At Dry Stack Vineyard we farm for some very particluar wineries - including our own - and we pride ourselves on our ability to meet the most demanding requirements.

Growing grapes in the north coast comes down to three main factors - how much water you put on, how you manage your canopy and how much crop you carry. Water is the biggest "lever" we have over our vines, it helps us control vigor and berry size when applied correctly. Canopy management is the next biggest "lever" we have. We can control the amount of sun exposure the fruit and the interior of the plant gets which has a big impact on fruit flavors and next years crop. Anyone that tells you they have both of these down to a science is deluded, but we try our best to apply just enough enough water and maintain a balance of good fruit exposure while maintaining as much canopy as possible.

Beyond water and canopy management there are other considerations that aren't quite as controversial.

Nutrition - Syrah in Bennett Valley requires a lot of Phosphorous (and not much else). We work to supply as much as that as possible with natural, organic fertilizers but because the organic sources of Phospohorous aren't very concentrated we end up having to augment them with conventional, chemical fertilzers. It costs more money, but we feel the vines and the soil are better for it (if not our irrigation system).

Disease Pressure - Mildew, Botrytis and the occaisional insect pest are our yearly battle as the are on all vineyards in the North Coast. We use a mostly organic regime for fighting mildew of sulfer, Kaligreen and Serenade but we have expanded beyond organic materials when we felt the benefit to the vines and the farm outweigh the negatives of any particular material.

Sustainability

Sustainability is a subject to which we give a great deal of thought on a daily basis and we are committed to responsible, sustainable farming. We believe strongly in considering the impact of everything we do on our vines, our farm, our family, our neighbors, our comunity and the world - and believe me weighing those factors against eachother can be very complicated.

We tried farming orgaincally for 3 years and during that process we came to believe that the basic organic rule forces farmers to make rediculous choices which is something that I have come to believe even more strongly over time. While we were farming organically our biggest challenge, and I think the biggest example of how the Organic rule fails, was fighting weeds. The only options availble to us were:

1. Hand hoeing - this is prohibitively expensive and very hard work.
2. Mechanical Tillers - we broke several of these in attempts to make them work and in the process they ripped out quite a few of our vines - I ended up calling our vine removal program. They are effective in the right kind of soils...but, I have a hard time justifying the use of a large tractor along with it's fuel, polluion and compaction it causes in the vineyard.
3. Vinegar - turns out you can buy vinegar strong enough to burn the exposed parts of a weed. It's a natural prodcut (used in food processing) but just becuase it's natural doesn't mean it's nice. The vineagar we used is so strong that it will burn through your clothes and is very dangerous to handle -but becuase it's "natural" the organic rule allows it.
4. Flamer - this is the most amazing of all. Because you are not applying a chemical, it's allowed under the organic rule. So you can tow a propane tank behind your tractor or ATV with two or four large "burners" literally "bloiling" the weeds to death at the surface. It's dangerous as hell and causes all kinds of trouble in the vineyard no to mention all the fossil fuels it uses.

In the end all these options seemed rediculous. Here's how we ended up looking at it.

We really dislike pre-emergent herbicides and don't use them. They are nerve toxin derived and essential make the soil they are applied to sterile over a period of time. We believe that it is important to keep the soil alive and the carbon cycle functioning ESPECIALLY in the vine row. We have gravitated towards RoundUp as the least impact solution. It is systemic which means we only have to apply it twice. It is not derived from a nerve toxin and is not pre-emergent which means that after the plants that come in direct contact are dead the next set of plants can start growing. We can apply RoundUp behind our ATV using less fuel and causing less compaction that something dragged behind the tractor.

We also dislike chemical fertilizers. It's like raising kids on sugar and it shortcuts the process of the soil mediating the nutrient's absorbtion into the vine. But we use them because we simply cannot not get the required effect from the organic fertlizers that are available. We use the organic fertilizers as well as both a long term, slower release fertilizer and as a soil conidition/soil bug feeder. We use as little chemical fertilizers as we can to meet our Phosphorous needs.

Our pesticide program (the belief that Organic farming does not use pesticides is not true, they just use Organic ones) is largely organic. Sulfur, Serenade and Kaligreen for Mildew and Stylet Oil for most bugs and mildew. But we have also incorporated Pristine into our spray program as we feel for a few reasons it makes sense. When we have to fight bugs, we try to use Pyganic or Stylet Oil wihch are both organic, but occaisionally we need to go stronger and when we have to, we do. They are all broadspectrum, organic and conventional.

We recognize our farm is a managed eco-system and we strive to manage it well. We try to tolerate most things natural but we hate gophers - hate em'.

We belive in diversity and are slowly moving towards a move diverse ecosystem on the farm. We are "no till" for both the soil, the water consumption and the habitat it provides.