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Growers in Lodi are "in a world of hurt," industry leaders say, due to decreased wine demand, and experts have recommended that the region tear out 30,000 acres of vines. But there may be a light at the end of the tunnel: going organic.
That's according to Vino Farms vineyard director Mike Harder who spoke at an Agrology webinar with Vino Farms viticulturist Daniel Meyers. The webinar explored the impact of organic and regenerative practices with a deep data dive on measurable soil health and respiration variables using Agrology sensors.
IMHO, I'd say this is hands down one of the most valuable webinars of the year, so far.
For a 20 percent increase in farming costs, they said buyers, large and small, are clamoring for certified regenerative organic grapes and paying double or more above the going rate compared to conventional grapes.
Markets are conversations, and it all depends on who's buying.
Bonterra was a key player in boosting Vino Farms' interest in organic grape selling, as was Avivo, a newer brand (approaching 30,000 cases in 2025). Now other smaller wineries are asking for grapes certified Regenerative Organic, the team said.
See the video and the slides for additional details.
The journey for Vino Farms began before 2023. (See earlier story with Craig Ledbetter on WineBusiness.com on the company's earlier organic perspective). The giant company farms 17,000 acres of conventional or sustainable grapes across California and is a major player in the wine grape grower world.
IN SEARCH OF SOLVENCY IN A DOWN MARKET: PIVOT TO NEW CLIENTS
Sustainable certification did not boost demand or prices, the team reported. Now the company is pivoting in a new direction it had not anticipated, representatives reported.
Said Harder:
"We are motivated as a business to stay solvent. Obviously, it's a business that's been in play for over 50 years, and we had to adapt, right? If we're going to stay in business, we can't rely on the big players, the big wineries in the game, to keep us sustainable for the future. We had to look outside the box."
"I remember a point where Dan and I got an email from our one of our owners. He says, 'Hey, my phone's going off the hook. We need to set up a meeting and talk about how we're going to expand our operations in terms of organic and biodynamic?' Well, that was two years ago."
After Avivo founder, climate activist and vintner Ridgely Evers sought biodynamic (and later regenerative and organic) grapes, in 2023, the team was invited to Bonterra in Hopland for a Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC) workshop.
"So Dan and I toodle over there. And we sit, we listen to everything. They talk about the three pillars.
"And the first two pillars–soil health–I think we can handle that. That looks great. Shouldn't be a problem. The second pillar...animal welfare, I've got a sheepherder. We contract our sheepherder out. He's good."
"But the third pillar is the one that we all kind of, we looked at each other like, Whoa. That's a little invasive. There's some vulnerability there. I don't know that that would fly with us. Well, we took that back to ownership, and ownership batted it around for a couple of weeks, and we decided, 'let's make a run at it, right? So you expose yourself a little bit with that third pillar...Let's be honest. You've got to bring in HR, you've got to bring in your employees."
"And today, we continue to receive phone calls–not from the big players, but from small wineries–looking to source fruit that is regenerative certified. That's our motivation, guys."
CONSUMER DEMAND: NEWER WINE DRINKER SEGMENT IS PRO-ORGANIC
A recent Wine Market Council study on 1,800+ consumers in their 20s and 30's (representing a variety of ethnicities) found that 59 percent prefer organically grown wines. According to WMC president Liz Thach, roughly a third of all consumers are interested in eco-friendly wines.
As Harder put it,
"Everybody understands this is a market, right? And in my 30 years, I've never seen the market as dismal as it is today. If farms are going to sustain themselves for the next 50 years, we have to adapt. So that's our motivation–to continue forward with that. And it sounds shallow in a sense, right? But at the end of the day, we are a business, right? And out of this transition into regenerative, we are learning some things about ourselves as a company."
Charlie Dubbe, Agrology's head of partnerships, said consumer demand can change farming.
"Regenerative agriculture and regenerative viticulture cannot and will not scale to the level that we need it to really revitalize our food system, and our wine grape system, without that market mechanism..."
"I think that seeing that price difference is the market mechanism to allow you guys to not only explore regenerative, but now to get excited about it and continue to scale."
Harder said organic is providing a greater upside than sustainability.
