Organic and Regenerative Organic Certification 101 with CCOF and ROA Experts

Two certification experts spoke at a Napa Valley Grapegrowers event in late July at COPIA in downtown Napa, following an on stage conversation with Steve Matthiasson of Napa and Jason Haas of Paso.

See the charts and photos FREE on SUBSTACK. 

“You were just hearing from some really seasoned organic and now regenerative organic farmers. We’re going to take it like a little step back because there’s a lot of folks who are in different places along the spectrum of what we would consider a transition,” said Beckett Parr as she began her talk. [Alanis Lindquist from ROA spoke during the second half of the session.]

CCOF history in a nutshell - photo (see substack for photo). 

First Principles | Biological Balance

“When organic was conceived certification in the early 70s, late 1960s, it was really about a holistic system of management, and you heard from the two growers talk about earlier today how really the goal of an organic system is to wean yourself off of inputs, hopefully entirely, right, and come into biological balance,” Beckett Parr said.

For those who pooh pooh organic certification (God knows why) Beckett Parr reminded the audience, “Organic is the most regulated, scrutinized, and transparent farming system in the world, and Steve Matthiasson [who spoke earlier in the proceedings] is not incorrect in saying that there is a lot of paperwork involved and it is highly scrutinized.

But it also means that it presents an opportunity to communicate to consumers about why you’re doing what you’re doing, how you’re doing what you’re doing, in a transparent and fair way, so there’s a lot of different benefits of organic.

I think you heard some of those from the growers earlier today.

There’s environmental benefits, there’s social benefits, and there’s also economic benefits.

And you heard some questions from the audience about how much does it cost and how much more am I going to make…it’s very crop specific.

SEE PHOTO

“So just a little bit of an organic timeline…organic is an age-old concept coming out of indigenous farming and indigenous food systems the world over.

“But as a certification, it was really codified beginning in the 1960s, early 1970s.

“The organization that I work for, CCOF, which was founded as California Certified Organic Farmers was founded by a passionate group of farmers here in California in 1973, and it was an all volunteer organization.

“Farmers developed standards together around their kitchen tables, and then they went out and said to their neighbors, ‘Do you want to transition into this thing that we’re calling organic?"‘ And it was volunteer for about a decade, all the way up into the early 1980s.

“And something that I think is really interesting is that this type of organizing was happening across the country. There were different farming organizations, farmer-led, being like, ‘Okay, we’re going to develop standards together for this thing called organic, and then we’re going to certify each other.’

“So farmers actually went out to each other’s fields and said, “Do you make the cut or do you not make the cut?…

“It took a couple decades for that to be codified into law. The California Organic Law was passed in 1990, and the federal law wasn’t passed until 2002. And so, in the early stages of organic, there were different definitions here in California and other places as certifications arose, and then as it became codified into state and federal law, it became unified. And that’s when the unification happened. We did give a bit of sovereignty over to the federal government. So now it’s the USDA organic law, and the way that the regulatory framework works is that there’s federal laws and standards.

Federal Oversight

It’s run through the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, through their Agricultural Marketing Service, and they house what’s called the National Organic Program, the NOP. It oversees accreditation standards and investigation for the entire country, and today there’s over 80 certification bodies. CCOF is one of them. [NOP audits and certifies the 80 certifiers].

We [at CCOF] certify about 15% of the U.S. market.

I’d like to think that’s because we’re fabulous at what we do. I think it’s also based on the fact that we were born in California, and we have the largest agricultural market in the country.

So CCOF spans all 50 states, and we also operate in Mexico and Canada. We are accredited by the National Organic Program. That means they audit us, we audit you, they audit us.

It is a lot of paper, and then we go out and we inspect and we certify organic farmers, handlers, retail operations, as well as livestock.

We were founded in 1973. We are a member-governed nonprofit organization. That means our membership base elects our board of directors. We have 15 members on our board of directors who are all farmers, processors, handlers, or livestock operators, and it is really the lifeblood of our organization to be accountable to our membership through that function. Today we have over 5,000 members. That means 5,000 individual operations.

Some of those are half-acre urban farms. Some of those are 60,000-acre farms in the Central Valley. We certify Whole Foods, which is one member but 500 stores. So think about the scale of operation that we’re talking about. It’s also extremely complex from a governance perspective to try to meet the needs of all of those different folks in all of those different production categories.

So here’s our pop quiz: What do you know about certified organic agriculture? And if you’re already certified organic, you are not allowed to answer this question. So anybody else in the room, do you know what do you know about certified organic agriculture? You heard some things this morning. You can draw on their experience.

No herbicides.

No GMOs.

No, yes. Non-genetically modified organisms are prohibited. No synthetic herbicides.

Biodiversity.

Biodiversity 

There are conservation and biodiversity standards written into the organic law, so you do have to maintain. For example, in your organic system plan, you have to maintain or conserve wildlife. So it takes into consideration: Do you have a stream that’s running through your vineyard? How are you managing that biologically? How are you accounting for the biota that’s coming onto your farmland through that? Other things that are in organic certification.

You have to be doing performing these practices for a certain period of time before you can be certified.

Yes. Does anybody know how much time it takes to farm organically before you can be certified?

It is three years.

So from the last time you applied something to your operation that’s not allowed in organic production to certification has to be three years.

Something I like to mention for vineyard operators: when you are putting stakes in the ground inside of an inside of an organic vineyard, you are not allowed to use treated wood. So, for those of you who have treated wood, this is something to consider in your organic transition.

If I’m starting to transition, I’m now writing down everything that I’m doing over that three years and making sure that everything is an allowable substance. So…three-year transition, no synthetic herbicides, no GMOs, biological conservation.

Labor is not part of it. It was part of the original impetus. There were a lot of things that came into organic as part of the original founders’ consensus, but it did not make it into the federal regulations.

So labor is not part of the organic standards. But when you are using biological inputs, your workers are safer, right? Like we would much rather have somebody spraying a stylet oil than some synthetic input that would be more toxic to human health.

Can you clarify what certified mentioned certified planting material? What exactly does that mean?

There is a materials list, so when you are considering going organic, there are three major places you can look to see if your inputs are allowed or not allowed.

1 There’s OMRI, which is the Organic Materials Review Institute. 

2 There’s the CDFA here in California, California Department of Food and Agriculture maintains a list. 

3 Washington State Department of Agriculture maintains a list as well, and you can check with us if you decide to get certified by CCF. 

We have our own list as well. Once you’re in the process of applying with us, we have our own member portal where you can check to see if something’s allowed or not, and upload or download the certificates of what you’re using.

The Organic Material Review Institute–fun fact–founded at CCOF, incubated, and then ran off and became its own business. 

We’ve done that with a couple of them over the last 50 years, but that was a very successful one that we probably should have figured out how to keep. But if it says OMRI on it, it is allowed.

Organic is also third party verified. We are the third party verifying your pesticides, so no synthetic pesticides. There are many allowable organic pesticides at this point. So if you’re on the input substitution route, there are equivalents. There are biologically derived pesticides and non-synthetics.

There’s also a lot of really interesting organismal pesticides [biopesticides] at this point. It’s a whole new field, not just like releasing insects into your vineyard, but also how do we deal with microbiota and cultivate specific types of microbiota to be controlling things in the environment.

Fertilizers, pesticides–these are things you want to be taking into consideration with certified organic agriculture.

So, for those of you all who are buying land or renting land, you can get an affidavit of land use history from the previous owner or lessee, and if they haven’t applied materials that are prohibited, you are allowed to transition quicker into certified organic production. You want to be thinking about planting rootstock and fertility.

“Pest management…We talked about materials on the national list. So again, there’s several places where you can look for available and approved inputs, and those are all maintained by the national list.

Both organic and regenerative organic require significant record keeping.

So that means, what are you applying? When are you applying it? How much are you applying? It means, what are you harvesting? How much are you harvesting? Where is it going? There are record keeping logs that we have that are available as templates on the internet.

If you don’t use paper, there’s a lot of really interesting applications, and you can come and talk to me later. We have farmers that keep all of their receipts in shoe boxes, and we have multi-billion-dollar corporations that have their own databases that they have 5,000 people who work in their fields that they’re all using. So everything in between is happening in our certified organic community.

Buffers

There is no set buffer because all biological and ecological processes are a little bit different.

