Drew Herman – Assume Superiority, Farm Scared, and Pretend Like You Know What You’re Doing While Killing Your Plants

Imagine if you were a thousand foot tall giant. How successful would you be at helping a 5 foot tall farmer collect her chickens eggs? Drew Herman is back for a second episode jam-packed with information and laughs. If you haven’t listened to the previous episode with Drew, I highly recommend checking it out first. It was episode # 74, published back in July of 2022 and was titled Microbial Democracy for a Healthy Vineyard and World. In this new episode, Drew discusses the game changing discovery of rhizophagy and what that means for the way we farm wine… and he manages to crack me up with memorable quips about once a minute. Drew wants to impress upon us how each new discovery about the soil microbiome and the way plants function with it shows how little we know. We discuss plants’ incredible genetic intelligence and the need to start assuming that they know vastly more than we do about how to take care of them.. We discuss recently discovered fallacies about fallowing and soil pH. We talk about the desperate need to reintroduce breeding new vines as standard practice in wine, and the stunning genetic potential in a seed, including a full arsenal of microbiology that actually teaches it how to grow. Given our deepening understanding of our ignorance, Drew beseeches us to stop blundering around with fertilization and pesticide programs, the impacts of which we really don’t understand. The vines we farm, as it turns out, are much better farmers than we are… and our efforts to help them usually just get in their way. Like a mushroom foraging expedition, there are non-sequitur delights scattered throughout this conversation all the way through to the end when Drew discusses the importance of voles and how to manage them in the vineyard. He also offers numerous free resources to deepen your knowledge and learn how much we have to learn.

Drew is vineyard manager at JK Carriere wines in Oregon, but I think his true gift may be in making deep soil science as fun as playing in the dirt… hopefully playing in the dirt sounds fun to you. If not… well, just think of something fun, and then associate that with Drew.

Enjoy!

Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.

Sponsors:

Centralas Wine - delicious, ecological wine

Catavino Tours - amazing, wine tours

Oom - recycled bottles for wine

VT Vineyards - plant your own vineyard

When I think of Vermont, I think of slanted light and moody skies, wildflowers and rosy cheeks, small farms and big forests. And because of my guest for this episode, when I think of Vermont I also think of hardy vines and delicious wines. Deirdre Heekin is the person behind La Garagista and Domaine de la Forêt, along with her husband Caleb, and what seems to be a continual stream of young winemakers who help and learn and have become the next generation of Vermont wine.

Deirdre is a restauranteur, vigneron, writer, photographer, mentor, gardener… and more, and that means we cover a lot of ground in this conversation. We talk about the magic of the forest and why grapevines are integral to the forest edge ecology that we aim to replicate with holistic, regenerative agriculture. We talk about Deirdre’s approach to farming Brianna, which involves not pruning it. She also shares some of the unique approaches she has developed for making cider and wine and coferments and other things that don’t have names by gleaning from ancient techniques and by learning from nature and the opportunities it presents to work with it to create one-of-a-kind fermentations.

My guest for this episode is Hans Peter Schmidt. He goes by Peter Schmidt, and he is a director and faculty member for the Ithaka Institute,  an international network for carbon strategies and climate farming, and he farms and makes wine from the amazing Mythopia wine-ecosystem in Switzerland, which he also uses as a research vineyard for the Ithaka Institute. He’s also involved in other winegrowing projects around southern Europe, and has a pretty big reputation for his approach to wine.

In this interview we cover viticulture, winemaking, and the philosophy of wine. Peter may be the most non-interventionist – or natural or naturalistic – winemaker I’ve ever encountered. You may think him strange for some of the things he does with wine, and you may think him mad for some of the things he doesn't do. You’ll hear how these things are even possible. Hint: it has to do with mindset as much as ecology.

Peter makes wine in a way that, once you hear its simplicity, could revolutionize your own winemaking. If you end up making wine in the way that Peter does, Peter only requests that you send him a bottle to thank him for the idea… a sort of intellectual property royalty payment.  I for sure at least want to try a batch of wine the way Peter makes – or really doesn’t make it.  