"We were hoping that sustainability would provide us with that mechanism, and it didn't. We were hoping being certified sustainable would provide a little bump in price. I'll be honest–I don't know that I have seen a price increase in the last 15, 16 years from the big players in the Lodi region. So we are in a pocket that's very unique. We can grow tonnage to a certain degree, but we're not going to pump out 15-20 tons to the acre in Lodi. We can't do it. It's not feasible, right? So, at the price point that we are at, we have to find a niche market to continue, right?"
MEETING THE SOCIAL EQUITY CHALLENGE RESULTS IN A BETTER PRODUCT
Harder volunteered to become the first at the company to help achieve the social equity pillar which requires companies to pay vineyard workers a living wage (as calculated by an MIT calculator for each region in the US). He said closer relationships with workers have led to improvements for both workers and the company.
"[The workers] are actually out there doing the leaf pulling, the suckering etc., right? There's been a disconnect for a long time–well, probably forever–between the farm management companies and the farm labor contractor employees. What we're doing now is trying to bring that circle of communication closer with everybody, and this is going to evolve into a role where I get to go around and speak with all of the Vino Farms employees...without a doubt, there's a premium being paid."
"The smaller wineries are doubling what we would normally get from the big players. That allows us to come in on the labor side and do site specific tasks that these guys are asking for us to do. I can't really do that for the big players. It's just with the cost of labor and everything...it's just not feasible right at the end of the day. We're a business. We have to stay solvent. But definitely this move into the regenerative side, and the organic side, has given us that opportunity to get back in the fields and do these cultural practices that increase the quality, right? Absolutely."
BUSINESS BENEFITS
Increased wine quality and better water retention are two of the biggest benefits, he said.
"It's kind of hard to quantify the quality standards from a phenolic standpoint, but I think at this point, feedback from the winemakers has been outstanding."
"Lodi tends to struggle with acidity just because of the heat. I'm hopeful that these practices will help mitigate some of that. We're going to increase our water moisture holding capacity, we're going to move away from all these synthetics."
In a recent internal tasting at Donum (based in Sonoma's Carneros), Harder said the Agrology soil sensors backed up experts' sensory perceptions.
"We did a really interesting tasting where they had one block [a test block] where they've got basically no till, minimal till, and then full tillage...same varietal, same irrigation, everything."
"We got to taste the wines from those three parts of the block. There were some master sommeliers–people who really have quite sophisticated palates. It was so amazing the difference between the three. Everyone agreed that there was so much more life and layers of flavor and complexity in the wine where there was no till. And then what's great is we can pull up the Agrology data–we can show, 'Oh there's way more life, there's way more microbial activity in those blocks.' So it just makes sense, right?"
"It makes sense that in order to create wines with a lot of life and a lot of complexity, we need a lot of life and complexity in the soils, and we need soils that are highly functional. And then, of course, there's all the academic research that backs that up–that shows that when you have soils with more microbial life, you get a higher production of secondary plant metabolites, phenolics, tannins, which on the other side, help the vine be resilient and resistant to stress when there's these crazy ways, right? There's all these compounding, stacking benefits to regenerative."
QUALITY ORGANIC INPUTS MATTER
Vino Farms said it is now moving to supplement purchased organic compost with a new vermiculture program. It's also adding the use of compost tea as well as trialing new products it asked its vendor GrowWest to select for evaluation. Agrology sensors provide essential data, Harder said, to evaluate the impacts of various, cost-effective practices.
"We'll brew compost tea–250 gallons. We are hoping up to start hitting up to 500 to 600 acres with compost tea at once. We're pretty much finding that this can be affordable–affordable enough that we're going to be able to hit our ranches over and over with a compost tea, and then we'll use our Agrology sensors to see if we can pick up any boosts in carbon restoration when we do that."
Meyers said that planting hedgerows of native plants inbetween the vines, not just at the perimeters, is a cultural practice the company is moving towards.
"We're applying five tons an acre of compost every other year, and then that compost is blended with SOP, and that's really probably 80 percent of our nutritional requirements right there."
"And then going into spring, we have a ranch where we get bad leaf hoppers. When you're organic and regenerative, you can't just use a neonic to get rid of leaf hoppers like a regular vineyard would."
Vino Farms brings in a drone and spreads a combination of green lace wings and parasitic wasps [natural predators] to help control both the leafhoppers and vine mealy bugs (VMB).