What we’re going to take into consideration is who are your neighbors, what are they growing? Is there a hedgerow? Which direction is the wind? And so it’s something that you would write out when you’re applying for organic certification. You fill out this thing called the organic system plan, and it asks you, what does your ecology look like around you? What do the parcels look like around you? And how are you going to manage for drift if you are up against folks who are managing conventionally? And so we would be asking you to help co-design something that’s going to keep you safe.

What would be an acceptable answer to manage drift?

That’s very technical question. Is it like a hillside? Is it like what does the ecology look like around you? Is there are there buffer trees in between you? So if you want, if it’s very specific, you and I can get down later, and I will connect you to somebody who’ll be like, here’s an example of somebody in your neighborhood.

What about herbicide drift from neighbors?

Herbicide drift does happen, and there is legal precedent here in California for organic farmers to be protected from herbicide drift.

A few years ago, Jacobs Farm del Cabo, their big tomato operation, they also grow packaged herbs. They experienced pesticide drift from their Brussels sprout neighbors down on the Santa Cruz coast, and they sued them and won here in state court. It went all the way to the Supreme Court in California, and the settlement was about a million dollars, which was great for them because they lost the whole crop. But the better thing about it was that it created legal precedent for people here in California who are growing here to have compensation from their neighbors if they have drift.

We advise folks to make sure you have really good signage.

Make sure you’re in conversation with your neighbors. Make sure you’re keeping track of when they’re spraying. Just noting it down…Oh, they’re out there with boom sprayer again. ‘Okay, I’m going to write it down.’

As part of organic certification, there are testing protocols. We do testing on 5% of our members every year, and then we do drop-in testing based on complaints and investigations. So we have a whole complaints and investigation team of six people.

The Basic Timeline

You have to submit an organic system plan, answer some significant questions before inspection, and then it takes about a month and a half to two months that you get an inspection scheduled. So it’s a few months. If you’re interested in doing it, especially for you all, start in the fall so you’ll be ready in the spring.

I have some information about consumer behavior, but I’m going to stop talking and hand it over to our next speaker to make sure that we have time for questions. But I do have a bunch of information about you know who’s buying what and how they understand the organic label that I think would be helpful for your audience.

Alania Lindquist, ROA

I work at the Regenerative Organic Alliance. We are a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2018 by a consortium of educators, policymakers, farmers, brands, and individuals who felt that we could do better in agriculture, and felt that there were some some shortcomings in the way agriculture was practiced, even organic agriculture that wasn’t addressing some of the big issues that we were seeing.

My role at the ROA is that I’m the farm brand liaison, and I work with our growers and with our brands, and help them connect with each other so that we can build a regenerative organic movement and help address some of the supply chains needed to make that that happen.

What is Regenerative Organic Certified (ROC)?

So, Jessie was fantastic in explaining what organic is, and organic is the foundational requirement for regenerative organic certification.

So, everything that’s required to be organic needs to be maintained to become ROC, and we add on three pillars that address soil health and animal welfare, and farmer and worker fairness.

So it’s a farm-level certification that is third-party verified by certifying bodies like CCOF, and those crops can then carry that certification to processed products, and companies and brands can buy those those crops and carry the claim on pack.

And I have some examples here of the variety of certified and branded products that we work with.

ROC History and Adoption

Our initial certification, a farm level certification, happened in 2020, and Jason Haas [who spoke earlier at the event] was part of that pilot.

We are now certified in over 47 countries on over 22 million acres.

We certify 583 different kinds of crops on over 540 farms and ranches in the global north, and then we work with over 55,000 smallholder farmers in the global south. We have 374 licensed brands, so brands that are buying those crops and turning them into a product. And you can see that we have over 330,200 products in the marketplace right now, and we have 15 approved certified bodies that we work with.

I just wanted to shout out some of our ROC vineyards around the world.

We have 44 regenerative organic certified vineyards that we certify globally–25 of them are here in California, and 28 of those vineyards are making a branded product.

So it carries carries the license through to the product level. So shout out to you guys.

Jessie shared some of the organic and agroecological principles that came into founding the organic movement. The regenerative organic certification adds pillars onto that organic certification that focus on practices and outcomes, and actively improving the ecosystem, and also requires continuous improvement and building on the soil health, animal welfare, and social fairness practices that both Steve and Jason highlighted in the work that they’re doing.

Some of the soil health practices that are recognized under the Regenerative Organic standard are working with cover cropping, diverse and permanent cover crops, reducing or eliminating tillage, composting, mulching, and roller crimping, eliminating pesticides and herbicides, and use soil monitoring.

“Regenerative organic farming begins with a simple but transformative idea: soil is a living system.”

That certainly is an aspect of the certification.

Biodiversity, again, as we heard, having pollinator habitat strips and diverse cover crops to bring in some of those beneficial insects, integrating livestock into the operation, reducing chemical use that can harm beneficial insects or any insects really, and using you know the local species that are already found and creating habitats for them, like owls and bat boxes, to help with some rodent and insect controls, and creating environments that where where those species can thrive as well.

So, integrating livestock, while it is not required for the regenerative organic certification, a lot of vineyards, especially, have livestock integrated into their operations. Sheep are probably the most popular. But I’ve seen poultry, cattle, llamas, and goats.

There’s various benefits to bringing livestock into your operation, including weed management and targeted grazing for certain weeds, pest control, reducing the mechanical mowing passes or herbicide use that you would use to otherwise control cover crops, and of course the improved fertility from from the urine and feces of those animals can help increase the biodiversity and microbiotics of the soil.

Water resilience was another point that Jason and Steve touched upon. In California, using less water is an important aspect of agriculture here, and so increasing the water holding capacity of the soil by using the soil health practices and maintaining that water throughout the season is going to be very helpful for your operation.

And soil that’s not covered does not have the same water holding capacity that a soil that has cover crops planted in them.

Social Fairness

Social fairness–this is a really important aspect of our certification. And thank you, Steve and Jason, for touching upon this.

This is a very unique aspect of our certification, and one that often causes a lot of confusion or concern.

We recognize that people involved in agriculture as important as how you’re treating the land, and so we do part of our standard that’s audited at the farm level is a social fairness pillar, and we look at how workers are being treated, that they have the opportunity to have good working hours, that they’re getting paid a living wage, and freedom of association and grievance mechanisms in place.

And Jason, I really appreciate you sharing how that’s changed your operation and how the communication has really improved your business.

This highlights a question that was asked about cost and some of the return on investment, and I don’t have specific metrics about the dollar increase at the farm level because it’s all going to be context specific.

Resilience as ROI

I thought it was really interesting to look at some of the practices that are required by our standard and some of the outcomes that we’ve seen coming from those practices, and so looking at the return on investment as a long-term resiliency outcome, having vineyards that have more water retention, better operating efficiencies, better ecosystem services, higher quality fruit, and then also through the certification, that brand differentiation, those are all return on investments that you’re making at the farm level to offset maybe some of the higher costs of practicing agriculture this way.

Consumer Response

SPINS data chart on Substack

Here’s what we’re seeing in the marketplace. So this slide here is shared with us from SPINS, which collects data at the retail level at the checkout. Whether it’s through Amazon, Whole Foods, or Safeway. 

This previous year we saw 22 percent year-over-year growth in the sales of regenerative organic certified labeled products, and not only did we see increased sales in products that were labeled regenerative organic, but it actually increased the sales of other sustainable and ecological labels as well.

So you can see that organic sales, when paired with regenerative organic label as well, actually went up, including non-GMO and Fair Trade.

This is our most recent sales data on regenerative organic wine sales, and I think what’s really interesting to note at the bottom here, and I took this quote from an article that I read, is organic wine sales are at $13 billion dollars to date, and it’s expected to triple in the next six years.

I think that’s a really important metric for everybody to consider is that overall wine consumption is going down, but this projection is showing that people are more concerned about what’s in the bottle and the labels that are on the bottle as well.

And here’s some more metrics that speak to that as well. Again, what consumers are looking for, and somebody [Steve Matthiasson] quoted millennials, Gen Zers, and even younger people want to know what they’re paying for. They’re not averse to paying more. 

They’re not averse to buying something that’s better quality, but they want to know that that means something.

And so when they’re looking at certifications and labels that are on the food and beverages and clothing that they’re purchasing, these certifications do matter to them. And I think we’re only going to see this increase in the future.

Some of the metrics that I have on the bottom here highlight that. There’s a plethora of information online, from webinars to courses and podcasts, and of course we have live experts in the room today. Jason and Steve, and I also want to call out Pam Strayer, who’s the editor of Slow Wine USA, who has really been sharing so much knowledge with me. So thank you so much.

