By Virginie Boone

Imagine if you could try a handful of Sonoma County wines without leaving your home. Or send a selection to friends who would be grateful to try such wines. Well, there is a way, with a new product launched earlier this year called Sampl.

Sampl. was co-founded in 2022 by Johan Eide and Kerry Thedorf, who are also the founders of Region in Sebastopol, a similarly-minded showcase for Sonoma County wines, where visitors can try a multitude of small-producer wines and occasionally meet the winegrowers and winemakers in person.

Region features around 50 wines at a time, with a weekly featured winery that does a full takeover of the space. Recent takeovers have been by Medlock Ames; this week is with Martinelli, while the weeks following will have Kobler Estate, Belden Barns and Serres Ranch.

Both Region and Sampl. are trying to help people make new wine discoveries.

Eide is an inventor, patent agent and hobby winemaker. To launch Sampl. he partnered with Sebastopol-raised Miles Pepper, who served as Region’s director of digital, ecommerce and creative services before launching Sampl.

Pepper was also involved in the creation of FinalStraw, a collapsible sustainable drinking straw that raised $1.89 million on Kickstarter in 2018 and was featured on the Season 10 premiere of “Shark Tank.”

Pepper then invented Sanikind, an eco-friendly refillable hand sanitizer made from recycled ocean plastic that he launched at the height of Covid. In recognition of his inventions and dedication to sustainable innovation, he has been named one of INC’s 30 Under 30 and is an international speaker on sustainability.

The newest invention, Sampl., is a re-imagined subscription wine tasting club featuring seven 100 ml glasses of wine protected in a individual glass capsules which are packed into a capsule case which can be shipped safely to people’s homes. The wines change quarterly and feature a new region of California with each shipment.

The wines and vineyards of Sonoma County are featured for fall 2023 and come with maps, winemaker interviews, vineyard videos and digital tasting notes accessed through a very cool coaster embedded with a QR code that guides drinkers through the region and the wines. Every part of the packaging can be reused or recycled.

The current Sonoma County lineup of wines are from impressive small-production producers such as Thirty-Seven, Anaba, Balletto and Gary Farrell and range from Albarino to a proprietary red blend. The one-time purchase price is $75 ($65 for subscribers).

Previous Sonoma County wines that have been featured include Flambeaux, DRNK, Chenoweth and Eric Kent. In other words, no bulk wine, no crap. The company values real people who grow the grapes and make the wine and choose the wines to be sent.

The concept is sustainable, innovative and a fun showcase for Sonoma County wines. Check out both Sampl. and Region when you can.

By Virginie Boone

After just over a year of writing The Good Stuff columns, the Sonoma County Winegrowers and I are happy to announce that we’re adding an audio version of The Good Stuff, which will debut this coming Saturday afternoon on KSRO 103.5/1350 AM. 

Co-hosted by SCW President/CEO, Karissa Kruse, both the show and the column are inspired by Karissa’s 2022 TEDXSonomaCounty talk called “Drink the Good Stuff.” During that talk, Karissa discussed how after losing her home in the 2017 fires she reflected on the impermanence of stuff, prompting her to rethink the notion of waiting for a special occasion to bring out a good bottle of wine, or wear a special outfit or spend time with friends.  

That tragedy also led her to double down her commitment to the community and consider what more she could do to further Sonoma County’s goals of sustainability and resilience, always asking, what’s next? 

Toward that end in the show we also aim to ask what’s next. We’ll be highlighting grape growers and farmers to emphasize to our listeners that wine is tied to agriculture in an intimate way, and that wine brings people together in a communal and cultural sense that’s unique. 

We hope to capture the joy, comradery and sense of community that makes Sonoma County such a special place to grow, make and enjoy wine. 

To be aired live and also preserved as a podcast, The Good Stuff episodes will dive deep into the stories and personalities that make Sonoma County both rich in history and innovative, inviting Sonoma County’s top winemakers, grape growers, chefs, sommeliers into the studio to converse about topics that are both serious and fun. 

Tune in this Saturday, September 19 at 1 p.m. when we welcome guests Evan Goldstein, Master Sommelier for the San Francisco Giants, and Sonoma County grape growers John and Diane Bucher, who have poured their wines for fans in the Cloud Club at Oracle Park, part of the partnership between SCW and the SF Giants.  

The following week we have our friends from J Vineyards and Winery, winemaker Nicole Hitchcock and E. & J. Gallo senior director of marketing and communications Caroline Shaw, on to discuss the sparkling harvest and a wonderful culinary series they host at J called Shifting the Lens. 

We hope you enjoy the shows! 

Learn More About The Good Stuff Show on KSRO.

By Virginie Boone

With E. & J. Gallo’s Luxury Wine Group’s blockbuster acquisition of Rombauer Vineyards last week, the world’s biggest wine producer is not only bolstering its white wine imprint, it is adding to its Sonoma County holdings, too.

As we wrote about here in May, Rombauer recently bought two vineyards in Sonoma Valley known as Carriger One and Carriger Two, where it has planted Sauvignon Blanc to boost its successful Sauvignon Blanc program, which has been growing like gangbusters since its initial launch in 2014.

