What's your most valued vineyard tool?

Wines & Vines, April, 2004 by Larry Walker

We asked a few vineyard owners and vineyard managers what they considered the most important piece of vineyard equipment that has been developed in the past 25 years. What piece of equipment not only made their job easier but led to better quality grapes. Most answered by saying, first of all, that the people in the vineyard were more important than any piece of machinery. However, when pressed, the following equipment got the call.

Andy Beckstoffer, Owner, Beckstoffer Vineyards, St. Helena, Calif.

In the past 25 years, how we've achieved vineyard quality is on the back of technology: the development of rootstocks, clones, vineyard regimes, pruning techniques and other techniques. In the next 25 years, quality will ride on information technology. I would say the computer is the most important piece of vineyard equipment I have. We can ride up a vineyard road in a pickup with a monitor on the dash and tell to the second when to irrigate and what effect that will have on grape quality. With the computer, we can read moisture down to 15 feet below the ground at every level, then flip the monitor up into the canopy and check moisture in the leaf. So the personal computer gets my call.

Mike Means, Vineyard Manager, Canoe Ridge Vineyards, Wash.

Since the bulk of my grape experience is with Washington viticulture I'll limit my comments to Washington state. As you are aware, the bulk of the winegrapes grown in Washington are grown east of the Cascade Mountains. The mountains create a rain shadow that limits annual precipitation to between 6 and 10 inches in most growing areas. As a result, grapes require supplemental irrigation to attain high quality fruit. The key to quality winegrowing in Washington lies in proper water management. The devices that have the biggest quality impact have been soil moisture monitoring equipment. Although some of these devices have been around longer than 25 years, their adoption and widespread use has really taken off in the last decade or so. With better water management has come increased fruit quality. The concept of deficit irrigation has revolutionized how and when water is applied to the vineyard. This has led to better balanced canopies and clusters which express their true varietal characteristics. The various monitoring devices on the market allow managers to walk the tightrope necessary to bring out the best in their fruit.

Richard Boer, Vineyard Manager, Chalone Vineyards, Calif.

I think the computer is the most important piece of equipment of the last 25 years. In 1984 I had two filing cabinets and 10 to 12 boxes full of information and records saved by my predecessors at Hess vineyards. In the seven years I was there, I may have accessed 5% of it. Here at Chalone I have harvest and viticultural information dating back to the early 1980s, as well as all the reports and records I have compiled since 1992 on my computer and available with the click of a mouse. The Internet and e-mail allow us to find and correspond with colleagues around the world. The computer has allowed me to access records and review information faster, giving me more time to spend in the vineyard and making me a better farmer.

Hector Bravo is my vineyard supervisor and 18-year Chalone employee. He thinks our current harvest system is the most important advance in equipment. Our current system uses a wheel tractor with low profile tires, a two bin trailer and half-ton plastic bins. They are loaded at the vineyard and unloaded at the winery with a forklift. In 1985 Hector recalls picking into 50-pound lug boxes. The boxes were hauled on a sled pulled by a crawler tractor. Once the sled was full, the boxes were loaded onto a flatbed truck and driven to the winery. The truck was unloaded by hand and dumped into the stemmer/crusher.

Jose Bravo and Alex Hernandez are both vineyard foremen, and have been with Chalone for 13 and 15 years, respectively. They both feel that the current tractor is the most important piece of equipment of the last 25 years. They were both bounced around on the two open station (no cab) crawler tractors at Chalone in the late 1980s. The current tractor is a four-wheel drive, air conditioned cab model with ultra low profile tires. It will perform all of our tractor tasks safely and efficiently, and the operator is not beat up and covered with dirt at the end of the day.

Vincent Trentadue, Four Seasons Vineyard Management, Geyserville, Calif.

It didn't take long to come up with what I feel is the most versatile and efficient piece of equipment we use: the ATV (all terrain vehicle). Our company uses five of the Honda Foreman and one Kawasaki Mule four-wheel drive ATVs on the 15 vineyard ranches we manage. They are easily transported to the various locations on a small trailer or even in the back of a Ford Ranger pickup. We use them year-round for everything from strip spraying in the tight vine rows in the winter to checking and working on irrigation in the summer. They can get in the wet fields using easily mounted tracks when the tracks can't. Most of our ranches are in the hill terrain of Sonoma County's Alexander and Dry Creek valleys, so the fuel efficiency and time saved getting back and forth to areas where they are needed is invaluable. Our mechanic likes how easily they are serviced.