RISE 6 of 6, Hallelujah and Let's GO
Climate Action & Regenerative Agriculture... but wasn't it all along?
THIS IS IT: The Grand Finale of Napa RISE Climate & Wine Symposium, and alllllll the notes I took during its long-morning-stretched-into-afternoon mind melt.
I felt beyond grateful and supremely aware of my privilege in getting to attend all six days of programming, and it reiterated my belief that wine is sacred and worth every effort of ours to preserve. It compounded my love of wine’s singular ability to connect humans in genuine community, and it confirmed my conviction that our efforts towards resiliency and regeneration for the wine industry can, indeed, set the stage for resiliency and regeneration of our entire world. 🙋♀️ HERE FOR IT.
So. If you’ve got the privilege, what are you gonna do with it?
These “I’ll let you copy my notes” shares are part of my answer.
If you missed Days 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5, feel free to take your time to track back and read up. I’m leaving them up as public posts forever, available to anyone—paid subscriber or no… but if you appreciate the content and think it’s valuable to our beloved wine industry (and, more importantly, to our precious community of humans as a whole), would you consider becoming a paid subscriber? Go paid for even a month… or two, or four. Imagine you asked me out to coffee and bought my matcha latte so you could pick my brain, “So how was RISE??” That’s equivalent to one month of Resilient Wine, boom baby! Or, better yet, imagine you invited me for aperitivo and footed the bill for my glass, yours, and a tasty little shared bowl of olives (I prefer Castelvatranos, if you’re asking). That’s like subscribing to six months! Also: please DO invite me for aperitivo, or at least have one while you read. That sounds dreamy.
Whether you ante up to a paid subscriber or not, I’m still insanely grateful you’re here. I’m outrageously thankful you’re reading. I’m crazy delighted we’re in this journey together and that we all have the great privilege of enjoying the magic of wine.
Here’s some of what I took away and you might care about from Day 6: Climate Action & Regenerative Agriculture…
THE TLDR: OVERVIEW OF THE DAY (keep reading below, if you wish, for more detail):
I have real, meaningful power and agency. YOU do, too. Do not doubt that.
Do not be more afraid of speaking up, asking questions, asking for help, asking for collaboration and to be in community than you are of the world burning around you. The world will burn around you while you wring your hands and play shy. Raise your hand. Stand up. Speak up. Do something… anything… now.
From author/artist Obi Kaufmann: “This story is of grassroots innovation, creativity, love, and communities locking arms and working against the rising tide—a story of post-economic, post-carbon, post-political value.”
MORE DETAILED NOTES:
Asking the Critical Questions Forum: Can Forest & Creek Restoration Create Localized Climate Cooling?
Contacts: Anna Brittain, Executive Director of Napa Green; Mimi Casteel, Vineyard Manager and Winemaker for Hope Well Wine; Tod Mostero, Director of Viticulture & Winemaking at Dominus Estate; Obi Kaufmann, Author and Artist of the California Field Atlas Series; Brock Dolman, Co-Founder and Program Director at the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center (OAEC)
Obi opened with some beautiful prose about anthropic ecology—the study of how human activity inevitably alters Earth’s ecosystems. He points out how California is an artifact of human ingenuity… and it burns because of the decisions people make
His field atlases are so, so pretty, y’all. Peep this map he made and calls “Localizing Hope,” outlining various grassroots projects of regeneration happening in every county of California:
You absolutely must take a minute and read Obi’s caption on Instagram that he put with this image. Just… wow.
His point is that we should look less and less toward federal help but more towards emergent solutions on a local, city or municipal level that are inviting us toward growing sustainability.
He comments that the word “sustainable” is anemic. We need a better word for what we’re striving towards…
(Ahem, resiliency and regeneration!)
Brock replaced Obi at the podium, and DAMN if I do not wish he and Jerome had been present together to battle rap!!! Because Brock is, like, insanely talented at rhyming and flow and dropped such insane hotness that was, wildly, all about ecology… he should truly 100% have a kids TV show where he teaches about preservation and regeneration. I can see the muppets beat-boxing around him now!!! OK. I rest. Here is a sample of his lines, advocating for managing our watersheds:
Our fire fears are in relation to our water woes.