“We looked to Sonoma County because it’s cooler and does better with Sauvignon Blanc than Napa,” Ritchie Allen, Rombauer’s vice president of viticulture and winemaking told us.

Rombauer’s SB production is currently around 48,000 cases with 76% of the grapes coming from Sonoma County as of the 2022 vintage. But Allen said the goal was to eventually source SB entirely from Sonoma County.

For Gallo, this would have only increased the appeal of adding Rombauer to its portfolio, for Gallo’s roots in Sonoma County run deep.

Founded in 1933 in Modesto by brothers Ernest and Julio Gallo, Gallo bought 50% of the Frei Brothers Ranch in Dry Creek Valley in 1971, what it considers its first investment in fine wine vineyards in California’s coastal region. Walter and Louis Frei took over the ranch from their father Andrew, who first established it in 1890, where they ran Frei Brothers Winery for 70 years.

Gallo started sourcing grapes from Frei after Prohibition. The Freis also ran an apple orchard at Guerneville and Frei Roads near Sebastopol which had included an apple packing facility at one point run by Andrew Frei, who formed the initial relationship with Gallo after purchasing holdings from his brother Thomas.

Gallo of Sonoma was introduced in 1994, among its first offering in the super-premium wine category. The company changed the name of Gallo of Sonoma to Gallo Family Vineyards in 2006.

In 1996 Gallo bought the MacMurray Ranch in Russian River Valley. A 1,536-acre once-cattle ranch that once belonged to actor Fred MacMurray, the Gallos planted it to Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, working with Fred’s daughter Kate to tell the MacMurray story. Today, MacMurray Ranch wines source from additional Gallo Sonoma County vineyard sites, Laguna Ranch, Del Rio and Two Rock.

In 2002 it bought Louis M. Martini Winery in the Napa Valley, which included one of Sonoma County’s crown jewels, the 575-acre Monte Rosso Vineyard on Moon Mountain above Sonoma Valley.

In 2001 Gina Gallo bought the Dry Creek General Store, first established in 1881 near the entrance to Frei Ranch. It continues to be a beacon of local goods.

In 2015 the company deepened its Sonoma County interests with the purchase of J Vineyards and Winery in Russian River Valley, which included a handful of cool-climate sites like Bow Tie, Annapolis and Eastside Knoll, following that big deal with the acquisition of the historic Asti Winery in the Alexander Valley.

One of Sonoma County’s oldest and largest wineries, first established in 1881, Asti included 535 acres (275 acres planted) and a winery facility capable of crushing 35,000 tons of grapes, in addition to the Souverain brand.

In 2021 Gallo bought 30 brands from Constellation, including Sonoma County stalwarts Clos du Bois, Mark West and Ravenswood.

Gallo’s presence in Sonoma County runs far, deep and wide, in both land and brand. From those early days sourcing from Frei to further sustaining Rombauer Sauvignon Blanc sites, Gallo is helping to get the Sonoma County name in front of millions of wine drinkers worldwide. Salut to that.

As harvest slowly kicks into gear, farmers will be spending a lot of time in their trucks, so it seemed a good time to put together a playlist of songs about, well, farming.  

Many of these songs have similar themes – trucks, tractors, daddies and mommas, corn – and while there aren’t many that mention grape-growing specifically, the sentiments about growing and harvesting things for others feel universal. Some of these songs are serious, some are silly, but ultimately, they capture the heart of what it takes to make a living from the land. 

A Country Boy Can Survive, by Hank Williams, Jr., is about the life skills people raised in the country have versus folks in the city and has the line, “We grow good-ole tomatoes and homemade wine, and a country boy can survive, country folks can survive.” 

A Man on a Tractor, in which singer Rodney Atkins finds solace in seeing a “man on a tractor with a dog in a field,” realizing all he needs in life is to become his own man on a tractor and he’ll “find peace of mind on my own piece of land.” 

Christmas Tree Farm, by Taylor Swift, is a shout out to her childhood growing up on such a farm, “where every wish comes true.” The video for the song has sweet footage that her parents took of toddler Taylor. 

Country Money, Miranda Lambert’s refrain about “making country money, making that country money, down in cash cow county where the bills really grow in trees,” details such things as a “pocket full of Benji’s… and the best beef in the cheese state.” 

Dirt on my Boots has an upbeat Jon Pardi singing about having “a little dirt on my boots” and “a little mud on my wheels but we’re gonna dance the dust right off them tonight.” 

Down on the Farm, by Tim McGraw, is a country party anthem, wherein he makes no excuses for being “just country boys and girls getting down on the farm.”  

Farmer’s Almanac, a classic by the man in black, Johnny Cash, this song celebrates the many things people used to rely on from the farmer’s almanac, taking a lighthearted approach in his lyrics with a phrase like “visitors and fish smell after three days,” as well as a more serious mention of corruption, stating, “in rivers and bad government the lightest things flow to the top.” 

Farmer’s Blues, a downtrodden classic for Marty Stuart, who both played guitar for Johnny Cash and married his daughter, Stuart’s tale asks, “who’ll buy my wheat, who’ll buy my corn to feed my babies when they’re born, I work the land I watch the sky, I talk to God and wonder why.”  

