Nearly all Sonoma County vineyards are certified sustainable
Food // Wine
What's next for Sonoma's wine growers? Tackling climate change
Esther Mobley Sep. 12, 2019 Updated: Sep. 16, 2019 12:38 p.m.
1of4Harvest workers dump bins of fruit into larger containers through dawn during the grape harvest at Bucher Vineyards in Healdsburg. Sonoma County is trying to get 100% of the county's vineyards "certified sustainable." Bucher Vineyard was one of the most recent vineyards to get the certification.Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle
2of4Grape stems separated from the fruit will be composted and used on local farms during the grape harvest at Bucher Vineyards in Healdsburg.Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle
3of4Harvest workers removes leaves from fruit in larger containers during the grape harvest at Bucher Vineyards in Healdsburg. Sonoma County is trying to get 100% of the county's vineyards "certified sustainable."Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle
4of4Harvest workers pick Pinot Noir grapes during the harvest at Bucher Vineyards in Healdsburg.Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle
Did Sonoma County just become the most sustainable wine region in the world?
That's what Karissa Kruse believes. As the president of Sonoma County Winegrowers, she has the numbers to support her argument. Five years ago, her organization announced an ambitious goal: for 100% of the county's vineyards to hold a sustainability certification by 2019. It's 2019, and the group reports that 99% are certified sustainable — not quite 100%, but awfully close.
"It feels surreal," says Kruse. "Five years ago we were really at zero."
On top of that, Sonoma County is gearing up to become the pilot subject of a new certification program that could take its commitment to environmental responsibility even further. Called the Climate Adaptation Certification, the January 2020 initiative will guide participating farmers to mitigate the effects of climate change in their vineyards, primarily through tracking carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions.
Climate change looms large over California's $40 billion wine industry, and vineyard owners are becoming increasingly vocal about the need to intervene. Their shift in focus from topics like water conservation to big-picture ideas like carbon sequestration reflects the conversation's evolution over the past five years.
For Sonoma farmers, sustainability "was really the foundation piece of being able to take this more meaningful step forward," Kruse says.
Sonoma County is trying to get 100% of the county's vineyards "certified sustainable." Bucher Vineyard was one of the most recent vineyards to get the certification. John Bucher, the owner, also has a certified organic dairy farm on the same property as his vineyard.
Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle
But as sustainability certifications have proliferated, they've also drawn significant criticism — that the programs' standards are too lax on the use of synthetic chemicals, that they are marketing ploys constituting "greenwashing," and that they are financially burdensome to small-scale farmers. Kruse argues that the Climate Adaptation Certification will offer tangible, quantifiable results in a way that the vague, malleable term "sustainability" cannot.
Will this new program, the first of its kind, finally provide some common ground for Sonoma's wine industry as it confronts climate change, potentially its greatest threat to date?
Participation in any sustainability program in California is voluntary. For its 100%-sustainable campaign, Sonoma County Winegrowers recognizes certifications from four third-party organizations: the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, Fish Friendly Farming, Sustainability in Practice and Lodi Rules. Any vineyard owner in Sonoma County that obtains one of those certifications is eligible to put a "Sonoma County Sustainably Farmed Grapes" sign in their vineyard and, as of 2018, to use a similar label on their wine bottles.
The programs' requirements vary, but most participants will have to develop a safe pest-management plan, showing that they're looking for nonchemical solutions where possible. Many farmers must prove they're making efficient use of energy and water, protecting wildlife habitat and treating employees equitably.
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The campaign got off to a slow start in 2014. "After the first year, we were only at 33%," Kruse said. Many farmers were reluctant to join a program that would dictate how they could farm. Others insisted that they were farming responsibly but didn't want to pay for the certification — which can cost $1,000 to $1,250 for the initial audit, and $200-$300 in the second and third years — or go through the tiresome paperwork.
But over time, attitudes changed.
"The tipping point was really when the wineries wanted to use the label," says Kruse. Previously, customers wouldn't know that a vineyard was certified sustainable unless they came to the vineyard and saw the sign. But now vintners could advertise their practices on a bottle, easily visible to all customers. This year the label will appear on over 500,000 bottles of wine, according to Kruse.
John Bucher, owner of Bucher Vineyard in Healdsburg, was one of the county's latecomers, obtaining his sustainability certification just last spring. He would have done it sooner, but he hadn't had time to initiate the process.
To be certified, Bucher says, "it wasn't like we had to change a lot." He was already following most of the protocol. But he notes he's had success with some new additions, like owl boxes, which encourage owls to nest in the vineyard. Owls prey on moles and other rodents that can harm the vines, so they can potentially eliminate the need for synthetic rodent control. "The program nudged me to get it done," Bucher says, "and having the boxes in strategic areas of the vineyard, where there aren't a lot of trees, is giving us some benefit."