Peter ends the conversation with a perspective, or really a meditation, or how wine fits into the human story. Like so much of this conversation, it merely scratches the surface and gives a glimpse of many beautiful things that we can begin to explore.

Enjoy!

https://www.mythopia.ch/mythopia/fe/de

Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.

Sponsors:

Centralas Wine

Catavino Tours

Oom - recycled bottles for wine

VT Vineyards

Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.

My guest for this episode is Virginia Samsel. Virginia is a unique kind of vineyard, or orchard, consultant. She provides energy work and consultation using a synthesis of biodynamics and reiki. She translates the the messages she receives from a site into helpful advice for the people who care for it, and that can help farmers build a spiritual connection to their land.

Much of this conversation is at and beyond the limits of our language to express. So it’s important to be open. You may not be able to go along with Virginia on everything, and that’s okay. I think you will find that she doesn’t subtract from anything you already know, and she can add some new ways of seeing and knowing your landscape.

She gives us some really important tips on how to begin to connect with the land and the things living in it. She talks about spending Non-transactional time with your vines and or trees. Developing a relationship with your site that includes being vulnerable and allowing it to get to know the other parts of you beyond just your farmer side. She offers ideas about how to relate to the land and develop it as more than just a production facility. She reminds us that tending our vineyards is synonymous with tending ourselves.

Ultimately, this interview is full of resources for turning this Anthropocene, or capitalocene, into an Ecocene of renewed connectivity.

Enjoy!

https://vavadynamica.com/

Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.

Sponsors:

Centralas Wine

Catavino Tours

Oom - recycled bottles for wine

VT Vineyards

Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.

One of the sponsors for this episode is actually the guest for this episode: Stephen Wilson of Vermont Vineyards. I met Stephen at the Vitinord Conference, where VT Vineyards was also a sponsor, and I admired him and his approach to viticulture enough to suggest that we have this conversation… and I guess the feeling was mutual because he simultaneously suggested sponsoring the podcast. The result is that you can go to VTVineyards.com/owp and hire Stephen to install a vineyard for you, and that vineyard installation will support this podcast.

If you’ve considered planting your own vineyard, or even just putting in a few vines for landscaping features, like over a pergola or fence, then you’ll find this conversation helpful. Since both Stephen and I plant vineyards in backyards or even larger landscapes – or front yards in my case – and since we do this in the very different contexts of Southern California and Vermont, we have a wide range of perspectives and approaches to compare and discuss. We don’t get highly technical, but we do get to some of the dirty details and realities of being a vineyard caretaker. So there’s some very valuable information for potential vineyard owners and some important ideas for everyone to consider. And both Stephen and I find tending vines to be very rewarding work on multiple levels. Stephen’s idea for VT Vineyards was born during the pandemic, and grew from a desire to heal and enrich other people’s lives with a reconnection to the natural world through vines.

Stephen and I talk about the Vermont wine scene, and we both want to acknowledge that we couldn’t talk about everyone. There are, and have been, many winegrowers who we didn’t mention by name who have done much important work for Vermont wine. Since this was not a conversation about the history of Vermont wine, we inevitably omitted lots of people who deserve mention and respect.

Enjoy, and Happy Spring!

Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.

Sponsors:

Centralas Wine

Catavino Tours

Oom - recycled bottles for wine

VT Vineyards

Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.

This episode is about making room for the unknown. Or the known, but unmeasurable. If making wine means more than botany and chemistry to you, if you find yourself so deep in the soil that you've started making mycorrhizal connections, if you've begun to notice that what we talk about when we talk about wine is connected to things that have nothing to do with wine... this episode is for you.

