Grape Mealybugs feel the wrath of the Mealybug Destroyer (Cryptolaemus montrouzieri) during an Integrated Pest Management project at Ridge Vineyards, Santa Cruz Mountains, California.
Sustainable Practices
More than ever, people want to know about their food. How is it grown? Where is it grown? How healthful is it? The same holds for wine. An increasing number of us wonder whether a wine is made from grapes grown organically, biodynamically, sustainably, or conventionally. Ridge is committed to sustainability, and to organic certification of our vineyards.
What does this commitment to sustainability and organics mean? Sustainable agriculture can be summarized as a farming system that is sensitive to the environment, responsible to the community, and economically feasible to implement and maintain. These three principles provide a framework and direction to guide all decisions relating to the farm. Sustainability is an ever-changing target, even a state of mind: improvements can always be made to lessen one's impact on the planet. Organic farming can be defined as sustainable farming using only certified organic chemicals and amendments.
TO MOW, OR NOT TO MOW...
Multiple decisions go into making a vineyard sustainable.
Let's look at mowing between the vine rows. Sounds easy—just get out
the mower and go! Or better yet, just call your lawn service. Before
deciding to mow, a few other criteria must be looked at and analyzed.
How mature are the grass seeds? It is critical that the seeds are mature
before mowing to ensure that the desirable grasses will reseed. How
dry is the ground? Driving a tractor on wet soil compacts it, destroying
soil structure. How much rain has fallen this season? In dry years,
earlier
mowing preserves soil moisture for the vines. What is the weather forecast?
Mowing helps to warm the soil, giving some frost protection to emerging
grapevine shoots. What pest insects or beneficial insects are present
in the cover crop? These insects will migrate into the vines after
row vegetation is cut. Are the tractor
and mower serviced and ready? Has
the tractor
driver been trained, and is he or she willing and able to do the job
correctly? Questions such as these are asked and answered for every
task in our vineyard.
We are always working on and improving our sustainable practices. A few examples:
Compost Each year, we compost all our grape stems and pomace (fermented skins and seeds) along with our neighbors' horse manure and other amendments. Composted for a year, this "brown gold" is spread on our vineyards after harvest and helps feed our soil, which then feeds our vines.
Cover Crops We use several different cover crops, depending on our goals for each vineyard block. These include soil-building legume and grass mixes that add just enough nitrogen and organic matter to keep the vines healthy; insectary plantings to increase beneficial insects; grasses and clovers for erosion control; deep-rooted perennial grasses to control vigor in excessively fertile soils.
Integrated Pest Management We use IPM for all our insect and disease management. IPM is a systems approach to pests and diseases that combines a wide array of farming practices with careful monitoring of pests and their natural enemies to prevent crop damage. An important overall goal of IPM is to reduce or eliminate pesticide use of both organic and synthetic chemicals.
Insects Instead of spraying to control vine-damaging spider mites, we use beneficial insects to reduce their populations to non-significant levels. Careful monitoring of the mites—along with inundative releases of the pest's natural enemies—means we don't have to spray.
Birds We use raptor roosts and bird boxes to help with insect and rodent control. Plus, they are important to a healthy environment.
Vine Balance We constantly work toward achieving vine balance, essential to producing flavorful wines of distinction and longevity. The cultural practices used in viticulture, from pruning to shoot thinning, leaf pulling, crop thinning, and irrigation management, all lead toward growing grapevines that match variety to climate, vine vigor to soil type, and crop size to canopy. This harmony within the grapevine is a microcosm of the vineyard ecosystem. The more in-balance our vines, the more sustainable we become.
Education Our commitment to sustainable farming leads to our involvement in several organizations that foster new ideas about agriculture and environmental stewardship. We are participating in an agroecology diversity project with UC Berkeley, which will evaluate use of cover crops and hedgerows within a vineyard to promote beneficial insects. The non-profit Vineyard Team, working toward sustainability in winegrapes, is collaborating with us on a cover crop trial of various clovers and their effectiveness in attracting beneficials. Our Sonoma vineyards are enrolled in Fish Friendly Farming's Environmental Certification Program to ensure we are doing everything possible to limit erosion, and sedimentation of streams.
Awards Ridge has been recognized by the United States House of Representatives and the California State Legislature for excellence in water quality improvement and environmental stewardship. Our Lytton Springs Winery has won numerous environmental awards for its green design.
THE FUTURE
Every season, something new is learned that adds to our knowledge
and experience and keeps us headed toward a better, greener vineyard
and world.