There’s many ways that you can include regenerative practices in your operations. Becoming Regenerative Organic Certified is one way of showing and sharing the work that you do. But even if our standard is not for you, I encourage you to start looking at this work. We are here to be in community with you and to cheer you on and support your work. So thank you all so much.

Wine...Is It Still Relevant? | Yes, But...AND New Study Shows a Third of Consumers Say “We’ll Have It Our Way,” Mixing It With Juice, Ice, Sparkling Water, Etc.

New study from the Wine Market Council and strategy firm Material looked carefully at a matrix of specific demographics.

The research suggests consumers don’t dislike wine but they do not buy into wine’s elitist tropes and complications.

A national survey of 900 U.S. wine consumers from the Wine Market Council and consulting researchers at Material broke down a wide cross section of wine drinker types and generations to help marketers find steps to take to sell wine.

Some of the study’s most surprising findings:

• Three in ten respondents said they mix wine into cocktails or serve it over ice. Twenty percent mix it with non-alcoholic drinks like soda, juice, or sparkling water, or drink it blended and frozen.

• Compared to other alcoholic beverages, wine is not showing up in social media feeds that lead to discovery. Wine marketing is not keeping up.

• Wine branding is comparatively weak with consumers unable to recall which brand they saw content for.

• Consumers dislike showing wine pairings with fine dining: “just give us the everyday pairing ideas (burgers, taco, pizza, etc.)”

An Image Problem? Not Exactly.

Presenting the findings in a members’ webinar, Wine Market Council president Michelle Egan framed the core insight up front: consumers already see wine as welcoming, approachable, fun, and enjoyable. Those are real strengths.

The catch is that wine also remains tightly bound to tradition, older generations, and special occasions.

The opportunity is to broaden the invitation — helping consumers picture wine in the moments they’re already enjoying, and making it easier to discover, choose, and try.

How the Study Was Constructed

The research is the second phase of a broader WMC project.

Phase two validated cultural signals with hard numbers: a survey of 900 U.S. alcohol consumers, split evenly across Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X+, and further divided into core wine drinkers, marginal drinkers, and non-adopters — 100 respondents in each combination of generation and consumption tier.

Consumers aren’t asking for more wine education-they’re asking for wine to feel simpler, more approachable, and easier to try.

Four Key Takeaways

Material’s Caroline Heizee walked through four themes that anchor the report:

• Relevance, not reputation, is the real barrier. Wine is already perceived positively; it just isn’t associated with enough everyday occasions.

• Engagement changes what wine “is” to a consumer. Core drinkers see wine fitting almost anywhere — relaxing at home, hanging out with friends, traveling — while non-adopters keep it confined to formal, special-occasion use.

• Wine needs to show up differently to stay part of the conversation. It has lower visibility than other alcohol categories across major media, and discovery paths vary sharply by generation.

• Consumers want confidence, not more education. They’re asking for practical inspiration — food pairings, clear labels, simple selection tips — not deeper wine knowledge.

Breaking the Rules on Purpose

One of the more striking findings involves how people are actually drinking wine.

While most consumption is still straightforward — wine on its own, with or without a meal — three in ten respondents said they mix wine into cocktails or serve it over ice, and 20% mix it with non-alcoholic drinks like soda, juice, or sparkling water, or drink it blended and frozen.

Even among core wine drinkers, three-quarters reported drinking wine in a non-traditional way at least some of the time.

Younger consumers are driving much of this experimentation, but classic serving styles remain prominent across every generation. The takeaway for marketers isn’t to abandon the traditional wine occasion — it’s to normalize the non-traditional ones alongside it, so consumers don’t feel embarrassed serving wine “incorrectly.”

The Discovery Gap | Why Is Wine Sort of Silent on Social Media?

When it comes to media visibility, wine shows up far less than other alcoholic beverages across platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and TV — and there’s no single channel where wine outperforms alcohol overall. Importantly, Material’s researchers argue this isn’t because wine content feels intimidating or overly academic; it’s that wine simply isn’t showing up in people’s feeds often enough.

Generational patterns diverge from there:

• Gen Z discovers wine primarily through social platforms and responds to short-form, relatable content.

• Millennials have the broadest media footprint, blending social discovery with more traditional sources — and content needs to both inspire and inform them.

• Gen X leans on established sources: food, wine, and lifestyle websites, plus retailer and producer sites.

Non-adopters are the least plugged into wine media specifically, meaning broader lifestyle content — not wine-specific outlets — is the more effective entry point.

• Notably, most consumers who encounter wine content on social media can’t name the specific creator or account behind it. Discovery is happening, but it’s passive — which points to a need for clearer next steps (learn more, find where to buy, save for later) rather than more content alone.

What Consumers Are Asking For

Open-ended survey responses reinforced the data. Consumers described wanting wine marketing that reflects everyday life rather than fine dining, plain-language explanations of terms like “dry,” pairings with street food and home cooking instead of just cheese boards, and more low-commitment ways to sample wine — such as variety packs and tasting events — before buying a full bottle.

Guided tastings, variety packs, and at-home relaxing occasions emerged as nearly universal points of interest across every generation and consumption tier — notably including Gen Z non-adopters, who turned out to be the most open non-adopter segment in the study.

Turning Insight Into Action

Material closed with several concrete ideas for wineries and marketers, including:

• Everyday pairing content — short-form video pairing wine with pizza, burgers, or takeout rather than formal cuisine

• “Wine Works Here” campaigns — positioning wine for movie nights, game nights, and casual at-home occasions

• Modern serve content — spritzers, sangria, and other non-traditional formats, paired with messaging that there’s “no wrong way to wine”

• A shop-learn-save content framework — ensuring every post gives consumers a clear, low-friction next step

The Bigger Picture

During the Q&A, Material’s team pushed back gently on the narrative that people are simply “drinking less.” Rather, they argued, consumers — especially younger ones — are drinking differently: diluting wine to avoid overconsumption [or masking it with flavors they KNOW], favoring smaller formats, and finding new social contexts for a category that still carries real emotional resonance. As one presenter put it, some of what makes wine feel out of step with the moment — its traditions, its formats, its associations — may actually be underused strengths rather than liabilities, if repositioned toward relevance instead of formality.

The full survey report, including generational breakdowns and additional data on packaging formats and AI-assisted wine research (used disproportionately by Millennials, followed by Gen Z), is free to Wine Market Council members alongside a recording of the webinar.

“We Didn’t Want to Greenwash Our Way Through Life” | Tasting Room Manager Camille Cherry on Why Her Family’s Winery, MAHA, Has Always Been Certified Organic and Is Now Regenerative Organic

The Napa Valley Grapegrowers’ final event in the four part series of organic education month (July) hosted a conversation with certification experts from ROA and CCOF, along with a Paso winery.

At the closing session in the Napa Valley Grapegrowers’ organic series event held in late July at COPIA in Napa, Paso Robles based Camille Cherry from Villa Creek and MAHA (left) talks about her family’s certification journey with organic certifiers Alania Lindquist of Regenerative Organic Alliance (center) and Jessie Beckett Parr (right) from CCOF.

See this post on Substack for photos. 

Question | Tell us why did you all decide to be organic, and then what led you to be regenerative organic?

We have been farming organically since the very beginning. We acquired our estate property, MAHA in 2001 when it was a organically farmed walnut orchard. And organic has always been the pillar of how we live.

Growing up, my parents always bought organic produce, acquiring the the cleanest possible products that we could consume, and so when it came time to plant our vineyard, we farmed always with the attention of being certified. There’s a lot of greenwashing these days, and getting that third-party certification just helped solidify what we’re doing, and it lets the consumers know that we are farming the way that we say that we’re farming, without having to greenwash our way through life.

Question from Audience | What does that [greenwashing] mean?

[Greenwashing means pretending to be green when you are not}.

By having the third-party certification, you get an inspection once a year. You have to keep methodical records of everything that you’re doing, all of the inputs, whether it be a compost lay down or spraying something in the vineyard.

In my experience, there’s a lot of wine brands that are out there that say they’re doing something, but you drive through in the spring and everything is yellow. It has been sprayed out with some sort of glyphosate product, even though they’re saying that they’re farming organically.

Being able to have that [organic] certification is letting the consumer know that we are actually doing what we say we are doing. We’re not just saying that we’re doing it and doing something else. It’s just kind of solidifying what we are as a brand, and it is who we are.

