Babcock Wine Talk

Miracle in the Vineyard

Where’s MY Torch!

One of the main trends in coastal winegrowing over the last decade has been to plant vineyards with the vine rows closer together. The impetus for this has largely been to create higher yields per acre. Basically, the theory says, closer rows equal more vines, and more vines equal more fruit. I would say, for the most part, this principle is true. As a result, we have seen most of the new plantings around us going in with 6 feet between the rows. That’s two feet tighter than a lot of the eight foot stuff that was planted in the 90s, and it’s twice as narrow than the twelve feet between the rows that exist in our first plantings that went in 1980. My guess at this point is that most of the newer vineyards are at six feet because that is where the status quo starts to feel maximized yields along with the pinch in so far as getting equipment into the fields. And, if you look at conventional tractors, be they driven on tires or tracks, it is true; six feet is where it starts to get really tight.

But beyond the increase in yields, there is another consideration when it comes to narrowing the rows, and overall it has to do, I think, with wine quality. In a nutshell, as distances between vine rows start to get really narrow, it begins to influence how much direct sun the fruit is exposed to. If a vineyard’s rows run in a preferred north-south direction, when the sun comes up in the morning, it bathes the east facing side of the vine’s clusters with radiation. Through the middle of the day, the sun is directly above the canopy and most clusters are in the shade. In the afternoon, the west facing side of the clusters get their sun. As the rows get closer together, the lines of neighboring vines provide shade to the clusters later into the morning on the east side of the vines, and then they provide shade earlier in the day on the west side of the vines. In other words, as the rows get closer together the clusters get less direct sun.

Why is this important? My theory is that the best wines are made when the clusters get some sun, but not too much. Not enough sun and the wine’s flavors may not be adequately ripe. Too much sun and the flavors may be muted or baked out. Not enough sun and you can have disease problems like mildew. Too much and you can have sunburn and the berries may be physically injured and rendered incapable of properly maturing. So the question is where are the sweet spots? Every vineyard’s microclimate is different and different grape varieties respond differently to stimuli such as the sun.

While I don’t yet have a set number describing the distance between the vine rows for each vineyard site or each variety, my gut is telling me, the action is going to be between four and six feet. Experimentally, I am now studying these effects in small plots here on the ranch that range between these two distances. Why hassle it? Well, I’m thinking this new horizon is not just about yields. It’s not just about a cost analysis of the ease of farming vs. higher yields. No. It’s about wine quality. And when it’s about wine quality, I have to go there. I can’t just say, “Well, I’d go 5 feet between the rows, but my tractor won’t fit.” If the best wines are grown on 5 foot spacings, then it’s time to figure out the logistics.

There are these tricked out tractors with super narrow footprints. What they do is straddle over the vine rows. The vines run down under these tractors while the legs make contact between the rows on each side. At ground and vine level, the width of the tractor is perceived as the narrow width of the tires or the tracks. One problem with most of these kinds of tractors is that they are European and they are very expensive. I would also imagine that getting parts is no easy task. As I write these notes I am looking at a brochure from an American company. Their units look quite good but they are still expensive. Since I don’t yet know what the final spacings will be in our vineyards as time goes on, I am hesitant to purchase anything that might not fit or function properly in a few years. But, what I do know is that eventually I will need the small footprint.

The thing that caught our eye a few years ago were these ugly little spud of a tractor units that you would see in many industries ranging from farming to construction. They are called ASV’s. Two things are significant:
        1) There are a bunch of them out there, so there is a used market for them. They don’t cost an arm and a leg.
        2) Their tracks are hydraulically driven, so you can take a torch and cut them in half, raise them up and glue them back together again.
Well, in our case, weld them back together again.
And because a picture is worth a thousand words, here it is, our first HYDACLE. That’s short for “hydraulic miracle”.  It was built in-house by our vineyard manager/fabricator Rance Minyard. Its overall width gets wider or narrower on demand, and it can also go independently up or down on each side which is necessary for farming on terraces.

Will we build a fleet of these things? I am not sure. But even if we end up purchasing in the future some new generation of American skinny tractors, at least, with this unit, we will develop an understanding of what we truly want, and what the good equipment will look like. This unit will make it feasible to explore in our new tight-row-spaced experiments where the sweet spots are. It will help us to understand whether or not we should settle for what is becoming a conventional six foot between the rows approach, or get out the torch and make skinny happen.

