Native yeast expert Sydney Rogers explains it all at Unfiltered Wine Festival panel in Berkeley.
Native Yeasts | Not So Pure After All?
What about native yeasts–another hallmark of the natural wine movement but one that winemakers who don’t call themselves natural frequently use?
Things are getting ever more complex on that front, as Opus One’s Sydney Rogers reported at the Unfiltered Wine Festival held in Berkeley July 26.
She researched natural fermentation during her education at U.C. Davis and was asked to speak about her findings on a panel about natural versus conventional wine.
She isolated yeasts on Pinot Noir grapes from four different California AVAs across multiple vintages, and then made wine with them.
“We were trying to see if they could compare to commercial strains,” she said. “But the interesting part that I found from the project is that there are genetic signatures of vineyards, so yeasts can have terroir. They can be found in one vineyard across multiple years.”
Her study turned up somewhat perplexing results about what can be considered native yeast.
“I think that the term native yeast is hard because what do you consider native yeast? Do you consider it just something that’s not bought from a store, or do you consider it something that is truly genetically native to the place?”
Surprise: Bicontinental Yeast?
“We found that there’s actually a yeast that has a genetic admixture of lineages from California oak trees combined with European wine strains,” she said.
“So they sexually reproduced, and they created a new hybridized yeast strain that has characteristics of both. And I think that that’s a really interesting.
“They actually outcompeted even the strongest of fermenters like EC-1118 [a popular active dried wine yeast strain (Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. bayanus) originally isolated in Champagne] in these spontaneous ferments.
“That just shows that sometimes you have to take something of the traditional ways from the European lineage of yeast, and something from the new way or the new place that you’re trying to make wine from, and this combination of both things can end up with something really strong.”
There was a lot of enthusiasm in the crowd when it was time to sample the 2018 Opus One, a $400+ classic from Napa Valley.
To illustrate yet again the promiscuity of yeasts, Davis said, “Jared and I had a conversation last week, and there was a brewery near [a winery], and they were curious to know what their yeast in the wine was. Turned out to be Trumer Pils yeast, so a lot of their wines were being fed with yeast.”
Said Rogers, ‘We actually looked at the populations of many of these different yeasts, and there were many that were commercial…but some of these strains that have genes from oak yeast that are native to California seem to be better suited for the environment here, because they can outcompete the other ones. Now it may not happen in every winery. I don’t know. I guess the Trumer Pils yeast could be just really going into beast mode.”
But knowing what yeast ends up in your wine is not cheap to find out.
“It’s really costly to analyze what yeast you have in your wine, right?” she said.
Rogers, who brought the all important 2018 Opus One wine the audience was excited to try, said that Opus One transitioned to native yeast.
“We used to use commercial, and winemaker [emeritus] Michael Silacci wanted to start doing native, but he felt it can be risky, especially for a wine like Opus One [a coveted $400 Napa Valley classic co-owned with a Bordeaux partner].
Serving up the 2018 Opus One. Rogers is in the background.
“So we isolated some native strains from our vineyards. And from each of our estates, we have a strain, or more than one strain, that comes from those vineyards. They’ve been compared to many databases of commercial yeast, and they are native.
“So my job is to scale them up from petri dishes to 100 liter biofermenters every day, and use those biofermenters for yeast to inoculate tanks. So it’s a native strain, but we inoculate with it,” she said.
While for years, natural winemakers have debated pros and cons of various winemaking approaches, Rogers said it was best to sidestep all the analyzing, if audiences are not interested in natural wine minutiae.
“What does your consumer care about? What does your audience care about? If they really care about natural wine and how you define how you make natural wine, then sure, talk your ear off about it.”
“I think we need to stop making people feel bad for not knowing the rules or not knowing the definitions, and just get people excited about drinking something new–especially the younger generations–because wine is so intimidating and it’s really hard to learn.”
“I think being supportive–like [answering questions] ‘why do you call it natural?’ ‘Oh, but someone else calls it natural, but they don’t do what you do,’ and then just explaining nicely why,” she said.
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The Mothership of my writing about organically grown wines over the past 14 - yes, 14, count-em - has just passed the huge milestone of 2 million page views.
In total, there are 1,500 posts on that blog.
This little fledgling offshoot, Organic Wines Uncorked on substack, is up to 224 subscribers in six months (with seven of you paying, thank you VERY much) and thousands of page views…
I think the increase around 2022 is when more producers got certified organic.
And 2026 - did the blog benefit from AI? Maybe, but the top 20 posts are pretty diverse in terms of subject matter–representing a real cross section of interests. Anyway, I think as a slice of online life, it’s interesting to see what made the list.
Curiously I do not recall anyone ever asking me about the tagline – The Delicious Revolution Shall Be Vinified – which is, of course, related to Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse motto, which is also about eating as an agricultural act. Would that more of us felt that way about drinking. And perhaps they will one day.
I got frustrated with blogspot.com after it would not include photos or charts during this past year, and so those missing photos and graphics ARE available in the Substack version. So I have stopped cross posting some articles on the blog. Everything fresh is here on substack, including the visual elements, so please consider subscribing here.
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Dogmatism is out, tolerance is in. After years of ongoing, fierce debates over what a natural wine is, a more mature middle ground is emerging over what it is and isn’t a natural wine. If anyone is still listening…
My old friend Monty Waldin used to say about natural winemakers, “Don’t tell me what you don’t do. Tell me what you do do.”
A panel of five wine experts, including four natural winemakers spanning from 20 something to seasoned veterans, examined the definitions, the divides, the controversies and the intersections–as well as perhaps the irrelevance of drawing lines.
Back in 2009, host and moderator Jared Brandt, co-founder of Donkey and Goat (then married to co-founder Tracey Brandt), published a manifesto.
Issued in the spirit of transparency, it proclaimed the winery’s do’s and don’ts in buying grapes and in winemaking, but also capped it off with a warning.
“When it comes to dogma, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Seventeen years later, Jared Brandt was in the room with fellow winemakers attempting to find common ground defining natural wine or just hearing what everyone else had to say, since the days of dogmatic disagreements appear to be wearing thin among both makers and their fans and the scales seem to be tipping toward kumbaya.
The illustrious panel began with a statement of purpose that reflects the thoughtful distance the community has come over those 17 years.
“What this panel is really collected to talk about is breaking down and unpacking some of these divisions that create little tribes when they're actually a really powerful community that's striving after the same thing,” a speaker began.
A lot of the discussion was about minimal intervention. For example:
• Did oak barrels count as “doing nothing”?
• What about temperature controlled tanks?
• And the eternal debate: are sulfites ok or not? Even a little bit?
Brandt said he was agnostic about much of natural wines’ tenets, but just happened to learn from a natural winemaker in France.
“I moved to France to learn winemaking. I did not come into winemaking to learn how to make natural wine. I came to learn from Eric Texier because I love his wine,” he said.
Nicole Walsh, the long time winemaker at Bonny Doon (for 20+ years), as well as producer of her own artisanal SER Wine, has made both “conventional” and natural wines, early on converting a biodynamic vineyard in New Zealand.
Nicole Walsh
“This whole panel is really interesting for me,” she said, “because all along in my career, I've had a lot of passion projects. My interest is more on the viticulture side–vineyard managing, converting wine or vineyards to biodynamic farming, or organic farming. Really, I feel it starts there.
“And so, obviously, my belief and my passion is natural wines that reflect that farming. It's really, really important to me….wines that have a life force in them.”
They should also be wines of stability, she added.
