In Conversation: What Did Lafite Learn In Its Biodynamic Study? Hear from Manuela Brando de Lachapelle, Study Author, in Leading Bordeaux Podcast (English Transcript, Part 2 of 2)

A shoutout and big thanks to the podcast hosts who granted us permission to publish these transcripts.

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Podcast Hosts: Two terms caught my attention and I want to ask you about them. In your thesis you speak, in quotes, of a modified hormonal regulation in the grape, if I understood correctly, and an inhibition of degradation enzymes. To get properly technical here, what does that mean?

Well, we talked earlier about those berries that are smaller because the skins are thicker and harder. In fact, we tried to map the whole metabolism of the textural ripening of the berry at different scales. So we analyzed the hormones that trigger ripening, notably the auxin to abscisic acid ratio. And we see more auxin in the berry, as if ripening were slightly delayed.

These hormones are linked to the cell-wall degradation enzymes: when berries ripen, the wall breaks down to let the fruit swell, and there are enzymes that do that degrading. So we saw that certain degradation enzymes are inhibited under biodynamics.

Then we went on to ultrastructure studies of the skin. We cut the skin, make cross-sections, and observe the thickness of the cell walls, and we saw that they were thicker. And then, at the macro scale, when we do penetrometry studies, for example, we see that these berries are harder.

So all these building blocks of the same metabolism point in the same direction and show that a hormonal regulation can affect enzyme activity and so show up in macroscopic characteristics.

And these same berries are more resistant to pathogens like botrytis.

We haven’t studied the effect on heat spikes [Pam’s note: others have], but I think it would be interesting to see whether these harder skins can also withstand heatwaves like the ones we’re living through this year.

Climate change, adaptation and water

Let’s talk about that. It’s time to talk about global warming and heatwaves. How do you approach the coming years, and how are you preparing the ground, as a specialist in biodynamics?

It’s a very difficult subject. I’m a bit eco-anxious at the moment, but we mustn’t fall into panic.

I think the definition of sustainability is to analyze risks so you can put action plans in place and anticipate a future. That’s how we’re working on this subject. We’re analyzing the risks for our vineyards, but also for our staff. So there are action plans to mitigate stress, whether heat or water stress. That means reducing the vine’s leaf area, having shadier canopies, covering our soils or destroying cover crops earlier. Those are all aspects we’re looking at.

The presence of trees in the plots, having more shade, and so on.

Do you have experimental plots with all of this?

Yes, absolutely. We can also mention plant material.

We have experimental plots with different types of rootstocks, different varieties, and our massal-selection vines, which could be an asset for the future.

And then, as I said, there is mitigation, and there is the irrigation side.

Today irrigation is a bit like biodynamics: it’s becoming a very controversial subject.

I think that as technicians we have a duty to diagnose the vine’s needs and to study our water resources, surface and underground, so as not to make mistakes. That way, if tomorrow we’re forced to play that card, we do it intelligently, meeting the vine’s needs so as to irrigate properly, respecting the resources, with water available, without affecting the ecosystem around us. So those are all subjects we’re exploring.

And in any case, we have to move forward that way.

We’re at the start of this exploration.

Do you think that in a few years you’ll have conclusive results, and that you could extend these experimental plots to the other plots? What’s the timescale: a year, two years, ten years?

For example, our rootstock plots were planted in 2023 at Duhart-Milan, and in 2025 at our other Domaine, and at Château Rieussec. The massal-selection plot was planted in 2023–2024. So these are very young plots, and I think you have to wait at least ten years. You know, scientists like replication. So at least ten years before we have results, which we’ll gladly share.

And today we have a very good collective of estates: the Olivier de Serres Chair, run by the ISVV, which connects, notably, the estates of the Club des Neuf, to share all the results of this kind of trial across the different châteaux.

The Club des Neuf, a quick parenthesis: we should explain what it is.

The Club des Neuf is a collective for scientific reflection made up of nine classified grands crus from the Médoc, Pessac-Léognan, Sauternes and the Right Bank.

You pool resources to work on all these subjects.

To fund research, exactly.

At the ISVV.

Exactly, for this Olivier de Serres Chair.

I’d pick up on something you said about irrigation. You consider that, even though water is such a scarce resource, and will become more so, irrigation could still be a solution for the viticulture of the future? You, who practice biodynamics?

There are two subjects. There is the purely scientific subject of the vine’s water needs, and there I put on my scientist’s cap: we have to explore it.

And there is an ethical question: do we want to use water to make wine?

On that second aspect, it’s not for me to rule. But on the first, if we don’t do this diagnosis, we’ll make mistakes. So in any case it has to be explored.

What’s important to understand is that we’re not at all in the same orders of magnitude.

With mitigation, we’ll gain a few millimeters of evapotranspiration.

But with the heatwaves we’ve had, the vine today is at 7 millimeters of evapotranspiration a day. So with a soil water reserve of 90 millimeters, after a week there’s no water left in the soil. So it’s not reducing leaf area, or changing variety, or all of that combined, that will meet the order of magnitude we need. But the decision hasn’t been made, and I think it’s company leaders in particular who have to ask themselves these questions.

In any case, it’s very likely the vine will suffer more, and so its lifespan will also shorten, or at least be affected. And you can already see that.

We’re seeing entire vineyards where the leaves and bunches are scorched, with tiny berries. We’ll see what the impact on yields will be, but today, yes, we see a vineyard that is suffering.

And one that structurally could see its yields fall.

César, do you want to zoom out to the scale of Bordeaux? I know you, and I know you’re thinking, yes, but how will everyone manage?

Yes, that’s it. What Manuela is telling us is very specialized, and obviously very interesting. Remember there are 4,500 winegrowers in the Gironde. But the good news is that Lafite will share its results, I imagine, through the ISVV. It’s open to everyone, so that’s already an important point.

I also think water thinking has to be done at a collective scale, at the scale of watersheds, whose size remains to be defined.

It’s a bit like thinking in agroecology: at some point you have to go and see your neighbor to plant hedges that connect. So I think it’s not a Château Lafite subject, it’s a collective subject. So of course, if we can contribute at the scale of a territory to smart thinking, we will. What’s certain is that we may return to the essentials, to the most qualitative, most resilient terroirs. That may be a change. We may also return to the bocage landscape, with lots of hedges separating our plots: smaller plots, but surrounded by hedges to lower temperatures and manage our water better. So yes, the wine landscape will change. But I don’t have an answer to how we’ll do it. If I did, I’d feel better.

When you talk about returning to the essentials, Mathieu, there’s a point we haven’t addressed, I realize, and which is often raised by anyone interested in biodynamics. Tell us about the influence of the stars.

The Moon, small farms and where to start

We didn’t mention it earlier. We talked about soil, we talked about preparations, but the other element people have in mind is that I do my treatments and activities according to the lunar cycles. All very serious, of course.

Well, the Moon and lunar cycles: there are nine, there are many lunar cycles. We only see one, but there are actually several, and they all overlap.

So for a scientist, working on the effect of the Moon is very complicated, because you can never fix certain parameters. That makes it difficult. On the other hand, the examples everyone mentions, the tides, the effects on water, on women, show that the Moon can have effects on a natural environment, and you can’t deny that. There are also studies on tree-trunk diameter and on sap rise as a function of the Moon. Some studies exist.

At Château L’Évangile, for example, my colleague Juliette Couderc realized empirically that the lees settle more or less compactly depending on the lunar cycle. So today she enjoys waiting for a specific lunar cycle to rack the wine in order to get more compact lees. So I think we shouldn’t neglect these empirical observations in biodynamic knowledge.

And the biodynamic winegrower observes these cycles more than a conventional winegrower, right?

Exactly, they’re supposed to observe.

I think that’s one of the things that make biodynamics work: the human being, once again, is more present in the vineyard and observes more.

As for saying you have to work, or prune, according to the lunar cycle alone, that’s very hard in our businesses, because otherwise we’d never prune.

So at some point you also have to set certain cycles aside. That’s what we do at Lafite. Our biodynamics is non-dogmatic. If we can’t follow the lunar cycle, we don’t.

Take the time of day: normally you should apply silica very early and horn manure very late in the day. But we apply them when our vineyard workers arrive on site. So, as I said earlier, you have to adapt these practices, step away from the recipe a bit, and say, let’s do something pragmatic. And if I can’t follow the lunar cycle, I can’t.

There is the ideal biodynamics of the books, and there is the biodynamics of a property’s day-to-day life.

Exactly. And I come back to this path of knowledge. Good biodynamics is the biodynamics that fits each person, each estate, each organization.

And all this can be done on a small property of 20 or 30 hectares, by a small team. It’s all possible on a small property with few staff.

I think it’s even easier. It is costly, and in today’s difficult context there’s an extra cost. It isn’t enormous, but there is one.

For example, the L’Évangile vineyard in Pomerol is about twenty hectares. There, it’s the managers who apply the preparations; they can spend a few hours applying the plants themselves, and so on.

