It's not for the faint of heart Going no-till certainly has been picking up steam in recent years, and overall it’s a good thing. When I first got involved in viticulture back in 2010 I was living in Italy. Like a lot of Mediterranean viticultural areas, there was a tendency to disc everything all the time. If you didn’t have a barren wasteland with vines poking out of it, you weren’t a good farmer. Anything you couldn’t get to with a tractor you sprayed with herbicide. One of my first vineyard jobs in Italy was spraying glyphosate out of a backpack sprayer all spring. I felt like I was in the final scene of the Godfather! Minus the dying part. Herbicide: the new four-letter word Mentalities have shifted since then both in Europe and here in the states. All in all it’s a good shift. We’ve all seen places that have gone on for years and years using herbicide to a point where you don’t even need to spray it anymore because that soil is so d

Flextank Helps La Mesa Vineyards Deliver Award-Winning Wines Sweep Gold Medals At Three Prestigious California Wine Competitions  La Mesa Vineyards uses Flextank vessels to capture gold medals  and create top small-batch artisan-style wines of exceptional quality. Vancouver, Wash. – August 06, 2024 – Flextank, the leader in advanced oxygen-permeable polyethylene tanks for wine, cider, spirits and craft beverage fermentation and storage, today announced one of the company’s premier Flextank customers, La Mesa Vineyards, recently swept prestigious industry wine awards in three separate competitions. The Amador County, Calif.-based La Mesa Vineyards received several Gold, Double Gold and Best-in-Class awards at the respected 2024 Peninsula Underground "Under the Radar" California wine competition, 2024 Orange County Fair Commercial Wine competition, and at the 2024 California State Fair competition. Competition is Fierce. Flextank Helps Deliver Awar

Afternoon Brief, June 14th

The Changing Tide of Napa Grapes: Riesling and Cabernet Franc garner highest prices in Napa. What does that mean? Napa’s old guard—Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay—still rule. But for how long?...