When I Say "Drying Out" I Do Not Mean Not Drinking.
Notes on J-Rooting, AI, and daring to disagree in public
Somebody said something about drinking out of a fire hose, and that is how I feel.
But I can’t find that part in all my scribbled 85 pages of notes from Day 1 of Napa RISE, so all I can tell you is that they mentioned it, it pertained to irrigating vineyards less, and my point in bringing it up is there is a LOTTTT of information—and overwhelming emotion!—blasting out of Napa RISE and into my astonished lil’ face.
The annual RISE Climate & Wine Symposium has been teased out into six full days of programming, content, discussion and networking. SIX DAYS! Because: how could anyone fit even a fraction of the information and emotion pertaining to climate(!!!) and wine(!!!!!) in just one day? But seriously.
When a friend complained that that meant it cost way too much time/energy/money to attend, I couldn’t exactly disagree… but I also very much disagreed. There are SO many approaches to combatting the climate crisis and to enhancing your own company’s sustainability and resiliency. RISE is like: Pick a card! Any card!! Now go do something with it!!! This symposium offers up a multitude of options and opportunities so that everyone can grab onto something, take action and make an impact.
But since most folks 100% don’t have the time/energy/money to attend all six days (and I, momentously, do!), I’m sharing my notes here. They’re not fully fleshed out or further researched (I inevitably missed lots of precise data in my frantic note-taking so wrote things like “TONS OF!” or “MAD EVIDENCE FOR!”). Essentially, instead of trying to drink from the firehose like me, I’m giving you a nice cold shower of big picture information and key takeaways.
Here’s some of what I took away and you might care about from Day 1: Water Efficiency & Savings…
THE TLDR: OVERVIEW OF THE DAY (keep reading below, if you wish, for more detail):
First order of the day was a mentorship session with Dominus and Pine Ridge about dry-farming vines. I learned a bunch of nerdy things that my hospitalitarian brain geeked out on, having never heard of such things as J-rooting, superficial roots, or 101-14 v. 3309 v. 110-R rootstocks. I also got to touch the roots of a dry-farmed versus a normally irrigated vine, and my brain exploded.
Next we all just about slit our wrists listening to Mark Arak, author of The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California, low-key peddle conspiracy theories about AI convincing us to implant processor chips into our brains. Mark’s writing about how our natural resource, water, has been commodified and is being sold to the highest bidder, is beautiful and captivating. But this talk and his resigned tone was mad depressing. And his response to a question about “What’s bringing you hope?” (Nothing) left me cramped.
Finally we heard from a panel trying to answer the question: Is Water the Solution to Heat Stress? They discussed various opinions on irrigation in the vineyard, and for me, this is where things got really interesting—not just for the whip-smart content or buoyancy of the speakers, but because of the productive discussion and what I took to be healthy, very slight disagreement on approach. Debate = juicy.
MORE DETAILED NOTES:
Workshop II: Mentorship Results: Transitioning to Dry Farming with Pine Ridge Vineyards & Dominus Estate
Contacts: Tod Mostero, Winemaker at Dominus Estate; Gustavo Aviña, Viticulture Director at Pine Ridge; Josh Widaman, Estate Winemaker at Pine Ridge
Establishment vs. Transitioning: key recommendation is for establishing a NEW dry-farmed vineyard versus transitioning a previously irrigated one, as the latter is too weak/doesn’t have enough developed resiliency to successfully make it.
Choose a rootstock appropriate for your soil rather than what you’ve heard is “good for dry-farming.” If it’s appropriate for your soil, you can dry-farm it! For example, 101-14 is NOT known for being drought-tolerant, and yet it’s done very well with dry-farming in the right soil at Dominus.
101-14 rootstock they found to generate super quality consistent wines, opaque, impressive, whereas 3309 seems to make lacier, less tannic wines in their case studies.
Strongly advocate for planting rootstock NOT bench-grafting as it allows richer root development.
“Moppy wig” root ball (nb this was my favorite phrase of the day): Trim roots to one inch to encourage roots going DOWN rather than turning up into J-rooted vines.