So I think it’s easier in small vineyards than in large ones like Lafite, which is around a hundred hectares, where we have to mechanize the application of the preparations and count on our workers’ schedules. That requires different logistics, and you have to a bit...

You’ll tell me it’s contradictory, but it means industrializing these methods a little. Because otherwise, on large areas, you couldn’t do it. And the biggest example is the biodynamics practiced in Australia, with big tractors, or drones, or passes...

You see, every scale is possible, but again, you have to adapt.

And in Australia, biodynamics is very advanced?

Yes, and there is...

Is it a country that’s something of a leader on the subject?

Yes, they took an interest in it. And there’s Alex Podolinsky, who even adapted one of the preparations, number 500. He created a preparation called 500P. He’s the one who brought 500P to Europe and other countries. So today it is considered a biodynamic preparation, and he worked on biodynamics at large scale.

Because the preparations are named by numbers.

Yes, that’s right. Either you call it silica or 500 for horn manure and 501 for horn silica.

I put myself in the place of winegrowers listening to you who are certified neither Demeter nor Biodyvin. Demeter is worldwide, the Australians; Biodyvin is French, right? They aren’t certified. They would simply be interested in the practice. They won’t go looking for certification right away. What advice would you give them to at least start experimenting? What should they do first?

You have to know whether you have the means to do it. Again, the preparations would be the icing on the cake. But I think that, without seeking certification and without applying the preparations, there’s already a reflection to have on this interconnected farm, on biodiversity, on coherence, on the presence of the human being. All of that depends so much on the farm in question. But I think that’s what you do first. And if that coherence doesn’t exist, you may as well not apply the preparations.

So it’s a conviction, at the start.

It’s a conviction, a presence, an observation, a desire to experiment. A desire to bring biodiversity back to our farms. Then, the word ferme (farm) etymologically means “to close” [fermer], which is a bit contradictory with biodynamics too. But you see what we mean: this agroecological unity. That’s what you have to work on.

Wine quality and the future of Bordeaux

Then there’s a final question, or at least final in the line of reasoning. All this work is done, it’s costly, and so on. In the end, are the wines of better quality?

Scientifically, I can’t answer you, because my thesis didn’t focus solely on wine quality. But what I can tell you is that we’ve been practicing biodynamics on these plots for 10 years, and we vinify the organic and the biodynamic separately.

This is a plot that has always gone into the Grand Vin, and biodynamics hasn’t stopped the wine from going into Lafite’s Grand Vin, given the standards we apply in selecting wines for the blend.

So already we can see there’s no loss of quality. Then, during my thesis, we compared the wines, and we saw that when the wines are very young, there is a difference the tasting panel can perceive. We can’t say which descriptor discriminates, but a difference exists. When the wines age and have 18 months in bottle, that difference is no longer perceptible.

[Pam’s note: See also the wide ranging study from two French wine economists here.]

Is it clearer to a taster?

The difference is clearer… But we can’t yet say which descriptor changes, and I didn’t dwell on it since it wasn’t the subject of my thesis.

We have hypotheses, since I told you about that very different grape skin. We saw that in the wines there are also polysaccharides linked to the skin, and these polysaccharides are different. And you know, wine is a colloidal matrix in which these polysaccharides interact with the tannins.

We wonder whether, with time in the bottle, these colloids stabilize, so that in the end the difference is no longer perceptible. So today one of my great wishes is to get into the wine, into the different metabolisms we’ve discussed, to understand what’s going on. Today I have few elements, but in any case the quality is unchanged.

OK. And perhaps even improved; at least that’s the hope.

If the grape is in better health, I hope that will be the case. And the vine, of course.

Staying with a little manual of biodynamics, if you will, because beyond the effectiveness you describe, I find it also very poetic.

At Lafite you are, in quotes, I believe, fans of the oats, vetch and clover mix. What is it? How does it work? What is it for?

Oats, vetch and clover is a mix we use for sowing, so it’s more about cover crops. We have indeed experimented with this mix and we continue to, since a blend of cereals and legumes is interesting for our soils. That doesn’t mean it’s the best mix. You always have to adapt the mix to the soils. It doesn’t mean you must always sow. Sometimes natural cover can be more interesting. But in any case, we’ve tested this mix for our soils. But we do use herbal teas, too.

Isn’t that the same thing?

Not at all. It’s like the herbal tea you drink in the evening, chamomile or verbena. We make herbal teas that we apply at Lafite every time we do a phytosanitary treatment. So we put a plant tea inside. And yes, we do it in the same tank.

The copper and the plant tea.

Exactly. And again, we have a protocol of our own. We like to alternate between horsetail, willow and nettle. These are three plants that are very rich in silica; nettle is also very rich in nitrogen and iron. We can combine these three plants, which are a bit like the skeleton of our protocols, with plants such as chamomile, calendula and dandelion, depending on the weather conditions.

A very open question now. French, Bordeaux viticulture is going through a terrible crisis. What is your vision of the wine of the future, or of the future of wine?

We analyze our risks. Climate risks are the biggest for us today at the vineyard level. There are environmental risks, impacts on our ecosystems. There are also market risks. There are digital risks. All of that coexists.

And we do have to adapt our practices to those risks.

How do we see the viticulture of tomorrow? I believe a lot in the notion of robustness. I’m a big fan of Olivier Hamant, who contrasts performance with robustness. I think we have to put in place action plans that let us be not performant but robust.

So today, the rise of the great Bordeaux wines may be less strong in the future, but maybe we’ll become more robust and get through crises more serenely. So it’s back to the essentials: biodiversity.

Today we talk a lot about reducing carbon impact. That’s important, certainly, but introducing biodiversity is paramount if we want to reduce carbon.

I also believe a lot in a certain autonomy for vineyards. Because tomorrow, if we don’t have access to fertilizers or oil, we need to be fairly autonomous. And then, on the markets, I think we’ll reach some kind of regulation, one way or another, with more French consumption, and with the great wines continuing to export. But again, I don’t have a magic wand. It’s very hard to answer that question.

I know you love wine and that you’re a wine lover. And that’s a point that often interests us here, Mathieu and me. The taste of Bordeaux wine, with everything you’re telling us, in 15 or 20 years: what will it be? Less alcohol, more? Tannins that may be a problem for new generations?

If you imagine the wine of Lafite, it will be superb, I don’t doubt that for a second. But in general, how do you see the wine of tomorrow? How do you see the taste of tomorrow’s wine?

Well, for 15 to 20 years, I think we’re lucky to have the best-adapted grape variety in France, and in the world: Cabernet Sauvignon. I think that saves us.

On the experimental plot we planted, we’re not planning to change grape variety in 20 years. We’re considering it a little later, because we know very well that Cabernet Sauvignon gives us room to maneuver. So in the Médoc, at least, we’re fairly protected on that front. I think we’re doing a lot of work on gentler extractions.

So in fact we have a bit less tannin. I think we’re also working to harvest a little earlier. We made a 2025 at 12.5%, which is very low in alcohol.

So I think in the Médoc we’re fairly protected.

In Pomerol, we have the two extremes within the group: at Château L’Évangile in Pomerol, we do ask ourselves the question of changing varieties.

Merlot is in danger?

Well, I don’t think so. I think Merlot, on certain terroirs, still has a lot to say. On others, though, it struggles.

At Château L’Évangile we planted a little Cabernet Sauvignon, for example. And in discussion with Kees van Leeuwen of the ISVV, we talked about the typicity of the wine. I told him, but Kees, if we plant Cabernet Sauvignon in Pomerol, we’ll lose the typicity. And he said, but Manuela, is an overripe Merlot the typicity of Pomerol from a few years ago? I don’t think so. So maybe it’s better to change the variety and recover freshness and gentler tannins than to have an overripe, over-extracted wine.

Everything has to change so that nothing changes.

Exactly.

The Leopard.

The Leopard.

Thank you, Manuela de Lachapelle. I’m very happy. We cited Olivier Hamant and the concept of robustness in this podcast, which is a first. Doubly thank you. Biodiversity, observation, presence, coherence in the interconnected farm.

Thank you, César. Thank you, Manuela de Lachapelle. Thank you, everyone.

We’ll meet again soon for a new episode. Thank you also for listening to our podcasts. Don’t hesitate to send us messages or comments. Find all our episodes on www.sudouest.fr. So you don’t miss the next ones, subscribe on Deezer, Spotify, iTunes or Google Podcasts. Until then, take care, and remember: the best wine isn’t necessarily the most expensive, but the one you share with moderation and responsibility.

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In Conversation: What Did Lafite Learn In Its Biodynamic Study? Hear from Manuela Brando de Lachapelle, Study Author, in Leading Bordeaux Podcast (English Transcript, Part 1 of 2)

Les quatre saisons du vin – Manuela Brando de Lachapelle (English translation). This published with the permission of the podcast hosts. 

