Jason Haas of Tablas Creek in Paso and Steve Matthiasson of Matthiasson Wines in Napa offer insights at Napa Valley Grapegrowers’ organic event.
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Cover crops, farming costs, drought, climate change, resilience and the magic word “regenerative” topped the list of topics two pioneering, organically farming wine industry icons discussed at the final session of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers Organic Month.
It was standing room only at Copia in Napa July 29 as Steve Matthiasson of founder of Napa based Premiere Viticultural Services and Matthiasson Wines (with his Jill Klein Matthiasson) and Jason Haas, general manager of Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles, shared an in-depth exploration of what it’s like to farm under Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC).
“How many seminars have we heard where Rob McMillan is telling us that we’re not doing a good job reaching out to millennials?” said Matthiasson. “We know what millennials want. They want to buy things that they believe in from a values perspective, and they vote with their dollars.
Napa Valley Grapegrowers president Caleb Mosley (left) with Haas (center) and Matthiasson (right)
From Sustainable to Organic and now Regenerative Organic
Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) was created by the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA) in 2019, two years after the Rodale Institute was outraged over the USDA’s contentious decision ruling that hydroponic agriculture could certified organic.
Appalled that soil-less agriculture could be certified organic, Rodale partnered with Doc Bronner’s and Patagonia to create the ROA and then established ROC standards that included many things the original organic movement leaders felt federal laws and USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) had left out–mostly focused on animal welfare and worker fairness.
ROC requires organic certification as a baseline. ROC certifies only farming, not winemaking standards.
The rise of the no-till movement, originally based primarily in the Midwest, made no till or less till a core tenet as well, as scientific studies further validated the impact of heavy tillage and plays a role in ROC. North Dakota farmer Gabe Brown started a no till movement that continues to resonate with row crop farmers.
Wine grape growing standards were developed later, with the help of the late Bonterra founder Paul Dolan. Haas oversaw Tablas Creek’s transition to ROC. It became the first regenerative organic certified vineyard in the world in 2020.
Haas and Matthiasson shared their journeys on the challenges and the rewards of regenerative organic farming and certification.
Said Matthiasson, “I feel that regenerative organic is getting back to the more holistic approach, but also with a modern understanding, because we’re learning all the time.”
July 29 | Harvest Already?
Though the event was originally planned to take place after harvest, it kicked off with Matthiasson telling the crowd that harvest had started at his vineyard that very morning.
“It’s another one of those ‘Mother Nature is always in charge of the schedule when you’re in farming’ kind of moments to sink into,” said Caleb Mosley, Napa Valley Grapegrowers executive director.
The event capped off a month which featured three organic field days Wednesdays in July at organic estate wineries–Balducci, Quintessa and Opus One–in Napa.
“The reason we’re here is to talk about regenerative organic farming…–the intersection of all those somewhat new terms, but kind of ancient practices,” Mosley said.
What exactly is the history of regenerative farming?
“To me, it dates back to some of the early days of organic farming and a more holistic ethic,” said Matthiasson, “around organic farming that got distilled down [with federal regulation] to nowhere. [The national organic program] became just against synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, essentially, in terms of the letter of the law.
“Regenerative organic is getting back to the more holistic approach, but also with a modern understanding, because we’re learning all the time.
A Moving Target
Matthiasson has been involved in wineries’ search for greener farming since the 1990s when he worked in Lodi.
“When we did the Lodi Winegrowers workbook back in 1999, we had nothing in there on the carbon footprint because we weren’t as aware of it at that time.
“Our human resources was all on safety, but it wasn’t on diversity and opportunity.
“Things are evolving, and so I feel that regenerative organic is the result of all these decades of work in sustainable agriculture, but it’s also just still a moment in time. I don’t think it’s finished by any means.”
The core tenets are soil health and soil conservation, he said, and though the principles remain the same, the practices vary depending on the site and context.
“Tillage, non-tillage, all these other things are practices that get at the principle of soil conservation and soil health, sequestering carbon into the soil…soil health ties into water infiltration, less runoff, less nutrient loss, all kinds of downstream stuff from that.
“So we have [as tenets] reducing carbon footprint, water conservation, soil conservation, habitat creation and maintenance, so your land is being managed in a way that migratory animals can get through your land and prosper and not die off on your land, or find a wasteland essentially, but instead be able to find forage and keep moving. You’re connected to that to a healthy ecosystem on your land.
“It could be hedgerows. It could be all kinds of different things. Again, that’s site specific, but creating habitat on your land, and then social equity, so the people that work on the land have a safe place to work, have a place for opportunity, have a place where they can grow and develop as human beings and healthy members of our community,” he said.
The Certification Process
Mosley asked Haas if his definition of the core tenets changed at all as the winery went through the regenerative organic certification process.
Tablas Creek was already certified organic in 2003 and biodynamic in 2017 before ROA recruited it to be the first ROC vineyard. It is half owned by the Perrin family in Chateauneuf de Pape, which has long been organic (since 1956) and relied on biodynamic practices, and half by the Haas family, its U.S. importers.
Tablas Creek became the first vineyard in the world to be regenerative organic certified in 2020, snd there are now 28 regenerative organic vineyards in the U.S. (out of 43 total around the globe).
“I would say that our understanding of the tenets didn’t really change, but what did change was the way that we thought about how to get there,” Haas said.
One example is explaining what regenerative organic is to consumers and trade –it’s not a simple matter, Haas said. He leans in on talking about problems people can easily grasp.
“Resource scarcity and climate change and inequality, topsoil loss–” he said, “those are probably not solvable problems. The conception of it being part of the solution to these big picture problems is, I think, what provides its main appeal for us.”
Worker integration into the decision making processes was a bit of a change, but also improved communication, he said. “Our tractors stopped breaking,” he said, because the channels of communication deepened and workers found it easier to say when a machine was early signs of a potential maintenance problem.
The Question of Certification: Getting Beyond the Challenges of Personal Resistance and Paperwork
Matthiasson said he had to overcome his feelings about any kind of certification.
“Caleb knows how allergic I am to any kind, any organization, whether it’s the feds, the state, the county, just anyone that wants to tell us what to do and make us fill that paperwork–I’m not a fan of. ” he said. “So why are we doing this voluntarily? This is crazy.
“We had been organic years ago, and I had actually quit because I had been protesting some of the organic certification decisions I just didn’t think made sense, and so we just kept farming organically, and we weren’t certified.”
Others in his circles (he named Ted Hall and me) pushed back, he said, and because he believes so strongly in it, he recertified with CCOF.
“I just believe in the values and the ethic of organic farming.”
He said he realized, “if you want to have an impact on the organic movement, then you should probably be certified and participate in it, so we got recertified [in 2018].”
In 2020, he and his wife and partner Jill Klein Matthiasson started on the path to regenerative organic certification but were delayed by the pandemic and the extra workload that meant for their back office.
ROC Certification Challenges: Farm Labor Issues When Contractors Are Involved
Both vintners [and others] still struggle with the regenerative organic labor requirements though both have predominantly their own vineyard workers.
Said Matthiasson, “How do you handle farm labor contractors? Because we’re not going to get the level of certification that we want to [gold level] because [although] we’re in house, we still need help from outside when we can’t handle a job, and we don’t have control over the way that the businesses run internally on farm labor contractors… we’re not going to work with someone we think is abusing their people. But on the other hand, we can’t ask them to go through what we’re going through [a human resources audit]. This is just the way it is. It’s going to keep evolving in terms of getting it streamlined.”
Read more in the next installment covering the two leaders’ wide-ranging conversation in Part 2 (coming soon) where the headline above (green wine marketing) is a topic the two touched on.
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