A big thanks to Chiara Shannon and Darek Trowbridge for candidly discussing these ideas. We’d really like to know what you think about this episode, so please email any comments, or questions to connect@organicwinepodcast.com. We only scratch the surface of this topic, but I think you’ll find some inspiring ideas including:

Darek’s proposal of Sacred Grade wine, quite a few books and resources to check out, a discussion of some of the as yet unmeasurable aspects of Biodynamics, with a really amazing story that Darek shares about the efficacy of the 501 preparation and how he made believers of his entire vineyard crew. And we talk in many ways about regeneration and rewilding, how these land-centered ideas are connected to and echoed inside us, as well as how our interior lives get reflected in how we care for our land and our vines.

https://www.mindfulwine.co/

https://www.oldworldwinery.com/

Support this episode by subscribing via patreon.

Sponsors:

Centralas Wine

Catavino Tours

Oom - recycled bottles for wine

VT Vineyards

Let them know you heard about them through the Organic Wine Podcast.

I’d like to introduce you to a source of inspiration for me personally, and my guest for this episode: Marreya Bailey. Marreya’s winery is Mad Marvlus, which, as she mentions, sounds like a super hero name. And maybe that’s appropriate. Marreya doesn’t really make wine with Mad Marvlus, she creates living embodiments of personality and spirit that you can drink. She calls them her creatures. Don’t expect just grapes, but any and every natural thing that produces sugar and flavor in her environment. Don’t expect traditional wine either, unless by traditional you mean the actual traditions from cultures around the globe that were practiced for millennia prior to this strange thing that has happened for the last fifty years.

Marreya is also the founding mother and co-partner of The Bathing Collective, which you’ll have to listen to find out what it is… and the future that it hopes to bring about.

My guest for this episode is J Stephen Casscles, author of the book Grapes of the Hudson Valley, and grower of 106 varieties of hybrids and heritage wine grapes in the Hudson Valley.

If I were to boil this entire episode down into one message it would be to Treat hybrids like real grapes!

We talk all about the benefits and characteristics of these heritage and hybrid grapes. We talk about the added benefits of growing grapes on their own roots, rather than rootstock. We talk about why hybrids were banned in France. We talk about the benefits of the greater productivity of these grapes, the benefits of the disease resistance of these grapes. We talk about making wine from hybrids, and how they can immensely expand your palate of flavors to work with.

Stephen has a wealth of information to share and this interview is a non-stop firehose of wine knowledge.

Enjoy!

I recently introduced a new sponsor for the podcast, Catavino Tours. One of the main reasons I decided to partner with Catavino Tours was because of their founder, Ryan Opaz. His wine journey has led him to become a thoughtful wine business owner with deep ecological consciousness gained from decades of working at nearly every level of the wine industry. Besides being the founder and CEO of Catavino, with his wife and partner Gabriella he runs a natural and organic wine shop in Porto, Portugal, co-authored and was the photographer of the James Beard Award-nominated book Foot-Trodden: Portugal and the wines that time forgot. Previously he was also the photographer for the book The Amber Revolution, and a book about Porto’s Portugal’s Historic Bolhão Market. For his service to the Portugese wine industry he has also been inducted as a Knight of the Port Wine Brotherhood. Yes, this this is a conversation with not only a Knight, but a wine Knight.

My guest for this episode is Hoss Hauksson, and he practices a form of viticulture in Switzerland that integrates elements of vitiforestry or a silvoculture polyculture, using a biodynamic approach, with the world’s smallest sheep and technologies like drone spraying and UV robots. His wine takes the idea of terroir literally, incorporating medicinal and aromatic herbs and trees as infusions in both the vineyard ecosystem and in his pinot noir.

In other words, I think I discovered my long lost soul twin.

Hoss is one of the only, if not the one and only, Icelandic winemakers on earth, (which means he’s probably related to Steve Matthiasson) and he tells us about his journey from wanting to be “the hero winemaker” to a focus on just becoming a good farmer.

Hoss’s holistic, ecological view of fostering a healthy farm ecosystem from which the best, most interesting wine can be made, leads us from some really important discussion about the soil microbiome through to expressing terroir by making a pet-nat infused with wormwood, hyssop, and yarrow. Along the way we find out the importance of promoting a fungal-dominant soil that recreates the forest floor from which vines evolved, how he uses different trees and herbs for different purposes in and around the vines, and how his adorable miniature sheep are vital to the entire ecosystem.