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This is part one of a transcript of the Aug. 1 episode of The Four Seasons of Wine podcast in French, which has been translated into English. [The original podcast, in French, is here, It is translated below by Claude.]

[If you prefer the audio, you could also try listening to it while using with Google Translate.]

I have taken the liberty of sharing this in the U.S. in English with the sole intention of spreading the knowledge from the Lafite study and to support of the podcast hosts’ new book (published before their interview with Lachappelle took place). It is a wonderful podcast series.

Podcast Intro: Wine lovers, our specialists César Compadre and Mathieu Hervé invite you to join them through the seasons to talk good bottles, the Bordeaux vineyard and wine news. In each episode, they guide you through the industry’s must-see events, break down what’s at stake, and share their insider tips (to be enjoyed in moderation!). They also host major figures from the wine world for in-depth interviews.

—

The hosts’ questions are in bold. The guest’s answers in plain text. I have inserted a few boldings in italic in the guest’s answers.

Episode Introduction

Interested in buying local? This Sud-Ouest podcast is supported by the #BordeauxLocale movement, a campaign that showcases the economic players of the Gironde: the businesses, and the men and women who make local products and Bordeaux wines. Today more than ever, all local players must support one another and take part in a more supportive, responsible and committed economy.

That is why the Bordeaux wine trade body and the Bordeaux Métropole Tourism and Convention Office designed this movement, with the backing of many public figures. If you too are #BordeauxLocale, join us: discover the establishments that put local products forward, sign up at bordeauxlocal.fr, and share the hashtag BordeauxLocal.

Hello, I’m Mathieu Hervé. You’re listening to Les quatre saisons du vin, a podcast from the Sud-Ouest newsroom. Thanks for being here. Enjoy.

Before we start this episode, a little self-promotion. This podcast has been running for eight seasons, and it is now going from spoken to written. From May 15, you’ll find the book drawn from Les quatre saisons du vin in bookshops and newsagents. It is published by Éditions Sud-Ouest and titled Où va Bordeaux? (Where Is Bordeaux Headed?), because that is the common thread of our dozens of interviews with the women and men of the Bordeaux wine world

It’s a stocktaking of the vineyard’s situation on the human, political, economic and cultural fronts, in the words of the people who came to speak at this microphone. César Compadre and I hope it will modestly feed the ongoing reflection of professionals and enthusiasts on the place of wine today. Thank you for listening to us and supporting us for eight seasons.

Once more, the details: Où va Bordeaux?, 250 pages, €19.90, Éditions Sud-Ouest, in bookshops on May 15.

And now, on with the conversation.

I quote: “Viticulture, an activity closely tied to French civilization and the French economy, must now adapt to a world of limited resources.” Close quote. That is the first sentence of a thesis titled Biodynamic preparations, professional perception, and study of their impacts on the physiology of the vine and the grape berry. We’ve been told, in scientific and university circles, that it’s a great thesis, defended in Bordeaux, that will become a reference on wine and biodynamics. Its author is at our microphone. Her name is Manuela Brando de Lachapelle, and she is going to explain it to us.

Hello, everyone. You’re listening to an episode of season 8 of Les quatre saisons du vin, the podcast from the Sud-Ouest newsroom that tells the story of the wine world, revisits its major events and tries to decode their stakes. I’m Mathieu Hervé, and I’m here with César Compadre, head of the wine desk at Sud-Ouest [”rubrique 20” in the source]. Hello, César.

Hello, Mathieu. Hello, everyone.

And we’re welcoming Manuela Brando de Lachapelle. Hello.

Hello, Mathieu. Hello, César.

Let me introduce you briefly; I’ll correct myself if needed. You were born in 1989, in Bogotá, Colombia. You arrived in France in 2007 and have been based in Bordeaux since 2013. And I want to stress one point right away: you are a scientist. You trained as an agronomic engineer and hold a doctorate in oenology, with a thesis defended in 2025 at the Institute of Vine and Wine Science (ISVV) in Bordeaux. You are Director of Research and Development at Domaines Barons de Rothschild Lafite. I’d point listeners to our recent episode with Saskia de Rothschild about the estates.

Today we’ve invited you to talk about a subject that is interesting, often divisive in the vineyard, and sometimes caricatured, or at least it was not long ago: biodynamics. We’ll talk about your approach, your work, what you do at Lafite. We’ll also talk about global warming, viticulture, agriculture, and wine in general.

A quick note: we’re recording in early July, and this episode will air in August. I mention it because we have already lived through two heatwave episodes, and we may well see more soon. It’s important to state the context.

The thesis, Steiner and the roots of biodynamics

Biodynamics: skepticism and curiosity. Those are the two words that come to mind. When you’re out in the field a lot, as I am, you hear about biodynamics very regularly: in estates that are certified biodynamic, in those that are interested, in those that criticize it. Pontet-Canet, Fonroque, Palmer, Climens, to name just a few. These are châteaux we’ve written about a lot in our columns and elsewhere. And one idea strikes me: if you set the number of press articles and conversations about biodynamics against the number of properties actually certified, the gap is striking. We’re talking about barely a few dozen properties certified by Demeter or Biodyvin, the two certifying bodies for biodynamics, and about a thousand certified properties in viticulture worldwide [figure as given in the source]. So it’s a subject that is often put forward and studied, yet in the field there are rather few certified businesses. But where the interest lies, I think, is that biodynamics raises many questions about soil life, about work, about the interaction between people and their universe, and those interactions go well beyond business certifications. What’s interesting is that it opens the mind.

Let’s open the mind, then. Before we begin, Manuela Brando de Lachapelle, we’ll give you an exercise academics are generally well practiced at: explain your thesis in 30 or 35 seconds.

Well, I completely agree with César. There are tons of articles giving opinions on biodynamics. But we also noted that there were very few scientific articles on the subject. So one of the aims of my thesis was to speak about it scientifically, in particular about the biodynamic preparations, which are only one element among others in the biodynamic method. The aim was to start with a preamble on how biodynamics is represented in the French wine sector, so as to work on those attitudes of skepticism and curiosity that you can observe. The second aspect of my thesis was to look at the impacts of these preparations on the plant’s physiology: growth, water status, berry ripeness, fertility. The aim was to do it in the open field, so we did it at Château Lafite Rothschild, with the expertise of course of the Institute of Vine and Wine Science, combining field approaches and laboratory approaches, but always keeping in mind that the results should be applicable in the vineyard. That way my colleagues, and all our peers around us, have the elements to decide whether or not to adopt the preparations in their practices.

A scientific analysis of practices. And to start this conversation on solid ground, let’s immediately address what is often biodynamics’ controversial side. Pell-mell: there’s esotericism, there’s the guru figure, there’s the drift, in quotes, almost sectarian, there’s astrology, in other words anthroposophy. And above all there’s its creator, the Austrian Rudolf Steiner, 1861 to 1925. Explain the historical roots of this movement to us.

Sure. Rudolf Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, open to many currents. He isn’t the first philosopher to talk about nature. He raised various points related to agronomy in the interwar period, when chemical products were arriving in agriculture and harming soil fertility and crop yields. So he laid down precepts, and the unfortunate thing is that he died a year later and couldn’t justify what he had said. These precepts are collected in a book called the Agriculture Course, which is very hard to understand. But what’s worth looking at, and there are interesting scientific articles on this, is that gathering, those lectures by Rudolf Steiner. The group listening to him was made up of very varied professionals, often scientists and researchers. You have to know that Steiner said what he thought, but he insisted on the importance of experimenting, publishing the results and sharing them. So in fact it is the experimental scientific approach we know today. We sometimes forget that. And of course, because he was a philosopher, that group began to be singled out, which made it feel shut in. That’s why people speak of a sect today. But when you look at how the French government [body that monitors sectarian drift] defines a sect, what I know of biodynamics in agriculture and viticulture doesn’t tick all the boxes of a sectarian drift.

It is indeed a community, one that sometimes combines science with a certain empiricism and certain spiritual aspects. But there is in no case a sectarian drift with everything that implies in terms of control or physical or psychological aggression. So yes, it divides the sector. Since there is little scientific knowledge, there are many opinions. Today the sector is split between detractors and the convinced. So the objective of my thesis was to see whether it was only that, or whether there was something more interesting than this debate, which today doesn’t let us move forward.

Let me add two or three details. It’s a theory that was, in quotes, developed mainly in Austria and Germany, so nothing to do with the oceanic climate here, by a man who didn’t drink wine, or hardly.

He didn’t mention wine at all, because indeed he didn’t drink it. So what we use today in viticulture has been adapted, and I think it’s important to adapt what was said. Today there are some, notably the category we call the convinced, who stick to Rudolf Steiner’s specific recipe. And it seems important to me, in the context we’re living in, to adapt these practices and let them evolve. And viticulture has made these methods its own.

To complete the picture, I’ll mention Corinne and Jean-Michel Comme, whom we’ve already had on the show, and who also talked to us about biodynamics. I don’t know which current they belong to compared with you; perhaps you can tell us. In any case, this is the starting point of our conversation. To sum up, and I’ll ask for your definition: biodynamics has a holistic dimension.