Then they have a spray program that is sulfur based, combined with an organic fungicide. Biodynamic sprays (BD 501 and 500) supplement those practices throughout the season.
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| (Watch the video to hear more detailed explanations about this slide.) |
Agrology data showed that the cover crops had a bigger impact than compost additions but that the biggest soil health improvement came from not using synthetic fertilizers and herbicide, Dubbe said.
"So this, the green line here, shows the conventional is receiving more compost. It is also receiving cover crops. But yet–that difference between not using synthetic fertilizers and not using herbicides–is creating a massive difference in the microbial biomass, carbon in the microbial activity and also in the carbon accumulation."
He continued, "compost, for example, gets burned off pretty quickly, right? I think the stat is like roughly half of it gets burned off in the first year, and then it's like a little bit less than a little bit less. It lasts like five years."
"But we know that the liquid carbon pathway, which is essentially getting carbon or energy into the soil, through plants...basically is absorbed out of the atmosphere, and then it is released into the soil as root exudates. That is the best way to get carbon into the soil, and that's the best way to build your biology."
"That's the best way to build soil organic matter that really stays for a long time...we can't really overstate the importance of cover crops and just having living plants on as much of our soil as as long as possible."
Another Agrology spokesperson added his observations on typical drivers for moving toward more regenerative practices.
"Typically, we hear two motivations right for going down this road. It's quality, and then it's climate buffering, dealing with heat, and dealing with water holding," he said.
ECONOMICALLY VIABLE?
Does all this pay off in the here and now? Harder said it does.
"[In Lodi] we're anywhere from $550 to $600, $700 tops, a ton. That's the reality for conventional in Lodi. And it's been that way for 15 years, as far as I can remember. We have not seen a price increase in Lodi in that long."
"We have smaller wineries and we have larger wineries that are sourcing fruit out of the organic and regenerative blocks. The larger wineries are a little bit softer on their pricing models. They're probably around $900 to $1,000 a ton. Whereas the smaller guys, the guys that are around the 2,000 case level...we're fetching anywhere from $1,500 to $1,800 a ton."
What about the cost side? Do the increased costs to farm under regenerative and organic certifications prove cost effective in today's market?
Said Harder, "It's more expensive on the cost–your IPM line items, your weed management, your weed abatement. Some items are a little bit higher, but not significantly. I'd say [farming costs are] probably 20 percent more."
"We're far more profitable in our organic and regenerative [compared to conventional or sustainable]...Absolutely." He said there was no price difference to the buyer between organic and regenerative organic at Vino Farms.
In order to simplify things, the grapes are farmed to meet a variety of certifications ranging from A Greener World (regenerative), ROC and organic. "We have a ranch that certified regenerative organic. We have Regenerative By A Greener World...CCOF certified...Lodi Rules, Bee Friendly and Demeter Biodynamic. We just farm in a regenerative way that essentially covers every single certification."
"We are still figuring out what regenerative certification is going to bring most value to us. We think Regenerative Organic (ROC) from ROA is the way to go."
"The hardest part about being ROC certified is when you do your social equity audit–that's a multi day audit," he added.
"But when it comes to certification, regenerative is a very quickly changing world, so we'll see."
Harder also said the quality of various practices is a big factor that is not often well explained.
"In my experience and opinions, it's really worth spending a little bit extra on the sources for that compost, right? Because you need so much less of it, if you're making compost teas. If you have really high quality stuff, with higher fungal counts, [it makes a difference]."
"People say 'Oh, you cover crop. But cover cropping is not [just] cover cropping. It's not cover cropping, right? Irrigation is not [just] irrigation. Compost teas–there's such a wide variety of the qualities and then the impacts that they can have, which again, brings us back to [the fact that] it's so important to measure the results and so important to be super observant."
"When you're farming organic regenerative, don't just try to find what you do conventionally and just find an organic version of that product and farm exactly the same. You're going to run into a lot of issues. You're going to learn that organic liquid fertilizers, especially when it comes to nitrogen, lack a lot of potency. You can get your potassium pretty easily organically, because the others are you're going to run into trouble. And then if you're also doing that, you're going to learn that treating leaf hoppers is very difficult."I would recommend just start doing compost. Start learning to replace conventional practices with organic ones, going one at a time. And if you do it right, and you do it correctly, you really shouldn't have much of a yield drop."
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