J-rooted vines look like what they’re called: the letter J! The roots go down maybe only 1 foot and then hook back up (like a “J”) to get the easy water right at the surface. This means they’re fairly weak/not deeply rooted.
Plant root ball ~8-12” deep so less exposure to surface variability.
PACK THE SOIL around the root ball so there are no air bubbles. This is critical for sturdiness of the vine. Air bubbles are bad! because if there’s a heavy rain and the plant sinks you’ll have no room for grafting later.
Add 4 gallons (lots!) of water very quickly after planting so that you flush out air; then, don’t irrigate again until much later and only ~2x/year deep soaks as it’s getting established before ultimately going fully dry.
Plant as early as possible!! February if you can?! March?! March is better than April, April is better than May, etc. because you can take advantage of the growth opportunities and available winter/spring moisture.
Recommend installing drip irrigation system at time of planting to have just in case of emergencies for 3-4 years post-planting. Usually by then you can pull this out and re-use it on the next planting.
Have drips spaced in between vines, around every 2 feet—that is, 1 foot from vine base so that roots have to stretch—otherwise if they get easy access to water right at the base they can J-root.
Dig lots of holes to examine root structures and see how much moisture is in the soil!
In these holes, they found that dry-farmed vines establish bigger, deeper tap roots in heavier clay soils versus more branching roots in sand/gravel soils.
Often when digging these holes relatively late in the season when they’re worried they need to be irrigating, they find the soil is still saturated where the roots are reaching.
Roots of dry-farmed vines are reaching many feet into the ground versus irrigated are only a foot or two, often J-rooted and weak.
THE ROOT STRUCTURE THO!!! You guys, WHOA. We got to see and FEEL the roots of an irrigated versus dry-farmed vine. Not only was the above point obviously visible, but the dry-farmed vine root was considerably more dense, hard, and strong, with a tighter cell structure clearly more efficient at moving water and nutrients through it. Wild:
Key inspo quote from Tod: “I look to wine to tell me how I’m doing in my relationship with the earth. When the wine is imbalanced or lacking complexity or intrigue, I ask how I can adapt and improve in my relationship with the earth.”
Asking the Critical Questions Forum: Is Water the Solution to Heat Stress?
Contacts: Dr. Jay Famiglietti, Global Futures Professor, Arizona State University; Beth Forrestel, PhD, Asst. Professor of Viticulture & Enology at UC Davis; Philippe Coderey, Co-founder & Owner at Traditional & Biodynamic Vineyard Consulting; Rob Whyte, Chief of Operations Officer at Renteria Vineyard Management
Jay opened the forum with a bunch of data and stats proving that there’s tons of development, especially in the West, esp. in drought- and wildfire-prone areas. Before opening up the conversation further, he made the compelling comment: “Do not ask me where the water is coming from, because I don’t know. And it’s my job to know.”
Surface water periodically rebounds in non-drought years (offering false hope), but groundwater (at the very base level) continues to diminish. No beating around the bush.
Beth’s big point is that we have to shift paradigms. Meaning: stop expecting the same old norms, routines, and outcomes to work. For example, we have to get used to shortening the growing season, especially by picking earlier.
This will likely be tricky (i.e. paradigm-shifting) for those used to big, dark, bold, full wines, but necessary because anthocyanins or phenolics degrade in heat events. And more heat events are coming.
Also look at rootstock choices. Also think about it as treating the vineyard as a total ecosystem.
Make choices less out of fear (like: “OMG just hurry and add water! More water!”) and more open-mindedness, risk quantification, get data and analytics to make new, educated choices.
Use data to track water, use plant sensors to track plant temperatures and moisture versus looking at ambient temperatures. AI is good for this! (Contrary to keynote speaker Mark’s comments.) Because there’s a lot of “noise” in ambient temperature studies—it’s so much more specific, based on soil type, shade, root integrity, vine age, etc. etc.
Consider all the above-mentioned vine-specific factors in determining how you can prepare the vines in advance for inevitable big heat events late in the season.