Arcadian's Joe Davis, made the distinction that natural wine “is about harvesting at higher acid, lower pHs. There's less bacterial activity. Wines tend to be clear and bright.”
Winemaker Brent Mayeaux of Stagiaire, championing the purist line, opted for a simple definition.
“My idea of natural wine, which over there in France seems like pretty well understood and agreed upon,” he said, “…I don’t understand the confusion in the United States so much, but natural wine is considered organic grapes that you crush and ferment, and you bottle without fining, filtering, or adding anything to the wine.”
I might point out that there’s no mention in his definition of growing the grapes yourself–and he like, most of the producers at Unfiltered, does not grow all of his grapes, in contrast to leading French natural wine producers.
Beyond the Moralizing
“I almost wish it wasn’t called natural wine because we tend to moralize it–to not make natural wine isn’t immoral,” Mayeaux said.
“How you make your wine is very inconsequential in the grand scheme of the world, but to me, natural wine is organic grapes that you don’t do anything to.”
Brandt pointed out that overall, winemakers are prone more and more to making acid adjustments [due to climate change]. He said chaptalization and adding sulfites were once typical in Germany and France.
“I struggle with the definition [of natural wine],” he said. “I think ‘natural’ is a very bogus word, but I struggle with where you do draw the line, because it goes back [the fact that] barrels do import impart flavors. Concrete and terracotta have a big influence in the wine. Stainless has an influence in the wine.”
How many sulfites is still another much debated topic.
Said Davis, “I think if you're going to try to make wine as naturally as possible, then you've got to have a really good lab. You've got to be able to look under the microscope and see what's there.
The wine he poured at the panel clocked in at 35 ppm sulfites he told attendees.
“To not use some amount of sulfur seems to me to be insanity,” he added.
Walsh looks at the bigger picture. At Bonny Doon (now part of WarRoom Cellars), she led the team that formerly made as much as 450,000 cases of wine a year and later launched her own personal, artisanal brand Ser Wines. Maker Wine produces her own wines in cans.
“You're striving for this persistence, this life force in the wine,” said Walsh.
Wine can’t be perfect all the time, she said, and then what.
“In my opinion, some of the flaws from not intervening in some way, even being as thoughtful as we can, and being as prepared as we can come harvest…Making those decisions when you were talking about acid is a priority, but maybe you can’t make those picking decisions perfectly.
“I feel like you do have to intervene, and because, for me, it's trying to make this reflection of the vineyard in the resulting wine, without distracting flaws.”
Holding up the purist end of the spectrum, Mayeaux disagreed. “That's the point. It's not supposed to be easy,” he said.
Countered Walsh, “I would argue that you shouldn't win a prize for doing nothing.”
Mayeux makes about 2,000 cases and said at the panel that he lives very frugally, including getting food stamps. Walsh makes a lot more wine.
For the section on Native Yeasts | Not So Pure After All?
Please visit this link to read about Opus One’s transition to using native yeasts. (This panel article was getting too long for Substack’s email length limits so I made the Opus yeast discussion a separate article.)
Broken Berries | A Big Risk
Mayeaux said he was he was “trying to prioritize the healthy yeast and keep the less desirable yeast and bacteria at bay.
Brent Mayeux
“Any broken berry in the vineyard is a breeding ground for the yeast and bacteria that you don't want fermenting. Every single broken berry that comes in from the vineyard into the cellar is this petri dish–this inoculation of the things that you don't want dominating or fermentation. So we are doing everything we can to keep those out of the cellar or in the vineyard.” That means “sorting really well," he said.
Mayeux paid homage to Opus One for getting him into wine.
“Honestly, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Opus One. It was a couple bottles of Opus One that sent me down the wine path. And I still, honestly, drink probably more classic-leaning wine because a lot of natural wines are kind of disgusting.”
[Of course, Opus One costs $400 a bottle and does not claim to be a natural wine, but it has switched to using native yeast].]
Transparency Is a Common Denominator–Or Is It?
Some label ingredients. Most don’t.
Walsh said Bonny Doon was “one of the first wineries to do ingredient labeling [in 2008], and at that time it was because we really felt we wanted to show ‘here's a wine that's out in the marketplace, and we're really minimalist with our additions.’
“We were hoping it would cause other wineries to show what they actually put in their wines, or to bring awareness to a consumer of what goes into wine.”
While transparency was a lauded goal, audience member and wine expert Clark Smith said it’s [sadly] unrealistic to expect truth from mainstream [or natural winemakers.
[Clark Smith is the inventor of reverse osmosis and micro-oxygenation–interventions that are anathema to the natural wine community.]
“I spent my whole life for over 50 years in the industry developing new tools,” said Smith, “and I’ve been experimenting with honesty, and I have to tell you that the reason you don’t have transparency in winemaking–look in the mirror.
“Because the natural wine movement has been firing live ammo over the heads of winemakers for a long time, and they’re going to lie.”
In the end, one thing matters, he said.
“What you should be asking for is great wine, whether it's agricultural, conventional, natural, 00. It's really about finding delicious wines to drink.”
A creative audience member, Julie Weber, a watercolorist of many years, was having a good time painting panelists and taking notes of this and other sessions. Here is her delightfully artistic record of the panel.
Watercolorist Julia Weber (jukelia_sf on instagram) painted during a number of sessions, exciting many participants and attracting many admirers.
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UCANR entomologist Houston Wilson, Ph.D. on state of the art thinking about integrated pest management, which starts in part, from biodiversity research he conducted with growers in Napa and Sonoma
Now based in the Central Valley, UCANR entomologist Houston Wilson, Ph.D. started his career counting leafhoppers at Quintessa
This is part 2 of an organic winegrowing field day held July 15 at Quintessa sponsored by the Napa Valley Grapegrowers as part of their July organic education series.
See Part 1 of this field day here.
Entomologists Are Widening Their Lenses
While entomologists look at the world of insects, these days they don’t look at bugs alone-they look at ecosystems. And it’s helping viticulturists learn how to understand pests and manage wine grape vines more effectively.
“The landscape context really tends to mediate how effective on-farm practices can be,” speaker Houston Wilson said.
That was the message the UCANR scientist highlighted for those attending the Napa Valley Grapegrowers’ Organic Field Day held at Quintessa. And he should know, because he was part of one of the landmark viticulture agroecology studies that set out to study cover crops but wound up discovering a bigger picture truth about landscapes and biodiversity.
That study, ultimately published in 2017, started first at Quintessa, Wilson recalled. As a student at U.C. Berkeley, he was lucky enough to study under some of the most esteemed agricultural entomologists in biocontrol, including those pictured below.
In 2008, Wilson (left) with the powerhouse of U.C. Berkeley’s ag entomologists–Kent Daane, Robert Van Steenwyk, Miguel Altieri and Nicholas Mills. Note: I first met Houston around 2015 when he was a T.A. in Miguel Altieri’s agroecology class at U.C. Berkeley, (which I audited). .
Wilson was deeply involved in one of the first big studies in Napa and Sonoma that showed how leafhopper populations were and were not affected by various farming practices. While initially designed to study the impact of carefully selected cover crop mixes grown in vineyard middles, the 2017 landmark study entitled “Landscape diversity and crop vigor outweigh influence of local diversification on biological control of a vineyard pest” found that the biodiversity around sites was a more important factor in leafhopper populations than a set of selected cover crops and even pointed to one native plant as an important host for beneficials.
A Bit of Backgound
U. C. Berkeley has played a pivotal role in pioneering biocontrol, starting with Robert van den Bosch, whose seminal book Biological Control was first published in 1973, just 11 years after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, and followed up by his more influential and popular book The Pesticide Conspiracy (1978). It was the dawn of integrated pest management or IPM, as farmers were struggling to find a way to stop or reduce the use of toxic agrochemicals after their negative impacts became more widely known.
Miguel Altieri, Founder of the Field of Agroecology
Altieri holds the mantle as the founder of agroecology, writing the first text on it, Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture in 1987.
He went on to become a celebrated expert working with the Pope, King Charles and United Nations, as well as countless other groups.
He has widely championed mixed agriculture for small farmers in Latin America.
Summing up the field of agroecology, Altieri has written, “Each ecological disease is viewed as an independent problem rather than what it really is–a symptom of a poorly designed and poorly functioning system.”
Today the term agroecology has become more and more fashionable in wine. The Coturri family at Winery Sixteen 600 used the term on a wine label recently. Retiring Opus One winemaker [now emeritus] Michael Silacci now calls himself an “agro-enologist,” on his LinkedIn page.
Return to Quintessa
Wilson is now a UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Entomology at UC Riverside where his title is Associate Cooperative Extension Specialist, Orchard/Vineyard Entomology. He is currently stationed at Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier in southern San Joaquin County.
But his career in entomology began in Napa when he told Altieri that he was interested in agroecology. Chilean born Altieri, connected to the Chilean founders of Quintessa, Agustin Huneeus Sr. (former CEO of Concha y Toro) and Valeria Huneeus, was working a bit in viticulture. Altieri sent Wilson off to count leafhoppers at the Rutherford estate.
“One of the first projects I ever worked on in commercial agriculture–not at the U.C. Berkeley university farm–was here at Quintessa,” he said. That was in 2007.
“I was some 20 year old kid down there counting these leafhoppers, and what we did at that time eventually evolved into my PhD dissertation. It was to look at diversifying vineyards to enhance biological control of leafhoppers, and Quintessa [farming biodynamically] was experimenting with that at the time.”
The 280 acre Quintessa site has 140 acres of vines, lots of native oaks and varied soils and sites.
From Micro to Macro View
After the team worked at Quintessa for a summer, the study grew, involving a bigger group of growers who were putting in hedgerows and insectaries and playing around with summer flowering cover crops. “Caleb Mosley [who was in attendance at the field day] was part of that,” he said. Today Mosley is currently the executive director of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers.
One of the many questions the growers had was how to attract beneficials with cover crops.
“Could we plant in the fall flowering plants in the row middles that over the spring and summer would bloom and provide some sort of habitat for beneficial insects that would then go on to control leafhoppers?” he said.
Said Wilson, “How you best manage these farms in an ecological way is really site specific–there’s principles of agroecology and how to approach your farming…
If you want to expand that ‘organism idea’, it’s not just all the biophysical things and how they’re interacting on your farm. It’s how they’re interacting across the entire landscape, this whole valley, and how they’re functioning over time,” he said.
The Leafhopper Pest’s Biggest Predator: Tiny Parasitoids
Vineyard managers have to manage leafhopper populations, which can decimate a crop of wine grapes.
One ally in their arsenal is tiny wasps like Anagrus species (fairyflies) that inject their eggs directly into leafhopper eggs. To quote from the U.C. IPM website, “The developing wasp larva consumes the contents, turning the translucent leafhopper egg brown or red before emerging.”
How can vineyard managers encourage these tiny wasps in their vines?
“When we first started this project, the best known overwintering habitat for the parasitoids [that feed on leafhoppers] was blackberries,” Houston said.
But one species alone was not the totality of the site.
“You’re not just managing leafhoppers," he said. ‘You’re managing 10 different things. How do you develop practices that work well for all of these competing demands?”
The group ultimately developed a group of cover crops with the growers–they were the lead experimenters at that point, Houston said. The questions were not just what species to select, but, “how to sow them? When to sow them? How to keep them from spreading and going to seed under the under the vine rows?” he said.
The group came up with a cover crop program focused on purple tansy, bishop’s flower, wild carrot and more.
“Those three flowers were ones you could put in the fall, and they would bloom in succession and as each one peaked at its bloom, you’d go in and mow it, and then the next species would come up, and it would keep it from spreading.
“We saw a lot of beneficials come to those plants, and so we set up this large replicated experiment to compare plots with and without this flowering summer flowering cover crop program over a two-year period, and we had vineyards in Napa, Sonoma, and all these different kinds of locations.”
The Surprising Results | Not What They Originally Thought They Would Be
“What we saw was that a lot of beneficials showed up on those flowers, but it didn’t really translate into increased beneficials in the canopy itself.
“There were major differences in biocontrol of leafhoppers between the different sites, not necessarily the plots at those sites.
“What it turned out to be is that certain vineyards had higher early season populations of these parasitoids, and that led to higher parasitism early in the season, and that led to lower leafhopper populations at the end of the year. And it just had to do with where they were located. If you think about the need for overwintering sites of this parasitoid, it starts to make sense.
“What defined these better sites is that they had more natural habitat around them (and we hadn’t done anything about the composition of the habitat).”
“The best sites just had more natural and semi-natural habitat within half a kilometer of the site. And the more of that you had, the more parasitoids you had, and the lower leafhopper populations you had,” he said.
Eye Opening Moment: Coyote Brush
“What we did at that point was to go out and basically sample every plant we could. There’s 70 or 75 different species or genera that we were able to collect around the North Coast over a two-year period.
“We found a number of different plants that harbored these parasitoids, but far and above, coyote bush was the number one plant.
“You have some of it planted down there [at Quintessa], and that for us was a very eye-opening moment. There’s coyote bush all over the place here, and it’s a native plant in California.
“When I brought this up with growers, some folks were like, ‘Man, I just cleared all that off my hillside or off the road cut’ or whatever. But it was an alternative plant that doesn’t harbor sharpshooters, it doesn’t harbor Pierce’s disease, but it is an effective overwintering habitat for this parasitoid. And so that was cool–the story kind of goes like this [in one direction], and then suddenly we find this landscape thing, and there’s this other overwintering habitat, and that was a good ending.”
The Trail Doesn’t End There
“There’s all sorts of questions that still remain about how much of this coyote bush do you put in your vineyard relative to the number of acres you have, and how far do they go from it, and all sorts of stuff like that. But this is kind of how science goes.”
Then the project ended.
"I got my PhD, and that year red blotch showed up, and we also had Virginia creeper leafhopper show up in Mendocino and Lake County, and it was like, stop all that, focus on this, and off we go.”
“But at the end of, I think one of our final presentations with the group which was about 30 different operations…was that what we discovered was pretty cool.
“More questions arose: what do those plants do for vine mealybug or sharpshooters? We didn’t study any of that. It’s so difficult in some of these systems where you’re doing all these multi-layered practices to scientifically isolate certain variables and try to tease apart these things,” he said.
The New Bottom Line: Collaborative, Region Wide Projects Matter Most
Wilson said scientists today are more excited about broader projects that involve larger landscape studies.
“As an ag entomologist, area-wide IPM is how you do IPM now,” he said.
“For us it’s been really important to try to build more collaborative projects where we have someone looking at how do birds and owls respond to this? How do weeds respond to this practice? How do the insects respond? And that’s more the type of work that I’ve been able to develop in the past 10 years.”
He cited Matthew Johnson’s project at Cal Poly Humboldt (with numerous western bluebird boxes on sites in Napa) and Danny Karp at U.C. Davis who are studying song birds and their response to proximity to natural habitat and nest boxes. Both are featured in the video below.
Of special interest to Wilson, those scientists are studying what the birds eat–specific insects.
“We’ve been able to take fecal samples and run it through molecular methods that can tell us what insects we’re finding, DNA from there,” he said.
“We’ve found that the birds eat vine mealybugs, they eat leafhoppers, like they also eat lacewings.
You’re trying to manage an ecosystem that is not evolved to make sure you can produce wine. The birds are just trying to get food. They eat the good bugs, eat the bad bugs, and so it’s difficult. But it’s important to think of it in this way,” Wilson said.
“There’s more to come, and results will be out soon,” he said.
Wilson said insects of interest in his field boil down to two categories.
“With biological control, you have two types of insects.
“You have these generalist predators like spiders and lacewings and ladybugs, and then you have parasitoids. Well, the generalists-they’re general. They eat a bunch of different stuff. Some of it you want them to eat. Some of it you don’t. Sometimes they eat each other–like a spider and a lacewing. Parasitoids can have really hyper specific host ranges.
“Anagrus is pretty specific… it’s got the leafhoppers, but then it also has this alternative host.
“There’s other parasitoids that are known to attack 60 different types of insects. So, when you think about these insectary plantings, like which beneficial insects are showing up, and which ones do I need to control the pest I’m trying to control, and do they show up at the right time of year that aligns with the phenology of this insect or with the timing when my crop is vulnerable to damage from that insect, and how far do they move from these plants? There are a ton of unknown questions.
“Those are all very approachable questions, but each one is a huge study of its own, and you need a bunch of people to look at these things.”
“Coming back to the coyote brush…that would be one of the next steps for me if we were to resume that work.
“How much coyote brush is enough? Every 10 rows, or do I put it around the border? We don’t know.”
Because Anagrus are so lightweight, studying them is a little more challenging, Wilson said.
“Rather than flying, it’s more like they’re swimming through the air,” he said. 'They’re so tiny. They’re one of the five smallest known parasitoids on planet earth, which has made them a total joy to work with. They look like a little thing with pepper–not a peppercorn, like a piece of pepper you put on your food–bouncing around in a vial.
“So how does wind affect their dispersal? And if you have a ton of insectaries or a bunch of vineyard and a little insectary–this is where the questions about landscape ecology come in.”
“What I was saying earlier about the surrounding landscape, more and more what we’ve seen in these type of studies–not just in vineyards and not just in California, but globally–is that the landscape context really tends to mediate how effective these on-farm practices can be.”
Population size and habitat size are other factors, making tracking the tiny parasitoids and their impacts elusive.
“If you don’t have enough habitat at a larger scale, you don’t have a metapopulation–a regional population of these beneficial insects–to draw into your farm. And so, if you’re in a huge monoculture and you put flowers in 10 acres, nothing might show up because there’s nothing in the area.
“In other cases, if you have so much habitat, and you add flowers, you may not see a difference because there’s so much just already coming in,” he said.
Landscapes Are Diverse | Biocontrol Results Can Vary Widely
Looking at the broader landscape of biocontrol, biodiversity, agroecological studies, scientists have found mixed results.
“There’s been some synthesis of these studies over the past 50 years, and when you diversify in agriculture in a cropping system, whether it’s for pollinators or weed control or biocontrol or whatever–a third of the time it works, a third of the time it doesn’t work, a third of the time maybe it kind of worked.
“So it’s not necessarily the absolute solution. But it’s an important principle to think about as a root cause. For example, mating disruption is awesome. We need more of that, and you can’t do that in house. Sprayable beneficial insects–those are really cool. And the sterile insect technique,” he said.
A Final and Very Practical Tip | QA Your Purchased Insects
Wilson cautioned that growers purchasing insects should do quality checks on their purchased insect shipments.
“Quality control is a major issue,” he said. “They’re living organisms, and so we always recommend to anybody who’s applying beneficial insects from an insectary to do a quality control check when you get them. We’ve had shipments with high variability. This isn’t to criticize these ancestries,” he said, adding that bugs can be damaged in the shipping process.
Next in the series of NVGG organic field days, Ground Cover Management at Opus One, featuring Kimberlee Marinelli of Opus One, Dave Kaplow of Petaluma based Eco-Management, and native plant specialist Selena Vengco for a field-based discussion exploring how thoughtful ground cover management can support soil health.
This [below] just arrived in my inbox. Having visited many wineries in Cava country last fall for the Cava Meeting for trade professionals, I was deeply impressed with the makers, the landscape, the food and the culture. One of my first steps after the that press trip and one to Jumilla/Murcia last summer, was to call Markus to get more ground truths about these regions. Now you don't have to be member of the press to get insights - you can go with a native of Penedes.
Here is the advertisement for tours the Bokisch family is leading.
Join Markus & Liz for an unforgettable Wine Club Members-only journey beyond Barcelona—where every vineyard, village and shared meal tells part of their family's story.
For eight unforgettable days, Markus and Liz will personally guide you beyond the tourist routes into the vineyards, coastal villages, family traditions and hidden corners of Catalunya that inspired Bokisch Vineyards from the very beginning.
You'll walk through historic castles, sip Cava where Markus and Liz once lived, enjoy private winery visits unavailable to the public, dine with award-winning chefs, and spend your evenings along the Mediterranean surrounded by new friends who share your love of wine, food and travel.
This isn't simply a wine tour.
It's Spain through the Bokisch family's eyes.
With only a handful of spaces remaining for our 2027 departures, we invite our Wine Club members to join us for what many guests describe as a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Each day of the tour has been thoughtfully curated to balance unforgettable experiences with authentic moments.
Explore the birthplace of Spanish Cava in Penedès before traveling south to Terra Alta and Priorat, two of Spain's most celebrated wine regions. Wander medieval villages, discover centuries-old monasteries, enjoy Michelin-starred dining, taste wines alongside the winemakers who craft them, and experience Mediterranean life from your home base in beautiful La Rà pita.
The difference isn't just where you'll go. It's who you'll experience it with.
Markus grew up spending summers in Catalunya, and throughout the week he'll introduce you to the places where his family lived, celebrated and built lifelong friendships. You'll visit the monastery where his parents were married, stroll through villages where generations of his family still live, and gather for a farewell dinner at Lo Xalet—his grandparents' summer home overlooking the Mediterranean.
Together, Markus and Liz have spent decades building relationships with winemakers, chefs and local families throughout Spain, opening doors that simply aren't available to the average traveler.
These aren't stops on an itinerary. They're personal introductions.
Wine Club Member Exclusive
Only Bokisch Wine Club Members are invited to participate in our Beyond Barcelona Tours.
This intimate experience is intentionally kept small so every guest enjoys meaningful access to Markus, Liz and the extraordinary people you'll meet throughout the journey.
The cost of the afternoon seminar/tours is $65 per person; the seminars/tours will begin promptly at 3:00 p.m. at the Popelouchum vineyard. [3] The dates are: August 9th, August 23rd and September 6th though we might possibly add another date if we are not crazy busy with harvest. The season will culminate in a festive harvest dinner at the vineyard on September 27th. The four-course family style dinner will be prepared by our friends, Drew and Ellie Quintana of Inaka Fusion Restaurant in San Juan Bautista, and will feature some ultra-rare bottlings and produce from the Popelouchum Estate. We are still working on some details, so save-the-date for now and watch for the ticket sale announcement soon. The vintage is looking quite promising this year, and I very much look forward to seeing you ‘ere long.
This is the first in a series of posts about the Unfiltered Wine Festival that took place this past weekend in Berkeley.
Sparkling wine, oh, sparkling wine! It seems to be in a bit of a fizzy tizzy with some regions going gangbusters and others flailing or repositioning themselves. And now natural-ish producers are entering the building.
As Champagne fidgets over its declining sales down from a pandemic peak of 326 million bottles in 2022 down to 266 million bottles by the end of 2025, compare that with Prosecco where sales have more than doubled over the past decade. (Champagne really uses a lot of herbicide, as these photos from Caroline Henry show, and Prosecco is also lame on organic with a mere six percent of its acreage certified organic).
Cava launched its newly designated organically grown category (“Guarda Superior”), and Oregon is gunning for a breakout spot in the sparkling category with its latest coalition of 50 producers banding together and branding themselves Method Oregon. They, too, have imposed pesticide limits (effective in 2029) prohibiting the use of synthetic herbicides.
While California has sparkling powerhouses–Roederer, Domaine Carneros, Domaine Chandon–that keep humming along (none farming organically these days, Domaine Carneros once was), the natural wine movement’s love of pet nat bubbles has bubbled over to more serious renditions, as we witnessed at Saturday’s panel discussion at Unfiltered Wine Festival’s panel “Breaking the Champagne Spell: California’s Great Sparkling Wine Experiment.”
Everyone who came to the Unfiltered Wine Festival was given a glass of Donkey and Goat’s Lily’s Pet Nat when they came through the entry door.
Here are a few excerpts from the panel that have been very very very lightly edited for grammar, etc.
Jared Brandt of Donkey and Goat introduced the panel, saying how proud and happy he was that producers here “are now going toe to toe with grower champagne.”
“Why is that, and why did that happen?” he said, complimenting the festival for educating people about all the effort and passion that goes into these wines.
“People don't always understand the farming and the intentionality behind these wines and the incredible work that goes into creating these wines. So part of what we're doing here is educating and elevating people's awareness of just how special these growers are,” he said.
Matt Wood, Indie Wine Podcast
Moderator Matt Wood, of Indie Wine Podcast began with a brief recap of California sparkling wine’s roller coaster ride through history.
“My idea for this festival [panel] was that sparkling wine in California has always been a little bit of a white whale since the beginning of the industry. There’s been wineries chasing it, oftentimes going through heartbreak, spending money, going bankrupt. A lot of time and energy has been spent, but it seems like in the last few years it’s really turned the corner, and there’s a huge range of wines that are made now in a sparkling style that are just great tasting wines that can hold up to any other sparkling wines of the world.”
Brandt recalled his first encounter with a pet nat in France when he was hooked.
“I'd never had a pet nat before, and I got super interested in it,” said Brandt, “and so from there on I kept exploring the idea of pet nats. A gentleman named Andrea Calek made one called Blonde, which I loved…and a guy named Louis…and a friend of Lou's wife, Bart…would chat via email. So I started experimenting with making a pet nat. And for context, no one in America made it at the time.”
Since no one was making it, no one knew how to make it, he said.
“But there's a custom bubble facility, Rack and Riddle–I told them what I wanted to do, and they told me I had my head up my ass. So that's how I got started in it.”
“I think sparkling wines are actually just really, really fun and just super versatile.”
Chris Cottrell, Under the Wire
Jared Brandt (Donkey and Goat), Chris Cottrell (Under the Wire) and Michael Cruse (Cruse Wine Co.)
Chris Cottrell from Bedrock and Under the Wire described how he and Morgan Twain-Peterson MW met working in a shop (Pet Wines, on the Upper East Side in NYC).
“That’s where I discovered wine,” said Cottrell, “and that wine shop had a very European sense in the drinking age, so I was able to taste wine there–but also I got lucky because it was in our very small artisanal wine shop–and so early on in me discovering wine, grower Champagne was a big part of that.
“And we’re talking 2004, so really kind of just at the stage when grower Champagnes were coming into the market. That store only sold grower champagnes. There was no food. There were no other champagnes you could buy there, outside of grower Champagnes.”
“So Morgan and I both found a love of grower Champagne pretty early on in our lives, and I came out and started working harvest for Bedrock in 2008, and then in 2011, Morgan asked, ‘What wine would I want to make with it?’
Cottrell said, “sparkling wine.”
“That became our own thing together…That conversation ended up getting to a point where actually we found Rack and Riddle because the first two vintages were bubbles were done there.”
“At that point, 2011, when we looked at California, there were a lot of great large house producers like Gloria Ferrer, like Scharmsberg, Roederer–direct from Champagne. But at that point, if you looked around California, there was essentially no small production, particularly single-digit sparkling wines.”
Michael Cruse, Cruse Wine Co.
Cruse started his talk with a caveat that getting started in artisanal sparkling wine is not for the faint of heart.
“I gave a talk one time at Haas Business School [at U.C. Berkeley], and the title of the talk was ‘Sparkling Wine in California: How to Make Very Little Money Very, Very Very Slowly,’” he said, getting a laugh from the crowd.
“My M.O. has really been how do we take the tools of friends who have actually gone through all the permutations of what we do in sparkling wine, and how do we sort of pick and choose the methods to best express that here in California.”
He served his Tradition wine.
“It's our entry level wine. It’s mainly Sonoma County–55% Pinot Noir, the remainder Chardonnay, and then we have a fair amount of Reserve wine that goes back to 2015,” he said.
Brad Kurtz, Gloria Ferrer
Kurtz is the vineyard director at Gloria Ferrer in the Sonoma side of the Carneros. Working with an all estate sparkling wine producer, he brought a different perspective to the panel, including one of scale.
He served a 2022 Sencilla–a 100% Chardonnay with zero dosage. While the winery produces a lot of wine in the wholesale market (it makes 60,000 cases a year), it also experiments with small lots of limited production wines.
It was started by the Ferrer family from Penedes (near Barcelona). The Ferrer family was famous for its massive Cava brand, Freixenet, now owned 100 percent, as of 2026, by Henkell Freixenet, a German corporation. Today the Ferrer family retains a lot of vines for its other Cava labels.
I had the pleasure of a tasting and tour at the Ferrer family’s home vineyard and winery in November [along with Elaine Chukan Brown], where the Ferrer family now makes its rare, high end Can Sala by hand in an historic wine press.
Said Kurtz, “This is one of our “Innovation” small production wines. It’s one that I personally love. That’s why I chose to bring it. It’s one that I drink on a daily basis. It’s probably my go-to. It’s all estate grown.”
The company certified the entire 300+ acre estate in 2025, converted during Kurtz’s tenure.
He used to work at Wente in Livermore, before he was presented with the opportunity to work at Gloria Ferrer.
“I haven’t been around as long as these gentlemen in the sparkling wine game,” he said.
“I was attracted to sparkling wine as a grower. I was enticed by a three week long harvest and being able to be done by mid-September, and having basically all the estate vineyards–Pinot Noir, Chardonnay–with the focus of producing sparkling wine.”
“Everything, all of our lots are planted separately and graded and blended accordingly for the final wine and how long it will spend at tirage and what the final dosage will be. So all of that is decided at blending.”
“All our vineyards are planted and designed to produce sparkling wine, not to produce [still] Pinot Noir or to produce [still] Chardonnay. It was to show can we produce the best quality sparkling wine in the Carneros.”
[The original founding winemaker 40 years ago at Gloria Ferrer was Eileen Crane, who went on later to lead the Taittinger’s Domaine Carneros, once organically farmed. Crane died recently. A high profile service honoring her memory was held.]
Vineyards
When Brad started in 2021, the team began the conversion over to certifying all 330 acres of vineyards. [The winery is now also on the way to certifying its winery as well, which will enable it to label future estate wines “Made with Organic Grapes.”]
“We are now the largest organic grape grower in Sonoma County, so we are very proud of that fact,” said Kurtz. “And it was not easy. We just had our CCOF audit yesterday, and it was a lot of large stacks of paperwork. But it’s well worth it, and I think it really is something to be proud of and something that speaks to consumers, and consumers understand the work that goes into that, and we see it in wiring the quality that that brings to the farming.”
Said Kurtz, “There’s no textbook on how to grow sparkling wine in California. So it’s a lot of experimentation. It’s a lot of ‘Oh, we did this in this block, and it turned out extraordinarily well. Let’s try to expand that into other blocks.’
“Luckily, I have 60 blocks to work with–mostly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. It is a site-driven product.”
“When I sell grapes–I sell quite a bit of grapes as well–when I sell grapes, the first question I get is, ‘Oh, what’s the clone?’ But if I gave you the same clone in two different sites, you wouldn’t even know it was the same clone when it comes to sparkling wine. Site comes first.”
“I would say rootstock is the next biggest choice that you can make. Way over clone, I think rootstock has a huge impact on sparkling wine more than anything.”
“I think also row orientation, trellis style, age of vines, young vines versus old vines–all of these things have dramatic impacts–and then ultimately the blend.”
Discussion
Cruse weighed in on viticulture for sparkling wine in California versus France.
“When you go to Champagne, you'll see Pinot Noir that's at like seven, maybe 8% potential alcohol, and all the color is uniform. You do not see that in California,” he said.
Cottrell said their first priority became looking for sites that in still wine, “had a very unique hallmark.” Example: “This can only come from Brosseau, right? So a site that already had a very signature flavor to it and sort of character to it.
“What we found when we made the wine for still for two years…was what Michael was saying is a lot of sites in California, whether it's Chard or Pinot or Zinfandel, don't really have much character or flavor when you're picking out of 9, 10, 11% alcohol…there's just not much there there.
“So we were really trying to find sites that when you tasted them at that low potential alcohol, had a lot of personality, had a lot of flavor packed into it, and with Brosseau specifically…it just was oozing with texture and flavor. And there it's kind of interesting because it's a very warm site… in the Chalone AVA, next to Pinnacles National Park. It's a warm site, but it's planted on limestone and granite.”
“So our focus really has been on finding sites that have a lot of flavor. You can really taste the site at lower sugars and lower pHs, and that's generally led us to kind of extreme sites. Whether it's Brosseau, which kind of is on its own island, whether it's Alder Springs, which is kind of on its own island, or Bedrock Vineyard–it’s unique kind of extreme is that the vines were were planted in 1888…So, really looking for flavorful sites at lower sugar and lower [yield] the acre, and farmed really well.”
Styles: Sparkling Is Just “Changing the Aperture”
Cruise said site is all.
“I really truly in my heart of hearts believe that sparkling wine is just another method to show site. Honestly…you can show site in still wine, show site in sparkling wine. So it's just another…like an electron microscope versus a light. Or something like that. And then in terms of like pet nat or blends or single vineyard or whatever we're just sort of changing the aperture.
“Pet nat for me has always been something that leans on the primary juicy… the kind of grapiness of the wine. Anything with traditional method, you'll see for my wines anyway, tends to be a little bit more savory.”
Kurtz said Gloria Ferrer has a house style, but also experiments.
“Most of our wines are wines that are out there in distribution…They’re supposed to be approachable. They’re supposed to be something that potentially has a little more sugar…They are fruitier. They are fresh. They are pure. They’re trying to be bright and pure and fresh and fruity and show the California sunshine that we get here, and that’s our house style.
“I really respect what a lot of other growers and producers do with their style, but that’s what has made Gloria what it is for so many years, and hopefully many, many years to come.
“We get to play around on small scales with our Innovation wines–playing around with single vineyard stuff from our estates, showing off clones, showing off different vessels–amphora versus barrel versus whatever else it may be, Methode ancestral wines, fun small-scale projects that we pour out for our wine club and tasting room.”
“The classics–the non-vintage, multi-vintage wines, the Royal Cuvee-those are wines that we’ve been making for a long time, and you don’t mess with the style. The vintage to vintage variation is there, but the style is true.”
Sourcing from a variety of sites and vineyards across the state at Under the Wire, the approach is different, Cottrell said.
“Even though I love like Cruse or Gloria Ferrer with their house styles,” he said, “we were very much trying to be the counterpoint to that,” he said. “Alder Springs and Brosseau are about a six to seven hour drive apart from each other. If these wines don't taste completely different, like our whole thesis on terroir via bubbles is fucked, and they did taste completely different.”
“Bedrock has always been our main business as a winery, so at our scale for Under the Wire, we're going to focus on making 1,200 to 2,400 bottles every year because we want to see what that vineyard does in different years, and we've we've made the wines also to age for a long time,
“How we make the wine, we pretty much do the same thing every year. There's always a little bit of adjustment, like Pinot…Always fermenting in old oak, aging in old oak, so we kind of have this consistency of how we press and ferment the wine, and that leads to like where you really can track a vineyard and kind of admit the variations over years.”
For Kurtz, the options the sparkling winemaker has are endless, compared to still wine.
“There's a few choices to make with still wine, right? There's a pick decision. There's fermentation. How you're going to ferment it? Aging time? Which barrels to choose? All of that.”
“For sparkling, there are infinite choices…when you're going to pick it, how you're going to ferment it? What levels are you going to charge at? Like what carbonation pressure levels are you going for? How long are you going to leave it in tirage? When you disgorge it? How are you going to disgorge it? What's your dosage going to look like? What are you going to use as your dosage base? What are the sugar levels going to be?…There's just so many choices to make.
“To echo what you guys said [about it taking a long time to see the results], our Carneros Cuvee is nine years in tirage. Our Royal Cuvee is six years in tirage. I started with my sixth harvest… and I haven't seen the release of the first Royal Cuvee that I produced there, and I won't see the release of our first Carneros, my first Carneros Cuvee, for another three to four years.”
History Enters the Picture: Making Sparkling Zinfandel
Cottrell spoke about Buena Vista’s legacy in sparkling that began when Arpad Haraszthy, son of California wine pioneer Agoston Haraszthy–credited with making the first commercial wine in 1857–went to Champaign in 1868 to study sparkling wine.
“This is kind of a forgotten story about the original great sparkling wine house of California.,” he said.
It’s all documented in a book called A Toast to Eclipse.
“It’s an incredible book. Arpad came back to California after studying in Champagne. He founded a winery in San Francisco called Eclipse, which ended up blowing up. He was in the 19th century–there were a lot of busts and booms in California–and he definitely felt all of them. But in the good times, he was making hundreds of 1,000s of bottles of traditional method sparkling wine in San Francisco, sourced from out near Wente, Livermore, and up in Sonoma. [His primary vineyard was in Yolo County.]
“One of Arpad’s favorite grapes to make sparkling wine with was Zinfandel. Most people don’t realize this, but Zinfandel is actually a high acid grape. When you pick Zinfandel at sparkling wine alcohol levels, you know about 18, 19 Brix we’re talking about, the pHs, the TAs could be very similar to Chardonnay or Pinot.
