, using the wheats leaching fraction, for example, that to push water below, or occasionally do very long sets. And I know, you know, sounds counterintuitive. We have bad water, less water more with it. And with water more, right, yeah, but the thing is, you need to push the salts down below the root zone, if you can, and watering on long sets can do that. So that was the strategy through you know, there's really no solution that I'm aware of for high boron levels, I wish there was one that was reliable, and that that someone could present to me for the salts, we use the irrigation strategy that I just mentioned, to try to push it down below the root zone as much as possible. But there's really beyond that not a whole lot you can there's course there's some soil amendments, I shouldn't say there's nothing some growers tried to displace sodium with gypsum or calcium additions, or by adding organic matter to the soil to try and bind it up or you know, and still have other cations available on the cat on exchange. Some growers are injecting acid using acid injection to try to help with nutrient uptake that sodium sometimes is blocking. There's other things that go well beyond even my understanding of all the chemistry behind it. But I think it's fair to say that the growers who have the worst problems and have that proactive kind of frame of mind have been have been doing some of these things to try and combat it. But really what they're doing Craig is they're saying why isn't it raining? Like it usually does. That solves the problem for me. And it just hasn't happened in the past year here. And it's not to say we won't get back on the normal pattern. We'll just have to see.

Craig Macmillan 29:18

We're running out of time. Unfortunately, we could go on forever. Lok forward to seeing you here in the future. We have the Sustainable Ag Expo. It's put on by Vin, your team coming up in November and you are going to be here for that I believe you're presenting Yes. Yeah. hoping we can connect. I don't see why we can't in just a couple of sentences again, thinking like you're on stage. What one piece of advice would you give to a grape grower in the realm of how to improve the sustainability or how to farm a sustainability as sustainable as possible? And what's your one piece of advice?

Fritz Westover 29:51

But wait, we're not on the stage here. This is a podcast Craig This is one of the largest stages you can get without actually being looking someone in the eye right? This isn't acing who invented this stuff. It's true. So so when I am at Sustainable Ag Expo, my talk is going to be about the long term view on sustainability, it's going to be about things that you can do from the beginning onward, moving the needle a little bit on on some of the fine points that we tend to overlook on a daily basis, because we're focusing on more big picture stuff. So my focus for anyone who wants to start off, and they know that they want to be doing things the right way, 10 years down the road, and they want things to be a little easier for them, it goes back to what you and I've been talking about earlier, the beginning of our conversation, choosing the right varieties, making sure your site selection is all going to work out if you don't have the expertise to do that, you should really find someone who specializes in that, you know, I've drawn upon soil scientists that come out and look at sites and map sites, on projects that I'm working on, you know, we need to bring the team together that can make the right decisions from day one, and choosing your varieties and your rootstocks and making sure your vineyard design is done in a way where you reduce erosion and foresee some of the issues that are going to come up the other thing that that I'll touch on quite a bit at the Sustainable Ag Expo is the the smaller detail things after the vines go in the ground, how we train our first and second year vines, where we make the cuts on those vines for die back and proper healing and preventing infection by by diseases that want to get into our trunks early on and establish and then all the way through to the young vine care. What are some of the things that I see growers making mistakes on that we could be overcoming. And it's really I don't want to say to viticulture 101 because it downplays the importance of it a little bit, when you make it sound. So basic the challenge is, sometimes we know what we need to be doing. But we have trouble conveying that to the workforce that we're using to the contract labor that we're using to our own team. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about a combination of those things about what's important, what shouldn't be overlooked, and how we can make sure we don't overlook it and put a team in place to get it done. Because the establishment will just umbrella that term with the vineyard establishment that first three to five years of getting your cordons developed. Or if you're in a cane pruning system, establishing your renewal zone and, and everything else. I'm super excited about it. I'd be lying to you to say that my talk is ready as of today. But I've got it outlined in my in my mind, and I've got the ideas already in my head that I clearly would love to share.

Craig Macmillan 32:22

And hopefully that will spread. Where can people find out more about you what you do?

Fritz Westover 32:27

Well, I'm available on social media through Westover Viticulture, on Facebook and on Instagram. And as you know, I also do an online vineyard advising and education community that I snuck you into, to kind of see behind the scenes on that and that is known as virtual viticulture Academy. That's really where I share all of my information with growers who are not necessarily my clients that I consult for on a one on one basis. You know, you have all this information, you want to share it with other growers. I know that's my passion is helping growers. And I've been doing that for my whole career. So through Virtual Viticulture Academy, I have a way to get together with that community. For this, those who join and answer their questions in the vineyard and share some of the trials and tribulations the what works and what doesn't work, and give some direct feedback to a community of growers. And what's awesome about that Craig is we didn't just do Virtual Viticulture Academy because of the pandemic. We're in our fifth year, you know, a lot of people went virtual and went online and found new innovative and creative ways to reach their audience, whether it's a grape grower or winemaker in this industry. We've been doing that for five years. And when the pandemic came on, and we weren't visiting sites as much or doing things in person, we just kept on going and kept on teaching and trying to try to make an impact. And just like the Vineyard Tam has been doing with all their great online programs. So so that's one of the things that I've been working on there. And then I'd really letting the cat out of the bag here a little bit. But I think by the time this podcast is released, I'll also be releasing a podcast known as Vineyard Underground podcast. And that's going to be just where I hang out like this and share information through the ear buds about grape growing very similar to what you're you're doing there. Our goal is to have some quick wins that growers can take back to the vineyard. Some practical advice for the everyday grower. Well, we'll get into the science of grape growing but we really want to focus on the how to interviewing growers and getting down into the dirt a little bit into the underground, where things get a little bit hidden and overlooked.

Craig Macmillan 34:26

That's awesome. Our guest today has been Fritz Westover viticulturist with Westover Vineyard Advising, of course, the Virtual Viticulture Academy, and the upcoming Vineyard Underground podcast. Thanks so much for taking the time. This has been really fun. There's going to be links to all the things that he's mentioned in our notes regarding this, this little show here and we hope that you check them out tons of great stuff. One thing that Fritz does really well is communicate to the world. He's got he's got the Twitter, he's got the Instagram, he's got the Facebook, he's got the website really easy to find really great information super useful. We really appreciate everything that you're doing. I think one of the things I just want to say personally is that you know, to the public Fritz has been a an asset to the viticulture community throughout the United States in a way that I can't think of very many other people have been just speaking personally, I really appreciate that because you people who are really passionate about it and are really knowledgeable about it, and here's the piece that are willing to go out, who are willing to get on a plane or willing to get in a truck and really go out and meet one on one with people and then stay connected, whether it's virtual or otherwise, I think is really fantastic. And so you should be applauded for that.

Fritz Westover 35:38

Thank you, Craig, so much for having me and thanks to the vineyard team as well.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai