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

Farmers and agricultural experts indicate that better access to ongoing education is crucial to advance their businesses. Recognizing that advancements in science and technology are constant, Vineyard Team launched a series of online courses to deliver the latest education on sustainable winegrowing.  Courses feature insights from experienced farmers, researchers, and UC Extension. Best of all, viewers can access these courses for free (saving $380)! All courses within Sustainable Winegrowing On Demand include valuable continuing education hours (11.5 Department of Pesticide Regulation, 34 Certified Crop Advisor), and a train-the-trainer kit so viewers can easily educate their team. Through this program, there is a unique opportunity to connect with other sustainable winegrowers through roundtable discussions. Larry Witted, PCA and CCA from Lodi, California shares, "The Sustainable Winegrowing education from Vineyard Team allows me to view cutting-edge educational pro

Sunridge is pleased to share with our customers our ongoing efforts and partnership with UC Davis, UC Riverside and Foundation Plant Services (FPS) to explore new technologies and techniques in grapevine propagation. Our aim is to revolutionize the way we approach and tackle challenges in the critical field of disease prevention and management. We understand the increasing concern among vineyard owners around this topic and are committed to helping find innovative solutions to mitigate these challenges and ensure the longevity and productivity of your vineyards.  We pride ourselves on implementing a variety of treatments to our field cuttings to ensure cleanliness and guarantee the vitality of our vines from the very start. Building upon our existing practices, we are currently exploring strategies using the latest scientific research on grapevine trunk disease (GTD) mitigation to enhance our post-graft procedures, specifically to the pre-callusing stage.  Our vines are being

As the grape growing season intensifies, we are observing significant bloom and berry development in vineyards. Your irrigation and field practice strategy is the difference-maker in boosting berry development. Ensure you’re on the right track by joining us for the Viticulture Webinar with Expert Cody Ashurst: Strategies to Boost Berry Development. This Thursday! May 30th from 11:00-11:30 AM. Register Here >> https://lnkd.in/ghV6zauu Topics will cover both Wine Grapes and Table Grapes… - Monitoring Vine Health and Stress Status - Monitoring Vine Growth, Trunk Growth, and Canopy Development - Identifying Lag Phase and Veraison for Post Veraison Irrigation Strategies - Live Q&A

At Sunridge, we take great pride in our commitment to actively collaborate with experts in order to find solutions to better serve our industry. Most recently, we’ve partnered with UC Davis to provide vines for testing and evaluation in their latest trial aimed at innovative treatments to combat trunk diseases.  Today’s visit was a follow up to administer the second round of treatments to the grafted vines, now that they have just come out of callusing. Our team will immediately plant these vines in pots and after about 12 weeks of growth, they will plan another visit to take the vines for inoculation and further evaluation to complete the last stages of this trial.  Our commitment lies in not only identifying early detection methods but also prioritizing preventative measures to ensure the utmost health and vitality of our vines. That's why we diligently administer beneficial organisms throughout our propagation process, allowing our vines to flourish and rea

Vineyard Team's introduction of Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand in 2023 brought forth a game-changing initiative. This program includes no-cost online courses that explore essential subjects like soil health, pest management, nutrition, and climate change, benefiting winegrape growers and industry professionals alike. Get instant access to 20 courses - absolutely free! -These courses prioritize sustainable winegrowing methods and all count towards valuable Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) or Certified Crop Advisor (CCA) continuing education hours: Trunk Renewal for Management of Trunk Diseases | DPR 1 - O; CCA 1 - IPM Waves of Innovation in Virus Vector Disruption: Vine Mealybug | DPR 1 - O; CCA 1 - IPM Improving Nursery Practices to Prevent Fungal Contamination and Biocontrol Strategies Against Grapevine Trunk Diseases | DPR 1 - O; CCA 1 - IPM Beyond Climate Change: The Agricultural Response and the Concept of Climate Smart Agriculture | CCA 1 - SWM Biologicals Upda

Don’t Miss These 5 Experts at the Sustainable Ag Expo

Precision Agriculture, Trunk Renewal, Healthy Soils, Red Blotch, & Compost Tea for Powdery Mildew October 31st – Atascadero, CA: Looking for the latest viticulture and technology from the world’s top […]

I once saw a commercial that said: “forget everything you thought you knew about slip covers”. So I did. Admittedly I don’t know a lot about slip covers. I do know quite a bit about plant stress. Up until recently, our constant flow of data on soil moisture has been studied along with weekly spot measurements of leaf water potential via pressure bomb. This year we switched to FloraPulse® plant stress sensors and holy moly, having real time data on plant stress is pretty wild. First of all, how much data are we talking about? This graph compares our real time plant stress measurements with what would be weekly midday pressure bomb measurements. Look at how much data we were missing just by looking at only weekly snapshots of plant stress. There is a lot of stuff going on those other 6 days, not to mention at night. Pressure bomb measurements are hypothetical. Stars are placed where weekly measurements would be made to illustrate data missed by manual measurements.

The recent rain we’ve been getting is certainly a welcome change. Wet weather does, however, present other challenges especially going into the pruning season. That’s right. I’m talking about trunk disease. It’s everywhere, and like viruses, growers like to pretend they don’t have it. After all, it takes years before symptoms express themselves and even longer before they amount to an economic loss. But economic loss from trunk disease is real and, uh, expensive. No one likes being told their best option is tearing out and replanting a vineyard, so let’s go over some ways to be proactive. We’re all stuck in the office right now anyway. Sometimes there are more than one pathogen present in the vascular tissue. This vine shows the classic wedge-shaped canker typical of Eutypa, but also has some spotty necrotic tissue associated with an Esca infection. What is trunk disease? Trunk disease is a catch all term that refers to fungal diseases Eutypa,

Color is one of the consumer’s primary considerations when tasting wine, especially red wine. Whether a beginner or a wine connoisseur, consumers consciously or unconsciously pick up on color cues when tasting and buying wines. Where the hue sits in the red-violet-blue range can reflect the wine’s acidity, the degree of opacity can indicate tannin level, and color intensity can suggest age.  A pet peeve for many winemakers is seeing the color they spent so much time and money creating disappear as the wine ages. Producing an appealing and true-to-type color begins in the vineyard, where the varietal, soil, temperature, canopy, and other factors work together to yield the wine’s color. Climate change has added unpredictability to the mix, disrupting tried and true vineyard management techniques. After harvest, winemakers begin extracting color at crush, where temperature, use of whole-cluster fermentation or cold-soaking, and added compounds all impact the color