“So we saw this wine as an ode to some of the original method traditional sparkling wine from California from vines that were planted during Arpad’s time. This is from our home vineyard Bedrock. The oldest vines there date back to 1888. So it's our historical nod to the original great, traditional method sparkling wine.”
Climate Change: Trialing Malvasia
Experimentation with varieties continues at Gloria Ferrer, Kurtz said.
“We're playing around a lot with different varieties in very, very small quantities…We make 100% Pinot Blanc sparkling wine, Illumina, which is one of my favorites. Very light, very pretty. We don't leave it in a garage for a long time, and it really shows that bright fruit, that kind of honey.
And then you know, playing around with small percentages of other stuff, we planted some Malvasia on the property. When the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are struggling in heat, the Malvasia is growing like crazy, and it could be happier.”
Pet Nat
In the Q and A, I asked about the role that pet nat has played in natural wine’s popularity.
“It seems to me that pet nat really fueled a lot of the natural wine movement in terms of revenues–it was very approachable. It was fruity. It was bubbly.
"Prosecco is a worldwide phenomenon right now. I went to the Cava meeting this year, where Cava announced its new organic-only designation, and I’m sure they’re going to be taking on Champagne in that way because Champagne uses a horrific amount of herbicides. And I don’t know if anyone here reads Carolyn Henry…I published her photos on my own substack. Anyway, there’s a lot of different sparkling choices now. It’s really interesting to see this panel because it’s real sparkling winemakers compared to Pat Net, which has been so predominant in natural wine. And I just wonder if you could comment on how natural wine has shaped the landscape. How pet nat has shaped the landscape of natural wine?”
Said Brandt, “I personally struggle with natural wine and pet nat because a lot of the wines I think are not drinkable, to be honest, right?
“I think you’re probably right…Any pet nat is really approachable. It’s really fun. A lot of them are in the $20 to $25 range, which makes them really easy to drink. And so it probably did fuel it.
“Lily’s though is an exception…most pet nets are like $25-30, and we charge $45. And it always sells out.”
“I think a lot of what fueled natural wine was a different generation, and they were not interested in all the pretense of wine…I think that was probably part of it as well–it was just a rebellion against that.”
Another Dynamic?
“I wonder about a different question,” Brandt said, “…if you look at natural wine and the rise of social media, they are almost parallel. So did social media change the dynamic of the wine business–did that lead to the rise of natural wine? I don’t have an answer for that, but I’ve thought about it a lot.”
Next up: more coverage of Unfiltered to come, on natural versus conventional wine, table wine, Lodi as a hotbed for new wines, and more. Subscribe!
In a field day focused on highlighting estate and region wide pest management and biodiversity, Caleb Mosley, president of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers, acknowledged the challenge Quintessa’s team faced in managing such a large property–280 acres (140 planted) on diverse terrain, with more than 120 acres of oak trees–under both organic and biodynamic certification.
“I want to say one of the things that I think is really unique and a challenge that you and the team here have overcome is that you practice these really intricate and difficult ideas on a large property,” he said, before a group of about 20+ growers Wednesday July 15 at the Rutherford property.
The framed photo on the easel is an aerial photo of the estate, much of which is visible in the land in the vista below, which attendees could see from the promontory where the talk was held. The estate was virgin land before the winery’s founding in 1989.
Here is a map Quintessa published earlier on its website that shows the diversity of soil types and terrain:
The property is owned by the Chilean born Huneeus family headed by Agustin Huneeus Sr. (former CEO of Concha y Toro) and Valeria Huneeus who aligned early on with biodynamic, holistic farming, and have over the long span of their winery’s history worked with a who’s who of organic, biodynamic and biodiversity greats.
Biodynamics was the de facto “organic plus” and regenerative standard before the more recent “no till” regenerative movement found its own voice. Though the two movements have some things in common, but they also differ in goals and methods. (Too long of a story for this post! A great topic for another day.)
That list of Quintessa collaborators over the years includes:
• Texas born biodynamic pioneer Alan York, who is familiar to some for the role he played at Apricot Lane Farms, which he converted to organic and biodynamic farming. The farm’s conversion is a tale well told in the hit documentary The Biggest Little Farm.)
• Renowned Miguel Altieri, a former Berkeley professor who is credited with having founded the field of Agro-Ecology and who has worked with both the Pope and Prince Charles to create healthier farming systems globally.
• Rodrigo Soto, one of the biodynamic pioneers in Chile who managed the Hunneus’ estates in Chile and later at Quintessa, and has a history of working with biodynamic leaders including Benziger, York and as well as being a leader himself, hosting the Napa biodynamic conference at Quintessa in 2023.
• Olga Barbosa, one of the pioneering, global biodiversity academic and foundational experts on vineyard integration into ecosystems, leading pioneering biodiversity initiatives in Chile with Emiliana and working with the Napa Valley Grapegrowers as well as Quintessa.
Ecosystem services model: A slide from Barbosa’s 2023 talk at Quintessa. While people may imagine land as either productive or unproductive, this slide illustrates the integrated model on a vineyard in Chile. It is also the direction UCANR scientists are moving in their understanding of farming systems.
Mosley said putting this into practice is challenging but worthwhile. He recalled working on the estate for two years, working with Martin.
“This is not a small 40-acre where you can get a crew in there whenever you want. You have to farm this as a large organism with larger blocks, and still be able to be at that level of intimacy with what’s happening with an organic mentality. I don’t know of any other estate that’s done what you guys are doing.”
“I think the real power of it is in stepping back and looking at the bigger picture and how do you interact with the estate? How do you think about the vineyard, and what can you do in the bigger picture?” Mosley continued.
This big picture thinking has led to increasing biodiversity throughout the property, a long term project.
“We have this natural asset of the intact oak woodlands and the intact trees within the vineyard. On top of that, we’ve also made an active effort to increase the diversity–planting native trees, planting insectaries,” Wineburg said.
Restoring the area bordering Napa river restoration was one of many projects.
“We plant coyote brush and manzanitas and it's a beautiful place now down there,” said Galvan. “Every 10 rows, I put in insectary cover crops.”
In an area designed for guests to see the insectaries, they switched to predominantly native species.
Elsewhere they mimicked other biodiversity techniques Barbosa pioneered at Emiliana in Chile, including building connecting corridors.
“We built an insectary there, as well as at the house and at Martine’s house, partly with the idea of trying to connect the corridors for the insects–creating areas where the native bees and insects have a certain amount of space that they can jump from one to the other. So creating a corridor for them to further expand around the estate and take advantage of these extensive oak woodlands,” Wineburg said.
“We also very consciously made the landscaping around the winery with native species.” That is another hallmark of Barbosa’s work at Emiliana in Chile.
She said, “The source of the native yeast is, in fact, in the oak wood, which is not in the grapes.”
“I want to give credit to someone who was here before me–Michael Sipiora,” said Mosley. “He had been here for a long time (2002-2014). So when I got here, the ethos established by Augustine and Valeria had already been here.
“When I landed here, there was a beautiful row of buckwheat–I've never seen it as healthy and as robust. That was 10 years ago. So what I wanted to describe with that is that this has been an ethos that has transcended different management styles and different people.”
Mosley said he’d taken some “fancy, nerdy” steps in the vineyard in the Silver North block where the lower part is wetter. The team used two different rootstocks–one for each of the two different soil types.
“We designed an irrigation system based on where the soil change was. We actually installed subsurface drainage on the bottom, wetter area. Now you look at that block and you wouldn't be able to tell there's two different rootstocks. It worked out beautifully.”