Bucher is glad he's certified but says there's not much economic incentive for it. He also owns a dairy farm, for which he got an organic certification more than a decade ago, simply because he can charge more for organic milk. But "wineries aren't really willing to pay more for grapes that are organic," he says.
Grape stems separated from the fruit will be composted and used on local farms during the grape harvest at Bucher Vineyards in Healdsburg.
In the public consciousness, "sustainable" and "organic" may sound synonymous. But as defined by these certifying organizations, they're hugely different. (Kruse estimates that 3% of Sonoma County's vineyards are certified organic or biodynamic; some of them are also certified sustainable.) Organic farming, overseen here by California Certified Organic Farmers, strictly forbids the use of synthetic chemicals. Sustainable farming, on the other hand, is designed to be flexible.
"With organic, you're either organic or you're not," says Ryan Decker, director of estate vineyards for Rodney Strong, one of the first Sonoma County operations to achieve sustainability certification. "But with sustainability there's this huge range of scores you can have and still be sustainable. They don't force you to do things that don't make a lot of sense."
For instance, says Decker, "there's a misconception by the public that if we're sustainable we're not using pesticides. We are still spraying pesticides."
The flexibility to continue using synthetic pesticides may make sustainability more palatable to a larger number of farmers, but critics argue that it dilutes the concept. "To me sustainability is a made-up word," says organic viticulturist Phil Coturri, owner of Enterprise Vineyard Management. "How could you be sustainable and allow glyphosates to be used in the vineyard?"
Glyphosate, more commonly known as Roundup, is an herbicide and a probable carcinogen. Its producer, Monsanto, was ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages to people who used Roundup and later were diagnosed with cancer. Sustainability certifications permit the use of Roundup, along with neonicotinoid pesticides, which have been shown to harm bee populations.
Kruse says that the county's growers use glyphosate "as a tool of last resort," adding that use of the herbicide decreased 17% between 2016 and 2017 in Sonoma County.
But others have wondered: Did a high compliance rate in Sonoma County's sustainability campaign come at the expense of high standards? "I would celebrate Sonoma County saying we want to be Roundup-free by the year 2025," Coturri says.
Maybe the issue of climate change will unite the uncompromising organic advocates and the sustainability set. That's where the Climate Adaptation Certification comes in. It was developed by Laurel Marcus, executive director of the environmental nonprofit California Land Stewardship Institute, which also administers the Fish Friendly Farming certification. The institute chose Sonoma County for the new pilot program because of its success with sustainability, Marcus says.
Pinot Noir grapes drop from a conveyer into a bin with dry ice before being moved to a tank during the grape harvest at Bucher Vineyards in Healdsburg,
For the new certification, "the two goals are really to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and then to sequester carbon on site," says Marcus. "Of course, the purpose of having a farm is to grow a crop, so we can't get in the way of that."
The pilot program will roll out in January with a group of Sonoma County vineyards, which have not been selected yet. Participation will be free to the vineyard owners during the pilot program, though the full rollout of the program will eventually come with an audit fee.
Getting certified will involve a personalized assessment of a farm in order to create a customized set of best practices. To mitigate the effects of climate change, a farmer might be asked to reconsider her approach to tilling, hedging, composting and irrigating. Soil management will play a large role. Farmers will be asked to make a "nitrogen budget," tracking how much nitrogen they apply to their vineyards.
One of the most significant tools for fighting climate change is planting trees: "Oak trees sequester a lot of carbon," Marcus says. The program's other major target will be the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, which is far more potent than carbon dioxide and is produced by agriculture.
"We're not looking to radically change the way people farm," Marcus says. "We're looking at the fine points of what they're doing and fine-tuning that."
Kruse sees the program as having great marketing potential for California vineyards. "We believe that over the next couple years we'll be able to equate the greenhouse gas savings with something much more tangible for the wine consumer," she says. "We'll be able to tell people if this farmer reduced greenhouse gases to the equivalent of taking five cars off the road for a year.
"Sonoma County has really positioned ourselves as global leaders in sustainability," Kruse continues. "We're always going to be looking at what's the evolution of that."
Esther Mobley is The San Francisco Chronicle's wine critic. Email: emobley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Esther_mobley Instagram: @esthermob
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Wine critic Esther Mobley joined The Chronicle in 2015 to cover California wine, beer and spirits. Previously she was an assistant editor at Wine Spectator magazine in New York, and has worked harvests at wineries in Napa Valley and Argentina. She studied English literature at Smith College.
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