Extreme viticulture: how Northeast growers farm vinifera organically and sustainably

Wines & Vines, Oct, 2007 by Suzanne Gannon

Barbara Shinn is fired up. In 1998 she and her husband, David Page, bought the parcel of land in Mattituck, Long Island, that would become the critically acclaimed Shinn Estate Vineyards, and immediately began preparing the soil for an experiment in high-intensity viticulture.

"Our goal was to make an extremely high quality of wine, and to integrate extreme viticulture in order to make it 100% organic," Shinn said. "The naysayers said we'd be lucky if 5% of the vineyard were organic."

Nine years later, 90% of the vineyards planted with Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Petite Verdot, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Blanc and Semillon are organic.

"It takes a really big paradigm change to do it, and a lot of people don't want to take the step forward," said Shinn, who gained considerable exposure to winemaking while working with vintners to develop custom wines for the list at Home Restaurant in Manhattan, which she owns with Page.

One of the more labor-intensive rituals she employs across her 19.5 acres are the compost tea drenches she runs through a drip irrigation system monthly during the growing season. Using a blend of ingredients including reconstituted seaweed and Mississippi catfish heads, tails and guts (Northeastern cod doesn't qualify because it inhabits saltwater and is heavily overfished), Shinn consumes about 1.5 pounds of the mixture per acre under vine.

Fifty percent of the growth on the vineyard floor (above) is clover, which captures nitrogen and fixes it in the soil. When the clover is mowed, the decaying plant creates a "green," nitrogen-rich mulch. And since the soil is never disturbed, earthworms, bacteria and fungus remain intact, cultivating a healthy soil structure. Vines are trained in a vertical shoot position, and leaves are continually cleared away from grape clusters to allow light and air to penetrate.

"I want so badly for people to jump on board," said Shinn, who concedes that she grows frustrated with the slow pace of change around her. "There's no reason that someone else with a vineyard 10 feet away can't do the same thing."

When she decided to mount a "no-kill" vineyard operation, Shinn again encountered skeptics. By abstaining from the use of herbicides, observers cautioned her, she'd be fighting stiff competition in the root zone. But then Cornell University's viticulture extension program decided to study her vineyard two years in a row, and found no deficiencies in her vines.

"Our ability to harvest really high quality fruit year after year in the tremendously different weather from 2002 to 2006 shows that our techniques work," Shinn said.

Cornell's program

Organic orthodoxy aside, Shinn is one of 49 growers now participating in the sustainable viticulture program being offered by Cornell University, based on a workbook developed by Tim Martinson, Alice Wise, Jamie Hawk, Tim Weigle and Libby Tarleton. Last summer, there were 15.

Jamie Hawk, a sustainable viticulture educator based in Cornell's Penn Yan office in the Finger Lakes region, says the program now includes 18 growers in the Finger Lakes, one in the Hudson Valley, eight on Long Island, and 22 in the Lake Erie area.

Having completed self-assessments based on questions such as "Is crop thinning done in a thorough and conscientious manner?" and "Is fungal resistance considered when selecting varieties for planting?" for which answers are assigned point values from one to four (with four denoting a situation where substantial improvement is needed), the growers are now in various stages of action plan development.

"The hang-up in getting a lot of growers involved is that they see (the sustainable program) as another layer of regulations," said Hawk, a co-author of The New York Sustainable Viticulture Workbook who divides his time between field visits to participating growers and research in pursuit of new grants. "When they realize that they're already doing a large majority of what we're promoting, they get excited and motivated."

Tim Martinson, statewide senior extension associate for Cornell University's viticulture extension program and coauthor of the workbook, said the diversity of grape farming in New York state, where grape juice growers exist alongside winegrape growers, has led to substantial changes in the way the manual approaches nitrogen fertilizers.

"With grape juice growers, the objective is maximum tonnage at minimum cost," Martinson said. "For vinifera and premium grapegrowers, this just doesn't apply."

Recognizing the substantial presence of organic matter in the soil, his team now takes a variable approach, tailoring the nitrogen rate to individual blocks rather than dispensing the bulk rate of 100 pounds per acre. Martinson says nitrogen volume can be cut by 50% or more, with some vineyard parcels requiring as little as 10 pounds per acre.

Raising Riesling

Up in Pulteney, N.Y., John Althouse is just getting started. Three years ago, the former chemical engineer purchased land on the west side of Keuka Lake, and quickly realized its potential for the profitable cold climate Riesling, dubbing it Gilded Grapes, LLC.