Exactly. One of the founding principles of biodynamics is to consider the farm as a living organism. Like a human body, the farm is made of different organs: the vines, mixed cropping, livestock, the animals, the human being, and the surrounding environments, more or less near, more or less far. The idea is to make all these organs interact so that the farm’s physical body and energetic body interact well and stay healthy.

All this looks a lot like the notion of agroecology we use today. The only difference is that agroecology speaks of services provided by nature and of interaction between the environment and the farm. Biodynamics goes further: it speaks of distant environments too, but above all of the central place of the human being in this ecosystem. And it seems very important to me to put the human back at the center of the farm, to return to the peasant common sense our professions should have, so that the human is the conductor of this agricultural organism.

Resistance, the preparations and the thesis results

In an interview you published, I believe on the Domaines’ website, you said: what interests me in my thesis and in my work is understanding why some changes pass easily and why others provoke resistance, mistrust, even mockery. Concretely, in your practice, what seems to provoke that resistance, mistrust and mockery in this approach today?

It’s the aspects you mentioned earlier: the esoteric side, the side that isn’t justified by science. And I realize that in French culture in particular, the culture of Descartes, you need scientific validation in order to believe in a subject. In my twelve years of applied research, I’ve found that changing mindsets is the hardest part of getting my colleagues, and winegrowers, to adopt a given practice. So it’s not so much the tools, or the products, or the supply of certain resources; it’s really a change of mentality. I love these subjects that call for collective transformation, an adaptation of practices, stepping off the beaten track a little. They’re the most complicated, but the most exciting.

You talked about farms. Let’s take an example: an estate working in biodynamics. Tell us how it differs from conventional viticulture and from organic viticulture. The preparations, which you mentioned earlier: what is a preparation? We talk about biodynamics, we look at lunar cycles and so on. Give us a typical picture of a biodynamic winegrower. What are they thinking about, and what do they put in place that their colleagues don’t?

Rudolf Steiner spoke of a path of knowledge. I think a biodynamic farmer or winegrower is an experimenter, and every day they ask themselves: should I do this? With the climate I have, my employees, my context, is it relevant to do it or not? I’ll launch experiments, I’ll question myself. For example, I’m a great admirer of Château Palmer, because indeed they use the preparations, and my thesis worked on those preparations.

You need to explain what a preparation is.

The preparations are either mineral or organic. The organic ones are based on cow manure or on plants. The two main preparations are horn silica and horn manure. Horn silica is crushed quartz that you put in a cow horn and bury from spring until autumn. Horn manure is cow dung that you put in a horn and also bury for six months. These preparations undergo a transformation, a fermentation, in the soil. When they come out, they’re completely transformed; you dilute them in water and apply them to the vines.

On the foliage.

On the foliage. We analyzed these preparations in the laboratory. They’re teeming with microorganisms. My thesis didn’t deal with the microorganisms, but it would be very interesting to study the effect of the microorganisms applied through these preparations.

During those six months, what’s in the horn changes completely?

Completely. We ran trials of this transformation on the cow manure, which isn’t very pleasant to go and collect. We put it in terracotta containers, in plastic containers and in horns. And the only interesting transformation is the one that happens in the horn. We thought terracotta would work, since it’s also a porous material. But the manure didn’t break down in the same way.

The horn manure that comes out of the ground looks like humus. It has a modeling-clay texture, and an aroma [the source reads “super bronde”, unclear]. It has nothing to do with the manure we buried at the start.

And when you spray it, what does it do on the foliage? What does it bring?

Well, horn manure is normally sprayed on the soil.

On the soil.

On the soil, with a coarse-droplet spray. Horn silica, on the other hand, is applied to the foliage as a mist.

OK. And what does it bring?

We can get into the results of my thesis.

Let’s go, then. The conclusions, the results, your observations.

I admit it’s not easy to imagine that you put horns in the ground and it will make good wine.

Not at all. It’s quite counterintuitive.

And I’ll come back to the farm in a moment. You asked me what the farm is. It’s important to talk about the preparations, but we mustn’t forget they’re the cherry on the cake.

For me the most important thing is to have this organism that interacts well and is healthy. So, back to the results of my thesis. Some aspects of the vine’s physiology are not affected: the phenological stages, the leaf area, the vine’s storage of reserves. Its general physiology isn’t impacted.

Other aspects do change. We observed better water-use efficiency. That is, when you measure water stress, you see that the vines in biodynamics are a little more stressed. But alongside that, stomatal opening isn’t affected. There’s no triggering of certain hormones, such as abscisic acid, in the event of stress. Stomatal density is identical. Leaf area, as I said, isn’t affected. So in fact the vine does just as well with a stronger water constraint.

Then we observed that it’s less sensitive to disease attacks. These are things we had already seen in the field before my thesis began, over 2018 to 2021, and again during my thesis, in 2023 to 2024. We observed that the vine has a lower intensity of mildew attack.

That’s counterintuitive, because we have in mind the idea that biodynamic estates have rather very low yields.

I’d like to take up that subject, because I don’t think phytosanitary protection is the source of yield loss. I think that when you go organic, the soil work strongly reduces yields. At Lafite, for example, we have always worked the soils. So when we went organic, we saw no yield loss linked to phytosanitary treatment, since the yield loss from soil work was something we never experienced. If the phytosanitary treatment is done well, there is no yield loss.

So when you apply the biodynamic preparations, there’s less intensity of pathogen attack.

We’re opening lots of doors here. We can come back to yields if you like. The farm, we’ll come back to as well.

I’ll stay on the thread. In other words, what you’re telling us is that the whole system is slightly shifted. The vine grows a little more slowly, defends itself better, and the grape ripens a little differently. You observed all that at Lafite, right? If I understand correctly, what is the protocol you set up?

It’s important to talk about this, because it’s a thesis done at Lafite, in a very particular context, with a protocol of our own. We have practiced biodynamics since 2017. We were accompanied by two advisers, Jacques Fourret and Nicolas Jamin, who taught us how to do biodynamics. We adapted our preparation protocol, and today we apply nine preparations a year. That’s a lot, when you consider that labels like Demeter or Biodyvin sometimes require just one silica and one horn manure. We apply nine preparations.

Over what area?

Today at Lafite we apply these nine preparations on 15 hectares. My thesis focused on four hectares. Of the nine preparations, six are silicas and three are horn manures. So I can’t tell you today that this is generalizable, since few biodynamic winegrowers apply that many preparations. But we wanted to push the system to the extreme in order to draw interesting conclusions during this thesis.

Yields, soil life and resilience

Now we can come back to yields, since you mentioned Palmer. César, do you want to jump in?

Just to say that it’s a matter of professional, or public, common knowledge, I don’t know how to put it, that estates practicing biodynamics get low yields. Or even, as we saw at Pontet-Canet one year, when the season starts badly and the phytosanitary treatment is poor all season long, the harvest is compromised. So it’s counterintuitive, at least to me, to think that working in biodynamics secures yields. So you’ll need to explain. Maybe this will send lots of estates into biodynamics, I don’t know. Because to do biodynamics, we haven’t said this yet, you first have to be certified organic.

Exactly, and that’s very important. At DBR Lafite we have worked organically since 2016, by the way, with trials so as not to make mistakes. We learned a lot about the timing of treatments, the doses to apply, and spraying that has to be impeccable. And we found that if organic is done well from A to Z, there’s no reason to lose the harvest. If you have the firepower, if you can intervene within a day, there’s no reason.

On weekends too?

On weekends too, with an on-call system and so on. These are all things we learned along the way, and today we know how to manage despite Bordeaux’s difficult climate. So I’m convinced that if organic is done well agronomically, there’s no reason to lose yields, and on top of that, the biodynamic preparations are meant to do good and not reduce yields.

Just a remark, Manuela Brando de Lachapelle, because we’ve heard this enormously over the years at this table, elsewhere, in magazines, in interviews: yes, but organic and biodynamics are simply not suited to the oceanic climate of Bordeaux. Between the lines, what you’re telling us is that the problem isn’t there. Could you expand on that?

It’s true. Take a year like 2024: we had to spray 25 times because of abundant rain. Of course you ask yourself the question, and you say, we’re passing over the vines, using fuel. It’s not great to pass 25 times.

On top of which you compact the soils: fuel, labor, tractors, soils, there are only drawbacks.

Exactly. But in a year like 2025 [as in the source], some of my colleagues this year are finishing at under 2 kilos of copper per hectare. They haven’t even sprayed ten times. So yes, there are very complicated years, and there are other years. With climate change, maybe we’ll get less rain and maybe it will adapt well.

What is true is that for soil fertility, for the health of our ecosystems and of our employees, organic seems to us today to be the best option.