So false advertising is greenwashing?

Yes, pretending to be green.

Inside an ROC Tasting Room | What Do Consumers Want to Know?

Question | Camille, can you talk about managing your tasting room and a lot of your consumer-facing work? Tell us about your consumer research and what people assume when they walk in, and how the different labels that you carry–organic and now ROC–change that conversation for folks.

Camille | Probably about a quarter of the people that walk into the tasting room find us because they’re searching for wine that is certified [organic or regenerative organic], or they’re looking to make a change in how they consume wine.

I think in the general population, eating organic has been around for decades, and a lot of general consumers don’t, or haven’t in the past, put that same consideration into what they’re drinking.

Over the last five or six years, people are getting to realize, oh, ‘there’s a lot of stuff that goes into conventionally farmed wine,’ and whether that’s in the vineyard application or in the cellar… and the health benefits that people may or may not feel when they’re drinking an organic wine versus a non-organic wine have kind of changed the general mindset of the consumer, so they’re starting to look for organic wine as opposed to just picking a pretty label off the shelf, and they’re putting more thought into what they’re consuming on the beverage side of things.

Jessie | So it sounds like people are seeking you out…they’re coming to find you. Yeah. That’s great. That’s what we want. We want people to seek you out.

I’d love to pivot into Camille and talk about the trade-offs when you’re thinking about certification. It sounds like you all started as organic, but when you’re going into our ROC, what did you weigh? Cost, increased labor costs, timeline, yield. You know, how did you kind of progress through that journey and in deciding how far to go? What were the main barriers to entry?

Camille | I think barriers are always on a sliding scale depending on how you’re farming and what size your production is, and for us, it there weren’t really any barriers. Honestly, we’ve basically been practicing all of these things already. [The vineyard and winery were Demeter certified biodynamic for years].

I think the biggest part that was that’s created the biggest struggle is the paperwork. My mom was the one who who filled out the application, and it took probably the better part of nine months. We are a small-scale, family-owned and operated team. There are seven of us total, and we cover tasting room, office, vineyard, and cellar. And when you have a limited amount of time, based on what you already have to do, that super intensive application can kind of be prohibitive, but in the long run, it’s worth it.

Jessie | What surprised you or your parents as they were transitioning towards regenerative organic certification? Like, was there anything in the process we were like ‘Didn’t expect that to happen.’ Sounds like the paperwork. But beyond that, what surprised you about the process? It could be biological, too. It doesn’t have to be about the certification itself.

Camille | Yeah, I think what shocked us the most was how quickly things changed. We farm with the idea that we’re just borrowing this land from future generations, and we want to be able to leave it in a better position than we found it.

When we implemented no-till farming, for instance, and utilizing the cover crop, which then slows down the water runoff, and which increases the water absorption. That also and then, as Jason [Haas of Tablas Creek] was talking about the soil temperature and having during our extreme heat waves that we see in Paso–having the vines be more resilient when it comes to extreme changes–I think that how quickly that changed the wine. Like we have a block of Carignane that is diseased with red blotch, and that specific block, the year that we changed over, it was the cleanest fruit that came off the property that entire vintage. So I think it was amazing how quickly everything became more resilient once we fully implemented all of the practices.

Alania | I just wanted to respond to the record keeping challenge that you expressed, and this is definitely something that’s hurt. People get paperwork fatigue, and we’re constantly looking at ways to help improve that aspect of our certification. One of the things that occurred to me when you were saying that is that that’s really the meat of this work, and that’s where the story of how you’re applying the regenerative practices is really happening.

There’s definitely some good juice in there that you can leverage as your storytelling as well…What are we doing? How is that changing every year? So it’s kind of a fun part, too. Not saying paperwork is fun, but like there’s like good nuggets in there.

Camille | Oh, I just had a memory come back to me.

My brother has always been a very enthusiastic ornithologist, and one of the parts of the application for ROC is tracking migratory birds and migratory critters that come through your property. And I think my brother had quite a blast tracking all of the birds that that come through the property, and that now we’ve been certified since 2022, he’s kept on with that process, that practice of bird watching.

See this post on Substack for photos. See the photo of Henri here on Substack. CAPTION Camille Cherry’s brother Henri Cherry pouring at the Mindset conference in June pouring the family’s Clairette Blanche

He now leads a once a month bird watching hike around the property, which I think is kind of cool that we get to incorporate the benefits of farming this specific way and showing people, ‘oh hey, there’s this migratory bird that is only here for three weeks out of the year, but we didn’t used to see it, and now we do.’ And being able to just kind of see those super cool, the critters and the various native plants that might crop up now is really fun to see.

Jessie | So ROC has bronze, silver, and gold tiers. Can you talk to us about a reasonable entry point for a grower that’s just starting out?

Alania | So the idea behind the tiers is to make the certification accessible and meet you where you’re at, and encourage you to continue to improve along the way.

Looking at a practice like rotational cropping, for example, or cover cropping. For the bronze level, you might only have three [cover crop] species required, and at the silver level, five species, and then at the gold level, it’s like 10 to 15 species.

Another factor is how much cover crop is being left in the vineyard. At the gold level, it’s 100% year-round coverage. Whereas bronze, I think, it’s maybe more 25 to 50%.

Jessie | For somebody who’s already certified organic, because there’s a bunch of growers here [at the event] that are already certified organic…Roughly, how does how long does the process of getting into ROC take?

Alania | Some organic growers are already incorporating a lot of these practices into their operations already, and so that’s going to be as simple as submitting your application to the Regenerative Organic Alliance.

We are going to review the application, and then we’re going to send it over to your certifying body of choice. They’re going to review it and then reach out to schedule an audit.

Ideally, you’re able to bundle your organic and regenerative organic audits together, so that auditors are coming to the property once.

I think that our estimated timelines to achieve from the time of application to receiving your certification is between three and nine months. But it depends. If you’re having to kind of start from scratch–conventional organic–you’re going to need to incorporate some practices. It might take you a little more time.

Jessie | So, Camille, just back to the tasting room experience. We’re trying to thread the needle here between organic and regenerative organic, and find out what will work for this audience as they’re exploring their pathways.

So, how do you describe the difference between organic and regenerative organic in a couple sentences to somebody who’s just coming in to drink wine? They’re just there to drink wine.

Camille | My basic tasting room spiel is organic.

The base elements are no synthetics, whether that is herbicides or pesticides, and then with regenerative, you’re throwing in soil health, social fairness, and animal welfare.

And from that point, we then get into mostly the soil health aspect of things, the no-till, using cover crops, crimping to help replenish the soil, creating a nice batch of organic material that then lowers the soil temp, increases water retention, all of that good stuff.

Jessie | And do people usually lean in wanting more, or do their eyes glaze over?

Camille | They do. I’ve been working in the tasting room since I was 18…But being able to kind of read the guests in the tasting room and whether or not they’re engaged in wanting to know more versus a a couple that walks in that’s on their third date and they decided to come up from LA to do a weekend in Paso and they only want to talk to themselves.

It’s a fine line between educating the guests that come in, and also ensuring that they have a good time because in this wacky world of wine, you want everything to be enjoyed, whether it’s wine or blending the lines of enjoyment and education.

Question | Well, I have a question: when you’re sharing your practices and some of the concepts of farming on your property as you’re tasting wine, how are people connecting those things? Or how are you messaging the connection between the way that you’re growing grapes and how the wine tastes?

Camille | Kind of a hard question to answer. Every vintage is different. Mother Nature is a very fickle business partner, and so whatever like every vintage is going to show different things in the bottle, and so it’s kind of hard to to explain to a consumer what you might taste differently. Every palate is different, so it’s hard to pinpoint one specific thing that might that they might pick up.

Wine is all very vintage specific, it’s site specific, and it’s bottle specific.

My dad likes to say ‘there’s no bad wine. There’s only bad bottles of it,’ and so taking that same concept into how the wine is perceived based on its farming practices, if that makes sense.

Question | You said the words “red blotch’, and everybody’s going to want to know what was the practice you changed that made the red blotch disease pressure less?

Camille | I think it really came down to the soil and the soil health and the root health.

Question | Right, but you’ve been farming biodynamically and certified for a long time... So, what changed?

Camille | What changed was going from discing the vineyard rows to mowing and crimping instead. And I don’t know the science behind why the red blotch toned itself down, but from what I’ve observed, there’s something that’s happening underground that made the vines a little bit happier.

