Thoughts on Natural

A club member sent an interesting article a day or two ago on natural wines.  The premise was, most wines come from grapes grown in conventionally farmed vineyards, using pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and intensive tilling which damages the soil biome – a short term strategy to maximize short term yield.  "Most" might be accurate -- probably for sure based on gallons.  But for hyper-premium growing areas like the Napa Valley, it’s not necessarily so.  Driving up the valley on either the Silverado Trail or Highway 29, you’ll see at least half of the vineyards completely carpeted with cover crop – which means they haven’t been sprayed with herbicides.  At Diana’s insistence, we stopped using them about ten years ago and have seen the vineyards flourish.  Our vineyards are fully organic – except for one thing – the sandy volcanic soils are very low on phosphorous.  We’ve been relentlessly piloting different organic micro-supplements in our Brothers Vineyard – in fact, thanks to the pilots, the Brothers Cabernet has been made from organically farmed grapes since the 2015 vintage.  Each pilot takes two or three years.  We haven’t found one that works, but we will.