To finish on yields, since we studied them in the thesis: you know the vine’s reproductive cycle runs over two years. We analyzed the different stages: floral induction, fruit set, fruit growth. We studied all the components of yield. We saw that biodynamics would have an impact only on berry growth, because the berry skins are harder and less porous. On a calculated yield, there would be a 10% loss.

On a calculated yield.

Yes. I amused myself by measuring the yields and comparing them with what I had calculated. When you measure yields, there’s no difference. When I calculate them, I get this small 10% loss.

In biodynamics, a 10% loss.

On my thesis plots.

Because of the berry skins.

Because of the skins, which limit the swelling of the berry. So we get smaller berries and looser bunches.

And that 10%, when you look at it, is the year-to-year fluctuation in yield. It’s also all the measurement errors you can have in the vineyard.

It’s what you can lose through crop thinning, through sorting. So winegrowers don’t consider that 10% a big loss. And when you see alongside it that mildew is reduced, that the skins are more resistant to botrytis, and the prophylaxis you get because the bunches are looser, that 10% is quickly compensated. So you have to distinguish between yield loss from the soil work that organic involves, yield loss from agronomic mistakes when doing organic, and this small 10% loss you can have because the berries are smaller.

Explain this notion of soil work. You speak of yield loss in connection with soil work. What exactly is it?

Well, back when, and it’s still the case for some winegrowers, you chemically weeded, you had vines...

Weeded across the whole vineyard.

Across the whole surface, or just on the row, you had vines with shallow root systems.

The roots don’t go deep.

The roots go down less. And so when you go organic, you pass over the vines with mechanical tools to work the soil.

You stop the weeding and the tractor takes over.

Exactly. When you go organic, that’s what happens. This mechanical work can cut roots, and in that case you see that the vine suffers. So there are yield losses at the start.

In the first years, while the roots go deeper.

Exactly, and while the vine regulates its physiology.

So there, the yield loss is tied to soil work and not to phytosanitary treatment. That’s the big difference.

That’s my view, based on the experience I’ve had. Because beyond that, if the soil work is mastered, you’re past that stage of rebuilding roots, and you do your phytosanitary treatments well, there’s no reason to lose your yields.

There are winegrowers who want to go organic. They need to know the first years will be very difficult.

That’s the case, and unfortunately, with the economic context we’re living through today, many winegrowers in conversion and in organic are going back to herbicides, partly for cost reasons, since mechanical work is quite expensive. It costs much more to work organically than conventionally.

We’ve been talking about the impact of the practice on the vine and on the berries. We talked about soil work. Tell us about soil life. What did you observe? And, because it’s a test that makes people smile but surely says something, there’s the famous underwear test. Do you do that?

We did it for a long time. We did it for five months.

Cotton underwear?

Cotton underwear. You’ll have to explain that.

So we bury organic cotton underwear, which is important, and not colored. We realized that mattered too. And we keep the elastic, because the elastic won’t be broken down by the soil microorganisms, whereas the cotton will. We bury it and wait, and then when we dig it up we find the elastic with a larger or smaller piece of underwear attached. That gives us a percentage of degradation, which is supposed to correlate with the biological fertility of our soil, in other words the microorganisms present.

And beyond the anecdote, as a scientist, what did you find in your soil?

My thesis didn’t work specifically on soil microorganisms, but we sent samples to the University of Kassel, which does studies called substrate-induced respiration.

Kassel is where?

In Germany. Notably the researcher Jürgen Fritz, who specializes in this field. He found that the microorganisms in our soils have a low metabolic quotient. It’s as if our fungi and bacteria were great athletes with a lower basal respiration, a lower resting heart rate, who can therefore be in very good health while using fewer nutrients. That’s a first finding.

I also sent soils from my trial plots to INRAE in Dijon, notably to Lionel Ranjard and the EcoVitiSol program. He found that our biodynamic soils do better in terms of microorganism abundance and the bacteria-to-fungi ratio than soils that are purely organic.

And since I was seeing that, I also sent samples to another INRAE Dijon team, notably Antoine Sporthes, who works on mycorrhizae. He also found a difference in mycorrhizae between the biodynamic soils and the others. So I find it quite reassuring that other scientists are finding results too, notably on this aspect of soils.

So the soils on the biodynamic plots are sturdier, more solid, more resistant; they’re in better shape.

Exactly. That’s why we speak of resilience and homeostasis, meaning they change more slowly when a stress is applied. And today, God knows there are biotic and abiotic stresses, so it’s valuable to have soils that are resilient.

But how long does it take to get to this kind of soil? It takes years, I imagine, to go from conventional to this kind of result.

Well, I think going from conventional to organic is already great. Bringing in grass cover and organic matter contributes a lot. After that, I can’t tell you how long it takes, but we did these analyses ten years after the start of biodynamic applications.

Ten years after the first applications?

Ten years after the first preparations. And biodynamic practitioners say, empirically, that the effect is cumulative. It’s not in a single year that your microorganisms will settle in. What’s needed is small doses, small vaccines given every year, through the microorganisms brought in with the preparations.

Sometimes we visit estates where they tell us they’ve never used herbicide across the whole vineyard. I imagine those soils are doing much better. Are they in the same category as what you’ve just explained?

I imagine so. Those are solid, sturdy soils. It depends on how they’re worked. Today, notably in the Médoc, the rows are so narrow that the soils get worked a lot. And soils that aren’t covered get very hot. With the heatwave, you can reach 70 degrees [Celsius] on uncovered soil. The bacteria and fungi don’t like that. There’s oxidation. So it depends. But Lafite has never been weeded. That’s an asset for us. And comparing the same Lafite soil with and without biodynamics, the biodynamic soil is more resilient than the organic one.

END PART ONE

TO BE CONTINUED WITH PART TWO 

The First Regenerative Organic Value Wine | AVIVO Wines Launches Three Bottle Offer for $49 (Price Includes Shipping)

The company’s online-only offer brings together AVIVO White, Rosé, and Red in one first order.

As vintners try to find more DTC customers, see what Avivo is up to now…This aligns with the magical under $20 price point consumers say they want…and the farming is certified regenerative organic.

As vintners try to find more DTC customers, see what Avivo is up to now…This is aligning with the magical under $20 price point consumers say they want…and the farming is certified regenerative organic.

PRESS RELEASE

HEALDSBURG, Calif. -- [October 6, 2026] -- AVIVO Wines has launched the First Taste Trio, an online-only offer featuring one full-size bottle each of AVIVO White, Rosé, and Red for $49 delivered. The offer is available to new AVIVO direct-to-consumer customers.

Designed as an introduction to the AVIVO lineup, the trio gives new customers a chance to try all three wines and find a favorite. Fresh and expressive, the wines are made for the table and perfect to enjoy with food.

AVIVO makes its wines from Italian grape varieties grown in Lodi, where California’s Mediterranean climate suits them. The grapes are grown in partnership with the Ledbetter family at their certified organic, regeneratively farmed vineyards. Made with limited intervention, AVIVO wines have just two ingredients: organic grapes and small amount of sulfur dioxide is added at bottling.

The First Taste Trio is available at avivowines.com. The offer is available to new AVIVO direct-to-consumer customers, with one redemption per customer or household. Applicable taxes may apply. Purchasers must be 21 or older.

avivowines.com

About Avivo Wines

AVIVO makes bright, approachable California wines for the table. The wines are made from certified organic grapes grown in regeneratively farmed vineyards in Lodi. Learn more at avivowines.com.

Avaline Named 2026 Market Watch Wine Brand of the Year, Setting a New Pace for the Category

Proving there is indeed a market for organically grown imports branded under US celebs’ label selling bottles priced at $24-30

Note: I highlighted Avaline’s success in Danny Brager’s presentation earlier this year where it ranked among the topselling wines. This latest news cements its reputation as a growth brand.

PRESS RELEASE

Recognition follows six years of growth and national retail expansion for America’s fastest-growing nationally distributed wine brand

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Avaline, the organic wine brand founded by Cameron Diaz and Katherine Power, has been named Wine Brand of the Year at the 2026 Market Watch Leaders Choice Awards, a major recognition for the brand that has grown from a new entrant in the category since launching in 2020, into a nationally recognized wine brand today.

The Market Watch Leaders Choice Wine Brand of the Year is an honor voted on by the country’s premier beverage alcohol retailers and recognizes the brand’s cultural relevance, category-defining consumer connection, and explosive volume growth,

As the wine industry navigates shifting consumer habits, Avaline is setting the standard. Exceptional growth has propelled the brand past the longstanding leader in the organic category to become America’s #1 organic wine brand in total US scans. Avaline didn’t wait for the category to change. It changed the category.

Avaline is now showing up wherever its consumers are. In 2026, the brand significantly expanded its national retail presence across Kroger, Whole Foods Market, Albertsons Companies and Target, and deepened its digital reach through Instacart, DoorDash and Gopuff, putting Avaline in front of Gen Z and Millennial wine drinkers in the places they already shop. The momentum is proven in the numbers: Avaline’s dollar sales are up nearly 30% year-over-year — the fastest growth of any top-200 wine brand in the U.S. (Total US TABs, 52 weeks ending 9/5/26).

