California’s vineyards are on the verge of crisis.
Vine disease is rampant, labor costs are exploding, and the climate is getting hotter, sometimes wetter, certainly weirder. But most places you look, the vineyards appear exactly as they did decades ago: trellised, trimmed and utterly exposed to increasingly hostile elements. Despite brand new challenges, many are battling the same old ways—bringing shovels to a knife fight.
Not everyone thinks this way. A growing number of vintners across the state are managing their lands with proactive philosophies born from extensive experience and backed up by tangible outcomes. While many of their strategies rely on the latest science and technology, it turns out that the best tool we have to win this fight is as old as time, because Mother Nature can lead the way.
Nature Doesn’t Need Us
It didn’t take much convincing for Mike Grgich to agree with his nephew Ivo Jeramaz nearly 25 years ago that their family’s Napa Valley vineyards should go organic. That’s how farming was always done in Yugoslavia, where they both grew up. “It wasn’t called organic or biodynamic or regenerative,” says Jeramaz, who came to Napa as a mechanical engineer in 1986 but stayed to work in wine with his legendary uncle. “It was just farming that had been done for generations following natural cycles.”