They’re less stressed during the heat spikes, which is when our vines tend to show their the red blotch the most. They do tend to shut down sooner, but the fruit itself is cleaner. It’s cleaner and higher yield.

Alania | I just wanted to add on. This is somewhat anecdotal. I was recently at Bedrock Vineyards in Sonoma Valley, and we were looking at vines planted in the late 1800s. And when they did tissue analysis on these vines, they found that they basically carried every pathogen and virus that you could imagine, but they weren’t expressing that because of the resiliency and the immunity that was actually in the vine. So maybe there’s something to that.

Haas+Matthiasson in Conversation: Regenerative Organic Offers a Cost Effective Way to Farm, to Reach Millennials, and to Face Climate Stressors (Part 3 of 3)

 In this third post, two renowned organic vintners discuss their paths in regenerative and organic wine grape growing, winemaking and selling at a Napa Valley Grapegrower event.

This is part 3 in a series. Scroll down for Part 1 and Part 2.

Thanks to the Napa Valley Grapegrowers for this entire series of workshops and this public conversation, held at COPIA in Napa. Following the conversation, attendees enjoyed lunch served with both Tablas and Matthiasson’s gobsmackingly wonderful wines.

IT IS WAY BETTER TO READ THIS ON SUBSTACK WHICH IS FREE AND YOU GET THE PHOTOS!

Napa’s Opportunity: Messaging Wines’ Green Farming for Values Driven Millennials

“How many seminars have we heard of Rob McMillan telling us that we’re not doing a good job reaching out to millennials?…” said Steve Matthiasson, a famed Napa vineyard consultant and vintner who has been an organic leader in the community for decades. “…And we know what millennials want. They want to buy things that they believe in from a values perspective, and they vote with their dollars.”

Costs of Organic Viticulture

In the Q and A portion of the program, one audience member asked if it costs more to farm organically.

Matthiasson responded, “it’s very site specific in terms of whether we’re talking more expensive or not. For input substitution, which is sort of like what people think it is in the first phase of converting to organic, it can get expensive because the organic materials are pretty much all more expensive, other than like sulfur or something.

“But the idea is to start rethinking the way you do things.

“If you start going down the list, essentially, we’re still growing a cover crop–that is just part of good winegrowing at this point. So that’s just a wash.

“Mildew materials are more expensive. I think there’s a lot of room for using integrated pest management for powdery mildew now. I tend to think that we overcontrol mildew in our industry. We’ve gotten to a zero tolerance, and it doesn’t need to be a zero tolerance. The contracts all have 2% in them. You know people who now say 2% mildew in your vineyard [means] you’re a fail, you’re a terrible vineyard manager.

Matthiasson: “There’s no reason you can’t have a small amount of mildew, and the difference between a small amount of mildew and no mildew can be a lot of sprays, basically.

So again, site specific… in Carneros, we barely hang on mildew-wise, and we’re treating all season. But in Calistoga, we’re getting by in a typical year with three sprays organically…”

“Weed management. If you’re down by the Napa River and you can hoe plow once, that’s pretty cheap, probably cheaper than applying herbicides. If you’re weed whacking up on a terraced hillside, then that’s really expensive, and so that’s site specific.

“Hedgerows–we’ve been able to get grants for almost all of our hedgerows, and so like we just got a $20,000 grant for a hedgerow we’re putting in in Carneros, so the hedgerows don’t have to be super expensive.

It’s unfortunate that organic wine grapes can’t command the organic premium other organic crops can, he added.

Employee wages were another topic.

Pay is, “an individual decision for everybody, but I feel that transcends the discussion of regenerative organic,” Matthiasson said. “It’s what kind of community do we want to live in, and what quality work do we want, and what can we afford…That’s just [something] everyone has to make that decision for in their own businesses, basically,” he said.“But the way the market is now, it’s not about premiums. It’s about getting a buyer.

Jason Haas of Tablas Creek quoted his farming costs to the discussion. “We harvested 387 tons. So where we were, at two two and a half tons an acre, more or less.”

“Our total farming costs were $1.765 million, so that’s $12,600 per acre, or $4,564 a ton at those relatively low tonnages, and this is ROC gold certified, so paying all of our people full living wage and all of that.

"I don’t push back on the idea that farming regeneratively is prohibitively expensive…there are some additional costs. There are paperwork costs. There’s time costs. There’s training costs. There are transition costs for sure if you’re not already farming that way."

“But it’s not like Monsanto is in this for our benefit. You also are replacing products that you have to pay for every year with processes that become self-regulating, and that has some real benefits.”

Tablas’ Dry Farming Strategy Amidst a Drought: Bigger Spacing But More Crop Per Vine

“We dry farm a whole bunch of different grape varieties…almost every variety,” Haas said.. “Everything else we have done in at least one dry farm block at this point. The big difference is spacing.

“So instead of our trellis blocks, which we used to plant eight by three, we’re now planting eight by six.

“The dry farm blocks are either 10 by 10, 10 by 12, or 12 by 12 diamond spaced. So we can’t cross cultivate. We do get lower yield per acre on those blocks, but not as much as you would expect from the lower vine densities. Because the vines are so much healthier, we can allow them to carry more crop. We feel like that reducing the number of vines per acre, but increasing the crop per vine, also helps for balance, because that slows down ripening, slows down sugar accumulation.

“For us, we feel it gives more elegance to the wines.

“We feel that that [high density] model, which has been transplanted out of Burgundy, where you’re trying to put the vines as close together as possible to compete with each other [typically 1 meter by 1 meter] or reduce the crop per vine to get intensity and get ripening…

"That’s not what we need in Paso Robles."

"We’ve got plenty of ripening, we’ve got plenty of intensity. We want to be doing the opposite to slow things down and give us more balance.”

New Organic Requirements for Its Patelin Growers

Haas said that Tablas Creek changed the grower requirements for their Patelin, non-estate wines–which is about a third of their production–to organic farming or certification. The Patelin Paso growers all planted the Tablas clones, the original grower criteria for Patelin. [Patelin means neighbors in French.]

In 2021 Tablas Creek told its growers, that “within five years, we were going to require them to be farming organically for us to continue purchasing from them, and that we would offer our own our help of our own team, as well as a 10% increase in what we were paying per ton, if they made the conversion to organics.

“We were able to get that through in three years rather than five. So since 2024, everything that we’ve been buying for the Patelin tier has been from organically farmed, not all certified, but all organically farmed sources.

Tablas also has a second tier called Lignee de Tablas that comes from other vineyards planted to Tablas clones around California, and, “those are all farmed organically or better,” Haas said.

Certification can lead to discovering new growers, he added, illustrating the point with a case study.

“We just added a new vineyard from Lodi this year, which is the first regenerative organic certified vineyard in Lodi [Vino Farms]. We would never have bought from them if they had not gone through that certification. They would never have landed on our radar, so I do think that there are brands who are specifically looking for that [ROC certification] and who will pay more for it,” Haas said.

Matthiasson+Haas on “Do Greener Practices Make Better Wines? + Mosley: “Does Napa Promote Its Greener Farming Enough?” (Part 2 of 3)

This is part 2 of a three part series with organic and regenerative organic icons Jason Haas and Steve Matthiasson hosted by the Napa Valley Grapegrowers at the group’s Organic Month educational series in July. [Scroll down for Part 1.]

UP AGAINST IT

What role does regenerative organic farming play in combatting the challenges of heat and drought?

A big one, said Jason Haas, who credited this type of farming for being able to survive in hot Paso. 

The Paso region famously had four major heatwaves (as high as 113 degrees) in 2020 and several in September of 2022 (spiking to as high as 115 degrees).

“Anybody who lived through the 2020 growing season,” said Haas, “has to realize that these sorts of issues–the issues with climate change, the issues with water, the issues with farm labor, all these things–these are not something we need to worry about for the future. These are things we need to worry about now.”

“Paso Robles is a pretty extreme climate. It is very hot. It is cold at night. It is very dry, and so all of these investments that we were making anyway, because we were biodynamic certified before we were ROC–those were mostly designed to try to reduce the stress levels on our grapevines a bit because it’s such a high stress area that we were finding that the vineyards were exhausted after 25 years, and we would like to have longer lived grapevines, and we want to have healthier soils.” 

He continued, “We want to retain more moisture. All of the things that biodynamic and regenerative farming help you get to… but I think the fact that Paso is such a high-stress environment has made it a particularly attractive place for people to pursue this kind of farming.”