“Wine is changing, and we’ve been building for that change since day one,” said Jennifer Purcell, CEO of Avaline. “To be recognized by the industry as Wine Brand of the Year in just six years since our launch is incredibly meaningful. We started as a disruptor, we’re leading now, and we still feel like we’re just getting started.”

The Avaline promise is simple: every bottle is crafted in Europe with organic grapes, and ingredients clearly listed on the label so drinkers know exactly what’s in their glass. That promise has remained constant as Avaline has scaled.

The 2026 Market Watch Leaders Choice Wine Brand of the Year recognition will be featured in the October Market Watch Leaders issue, Shanken News Daily and additional Market Watch coverage, with post-event coverage appearing in Market Watch’s December issue.

To learn more about Avaline and its growing portfolio of organic wines, visit drinkavaline.com and follow @avaline on Instagram.

About Avaline
Avaline is a wine company founded by Cameron Diaz and Katherine Power that launched in 2020 with a mission to raise the industry standard by making organic wine more accessible without sacrificing taste. The brand offers a thoughtful collection of crowd-pleasing favorites made with organic grapes and zero sugar, with ingredients and nutritional information listed right on the label. Avaline is available in retail stores nationwide and direct to consumer via drinkavaline.com.

SF Chronicle’s New 2026 Top Wineries List Versus 2025: Curators Fail to Showcase Farm to Table and EcoWine Categories | Instead Increase Coverage of Chemically Farmed Wines Owned by Corporations

Lost were five farm to table, organically farmed wineries replaced with only one new organically farmed winery.

The SF Chronicle’s Top 25 BAY AREA Wineries to Visit has for years been strong on artisanal, boutique, organically farmed, family owned wineries. This year things changed.

In addition as far as I can see, the word “organic” no longer appears in any winery description, even when a winery's wines are fully estate grown [only] and certified organic in the vineyards. The word “sustainable” is used instead to describe organic leaders like Donum and Matthiasson. This seems hugely wrong.

Here are the changes:

Dropped from Bay Area 2025 (8)

Freeman (Sebastopol) O

Frog’s Leap (Rutherford) O

Hanzell (Sonoma) O

Merry Edwards (Sebastopol) (one vineyard is O)

Preston Farm & Winery (Healdsburg) O

Unti Vineyards (Healdsburg) (Practicing O)

Tres Sabores (Estate is O)

Added to Bay Area Wineries in 2026 (8)

Arnot-Roberts (Healdsburg) (A few certified organic vineyard sources)

Donum Estate (Sonoma) (ROC)

Rhys Vineyards (Los Gatos) (Practicing O)

Ashes & Diamonds (Napa) (A few vineyards O including the estate)

Beaulieu Vineyard (Rutherford)

Goosecross Cellars (Yountville)

Hudson Ranch & Vineyards (Napa)

Robert Mondavi Winery (Oakville) (exception: To Kalon is O)

This Year, Architecture Counts For More?

Basically several corporate owned, historic wineries - Beaulieu and Mondavi, both of which were extensively renovated - were added to the list. Also Hudson, which has architecturally stunning buildings and landscaping. All three farm with chemicals.

Not including classic Hanzell this year feels like a major miss, as it is so very historic and the wines are phenomenal and regeneratively farmed.

Other Additions

Goosecross in Yountville is owned by an alum from Gallo and a Coors descendant.

Sorry to say, but I honestly do not know why Reeve made the list.

Rhys is deserving of inclusion and is an excellent addition. Until recently it did not offer tastings, but opened a tasting room (*by appointment only) a few years ago in a remote (but view filled) location. Rhys is not certified but it is practicing organic, under a celebrated vineyard manager with a deep biodynamic history.

Bear in mind, the Chronicle has OTHER LISTS - one for Sonoma and one for Napa – and some of these all star, family run, organically farmed estates appear on those lists.

Overall Changes in 2026 Bay Area List

Sonoma lost the most: Five of the eight drops are in Sonoma County, and only two Sonoma-area wineries were added (Arnot-Roberts and Donum). Napa lost three and gained five.

The new Napa entries are renovation and glamour picks: Mondavi and Beaulieu both unveiled major renovations this year. That fits the Napa list’s new focus on hospitality and experience.

Several dropped wineries are the quieter, farm-style [AND ORGANIC] stops: Preston, Tres Sabores, Unti and Hendry Ranch are all unfussy, low-key estates.

THE. (CERTIFIED) ORGANIC AMONG THE CURRENT BAY AREA LIST

The organically farmed options on the 2026 25 top Bay Area wineries include:

All Estate, Organically Farmed

Clif Family (Napa)

Corison (Napa, globally renowned Cabs)

Donum (all regenerative organic estates; which the Chronicle does not even mention)

Matthiasson (the Chronicle does not even mention the word organic in its description of this leading ecowinery)

Some Organically Farmed Wines

Arnot-Roberts (A few certified organic vineyard sources)

Ashes and Diamonds (estate only)

Brown (a few, small lot wines from their Chiles Valley estate)

Failla (Peay and Savoy vineyard wines)

Idlewild (selected vineyards)

Ridge Vineyards (estate wines only)

Ryme (lots of purchased grapes from organic vineyards)

Littorai (not certified but very organic and biodynamic farming) should also be included as 100% organic/biodynamic.

According to market data, organically grown wines are in demand among younger drinkers, and the only category that is showing growth (2%) versus declining so it’s curious and confusing why the Chronicle eliminates the use of the word "organic" entirely.

Happy travels!

Artisanal, Boutique AND Organic? Sonoma Valley Group Has It All | Get Your Tickets to Their Upcoming Grand Tasting in SF Nov. 8 at Fort Mason

This grassroots group makes many of California’s best wines...taste them all before the holidays arrive...and you can stock up.

Here is the latest from the Winemakers Podcast, announcing the upcoming tasting.

S.O.R.B.E.T. is back! The Sonoma Organic Regenerative Educational Tasting returns to Fort Mason November 8th, 2026.

We sat down with old friends Katie Bundschu Tynan and Morgan Twain Peterson, who together conjured SORBET with our own Sam Coturri when some shit-talking messages about greenwashing vineyard “sustainability” got out of hand and turned into a full-fledged tasting event.

SORBET 2025 was a sold-out smash hit. This year, SORBET has grown and evolved. They secured official 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, hosted field days to promote regenerative farming practices in the Sonoma Valley viticulture community, and threw a spectacular, sunset-splashed fundraiser dinner.

Now they’re bringing it all back to where it started for one of the most unique and forward-thinking tastings we’ve ever seen. Expect more than 30 wineries and vineyards, hundreds of wines representing dozens of varieties, and every winemaking style you can imagine. What brings them all together? They’re all from Sonoma Valley, and they’re all farmed organically, regeneratively or biodynamically.

So sit down, pop a bottle of SORBET-qualified wine and listen in as the crew talks about why they’re excited about SORBET 2.0, what’s happening in the wine world in Sonoma and beyond, and, while we’re at it…all the other events everyone is doing between now and 2027.

Wineries include: 

• Abbot’s Passage

• Bedrock Vineyard

• Bedrock Wine Co

• Benziger Family Winery

• Brown Estate

• BUCKLIN

• Canihan Family Winery

• Dane Cellars

• Donum Estate

• Enterprise Vineyards

• Fest Wine Co.

• Fresh Wine Co

• Gloria Ferrer

• Gundlach Bundschu

• Hamel Family Wine

• Hanzell

• Hill of Tara Winery

• Kamen Estate Wines

• Kivelstadt Cellars

• KORBIN KAMERON

• Jambe de Bois

• Las Vivas

• Lasseter Family Winery

• Laurel Glen Vineyard

• Marioni Wine

• Montecillo Vineyard

• Once & Future Wine

• Pangloss Cellars

• Ram’s Gate Winery

• Rossi Ranch

• Stone Edge Farm Estate Vineyards & Winery

• Tidings

• Winery Sixteen 600

My notes:

BUCKLIN has some of the oldest vines in the country. Once & Future is the winery of veteran old vine loving Joel Peterson. Laurel Glen Vineyard put Sonoma Cabernet on the map. Kamen Estate, owned by the Hollywood screenwriter, famously dynamited volcanic rock to makes its Lava Block wines on Moon Mountain. Gloria Ferrer is now Sonoma’s largest organic estate and makes beautiful sparkling wines. Bedrock is always a standout…And that’s just the beginning of the stories about all these producers. 

Get tickets online here.

Enjoy the podcast recap here.

The last time they had a tasting it sold out, so don’t delay.

Real Time Answers in the Field with Agrology’s New AI Agronomist

The new functionality provides actionable and immediate feedback, helping growers make better use of inputs and get real time data on input ROI and efficiency, heat stress, irrigation impact and more.