Why hasn’t the wine industry term “New World” gone the way of other problematic terms like “Oriental”?

For a while now, something about the use of the term “New World” has grated on me. As someone who lives and makes wine in one of the myriad parts of the world described by this term, I couldn’t help but notice how different are the cultures within this term and yet how homogenous is the “wine” culture.

This term began to bother me more and more. It makes most of the world of wine referential and derivative. It makes us imitators.

In truth, I think it makes us colonial subjects. Not of a political power, but of an idea: the global colonial monoculture known as “wine.”

I think it’s time we stop using the term “New World” (and “Old World” for that matter). I think it’s time we create a new world of wine.

Tidal Bay is the first and only appellation wine in North or South America. That is, it is a wine that is made, branded, and sold as a reflection of place and culture without reliance on varietal labelling. And honestly, for the first of something, I think the Nova Scotians did something that needs no refinement. The way they have conceived of and structured Tidal Bay is brilliant. It’s flexible, inclusive, rigorous, reflective of their unique culture, and ensures high quality.

Greg Jones is my guest for this episode. Greg is the CEO of Abacela winery in Oregon and is a world-renowned wine climatologist. For over thirty years his research has firmly linked weather and climate with grapevine growth, fruit chemistry, and wine characteristics in regions all around the globe. His work was also one of the first to tie climate change to fundamental biological phenomena in vines and the resulting influences on productivity and quality. His groundbreaking work has informed and influenced the wine industry across the globe, and we talk about what it means to apply the science of climate change to growing wine.

My guest for this episode is Mike Appolo and he tells us all about how he is growing a no-spray vineyard in New Hampshire less than an hour from Boston.

Yes, I said “no spray.” You may have heard it’s impossible. You may smugly reject the possibility of success. But Mike is growing wine grapes in New England without sprays and has been for over a decade at his estate winery Appolo Vineyards. Appolo Vineyards was just this month named the New Hampshire’s First Winery in the Sustainable Craft Beverage Recognition Program. After listening to this interview I think you’ll agree that it’s a well deserved honor. Mike is growing winegrapes in a place where summers are hot and humid, winters can be brutal, and wild turkeys are one of the birds that regularly eat your grapes. It’s also a place of beautiful wines.

Growers everywhere are facing the realities of a changing climate and considering replacing their established wine grape varieties with others that are more suited to the challenges of modern viticulture. At the same time, consumers facing a sea of sameness are seeking out new and exciting wines crafted by artisans with a passionate focus on creating quality wines with authenticity of place. Perhaps never before has the table been set more perfectly for the emergence of new grape varieties that answer the needs and desires of both winegrower and consumer.

My guest for this episode is Isabelle Legeron. Isabelle is the founder of the RAW Wine Festival, which, if you haven’t heard of it, is the premier natural wine festival on the planet. She’s also the author of the book Natural Wine: An Introduction to Organic and Biodynamic Wines Made Naturally. Isabelle’s career is dedicated to promoting the same farming-first wine culture that I want to cultivate with the Organic Wine Podcast, so she was a natural choice for the 100th episode.

Randall Graham interviewed by Adam Huss on the Organic Wine Podcast. In this interview we dig into terroir and “wines of place,” attempting to determine if it is actually a helpful or beneficial concept, or if it is even real. Randall explains how he is testing a few new theories about terroir at his estate vineyard project, Popelouchum, in San Juan Bautista, where he’s growing myriad varieties of grapes, many from seed. And we discuss his partnership with Gallo on The Language of Yes project.

Dr. Johnston describes the many ways bats are vital to our ecology generally, and to wine production specifically. As he explains how unique and diverse bats are, I think you’ll find yourself falling in love with bats, not only because of their importance to the ecology of wine but because they are such amazing creatures that we mostly overlook.

My guests for this episode are Tara Gomez and Mireia Taribó of Camins 2 Dreams winery in Lompoc, California.

Farm beautifully & ecologically