Do Greener Practices Make Better Wines?

SEE THE MISSING PHOTOS OVER ON OUR FREE SUBSTACK

Mosley recalled Steve saying that ‘almost anything a winegrower does that is a sustainable practice for the environment will result in better wine quality.’ He asked Matthiasson to dive into that topic. “Let’s talk maybe conservation tillage or a natural practice,” he said.

“We can go down the list,” Matthiasson said. “Habitat, less pesticides, any sprays on the surface. We try to minimize sprays on the surface of the fruit, so that we maintain the waxy bloom better. We have less dehydration late season, and so you don’t need to put on insecticides, whether organic insecticides, pyganic [derived from chrysanthemum flowers] and spreader and buffer for leafhoppers, for example, versus the leafhoppers are taken care of by an anagrus parasite because we have the beneficial insect habitat. Conservation tillage.

“Basically, this is just good viticulture. As you’re looking for the appropriate amount of water stress, and so often tilling less, leaving or having more ground cover is going to help with fine balance. But for sure, winter cover crops. I can’t think of a better viticultural tool after pruning than cover crops because cover crops are how you can adjust your spring moisture for the vines so you can regulate vine growth.

“Before cover crops, every year the vines just grew as much as they were going to grow, depending on their rain. Now with cover crops, you can leave the cover crop in longer. You can decide not to till it. You can till it early. You have this phenomenal tool that has a byproduct of all the soil management soil benefits you get from having it over the winter.”

Worker fairness requirements are part of the ROC requirements, but they just make good business sense, Matthiasson said.

“Well paid, well treated employees are going to prune better. They’re going to shoot thin better,” he said. “They’re going to do everything better, because they value their job, and that’s going to directly translate to quality. That’s why we just don’t have a compromise. That’s the beauty of it.”

SEE THE MISSING PHOTOS OVER ON OUR FREE SUBSTACK

Communicating Better Farming: Does Napa Do A Good Enough Job?

Mosley posed the question, “How does this [farming] translate to a conversation with the consumer about how we make our wines?

“We have some amazing brands and cult wine brands here in Napa that farm with these principles and practices. However, you don’t really hear that in their marketing materials.

In contrast, in Paso Robles, six ROC wineries got together and sponsored a big media tour, inviting 25 writers to visit the region and tour and taste wines to learn about regenerative organic farming. 

In comparison, vintners in Napa, which has more ROC acreage (700+ compared to 659 for Paso) have collectively done nothing to promote their ROC wineries. The ROC vintners in Napa are but a small minority in a region that sees 3.8 million visitors a year. Paso sees 2.5 million wine tourists a year. Each region has around 40,000 acres of grapevines. Roughly 14% of Napa’s acreage is organic. Paso has far fewer.

Like Sonoma, Lodi, Sta. Barbara County and other regions, Napa promotes its own sustainability program (Napa Green) instead of organic certification programs which are less popular with vintners (because the organic standards are much stricter on the use of vineyard chemicals). However, Napa Green is the highest of the regional sustainability programs, and the only sustainability program that prohibits synthetic herbicide. Though many Paso vintners are SIP certified (a sustainability certification [valuable though not as strict as organic chemical standards]) Paso has not promoted a regional sustainability standard.

“You don’t hear about ‘hey this is a great wine because of these practices and this is what we’re doing and I’m wondering if we’re missing some leadership there,” Mosley said. “Both of you champion your farming practices outwardly and to inform consumers, but also to hopefully influence others to continue their journey in sustainability. So, are we missing something there from these folks that do farm this way but don’t necessarily talk about it?”

Eisele Vineyards and Spottswoode were mentioned as good examples of companies that talk about their farming. (Both are Demeter certified biodynamic. Spottswoode is also regenerative organic certified).

Matthiasson said his son is working at Screaming Eagle right now but the brand does not communicate publicly about its high quality farming.

“Their farming is so impressive from a regenerative organic standpoint, and the world has no clue,” he said. “People just assume that everyone a chemical zone and [they] don’t know how much they’re [Screaming Eagle] pushing the envelope. I have no idea why people aren’t talking about it.

“Everyone stewards their brand in their own way that they see fit, and so I wouldn’t get involved in that. But I do think from a Napa standpoint to be able to [would be a benefit.]

“I think that for the general public to understand how tied high quality wine is to this style of farming would be a very good thing for the health of our industry” he said. 

Organic Stigma Fading | “Regenerative” Popularity Is Growing

Said Haas, “‘Organic wine’ [in the US] got a bad reputation because it got conflated with no added sulfites, …the U.S. is out of step with the rest of the world.”

No added sulfite wines have higher risks for spoilage, a risk that does not categorically apply to wines made from organically farmed grapes.

[Much confusion stemmed from the federal government’s topsy turvy approach which ultimately evolved to three different standards for wines from organic grapevines. 

1 Only one of the three standards defined “organic wine” as “no added sulfite,” and the background reasoning for that ill-fated decision stems from salad bars laden with excessive amounts of sulfites. 

2 Two other organic standards for wine in the U.S. –”Made with Organic Grapes” or “Ingredients: Organic Grapes”–offer market-compatible sulfite adjustments.]

Recounting that historical era, Haas said that the poor associations with organically grown grapevines are fading with generational turnover.

Promoting greener and regenerative organic farming is popular with newer generations of wine drinkers, prompting Tablas Creek to start bottle labeling its certifications.

“You have an opportunity with regenerative that doesn’t have that same negative connotation among anyone’s minds,” Haas said.

“Even though we’ve been certified organic since 2003, we did not put an organic certification on our label until we got the regenerative organic [designation],” he said, “and now we have the regenerative organic seal and the CCOF organic seal together on our back labels, but that didn’t come through till the 2021 vintage.

“I think we have an opportunity to communicate, and I think we have more and more urgency to communicate this also because we know that one of the things that newer generations of wine drinkers are really looking for is more transparency.”

“That whole idea of marketing through exclusivity and marketing through mystique–I feel like the benefits of that are maybe a little less than they used to be, and the risks of that are a little bit more. Whereas the benefits and risks of marketing the great farming that so many of us are doing, those have flipped. So the risks of that are getting less and less, and the benefits are growing more and more.”

Said Mosley, “You’ve just put two together and said, ‘hey, this is a better way to even explain what I’m doing,’ and it seems like you might get more traction and open up more conversations and have the farming practices lead the conversation instead of saying ‘here’s the wine, let’s have some chats about the flavors, and then we’ll talk farming if you’re interested.’”

“All of the impacts on the wine quality of these farming choices are positive,” Haas said. “So it’s not in any way a compromise between doing the right thing and making the best wine.”

“One of the things that we know really impacts the the sugar and alcohol, the balance of flavors in wines in any hot dry climate is the impact of heat spikes and what happens when it does get to 100 or 105 degrees over the course of a few days, or a week, or however long it however long it lasts.

“One of the things that I really love about what we’ve seen since we converted to biodynamics, which I think of as a sort of subset of regenerative farming, is that we’ve seen lower soil temperatures, higher organic matter, better water holding capacity because we are tilling a lot less of our surface.”

“We’re tilling with more intention rather than tilling to make everything look good because that’s the way it’s done. So when we have ground cover, we’ll notice that the sections where we have crimped, for example, rather than tilled–if we do a soil temperature probe, it’ll be 20 or 25 degrees cooler under that crimped mat than it is on the the surface that’s exposed to the sun,” he said.

“So it stays cooler, which means that the vines are getting less of the stress indicators that their roots are giving them. They shut down less. We get less dehydration.

“We have 6% organic matter in our soil, so we know that that’s holding more of the water that we get in the winter.”

“Half of our vineyard acreage is dry farmed, unirrigated, which we think is only really possible because of the way that we farm.”

“So I think if you have a year where you don’t have a lot of those heat spikes. If you don’t have a lot of these incredibly high stress moments, it probably matters less how you’re farming.

“But we feel like what we’re doing means that the vines can sail through those heat events in a way less changed, less impacted with the chemistry, less changed than they otherwise would be. I feel like that allows us to avoid those days where our Brix levels jump a degree or two in a day through dehydration, and allows us to keep a more gradual, steady, ripening path.”

All of which makes for better wine balance because of the farming practices, Mosley said.

This is part 2 of a three part series with organic and regenerative organic icons Jason Haas and Steve Matthiasson hosted by the Napa Valley Grapegrowers at their Organic Month educational series in July. [Scroll below for Part 1.]