I’ve been a huge fan of Agrology’s work in the past so I wanted to check in Dana Revallo, head of customer success, on the latest developments. Here is our interview: 

So what’s the newest and latest at Agrology?

Dana: This past week, Agrology just released our AI Agronomist.

We’ve moved from just measuring soil health and reading a field’s whole carbon and water story to letting growers ask questions about the data we’re collecting in plain English.

It’s really amazing because our system takes measurements – like 17 different data inputs…Everything from soil moisture, use efficiency, field capacity, to the more environmental metrics and microclimate, like canopy humidity, vapor pressure deficit, heat stress, and then also like photosynthetic hours, photosynthetic efficiency, and then whether your field is absorbing carbon or emitting carbon.

We’ve been working on this for the past 18 months and done a soft release to some of our existing customers.

PHOTO - SEE SUBSTACK FOR THE Sample of the new AI agent from Agrology

Well, let’s back up a bit - how’s it going? What are you finding after five years in business?

We have been measuring carbon for three years. The previous two years before that was more ground truth microclimate and environmental metrics.

PHOTO Agrology sensors in the field

And can you just briefly describe the technology?

We measure carbon through a soil chamber, measuring respiration and the microbial life and and root exudation, so basically like a Haney test in real time. And then we use a carbon gradient mast similar to an Eddy covariance tower. These Eddy towers are out of reach for a lot of small and mid-sized growers because of the cost. It costs typically like $200,000, and then you need someone with a postgraduate degree to decipher the data and do all the gap filling.

PHOTO Demo at Robert Hall winery in Paso Robles which conducted a major study on regenerative versus conventional grape growing using Agrology sensors to document changes based on soil health.

So, what are people using that data for?

We’re using that data to show whether your regenerative practices are actually moving the needle and increase soil health and crop quality.

It’s really important for all of our vineyard customers. Because we can show through that, through measuring the carbon cycle, we can show when a vine is actively photosynthesizing. So, for example, if we have like a really big heat dome or some kind of heat wave, a lot of times when the temperatures reach 95 degrees, the vine will actually shut down because it can’t photosynthesize.

But sometimes treatments can increase the vine’s resilience to continually photosynthesize, transpire moisture, and cool the canopy based on treatments.

Like if you’re going no-till or keeping a ground cover, the ground cover can keep the the overall temperature in that block a few degrees cooler.

If there was a heat wave, you can show what blocks are shutting down and which ones are not, and then that allows you to apply irrigation proactively instead of reactively. So even if you don’t have overhead sprinklers, you can turn on the irrigation during a heat dome, and then that water will reach the vine, and then also just the evaporative cooling from the moisture, evaporating from the soil can help cool the canopy down as well.

What crops do you work on?

We work on everything from blueberries to silage, corn, and soy in the Midwest.

A lot of growers are moving away from more synthetic, salt-based fertilizers and incorporating more biology because they’re really seeing that can create resilience and increased yields in their crops as well.

We also work in a number of different grazing systems as well, measuring the carbon cycle and benefits of rotational grazing. We work in orchards and a lot of potatoes actually, too, up in Idaho and Washington.

How did you and why did you develop this new AI function?

The farmer can ask what our sensors are reading and then create different management decisions in real time. It answers questions about their data, and then the grower and agronomist can make the call as to what’s working and what’s not.

And is it voice activated or you have to type?

It’s currently a text interface.

Are people using it with other agents?

They can. We do have an open API, so we can incorporate other sensor data into our chat interface, so we can pull on that data. You can also upload other soil tests like micro and macronutrients, Haney tests, and it can digest all that data. Then it pulls all of the scientific peer-reviewed studies.

A lot of the measurements that are used in the scientific literature were all measured using gas flux, like Eddy covariance towers. So now we can incorporate direct measurement from these small growers and access all of the peer reviewed studies, so that growers can see how their their crop and and soil data are comparing to these other other studies.

Well, that sounds pretty amazing. Has the market been asking for this?

I feel like we work with some of the most talented grape growers, vineyard managers and farmers in the country, but a lot of the tools that they’ve been using are not able to give them the data they need in real time.

A lot of times when they’re sending using Haney tests or soil samples, they’re taking the sample, they’re sending it in, and they’re waiting four or five weeks before they get that data back.

So when growers are, or even fertilizer companies are, are trialing application rates and new amendments, new biological stimulants in their crops, they can see the results in real time.

And what does that enable?

That enables them to see if if a product is working during that season and not have to wait until the season’s end to make a decision for the next year.

Do you see them doing a lot more on farm experiments or trials?

100%. Yeah, we were working with a potato grower up in in Idaho, where they were trialing two different biological amendments, living biology, and what we saw was that the control field they were using actually started out with higher soil health metrics.

Prior to the biology being applied, the control field was already outcompeting the trial field. But within 45 days, we saw that the trial field actually overcome the control and created major benefits, and then the yields that we calculated at the end also reflected that.

So, when you say major benefits, what benefits are you looking at aside from yield?

The photosynthetic hours and the canopy CO2 drawdown. The treated crops were photosynthesizing longer throughout the day.

It was a really hot summer up in Idaho, and so we saw the control field shutting down, and the potatoes were stopping photosynthesizing while the treated fields could continue absorbing carbon and transpiring moisture, cooling their canopy, and then that resulted in not only higher yield but higher yield of quality potatoes that were large enough to sell.

So I’m curious, who are your clients both inside and outside of the wine world.

I think people were pretty psyched just to be able to get the data, but we don’t really know much about how they use the data. And then, of course, in the wine world, we have all the regenerative and organic people who are maybe more actively looking for tools like this? Can you fill me in?

Well, especially with input costs rising so much, growers are under a lot of pressure to make sure that what they’re applying is getting an ROI.

We’re working with different input providers and farmers who are paying for these inputs. Sometimes they’re $20 an acre, sometimes they’re $100 an acre, and sometimes the $20 an acre one actually does better than the more expensive one.

And are you seeing any correlations with nutrient density?

That’s a great question. We haven’t worked specifically with anyone like with Edacious. I really love what what Edacious is doing. We haven’t necessarily worked with nutrient density, but a lot of our vineyard customers are doing juice samples, looking at tannins and polyphenols and Brix.

Why do wine grape growers use this technology?

Well, it shows when a vine shuts down due to too much heat stress.

We use irrigation deficit techniques in order to make sure that the grapes aren’t too full of water and that they have the right flavor compounds. But if a vine goes under stress, like high vapor pressure deficit, and stops photosynthesizing for days on end, the grapes can start to develop off flavors.

And then, in terms of vine health and longevity, we’re wanting to make sure that we’re seeing really healthy levels of respiration post-harvest, so that the vines go into dormancy really healthy, and then they can come out next year full of health, so measuring the soil respiration and carbon flux post harvest is is really important.

We’ve worked with growers that usually put on a really large irrigation post-harvest, and that usually tracks very closely with soil respiration.

I remember one grower last season missed a few irrigations prior to November 1 - typically when we get that first inch of rain - and the soil health really dropped off due to just being starved for water. So that grower made this change of adding three solid irrigations, keeping that soil moist right until we get into that first inch of rain.

And does it also impact fertilizer application or compost application?

Yeah. So when we’re running trials, we can measure water use efficiency, field capacity. When you’re adding organic matter, biochar, and compost, you’re adding a lot of organic matter to the soil, and it’s increasing that water holding capacity. And we can measure the the water holding capacity and the water use efficiency of those vines.

Is there a way to figure out how to optimize those applications, like terms of volume, terms of timing.

Every site is is so different.

What we’re able to do with the agronomist is, if we start to see a vine shutting down or a block shutting down, and the other ones are not, we can start to find the metrics that are out of line, like what whether it was due to low soil moisture, was it due to higher heat, or are some blocks more resilient than others?

Some can continually photosynthesize and transpire moisture to cool the canopy and cool the crop, while others don’t. And sometimes, and sometimes those those blocks even have lower soil moisture. They’re just able to pull on that moisture and continually cycle nutrients that the vine will need in order to continue operating.

So, are you able to pool the data that you get from all of your clients into a database that feeds your AI, or that all remains siloed and private?

We use our data that we collect to train our model, but all of our data remains confidential for the individual growers.

But they are able to leverage the collective data?

That’s correct. Yeah, especially the environmental data we pull from weather stations, and then incorporate it with the microclimate data that we collect as well.

So, what does that enable? I mean, is that weather forecasting, or…?

We can forecast heat waves by pulling that microclimate data based on the GPS location.

So, do you have many people who are doing comparative trials like the one that was conducted at Robert Hall, comparing conventional and regenerative organic, are people interested in that?

Yes, most definitely.

Some of the trials that we’re running are on conventional farms, and they are starting to incorporate living biology in addition to their conventional practices. Especially in the Midwest and in Idaho and Washington, we’re seeing growers that are starting to to realize that their yields have been declining, and that their crops aren’t nearly as resilient as they once were, and they’re coming to the conclusion that it’s based on treating their soil.