 - Bryan Babcock

It's backwards, but I'll take it.

Even though our farming is very progressive, there are some things that remain beyond our control. After all, it is farming. One of the main thorns in my side is still an inability to help the vines consistently set a full crop. I mean, I can talk to the vines all I want, but in our soils and in our climate, they are very much on their own when it comes to pollinating and producing fruit. Some years they do it; some they don’t. Especially in the years when it is wet and cold during the spring, they don’t. And I am hesitant to go out and overly fertilize my way into a vineyard that looks like it’s on steroids just to have a little more fruit. All the great vineyards I have worked with over the years have had a theme of governance about them. They have all had an indelible imprint of the Terroir, and it has never been created by excess fertilizer or water.

A decade ago, in 1997, we actually had what I would call a full crop. There were grapes on every vine, and in some cases, I actually had to thin things out. My yields that year were around three tons per acre. Before then and since then it has become customary for me to stare at a reality that is much closer to one ton per acre. And through all that time, it was not unusual for me to visit other vineyards where, due to deeper soils and warmer springtime conditions, they had nice crops. Over the years I became accustomed to hearing a number of my colleagues belly ache if they were projecting anything under four tons to the acre, while I knew that back home, I’d be lucky if I had two.

  Well, this year there is still plenty of belly aching, and I would say in many cases, it’s warranted. Last spring we had a tremendous frost that decimated a significant percentage of coastal viticulture from Santa Barbara to Monterey. I have talked to a few growers in our area who are describing portions of their vineyards that will be producing nothing, as in zero tons per acre. In the North Coast, apparently they had some torrential spring rains which made everything grow like gang busters after bud break. Then some unbearable heat waves set in stressing the vines during and shortly after pollination (bloom). The result is a much smaller than usual crop for a number of the varieties up in places like Napa.

So, one might logically think that the vines at Babcock right now must have no crop. And I have been walking around the place saying, “why me?”

But this year is weird. This year is backwards. And I’ll take it, because what I am about to harvest is one of the most beautiful crops I have ever seen. I’d say the Pinot Noir is hanging out there at 2.5 tons per acre. The Chardonnay and Pinot Gris are looking like three, and the Sauvignon Blanc is probably four tons per acre. I mean, it’s like some kind of sublime freak show. Strangely consistent with all of it is the fact that on the one variety that I can always count on for tonnage, the Syrah, there is almost no crop. But if the Syrah wants to take a vacation this harvest, that’s fine. We only have a couple of acres of it. As for the rest of it, we seem to have totally dodged all the bullets.

If you are a wine club member, and you can get by the winery on a week day over the next couple of weeks, have someone here track me down. If I am around, I’ll take you out show you the spectacle.

Cheers,
Bryan

Pulling The Trigger

When you start something from scratch, you often have to employ a great deal of trial and error in order to find out what works and what doesn’t. In farming, I think this proposition is made even more challenging by the fact that things happen slowly. With the vines for example, if you prune something off that you shouldn’t have, you have to wait a year or more for it to grow back. If you plant a vineyard and then realize that the rows run the wrong way, well, it could cost so much and take so much time to change that you start having these thoughts like; it’s my kid’s problem. But one way or another, you have to press forward. You don’t always have the time to achieve certainty, or to feel like the things that you are about to do are without risk. Sometimes you just got to pull the trigger when your gut says to. Then stand back and watch, or, in my case, realize that you will have your conclusions in a few months or a few years. Such was the process that led me to “bore-hole irrigation.”

This will be the first year that we fully implement this style of irrigation. In other words, this is the first year that we will be putting 4 inches of water on most of the vineyards through the overhead sprinklers, at time in the growing season when most growers would consider it taboo. To fully understand this, let's back up a bit.

When I first started farming, drip irrigation, the process of delivering water to the vines through drip lines, was still sort of new. There were plenty of vineyards out there that were hold outs, and had only the traditional overhead sprinklers. The impetus for drip irrigation is that it’s efficient. It puts water out right at each plant. You don’t water every inch of the ground like you do with sprinklers. There is less evaporation. Thus, you typically end up using less water per acre, which in turn, allows you to water more acres simultaneously. As time went on, I saw a good number of vineyards install drip lines. In some cases it was the only irrigation system they put in. Interest in actually watering one's vines through an overhead system became more and more rare. While we did not remove our overhead system, we too followed the gospel, and installed a drip system.