Wine...Is It Still Relevant? | Yes, But...AND New Study Shows a Third of Consumers Say “We’ll Have It Our Way,” Mixing It With Juice, Ice, Sparkling Water, Etc.

New research suggests consumers don’t dislike wine but they do not buy into wine’s elitist tropes and complications.

A national survey of 900 U.S. wine consumers from the Wine Market Council and consulting researchers at Material broke down a wide cross section of wine drinker types and generations to help marketers find steps to take to sell wine.

Some of the study’s most surprising findings:

1 Three in ten respondents said they mix wine into cocktails or serve it over ice. Twenty percent mix it with non-alcoholic drinks like soda, juice, or sparkling water, or drink it blended and frozen.

2 Compared to other alcoholic beverages, wine is not showing up in social media feeds that lead to discovery. Wine marketing is not keeping up.

3 Wine branding is comparatively weak with consumers unable to recall which brand they saw content for.

4 Consumers dislike showing wine pairings with fine dining: “just give us the everyday pairing ideas (burgers, taco, pizza, etc.)”

An Image Problem? Not Exactly

Presenting the findings in a members’ webinar, Wine Market Council president Michelle Egan framed the core insight up front: consumers already see wine as welcoming, approachable, fun, and enjoyable. Those are real strengths.

The catch is that wine also remains tightly bound to tradition, older generations, and special occasions.

The opportunity is to broaden the invitation — helping consumers picture wine in the moments they’re already enjoying, and making it easier to discover, choose, and try.

How the Study Was Constructed

The research is the second phase of a broader WMC project.

Phase two validated cultural signals with hard numbers: a survey of 900 U.S. alcohol consumers, split evenly across Gen Z, Millennials, and Gen X+, and further divided into core wine drinkers, marginal drinkers, and non-adopters — 100 respondents in each combination of generation and consumption tier.

Consumers aren’t asking for more wine education-they’re asking for wine to feel simpler, more approachable, and easier to try.

Four Key Takeaways

Material’s Caroline Heizee walked through four themes that anchor the report:

1 Relevance, not reputation, is the real barrier. Wine is already perceived positively; it just isn’t associated with enough everyday occasions.

2 Engagement changes what wine “is” to a consumer. Core drinkers see wine fitting almost anywhere — relaxing at home, hanging out with friends, traveling — while non-adopters keep it confined to formal, special-occasion use.

3 Wine needs to show up differently to stay part of the conversation. It has lower visibility than other alcohol categories across major media, and discovery paths vary sharply by generation.

4 Consumers want confidence, not more education. They’re asking for practical inspiration — food pairings, clear labels, simple selection tips — not deeper wine knowledge.

Breaking the Rules on Purpose

One of the more striking findings involves how people are actually drinking wine.

While most consumption is still straightforward — wine on its own, with or without a meal — three in ten respondents said they mix wine into cocktails or serve it over ice, and 20% mix it with non-alcoholic drinks like soda, juice, or sparkling water, or drink it blended and frozen.

Even among core wine drinkers, three-quarters reported drinking wine in a non-traditional way at least some of the time.

Younger consumers are driving much of this experimentation, but classic serving styles remain prominent across every generation. The takeaway for marketers isn’t to abandon the traditional wine occasion — it’s to normalize the non-traditional ones alongside it, so consumers don’t feel embarrassed serving wine “incorrectly.”

The Discovery Gap | Why Is Wine Sort of Silent on Social Media?

When it comes to media visibility, wine shows up far less than other alcoholic beverages across platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and TV — and there’s no single channel where wine outperforms alcohol overall. Importantly, Material’s researchers argue this isn’t because wine content feels intimidating or overly academic; it’s that wine simply isn’t showing up in people’s feeds often enough.

Generational patterns diverge from there:

• Gen Z discovers wine primarily through social platforms and responds to short-form, relatable content.

• Millennials have the broadest media footprint, blending social discovery with more traditional sources — and content needs to both inspire and inform them.

• Gen X leans on established sources: food, wine, and lifestyle websites, plus retailer and producer sites.

• Non-adopters are the least plugged into wine media specifically, meaning broader lifestyle content — not wine-specific outlets — is the more effective entry point.

Notably, most consumers who encounter wine content on social media can’t name the specific creator or account behind it. Discovery is happening, but it’s passive — which points to a need for clearer next steps (learn more, find where to buy, save for later) rather than more content alone.

What Consumers Are Asking For

Open-ended survey responses reinforced the data. Consumers described wanting wine marketing that reflects everyday life rather than fine dining, plain-language explanations of terms like “dry,” pairings with street food and home cooking instead of just cheese boards, and more low-commitment ways to sample wine — such as variety packs and tasting events — before buying a full bottle.

Guided tastings, variety packs, and at-home relaxing occasions emerged as nearly universal points of interest across every generation and consumption tier — notably including Gen Z non-adopters, who turned out to be the most open non-adopter segment in the study.

Turning Insight Into Action

Material closed with several concrete ideas for wineries and marketers, including:

• Everyday pairing content — short-form video pairing wine with pizza, burgers, or takeout rather than formal cuisine

• “Wine Works Here” campaigns — positioning wine for movie nights, game nights, and casual at-home occasions

• Modern serve content — spritzers, sangria, and other non-traditional formats, paired with messaging that there’s “no wrong way to wine”

• A shop-learn-save content framework — ensuring every post gives consumers a clear, low-friction next step

The Bigger Picture

During the Q&A, Material’s team pushed back gently on the narrative that people are simply “drinking less.” Rather, they argued, consumers — especially younger ones — are drinking differently: diluting wine to avoid overconsumption [or masking it with flavors they KNOW], favoring smaller formats, and finding new social contexts for a category that still carries real emotional resonance. As one presenter put it, some of what makes wine feel out of step with the moment — its traditions, its formats, its associations — may actually be underused strengths rather than liabilities, if repositioned toward relevance instead of formality.

The full survey report, including generational breakdowns and additional data on packaging formats and AI-assisted wine research (used disproportionately by Millennials, followed by Gen Z), will be distributed to Wine Market Council members alongside a recording of the webinar.New research suggests consumers don’t dislike wine but they do not buy into wine’s elitist tropes and complications.

Matthiasson+Haas | Greener ROC Farming Tops Marketing Wine the Exclusivity Way, Regen Organic Icons Tell Napa | Part 1 of 3

Jason Haas of Tablas Creek in Paso and Steve Matthiasson of Matthiasson Wines in Napa offer insights at Napa Valley Grapegrowers’ organic event.

See this in its full glory WITH PHOTOS here.

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.

Ground Cover Trial | A New Agroecological Framework? | Napa Valley Grapegrowers' Organic Field Day at Opus One (Part 2 of 2)

This innovative trial, inspired by a challenge from agroecology consultant Mimi Casteel, explores a variety of test plots of native grasses to solve water issues.

This is part two of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers’ Organic Field Day at Opus One. See it FREE ON SUBSTACK with photos and graphics.

Kaplow’s Critique | Multispecies Seed Mixes Planted All At Once Create Too Many Weeds

Native grasses expert Steve Kaplow, consulting to Opus One, said regenerative, current seed mix practices have problems. Kaplow was speaking at an Oakville site that Opus recently acquired and plans to add to its estate.

“I’ve looked at the ground covers and test plots in many vineyards,” he said. “One of the things I’ve noticed over and over again is that people put in all these wonderful seed mixes. Yet when I come out to do the vineyard tour, 90 percent of what I see are weeds, and I’m not seeing the ground cover.

“For most people, the common definition is a plant I don’t like. It’s a plant I don’t have a use for. It’s out of place…I have my thoughts about weeds too, but I describe it from an agroecological point of view. A weed is a plant that spreads due to disturbance. It’s what’s called in ecology a pioneer plant, and wildflowers are pioneer plants, but they’re not weeds. So what’s the difference?

“Well, weeds are plants that had a particular ability to grow with the kind of disturbance that humans make, and so they’ve been around since the beginning of agriculture. They’ve been these same weeds you see now are the same weeds that have been around for 5,000, 6,000 years, and people have been controlling them for 5,000 to 6,000 years, and they keep coming back.”

“The plants learn to adapt to it, and they’re going to keep trying to come back. You’ll see a modern-day example of this, where the plants are adapting. A lot of weeds now are becoming herbicide resistant because the plants that were vulnerable died, and the ones that are not vulnerable came back, and so now we’re getting plants that are herbicide resistant because they survive.”