So does this enable them like a periscope into microbial activity?

We can measure microbial activity through gas flux. A lot of the the soil biology is aerobic, just like we are. They take in oxygen, breathe out CO2. So that’s how we’re able to measure the soil activity.

Is the sensor data revelatory for some farmers?

Starting to look at the CO2 cycle is very new to a lot of these growers because they’ve never seen this type of data before.

They’ve never actually seen numbers to how much they’re photosynthesizing, but with the AI Agronomist, we’re able to explain that based on the other types of metrics, right? We want our crop to be absorbing sunlight and breathing in breathing in CO2, so that it can continue to function and grow. And when we can show that that stops because of a certain thing that’s happening in the immediate environment around it, that becomes something that they can actually work to change.

So, are high fertilizer prices driving any changes in wanting to use this technology more?

I think that growers are realizing that there are alternatives to the nitrogen, like the typical NPK that they’ve been applying – living biology. There’s plenty of nitrogen in the atmosphere, and living biology can help take that nitrogen, turn it into an inorganic form that’s plant available.

Can you unpack that just a little bit more?

Yes. So the soil microbiome, as it’s living and and dying, a lot of these microbial bodies will have nitrogen available in their bodies, and and when that biology, when this soil life turns into microbial necromass - the dead bodies - that nitrogen is then plant available. You don’t get that in dead soils that are just have synthetic nitrogen applied, and this is beyond just using legumes and fixed nitrogen.

Living biology can help bridge that and can take nitrogen that would be not available for the plant, and then make it and then turn it into a inorganic form that the plant is is able to take up.

So, what kinds of farms and growers are benefiting, or are the first on board to adopt this technology and understand how powerful it can be for them?

It’s all types of growers.

We work with a lot of conventional corn and soy growers in the Midwest that are trialing new biology, and it’s not just younger growers. I think it’s a lot of growers that have been in the field for 20 and 30 years, seeing that what they have been doing isn’t working anymore.

They’re seeing their neighbors [benefit]. …I think one of our customers in in Nebraska just got five inches of rain, and a lot of these crops are struggling, and some of them that have been using no-till techniques - planting their corn directly into an alfalfa field - are seeing that their fields can absorb and take on that water without without destroying their crop.

So, do you think it’s led more people to adopt cover crops, or what other measures?

That’s definitely one of the levers that that people are using. Cover cropping can be incredible, and then also working toward no-till farming, if that’s something that works for your site. We work with growers that, especially in vineyards, that that are transitioning to no-till or just shallower tilling,

We see that sometimes there can be lower soil moisture in these no-till blocks. But what’s interesting is that the vine roots go down so deep that they’re able to pull from soil moisture from from down below, and they are continuing to photosynthesize even though they have lower soil moisture. That cover crop can start to transpire some of that water, so that it’s not available to the vine, but there’s still plenty of water for the vine to to draw upon.

So, what are agronomists thinking about this technology, and are they the ones making the decision usually to use?

It’s brand new. The onboarding calls that I’ve done so far, we’ve had just incredible response on it.

They’re really looking forward to starting to use some o this data this winter to go over the previous season’s data.

[In the new AI app] You can ask kind of these questions like “was my irrigation strategy proactive or reactive?” And it can start to draw upon all the soil health metrics in this previous season, and then it’s also logging the weather events and it’s also logging all of the stress events.

And then it’s comparing different blocks. I just worked with one grower, and two of the blocks were very proactive, and one that had rockier soils just was categorized as more reactive. So there were big stress events that happened, and then there was a three day lag between the next irrigation. So that irrigation really should have happened four days prior, and then that stress event would not have impacted the vine so much.

So back to the fertilizer question: Is that playing a role? When you said people are finding that they want that rising price of products, what products are you thinking of?

Typically, like the more synthetic nitrogen and synthetic products, we have been working with a number of organic input companies that are trying to validate their products, so they’re wanting to see how their product affects soil health…

We’re working on a trial on a farm, and they’ll apply their standard application, they’ll apply half the application, and then they’ll use it on a control. And then we can look at all of the soil health and plant health data, and then couple that with yield.

I think eventually we’ll be able to get to a point where we’ll be able to forecast yield, depending on the soil health metrics and plant health metrics that we’re seeing.

Yeah, the holy grail.

So I’m just kind of curious. What is happening re El Niño? How might people be able to respond using this technology?

I would say there is a lot in the news about El Nino and the amount of water that California in particular is going to be receiving.

So a lot of our customers are [changing cover crop practices]… Instead of just planting cover crop every other row, they’re planting cover crop every row.

They’re selecting different types of cover crop, maybe putting in more grasses out there for their ability to hold on to soil at that more shallow level with more fibrous roots instead of deep tap roots.

Yeah, there’s so much to think about here.

We work with some blueberry growers and some tomato growers in the Central Valley, trialing different fertilizers. We also can measure nitrous oxide, and that’s been pretty well received in the Central Valley, because nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that’s 300 times more detrimental than CO2.

So a lot of growers are using smaller [amounts of] nitrogen or trying to be a little more precise on their nitrogen applications, because we can measure what just gets volatilized and doesn’t even make it to the crop. So that’s just money that’s literally volatilizing into thin air.

Are they being monitored for nitrous oxide emissions?

Not yet, to my knowledge. I know that there is with nitrogen runoff. I think this is a really good way for growers to get ahead of that to be able to show how efficient they are being with with their nitrogen.

Is anyone doing that?

We are working with a couple of growers that are doing that.

That’s a very interesting point about the nitrogen holding, or being able to document that you’re not offloading.

A lot of irrigation cutbacks are coming the Central Valley…

Water is incredibly interesting, and it’s one of the metrics that we measure.

We’re not just a soil moisture probe, but we can show the soil moisture levels at which the crop shuts down.

So even if your soil moisture probe is saying, “Oh, you’re you know at 15% volumetric water content,” and that might appear low to someone, and they might put water on, but we can show what that stress threshold is. Maybe that crop doesn’t shut down until 11% ,so you have another few days of watering. You’re not just watering to raise the water level in the soil. You’re trying to feed that soil microbiome.

So if we’re trialing three blocks for, sometimes, an amendment additive. If you’re adding soil biology or you’re adding biochar, you can lower that stress threshold so that that crop, that potato crop, can still photosynthesize, or those grapes can still photosynthesize all the way down to 11% volumetric content. And then we can calculate at what moisture level the crop starts experiencing stress.

It’s not going to be the same in each block. And if you have really uneven terrain, maybe in these lower areas, you can water once a week, and the ones up top on the ridge top, you have to water three times a week. So we can really save growers money on irrigation as well.

I’m sort of curious because there’s so much about precision irrigation, right? And there’s actually more and more new AI stuff coming out with precision irrigation, and you’re wonder so what’s really new about this? It’s such a big concern that so many companies have worked on this. How is this solution unique or different or better?

Well, we’re not just measuring moisture, right? We’re measuring the crop response in real time, like every 30 minutes, we’re taking measurements.

So, where does it really pencil out for growers? Because you know, I’m sure most growers go like, “I ain’t spending money on nothing,” but they must be changing their tune?

It takes a grower that really wants to pay attention and to dial in their operation. I’ve farmed for many years, and I’m a firm believer in the old adage, “The best fertilizer is the footprints of the farmer.” Like we don’t replace that. We can just tell you where to put your attention, how to prioritize your day, or what blocks really should require your attention.

Right. It seems like a pretty revolutionary thing to be able to do. It is kind of “eyes inside” or something.

Yeah.

And I haven’t really come across other companies doing this.

We work with some of the most talented growers in the country, and they already know how to farm really well. But what they’ve lacked is that really trustworthy ground truth data.

Right. So you mentioned working with some organic products companies. What about regenerative product companies, and what about biodynamic practices or sub or preps?

Yeah, we work with growers practicing biodynamics as well. That’s something really interesting to me, too, because you’re you’re working with the invisible, right?

We’re measuring this invisible response, which is gas flux. It’s how this is breathing - living, and breathing. It’s kind of like a a Fitbit for your farm or for your block to see what its health is. Like, is it stressed? Or is it operating with excess? Is there excess vigor?

We work with a diversified grower in the Central Valley.

We not done like a side by side organic - biodynamic trial, but I would love to do that, working with with Demeter or someone like that - seeing how a horn manure spray and the horn silica spray increase respiration and the rooting mechanisms and and the response to sunlight.

Is the company expanding?

Next year we’re hoping to be international, so we will be working in New Zealand and Australia, and then shortly thereafter working in Europe.

END OF INTERVIEW

NOTE 

In addition to helping farmers and growers, CPG companies are finding Agrology’s sensors, data and reporting useful for Scope 3 emissions reporting and more.

To learn more about Agrology, dig deeper on their website or Instagram posts. (Be sure to go to agrology.ag as there is another company at agrology.com)