As time went on, I started to see a few new vineyards installing both systems. Why go back to overhead? The obvious reason is for frost protection. In the spring, after the tender shoots start to push out of the buds, if you get a real cold night, those shoots, and thus your crop, gets whacked. On those nights, if you have overhead sprinklers, you have frost protection. A few more years went by and I also started to see growers become more interested in their cover crop, i.e. the grains or grasses that you grow in middle of the rows between the vines. Drip lines are not going to serve up water to those areas. If you want to irrigate that cover crop, you have to have overhead, or hope that it rains.

While I do like the efficiency of drip irrigation, over the years I started to feel like we were missing something when we used only the drip. For starters, I got tired of nursing the vines. With overhead, while you do have to put on more water per acre each time you water, at least that usually means you can water less often. With drip, because you are delivering the water right to the zone of the vine's roots, you don't want to go overboard and make the vines grow too much. So, you put down less water at any given time. But because of that, the vines tend to run out of water more easily, so you end up watering the vines more frequently, i.e. "nursing" the vines. Every time I run the drippers I have to 1) turn on the pump 2) make sure all the appropriate valves are open/closed 3) send a crew into the field to walk the lines to make sure all the emitters are working and not clogged, etc. While the actual delivery of the water is efficient, doing all this multiple times per year is a hassle.

Another thing with a drip-only approach is that the middles of the rows get real dry. Real dry means real dusty. Now, I am a farmer, so if harvest has to be dusty, so be it. But I started to have these little moments, "What if I put on an inch through the over head a few days before we pick the grapes? Would that screw things up? It sure would take the dust down."  Well, no one else was doing it, and in the end it seemed a very risky, so I let it go. Nonetheless, there seemed to be something interesting about it, and in my mind it started having to do with more than just keeping the dust down. 

Then a few more years went by. That's when I got religion, the religion of “Terroir.” I started having trouble with the fact that the vines were essentially being invited to grow in the hydration sphere right under the drippers. Then I thought about it some more and my sense of it was that the vines were being forced to grow, and only grow, in that hydration sphere. "But look at all this ground," I would think to myself as I tried to wrap my brain around the issue. "The Terroir is not confined to the dirt under the drippers. The Terroir is all the dirt." That's when I got this idea, “What if I was to put on a sizable irrigation through the sprinklers right at the moment that I considered to be my window of opportunity?” That moment in my mind was veraison. Veraison is the point about 6 to 8 weeks before harvest at which the berries turn soft. In the red varieties, it's also the point at which they get their color. Before veraison there is tremendous mildew pressure in our vineyard. That's probably not a great time to get the vines all wet and cold and make the ground so soggy that you can't get in the field to spray for at least a week. After verasion the issue is bunch rot, and with us always seeing our fair share of that stuff as well, putting down lots of water then did not seem to make much sense either. Besides you don't want too much water too close to harvest for fear of diluting the intensity of the grapes and thus the wines. So, as my old circular logic would tell me, I just have to nurse the vines with the drippers, right? Well, I grew tired of nursing the vines. I also grew tired of the dust. And I was almost to the point of needing a psychiatrist because the vines were not spreading out their feet into all the terrior. I started watering through the sprinklers at veraison.

While I was apprehensive about the potential for rot, my gut still told me that it could not be some wimpy amount. It could not be me second guessing all this because most of my colleagues would think that I was crazy. It had to be enough water so that I didn’t have to water again before harvest. It had to all happen in one night because my theory was, if I stretch it out over 2, 3 or 4 days, then I really am asking for problems. I'd be encouraging some kind mold and I would not be able to get into the field to address it for long time. I had to get 4 inches on and it had to happen in a matter of hours.

It's called bore-hole irrigation because the first time I tried it, we only got about an inch down. Why? Because the nozzles in the sprinklers were not made for farmers like me. They were conventional. They put out a normal amount of water. I told my vineyard manager, Rance Minyard, we needed more flow. So, he took the nozzles to the shop and he bored out the holes. It's funny how I look at stuff like sprinkler nozzles with bigger than normal holes and I think to myself, "It's beautiful."