Philippe disagrees with this approach and with relying on AI, says you need “NI”: Natural Intelligence. Points out how you can intuitively see if a vine is stressed, looks a lot at girdled vines and how they’re struggling to get water and are not so healthy.
Rob points out other options (besides water!) for heat resilience: i.e. canopy management and smaller vines closer to the ground, plus cover crops (more on that to come tomorrow!).
It’s an appropriate time to have these difficult and challenging conversations with owners/growers/winemakers. It’s a good time to discuss alternative approaches or “paradigm shifts” that may have been shied away from by traditional or conservative producers historically, because the industry is in such a bad place right now; so many vines are getting pulled.
EMOTIONS / KEY TAKEAWAYS / OVERARCHING FEELINGS:
We’d better not count on much water in the future. And/or we’d better count on water getting even more expensive. Water is a commodity. We MUST plan for alternatives to using as much water as we are now!!! Or we MUST budget for increased water costs. Can you afford that? If not, you’d better bite the bullet and make your changes/improvements/reductions now.
Do something—anything—NOW to reduce your water usage. Start now. Start small. Even a little thing is a step in the right direction. See above point!
Anna Brittain took the mic at one point during the final panel, when they were disagreeing on approaches to water reduction. She called the conversation “contentious,” which I thought was a mistake. The conversation wasn’t remotely contentious, and I felt the urge to correct a definition.
Contentious:
causing or likely to cause an argument; controversial.
involving heated argument.
Similar: heated, vehement, fierce, violent, intense, impassioned.
Nothing about the conversation (wherein two people had different opinions and approaches to the same complicated challenge) was heated, vehement, fierce, violent, intense or impassioned.
And even if it was… well, was this not the perfect time and place for it? Aren’t we here to hash this shit out? Can we do so if we’re all always perfectly aligned? Personally, I wish we would have leaned even more into the discussion—a debate; an argument!—rather than shy away from it. How do we get back to not being afraid of even the smallest bit of confrontation? Why do people clench and brace for impact when two extremely well educated scholars or experts in their field speak up with differences of approach? After all: Both of them were there with their best intentions, which was shared: Save the planet. Save wine.
At lunch following the event, I sat with several [amazing] women discussing dry-farming and their success with it. I tried on the language I’d learned earlier in the day: “So, did you establish your vineyard or transition it?”
“We transitioned,” she said, which surprised me because earlier I’d been told that establishing a dry-farmed vineyard from rootstock planted right into the ground was preferred to taking a once-irrigated parcel and steadily reducing the amount of water it received.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Was that… difficult?”
“No,” she replied. “It was relatively easy because we’re already on such well-drained, rocky soil.”
I was shocked, because also earlier at that same discussion, the speakers had said that they were most concerned about the feasibility of dry-farming on sandy, gravelly, well-drained soil, because the roots wouldn’t have excess moisture to find. These speakers had said their success had been on rich, clay soils with abundant moisture-holding capabilities, making it easier to dry-farm.
“Yeah, I wanted to speak up and disagree with him,” she said, “but I didn’t feel it was appropriate. I mean, I wasn’t on the panel, and I didn’t want to sound contentious.”
PLEASE COMMENT! Did you attend Day 1 of Napa RISE?! What did you think? Do you have notes to add to mine (or more proper clarifications and fleshed out data)?
If you didn’t attend, any thoughts or comments back from my cold shower of notes above??
And what do you think about contentious conversations and discussion v. debate v. argument?!?!?
Stevie, thanks so much for sharing all of this info. This is something that I would really like to attend, but with the days broken up as they are it is hard to justify the length of the trip or trips. Loved the overview and the insights. I'll keep an eye out for the next one :)
good vibes only 🤦♂️. these are the kinds of conversations that don’t get had when fascism overhangs every aspect of a country’s practical and intellectual life. nobody can dissent because nobody knows when or where the negative fallout will blowback on them.
we tone police ourselves so that the actual police don’t haul our asses off to god knows where.
the truest thing i ever learned about california i learned in the 1980s, when a tour guide at mondavi said to me that california will die when all the water is gone.