To Get Past the Weeds: Mow, Mow, Mow Your Way

FREE ON SUBSTACK with photos and graphics.

Said Kaplow, “The weeds here are survivors of physical resistance, and the things we’ve been doing to mow or remove or till, they’re going to keep coming back.

“The weeds have another characteristic that makes them troublesome for me when I’m trying to do a project. These plants, when they want to grow, stick their elbows out and try to push sideways and push up, and so they try to kill all the plants around them, too, so that they can get big and they can produce seed, because pretty much all the weeds in the West Coast are annuals. They’re going to die at the end of the season. Pretty most of the weeds are dead already, but they produce seed, and they’re coming back next year from seed. So what they do is they try to kill the plants around them, get big, they produce seed.”

He continued, “All of the methods we use for doing an annual ground cover, particularly in a vineyard…are inadvertently improving conditions for weeds, because you let them get big.

“You say, ‘I’m going to let them get big. So what you’ve just done is give conditions that favor the weeds to grow, and they’re going to grow real big…You don’t want to mow it down till the end of the year. You’ve just let them go to seed, and now you’re going to mow them down, and you’re probably going to till the ground. So now you’ve disturbed the ground again. You made it easier for the weeds…you’re doing all the wrong things.”

The Right Way to Treat Weeds: “It’s A War Going On Out There”

FREE ON SUBSTACK with photos and graphics.

Kaplow has an answer for how to treat weeds: animal grazing or regular old mowing. Those favor perennial plants and natives, he said.

“What’s the timing? You don’t want the foliage to get any more than six inches…If I seed a native grass project in the fall, you’ll see all the nice, native seedlings in October, November, December. They only get about an inch or two tall the first year. They get bigger later. All their energy is going into their roots, so if you let the weeds get taller than that, any taller than two or three inches, they’re starting to grow on top of the natives. They’re starting to grow on top of your wildflowers. They’re trying to grow on top of many of the plants you really want. And by the time the weeds are six inches tall, most of what you seeded is probably already dead. And so it may look all peaceful and green, but it’s a war going out there, and the weeds are going to win. And if you don’t control them, the weeds win.

“It’s a matter of keeping it mowed low, particularly for the first couple of years, because you’re trying to suppress the weeds, keep them from killing the natives, and keep them from reproducing, so you want to keep the weeds short.

“You don’t want them to go to seed, and that’s that’s the mowing system. It gets less intense as years go by. In the first year, you might be mowing three, four times,” he said. Opus said it had already mowed four times by July 22.

Frequent mowing means gentler mowing. “Because you were mowing often, there wasn’t a whole lot of foliage to mow, and so it wasn’t rough on the equipment. It was almost like mowing your lawn, a little more than that, but on that basis,” Kaplow said. “So repeat mowings through the growing season, and then in the summer you can let it go.”

“[If you wait till the weeds get high,] you’re dealing with a lot of thick, tall stuff that’s going to bind up with your mower and wear your equipment out. But if you mow more often–yes, there are more mowings, but they’re easier and faster, and it puts your vegetation in a much better place…Eventually the weeds grow under control, and then you can start getting the vegetation you really want.”

Little Strips of Prairie Grass

FREE ON SUBSTACK with photos and graphics.

Kaplow recommends native perennial grasses over annuals.

“They have certain major advantages over the annuals that you’re using. When you look at the grasses, you’re going to see foliage even in the height of the growing season. They may only get six inches tall if you didn’t mow them. They don’t get tall. They’re little bunchgrasses, but underground, they’re putting roots that are going down five or six feet, and they’re putting a lot of carbon into the ground.

“Around the world, it’s well known that the soils with the highest amount of soil carbon are all grassland soils. They’re all prairie soils. So, in a sense, what I’m talking about doing here is putting in strips of linear prairie into your vineyards.”

Carbon Sequestration and Microbiome Advantages of Native Perennial Grasses

FREE ON SUBSTACK with photos and graphics.

“If you want to put the carbon in the ground, you have to let the roots do it,” Kaplow said.

Kaplow said the native grasses inject a lot of carbon into the soil and create a stable environment for the beneficial bacteria and fungi to grow. “Versus, if you have annuals, their roots only go down about a foot, and they’re going to die at the end of the season,” he added. “So you’re kind of starting from zero again for the microbial community, or at least their habitat is pretty much starting from zero. Whereas with perennials, you have a stable environment, and you can get the microbes to grow much better.

“Perennial grasses are very good for mycorrhizal association, bacterial association. So if you’re trying to get soil microchlora, perennial grasses are a great way to go.”

Native Grass Establishment: “Like Prepping a Canvas”

FREE ON SUBSTACK with photos and graphics.

Kaplow said he loves wildflowers but recommends waiting until the native grasses are established before planting them.

“The first step you’re trying to do in a perennial cover,” he said, “is get a stable background. It’s almost like prepping a canvas. You’re trying to get a stable surface that’s going to be weed resistant, and as the perennial grasses grow, their roots are going to fill the soil, and they’re going to basically make a wall of roots. And when weeds try to germinate in that; their roots are going to hit the native grass roots, and they’re going to stop.”

He is not an advocate for planting legumes as cover crop for nitrogen. “If you don’t need the nitrogen, don’t put the legumes in, because they’re going to harbor a lot of pests. Too much nitrogen in the soil creates a weed problem. If you don’t need the nitrogen, don’t do it. If you do need the nitrogen, absolutely, that’s not a question. But if you don’t need it, don’t do it,” he said.

Kaplow cautioned against using fescues and bluegrasses. “I didn’t use any fescue or bluegrass in this project, and the reason is that I’ve worked with them in restoration projects a lot, and fescue and bluegrass are northern grasses. They’re moist site grasses. If you are in Washington State, it’s a no-brainer. If you’re in British Columbia, absolutely.

“There are native fescues and bluegrasses here, but they’re on the north side of a hill. They’re in the shade of trees. They’re in the fog belt next to the ocean.

“You don’t see them wild out here. You can seed it, and you will get scattered plants. But you’re not going to get reliable results. You’re not going to get a full cover. It certainly won’t live. So that’s the only reason I didn’t try those.”

FREE ON SUBSTACK with photos and graphics.

Bentwood grass

Seeding Is A Bit of An Art Form

McGraw cautioned, “With native grass seeding you really have to be careful. The seeding rates are so low. You say, ‘Oh, I bought seed for five acres,’ and you use it up after one, because ‘it just doesn’t look right.’ You seed it, and you don’t really see anything, and you go, ‘I’ve got to put more. Well, by the time you did, you’ve overseeded. So you really have to learn to stretch it out.

“Sometimes what people do is they will mix it with rice hulls, or they’ll mix it in with something else to spread it out, so that it looks better…It’s as light as humanly possible, and even then, you’re probably putting it on too heavy. So that’s a major case of self-control.”

The rest of the morning was devoted to grass plot by grass plot inspection.

Kaplow said that even after just one year, some of the grass roots would already be about three feet deep.

“They’re reaching for water. They’re trying to make it through the summer. Now eventually they’re going to be six, eight feet deep. They’re going to hit the water table at some point. Maybe they have, but I don’t know. They’re still young.

“Eventually they’re going to not only grow down but sideways, and the root systems can start banging into each other. So it’s going to become a wall of roots…each year it gets a little more like that.

FREE ON SUBSTACK with photos and graphics. 

California oatgrass (Danthonia californica) is old-growth grass in California is a long-lived native perennial bunchgrass that can live for up to 200 years and helps sustain ancient meadow ecosystems.

“Danthonia has a very, very long term strategy,” said Kaplow. “This grass, when it’s going, will live 120 years. It would be an old growth kind of grass. This is the redwoods of the grasses, but it’s hard to start it.

“I’m not quite giving up on it for here because that is one that will stay green and will dry this field out if that’s what you need,” Kaplow said. “It’s long lived and once it’s in, it’s in forever. It’s just a great plant. I have high future hopes for it. I’ve got this growing in my front yard in Santa Rosa. I don’t water it and it’s still green.”

The final event in the NVGG organic series on July 29 featured a keynote conversation featuring two respected organic producers-Steve Matthiasson of Matthiasson Wines and Jason Haas of Tablas Creek Vineyard.

That will be the subject of a future post here.

UPDATE: The SF Chronicle published a new article on the winery's new eco-direction.