The days and the weeks after we first tried those nozzles, we saw a number of interesting things. For starters, as you can imagine, the vines loved the big drink. Their shoot tips got perky and they turned a greener shade of green, as if to say, "Thank you." It was as if the vines chugged around third base and started heading for home. Indeed, they needed no more water until after harvest. Maybe it's just me, but I was convinced that they were in better balance than they would have been had they been nursed through the drip system, and my psychology was that the wines would now finally come from the terroir, all the terroir.

Dust? Through harvest, the dust was gone.

Any more benefits? Yes, and this one is very cool. Over the last few years I have become especially interested in my cover crops. At this point I very aggressively farm legumes between the vines. Legumes are nitrogen fixing plants. Peanuts and soy beans are common examples, but there are all kinds of leguminous plants that are capable of taking nitrogen out of the atmosphere and putting it in little nodes in their roots. The keen thing about it is that if you grow a strong stand of legumes and then mow it, it’s like a very natural, non-intrusive, no-till way to fertilize. How does Bore-Hole Irrigation play into it? What I have found is that a Bore-Hole Irrigation at verasion, coupled with another 1-2 inches after we pick, makes the ground perfect for the planting of the cover crop. The legumes then explode into whatever heat is left in the days of September and October. I have always given the vines a drink after we pick. They are usually pretty thirsty by that point, and it used to be a good time to turn on the drippers. But now I look at that point as also being the perfect moment for the planting of my cover crop.

You might think that this is all good because it’s killing two birds with one stone; the vines get their drink and the cover crop gets planted. But it’s actually even more than that. If your cover crop is a legume, you want to mow it at full flower. That's when you get the full bang for the buck in so far as the legumes fixing nitrogen in the roots and thus becoming a nutrient source for the vines, like manure.  If you mow the legumes too soon, you don't capture the full nutrient impact.

What's the potential wrench in the gears of my system? Well, if I have a frost problem in the spring, I’ll want to mow my legumes before the problem, because a full stand of legumes will effectively push the cold off of the vineyard floor up into the vines where the new, tender shoots are. By March 1st, before bud break and thus before any frost problems, we want to be able to kill the flowers as we call it. That's our terminology for mowing a healthy, full flowering stand of legumes; the thick thatch from which also helps to keep the dust down during the earlier part of the summer.

You might be thinking, what about the sprinklers, can’t you just turn them on for frost protection? You can, but it has its limits. If it’s really cold, say down in the low 20s, you better hope that your cover is mowed and the cold air is draining out of the field. You might also think, can’t you just plant your cover after the frost season and grow it in the summer? No. You would end up destroying your cover every time the tractors ran over it during that part of the year known as the growing season. The moral of the story is, if you want to mow your legumes at full flower come the end of February, you not only need to get on with planting your cover right after you harvest, you need that cover to grow like gang busters. Now, I am allergic to legumes. Peanuts are my death. I have a hard time grooving on a freshly mowed field of something like Vetch the same way I do a hand full of freshly bored out sprinkler nozzles. Nonetheless, I have been very proud of my thatch lately.

My theory is that some of the water from the bore-hole irrigation is still deep in the fields at the time of harvest. If I put on 1-2 inches of overhead at that point, the vines still get their drink; I can get my tractors back into the fields within a week to plant the cover, which then grows vigorously because the new water in the middle of the rows unites with the old water from the bore-hole irrigation. Overall, the vines seem to love bore-hole irrigation, it’s integrated with killing the flowers in the early spring, and, ultimately, I think it makes better wine.

Being a fan of causality, it is interesting to me how well it all flows. I guess it’s true of a lot of things; when you get the timing down, it flows. I would not say that I am a radical for all this yet because it's still a bit theoretical. I need to look at it fully implemented for a few years to make sure I’m not creating any problems that I don’t yet know about. I think at this point, I hope at this point, that the benefits will out weigh any costs. There was a part of me that did not want to write any of this because of its proprietary nature. While I have heard a few of my colleagues from time to time touch on some of the various aspects of what I have said here, I honestly don’t know anyone who has presented these principles in quite this way. So why do it? Because for me, it’s not about trying to stem the flow of ideas, or attempting to change the supply of good wine out there; something I couldn’t do even if I wanted to. It’s because I want my customers to see it. I want you to have a feel for the reasons and the actions that will always make my stuff good.