Imagine the Napa watershed as your living lifeboat: From stem to stern and ridge to river, we’ve gotta rethink and retrofit for resiliency.
Think like a watershed: Slow it. Spread it. Sink it. Store it. Share it.
Have a probiotic perspective instead of an antibiotic approach to life.
Slash ain’t trash, it’s a beneficial biomass!
Is the watershed a commodity or a community? How do we work collaboratively?
Take those fire fears and water woes, and turn those fuels into flows.
Ultimately, this is a social and little bit spiritual challenge to connect more to these elements (earth, wind, fire, water) to change course and regenerate.
Tod gets up and opens, contemplatively, deliberatively, with what seems to be a few lines from Wendell Berry’s The Farm:
And so you make your farm.
And so you disappear, into your days, your days into the ground.
Before you go, you may have the joy of seeing what you have made.
Of what it is you have become:
a little changed by work.
But still… itself.
Your place is what you are.
And you are what it is.
Their record is the place.
In the 2022 vintage, Dominus made no wine because of the crazy and relentless heat events. Again and again and again, temps reached over 115°F, Tod explained. And then Tod did his classic Tod brilliant-radical dramatic and emotive thing, and I felt goosebumps forming and tears welling…
“A light extinguished. The wine was dead. For a man for whom wine is his gauge of his connectedness to the land, what was I going to do? Blame everything else? Run away, find a place that’s cooler? Could I change and take responsibility? Or would I stay in the comfort of pretending to adapt?
Then, on April 13, 2023, at 10:20am in this very room, someone stood up and paved a path forward. I thought she was speaking directly to me.
“Hi, I’m Mimi.”
[Stevie swoons at the dramatic effect! The room laughs, appropriately, and in grateful awe.]
Mimi is so bloody dreamy.
Mimi talks about the big Big BIG picture of life on Earth, how it was formed (truly you have to see/hear her speak in real life, my words do no justice), and how living versus non-living things are two states of matter separated by the thinnest of membranes.
AND how if Earth was literally transformed from a hell-like, un-life-supporting rock into “a blue and green sparkle in the dark” then we can indeed reverse the destruction we’ve created by creating a new biofeedback loop.
We do this by restoring ecosystem function at farm scale
Accountability and leadership: what does it look like right now? Do we look to policy? Community? We occupy the thinnest, weakest points in the membrane of homeostasis—we, the land stewards and managers.
HOLD OURSELVES ACCOUNTABLE to our own role here. We have the gift of agency in this moment. Lead with that. That’s what’s needed right now.
Every action we take on our farm today is a political act. The world will continue to burn until someone steps up and says, “I accept my responsibility.”
SPECIFICS:
Slow/spread/sink water.
Plant living roots that hold soil, cool surface and draw moisture down.
Shade earth instead of exposing it.
Protect the soil that feeds the vines.
Less dust. More life. This is how a new feedback loop begins. This is how we bring life back to the farm and light back to the wine.
Tod has begun to implement these practices at Dominus in the past two years and he founded the Abuelitos Foundation, whose mission is to collaborate with working land communities and implement transformative land management practices to create vibrant, productive, and self-regenerating environments. Mimi sits on the board.
Then, I saw Brock give Mimi a fist bump and explode it. Amen.
Anna taught us about forest restoration efforts in Napa, which Napa Green assists with. She showed us a project comparing the traditional model of clearing fuel after the Kincade Fire in 2019, which is expensive and labor-intensive versus using Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK): the evolving knowledge acquired by indigenous and local peoples.
Chip on-site; putting wood chips directly in place. Cal Fire hated this. But then they saw soil moisture content doubled, native vegetation thrived, invasive species slowed, increased creek flows.
3 treatments were compared: TEK, which saw results of natives returning, French broom suppressed, and the degradation of wood chips into soil; regular treatment, which saw French broom and non-natives thrive; and no treatment.
