California’s vineyards are on the verge of crisis.
Vine disease is rampant, labor costs are exploding, and the climate is getting hotter, sometimes wetter, certainly weirder. But most places you look, the vineyards appear exactly as they did decades ago: trellised, trimmed and utterly exposed to increasingly hostile elements. Despite brand new challenges, many are battling the same old ways—bringing shovels to a knife fight.
Not everyone thinks this way. A growing number of vintners across the state are managing their lands with proactive philosophies born from extensive experience and backed up by tangible outcomes. While many of their strategies rely on the latest science and technology, it turns out that the best tool we have to win this fight is as old as time, because Mother Nature can lead the way.
Christina Lopez Acquiesce – Photography by Mark Hartman
Nature Doesn’t Need Us
It didn’t take much convincing for Mike Grgich to agree with his nephew Ivo Jeramaz nearly 25 years ago that their family’s Napa Valley vineyards should go organic. That’s how farming was always done in Yugoslavia, where they both grew up. “It wasn’t called organic or biodynamic or regenerative,” says Jeramaz, who came to Napa as a mechanical engineer in 1986 but stayed to work in wine with his legendary uncle. “It was just farming that had been done for generations following natural cycles.”
Jeramaz thought winemakers were gods until he realized the magic was really in the vineyard. “Once you have the grapes, that’s your quality,” he explains. “Everything else is noise.”
After going organic in 2006 across their 366 acres of vineyard, which stretch from Carneros to Calistoga, they adopted biodynamic principles three years later and were among the first wineries in California to receive regenerative certification in 2023. The positive results are stark, especially since their farming costs $5,000 less per acre than the $15,000 average.
“In Napa Valley, vineyards are failing,” says Jeramaz of red blotch and other diseases that are causing vines to be replanted in just eight years rather than the typical 20. “Neighbors have everything cultivated. There’s not a single blade of grass. They see how neat the vineyard looks. We see a vineyard that is starving, that is thirsty because you’re losing water. It all evaporates.”
Rather than kill the weeds, Jeramaz fosters cover crop to protect and nourish the soil, just like you see in the forest. “Plants have been doing this for 430 million years,” says Jeramaz. “Nature doesn’t need us to figure out what to do.”