Cheers,
Bryan

Behind The Counter

      I’ve spent the last 22 years of my life working for the Babcock family and loving every minute of it. In 1986 when I started working in our tasting room, I was lucky if I had a dozen guests stop by over the course of an entire weekend. Those that did come in were usually older, at least the age I am today, and wine aficionados, knowing what they wanted and buying lots of it! Today’s guests are somewhat different than they were all those years ago. First of all, the visitors we see today have multiplied ten fold. The average wine taster is a bit younger and has a little less wine education, but is super eager to learn. Some, unfortunately, share an attitude that, for the most part, has been brought on by our own industry, the attitude that tasting rooms are wine bars. Many folks come in party size groups, celebrating birthdays, weddings, and anniversaries. They pay for their drinks and they want their monies worth. Who can blame them? 

     With this attitude towards wine tasting rooms come the new challenges that demand our utmost attention, especially when the local sheriff’s department is on the prowl for underage drinkers and drunk drivers. Who wants to end their weekend getaway with a D.U.I.? Hence, I spend a lot of my time today educating our tasting room staff on the current California state laws regarding the serving of alcohol.

     Did you know that it is unlawful for any person to serve alcohol to an intoxicated individual? When we are faced with a person who appears to have had that one glass too many, we legally have to say “no” to continued service. We will often hear, “I have a designated driver.” While we appreciate that more guests today designate a driver for their wine tasting trips, we are still bound by the law to refuse service to any person who appears to be intoxicated. Believe me, we hate to be the party poopers here, but we do have our obligations, the most important being to our guests to ensure they leave our establishment safely.

     Did you know that as servers we can be fined up to $1,000.00 if caught serving alcohol to a minor? This fee does not include the fines and penalties the business can incur. It sounds easy, right? Just ‘card’ anyone who looks too young. But it’s not as easy as you may think to tell an individual’s age, especially these days with all those impressive fake I.D.’s floating around. It’s not just fake I.D.’s either, we once had a young man try to pass himself off as being of legal drinking age by showing us another man’s I.D. When my assistant tasting room manager noticed the picture on the I.D. looked a bit different than the man standing in front of him, he asked one simple question about the information on the driver’s license. The young man could not answer correctly and finally broke down and admitted he had a friend’s identification.

     Did you know that we can not accept a passport as a legal form of identification? You would think that especially after 9/11, passports would be the best form of identification, but as far as the state of California is concerned, unless the passport is written in a language we can read, includes a description of the individual as well as a picture of that individual, then passports are not considered legal identification.   

     So, on your next trip to the wine country I ask you to consider your server and all they endure behind that counter. Leave your passports at home, bring your I.D.’s, the real ones, and drink responsibly. Wine tasting can still be fun, but with a little forethought on your part, you won’t end up a guest of the county Sheriff.

Terrie Marlin
Tasting Room and Wine Club Director

The Big Wakeup Call

It’s a weird time, not just in the wine biz, but any business that’s small, family owned, etc. I just feel like there is going to be a big wakeup call.   

It’s like, after 25 years I’m still driving to work thinking, how’s this all gonna work?

My vineyard, for the most part, needs to completely be reconfigured in order to be efficient and to make better wine. We’ve made great wines, but the days of paying $7.50 and hour for hand work on vines that produce, at best, a couple tons per acre, are gone. At the same, time the flow of good wine from all around the world that continues to saturate our markets has not backed off. It’s relentless.

$30 to $50 bottles of Pinot are still selling, but they are carpeting the Santa Rita Hills with Pinot Noir. Where is it all going to go? What’s going to happen when fuel makes producing the stuff cost twice as much, while demand for it, certainly at higher prices, starts to skid? What’s going to happen when all the new growers realize that the way they have laid out their vineyards makes it impossible for their farming to pencil?

I guess I’m glad I’ve started the process. Same way I was glad when we finally started ripping out vines and replacing them due to Phyloxera. Uhh.

All I can say is that if you are a small farmer, you better love the dirt. You better love taking old equipment, cutting it in half and gluing it back together again to make it work, and you better be able to sleep at night knowing that the old stuff still runs on oil.

Bryan