TEK took ½ the time and 1/3 the cost.
The panel discussed carbon, photosynthesis, how carbon follows water, and… lots of chemistry talk… my notes got a little scrambled but the point was that we need to look at the law of compounding, how benefits also compound, and start with increasing vegetation in our farms/vineyards to store water, consider all the ways we can use architecture to store water instead of move it, to maximize its infiltration.
Brock (of course!) said: “How do we move from the drain age to the retain age?”
When Tod said the hardest part of his journey was reaching out to ask for help and realizing he couldn’t do this alone, Brock also replied, “Sometimes the best way to rehydrate the land is with tears from the headwaters,” pointing to his own head. (Y’all, I’m dead from this guy!)
The introduction of parcelization and privatization and compartmentalization caused so much of this. “What you people call resources, our people call relatives.”
Stop with the fences because fire could give a shit about who’s paying the property taxes. Beavers and salmon don’t care about the AP numbers.
Mimi: it will be about people connecting with each other. It takes a lot to stand in this moment and say “I thought I was trying hard, but I see I still have so much to learn.” I try to say it every day that I don’t have all the answers, but we’ll get there faster if we’re holding hands. This gives people a chance to look each other in the eye and say “Can we do this together?” All of us doing this together is a revolution. Impossible happens every day. This is possible. Who’s going to raise their hand first?
We can’t look to our politicians; we need to lead from within. We have to decide what we’re going to pay… forward. If we don’t do it as leaders within ag, it will not happen.
[Aaaaaannnnnd, end scene!]
Next up, Opus One won the day’s leadership award for their regenerative agriculture endeavors! Michael Sillacci, Kimberlee Marinelli, and Haley Nagy were present and stated that the most important thing in your vineyard is your forest.
They are doing a regenerative comparison across different varieties and parcels including a sensory analysis of the wines to determine the impacts.
They’re using sheep to graze, native cover crops, and going no-till on their berms; also planted pollinator gardens.
This not only gave an environmental boost but also provided meaning and purpose for their teams, and it decreased costs of tractors and external inputs and equipment, which boosts their financial health.
Marquee Keynote: From Climate Anxiety to Collective Action: Transforming Emotions Into Impact
Key Contacts: Renée Lertzman PhD, Author, Climate Psychologist and Environmental Strategist; Finn Does, Climate Justice Organizer, Environmental Educator, & Climate Mental Health Advocate
Whoa, Mama. Some real gooey touchy-feely goodness coming out of these two forces…
Renée said: This symposium is the embodiment of who we’re being asked to become right now. It’s very moving to see human beings show up in this way in the time we’re in.
What does it mean to be a light? To have courage? To hold space for each other?
What we’re doing here is a form of existential change work. That means you’re in a world of asking people to look at things that are hard to look at or confront.
Knowing how to toggle being present and embodied while you’re out there doing this work that can be activating, challenging, frustrating, overwhelming.
We forget we all have to invite ourselves to be in this place of humility.
We’re in a moment of deep reflection. How are we doing what we’re doing, and how do we support and resource each other to evolve?
Renée’s job is bridging psychology and environmental work.
Being in a group where we have safety to talk about our feelings is critical to doing this work.
We all manage our anxiety and our urgency in different ways and with different coping mechanisms. Need to recognize these and recognize we do them because we care so deeply:
Yelling: Some have to be cheerleaders, have to keep people inspired, upbeat, positive
Telling: Some feel the need to “right”—tell others what’s right
Selling: Some love knowledge and info and love to educate, we think that’s what will move the needle
Unfortunately sometimes these aren’t the most effective ways to get someone else to care.
What does it look like to be more of a guide? The essence of guiding is about relationship, attunement, curiosity. Your position as an advocate for sustainability/regeneration is a set-up for resistance or people protecting themselves/avoiding you because they know they’re doing something not quite right.
People are more resistant to change when it feels like they’re being challenged or put upon. None of us want to be told what to do.
Knowing this, how do we extend this to stakeholders? How we guide determines our success on this journey.