Isolating unwanted pests is another detail the estate carefully manages. If workers work in. block that has mealybugs, they will not work in a no-mealybug area the same day, to avoid spreading the insects.
Their insectaries do not invite unwanted insects.
Sheep management has changed over the years in relationship to containing unwanted impacts that could infect healthy vines, Galvan said.
“When we bring animals onto the property, like the sheep, we have to be conscious of where they’re going because they’re moving stuff around. I think there’s a lot of unintended consequences there.”
Wineburg said today they use the sheep only in the woodland areas and only to suppress potential fire fuels.
In discussion, a participant asked how the transition to organic/biodynamic went.
“For us, it wasn’t a transition…we've operated for so long with these practices before getting certified. We did it because Valeria believed in it, because we believed in it, not for marketing. We hadn't feel the need to bring in an outside organization,” said Wineburg.
Wineburg said conversations at large began changing about certification.
“So many more people were talking about things, and if we would talk about it and not be certified, someone say like, ‘But you're just talking about it.’ And so we took the steps to get certified.”
The company certified the estate as organic in 2020 and Demeter certified biodynamic in 2021.
Organic farming is important, especially in a very competitive market, Wineburg said.
“I think in a more and more challenging market for grapes for wine that point of differentiation is important. And as a winemaker, I will insist on buying organic grapes. Or if they're going to say that they're like practicing organic, I want proof of that.
“It's not just like a value add. It's a need to have, and it's not that hard in our Mediterranean climate. They can do it in Bordeaux, and it's really hot and humid there. Like there's no excuse. Period. So that's now like a baseline.”
Said Moseley, “The beautiful part about Quintessa and what’s been done here is that it’s been a full-blown commitment to organic farming certification, certification with biodynamic farming, and the principles of those are embodied in the practices here that work really well for Quintessa. I think that’s that’s really impressive for a property of this scale.”
Next: Part 2 of the July 15 Field Day, which focuses on UCANR entomologist Houston Wilson’s talk.
The third field day is July 22 at Opus One. You must be registered for directions to the demo site.
The Sonoma Valley organic producers group S.O.R.B.E.T. raised funds for its next Fort Mason event in Rossi Ranch's historic vineyard and announced the date for its 2026 Fort Mason event: Nov. 8.
A fundraising dinner for vintners who make wine from organically farmed grapes in Sonoma Valley took place Saturday, July 11 at the historic Rossi Ranch in Kenwood, where organic vineyard pioneer Phil Coturri celebrated the Rossi family who planted the original vines in 1910 and the Otellini family who hired him in 2012 to restore the historic vineyard.
Wine historian and vintner Morgan Twain-Peterson MW of Bedrock has inventoried every vine and varietal in these historic blocks and got his first chance to make wine from them in 2024. The Peterson family are also major historic vine preservers, preserving Bedrock Vineyard whose earliest Sonoma Valley estate vines date from the 1880s.
Sam and Twain-Peterson celebrated the Sonoma Valley for the high percentage of vines being farmed organically. (Some are certified, while others are verified with data from the Pesticide Use Report).
The event featured wines from a who’s who of celebrated historic as well as up and coming producers, including:
• Bettina Sichel of Laurel Glen (Cabernet from Sonoma Mountain)
• Reid Griggs (winemaker today at Stony Hill as well as at his own label Tidings, offering sips of his Cabernet from Moon Mountain)
• Stewart Cellars (new owners of the historic 1960s Montecillo vineyard), with a Yountville tasting room
• Twain-Peterson and Chris Cottresll (Bedrock Wine Co. and Under the Wire)
• Joel Peterson’s Once and Future label (selected organic vineyards)
• Will Bucklin’s historic Old Hill Ranch label (Bambino Zinfandel), the oldest vines in Sonoma Valley (1880’s)
The Coturri family’s own winery, Sixteen 600, brought a selection of its white and red wines from Rossi Ranch (which I have to confess are among my personal favorites).
Eight of the 42 farmed acres on the 130 acre Rossi site date from the 1910 era, growing the old field blend on immaculately farmed, head trained vines. The fruit is reserved for special clients (including the Coturri’s winery). An elite group of winemakers (including some of Napa’s most prestigious) come for that fruit.
There were also a few special sips…this was from the early Kamen years. Another bottle tasted was a 2006 Zin from Phil’s cellar.
Certification marks a significant milestone for regenerative agriculture in one of California’s premier winegrowing regions.
Press Release
LOMPOC, Calif. (July 21 2026)
Administered by the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA) and verified through California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), Regenerative Organic Certified® (ROC™) is among the world’s most rigorous agricultural certifications. Building upon certified organic production, ROC recognizes farms that meet comprehensive standards for soil health and land management, farmer and worker fairness, and animal welfare where applicable.
For Groundstar Vineyard owners Chiara Shannon and Joseph Brent, the designationrepresents an important milestone and reflects their long-term commitment to regenerative land stewardship.
“From the day we acquired Groundstar, our vision has been to cultivate a vineyard that promotes ecological health, supports the people who work the land, and contributes positively to the broader agricultural community,” said Shannon. “Becoming Regenerative Organic Certified® validates the work of our farming team and reflects our belief that exceptional vineyards begin with healthy, living soils.”
Situated in the heart of the Sta. Rita Hills, Groundstar encompasses 81.5 certified acres, including approximately 25 acres planted primarily to Pinot Noir, Syrah, and Grenache. Since acquiring the property in 2024, the team has implemented a comprehensive regenerative farming program focused on building healthy soils, increasing biodiversity, and strengthening ecosystem resilience.
Those efforts include cover cropping, compost application, rotational sheep grazing, biodiversity plantings, reduced tillage, and holistic land management practices designed to improve the long-term health and function of the vineyard ecosystem.
Earlier this year, Groundstar expanded its stewardship through the acquisition of the adjoining Williams Ranch, creating a contiguous 320+ acre estate encompassing a working vineyard, ranchland, wildlands, and conservation areas in the Sta. Rita Hills AVA. Together, the expanded footprint and ROC™ certification reflect the estate’s long-term commitment to regenerative agriculture at scale. Groundstar’s approach is guided by the belief that a vineyard is part of a larger living landscape.
“Regenerative agriculture asks us to think beyond the vines—from fence line to fence line,” said Brent. “Healthy soils, thriving microbial life, beneficial insects, grazing animals, native plants, and the people who care for the land all play an essential role in regenerative farming. Our responsibility is to create the conditions for those systems to thrive together.”
The ROC™ certification complements Groundstar’s existing CCOF Certified Organic and Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing (CCSW) credentials, as well as its ongoing biodynamic and regenerative farming practices.
As interest in regenerative agriculture continues to grow, Shannon believes certification provides an important measure of accountability.
“The term ‘regenerative’ is increasingly used in agriculture, but certification matters because it establishes clear standards and independent verification,” she said. “We wanted to hold ourselves accountable to a recognized framework and demonstrate that regenerative farming can succeed at the highest level of premium winegrowing.”
Groundstar Vineyard supplies fruit to a growing group of acclaimed winery partners while also hosting educational programs, private events, and immersive vineyard experiences centered on regenerative agriculture, wine, and land stewardship.
The vineyard is part of Groundstar’s broader 320+ acre estate holdings, which includes the adjoining Williams Ranch and encompasses a working vineyard, ranchland, wildlands, and conservation areas. Together, these diverse landscapes are stewarded to promote healthy soils, biodiversity, ecosystem resilience, and long-term environmental sustainability.
