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