We shouldn’t see people’s resistance as a lack of caring; most often people are feeling paralyzed or tangled up. Our work as change leaders is to detangle and become a trusted partner and guide.
Attune: understand and tune into your people;
Reveal the truth by being compassionate and truthful to others;
Convene with less talking at and more activating conversations;
Equip people with tools/resources;
Sustain for the long haul
Finn is 19 years old!!! He spoke about his journey in harnessing climate emotions for change.
“It feels like there’s so much chaos, and they want you to feel that so we don’t have strategy. How we organize matters. We cannot restore the world by over-extracting ourselves.”
We live in an era when we’re constantly quantifying our work; it feels like we’re only making change when there’s a quantitative measure of impact. When we’re not meeting those benchmarks it feels like we’re not achieving or we’re doing something wrong. For so many of us right now, it feels like our work has been stalled, and that’s what they want you to feel like. They want you to quit. When we removed that pressure to measure, quantify and justify, there was greater change in our audiences and our organization.
Next we did this fabulous little guiding practice where we learned that it takes way less energy to ask questions, attune to others, and show compassion for them than it does to cheer or right or educate.
Our consistent yelling/telling/selling leads to burnout.
Don’t be afraid to name and acknowledge how you’re feeling and to have that be acknowledged and validated.
Asking the Critical Questions Forum: Can Wine Really Impact Climate Action?
Key Contacts: Anna Brittain, Executive Director of Napa Green; Diana Snowden-Seysses, Winemaker; Olga Barbosa, PhD, Researcher at the Universidad Austral de Chile; Elaine Chukan Brown, Wine Writer, Communicator and Educator
Anna and Diana both grew up in St. Helena. They knew each other in high school! Anna explains that, while she wanted desperately to get out, she ended up back here because she realized that we can make the most change at the local level. This industry has such a profound impact because we sit down and story-tell about our products. We have a unique opportunity to talk about buying regenerative, climate-smart products.
Diana talked about her climate change goals, how sustainability became a very important part of her life after the 2017 fires, about her attempts to capture CO2 from fermentations, about her Cousins bottle rewashing program… but she notes: “Today all the conversations about emissions started to feel secondary to our community being shredded. I’m focusing back on immigration right now. I’m fighting on all fronts but I have to figure out how to be impactful on that right now… Since the recent elections, my goal has been more community and grounding in my life.”
Elaine: “I agree.”
Olga: “Me too.”
Elaine tells two captivating stories about regeneration:
One is the story of a man who, during a massive drought, poked holes in the dirt around his home so that an ant could get into the ground. His entire area within 10 years had lush greenery growing, flora and fauna, just from poking holes. His hyper-localized approach has become a model!
The second is the story of the Klamath River Dam removal project and how, just two weeks after the final removal, salmon returned to the river… and that doesn’t just mean the return of a food supply resource, but it draws insects; those die off after spawning and provide nitrogen and growth of support species. Because of this cycle, more land was reclaimed from the river without losing water supply in the area. Again, a radical impact and shift that is a model others can follow.
Olga’s research is around Mediterranean regions as a priority for biological conservation; they are most vulnerable to climate change; she works with the private sector, especially wine industry, because we are within these regions.
Her team wants to restore native habitats, which generate native/local microorganisms and yeast so we can continue to create terroir-specific wines
Diana discusses her family’s property’s fire risk, explaining that firs were outcompeting the oaks. More trees is not a healthier forest. We need more diversity instead of concentration.
Overarching question posed: How do we share these stories with wider audiences?
The people in our organizations that we see doing this work and telling these stories are the ones who are seeing small creeps upward in sales even in this crazy time.
People who are actually demonstrating what they’re doing are doing better. Let that be an inspiration to go forth and do, and tell. Er… guide ;)
Anna ended the conversation—this one and the entirety of RISE—with the following poem “Keeping Quiet” from Pablo Neruda. I’ll leave you to it, and then I’ll keep quiet for a bit.
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
maybe resilient is the antithesis of extractive.