Hands of Time, by Margo Price, is about working to buy back the family farm, with the refrain, “all I wanna do is make something last, but I can’t see the future, I can’t change the past, I wanna buy back the farm and bring my mama home some wine, turn back the clock on the cruel hands of time.” 

Harvest Time, by Luke Bryan, who grew up on a peanut farm in Georgia, is all you could want in a song about harvest, with lyrics like, “It’s harvest time in this little town, time to bring it on in, pay the loans down, fill our diesel tank up, make another round.” 

International Harvester by Craig Morgan, the rare song not about John Deere, opens with the sound of a tractor revving and includes the line, “Excuse me for tryin’ to do my job… but this year ain’t been no bumper crop.” 

Jack of All Trades is a Bruce Springsteen working-class ode to a guy down on his luck who is willing to put his myriad skills to work for whomever will have him, singing to his family, “I’ll hammer the nails and I’ll set the stone, I’ll harvest your crops when they’re ripe and grown. I’ll pull that engine apart and patch her up til she’s running right, I’m a Jack of all trades, we’ll be alright.” 

John Deere Tractor, by The Judds, is a tale of fortitude, where the protagonist likens herself to the world’s most famous name in farming, singing, “I’m like the John Deere tractor, in a half acre field, tryin to plow a furrow where the soil is made of steel.” 

Rain on the Scarecrow is 1980s-era John Mellencamp’s darker take on the life of a farmer in the face of predatory lending practices and how hard it can be to keep land in agriculture, with stark lines like, “This land fed a nation this land made me proud, and son I’m just sorry there’s no legacy for you now.” 

She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy, by always-up-for-a-good-time singer Kenny Chesney, is a flirty all-around playful song that includes the lyrics, “She’s always staring at me while I’m chugging along.” 

Listen to our playlist here:

Spend time above 1,000-feet-elevation on Sonoma County’s Moon Mountain and you’ll see much of what you would expect – Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel, even Syrah. Tannat is unexpected. 

And yet at B. Wise Vineyards there are 12 rows of it made into a varietal wine that sells out quickly every year. 

An unusual grape variety in California, Tannat is common in the Madiran appellation in the southwest part of France, where it produces dark, powerful and tannic wines with vigorous structure. There it is often blended with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc and might even make an occasional Rosé wine. Do these wines need time to age? Yes, they do. 

It also has a happy home in Uruguay, where a dedication to making world-class versions of the wine is on the rise.  

In California, there’s not much of it – no more than 600 acres across the entire state, with the vast majority of that planted before 2014. In Sonoma County, it doesn’t even crack the top 13 of red grape varieties. Here, there’s more Sangiovese, more Mourvèdre, more Petit Verdot. 

It had a small heyday in California in the late 1800s. Charles Wetmore is said to have imported it here first in 1879 and records show it was used for blending by J.H. Drummond, founder of Dunfilian Vineyards in Glen Ellen, and H.W. Crabb, one of the earliest to plant in Napa Valley’s Oakville area on the site of today’s To Kalon Vineyard. Back then, Tannat was considered particularly well-suited as a blender with Zinfandel.  

Experiments by the University of California at Davis with Tannat in the 1930s and 1940s were glowing in their assessments of the grape as “richly endowed with a distinctive aroma, full pleasing flavor, good balance, intense color and full body,” but by the 1960s there was reluctance to growing it widely. 

The grape appears to favor high elevations, either that or growers who like to grow grapes at elevation like Tannat. The Silverwood Ranch on Pine Mountain-Cloverdale Peak also has Tannat, farmed by Imagery Estate on its Upper Ridge Vineyard. There it sits at 2,600-feet elevation, the highest vineyard site in all of Sonoma County. 

Its version is voluptuous, intensely aromatic and packed with flavor, tannin and acidity. 

For many years the small producer Y. Rousseau, run by a native of Gascony, made Tannat from Saralee’s Vineyard in Russian River Valley. It was meaty in strawberry with refreshing acidity and ample structure. Wine.com is still selling a 2014 vintage of the wine. 

“A lot of Tannats from Madiran… have a bit more rusticity to them,” he told Terroir Review in a 2015 interview.  

“The California Tannats are more generous, with bright red and black fruit. My Russian River Tannat… tends to be juicier and maybe even denser than the French Tannat, mostly because we have more sun in California. That said, as far as the texture and structure of the wine, they have the same frame. You can take the Tannat out of Gascony, but you can’t take the tannins out of Tannat.” 

He added that his job as a winemaker with Tannat is to tame it, but that Saralee’s Vineyard Tannat was a good way to introduce consumers to it, possessed of bright fruit, juicier than higher-elevation versions with super structure. 

Le Coeur Tannat was a short-term passion project of Verité winemaker Pierre Seillan, who wanted to express his southwestern French roots through the variety, which he sourced from high-elevation vineyards in Alexander Valley.  

The wine can be found via the Vigneron Collection Wine Club, where wines made by Seillan from around the world are sold. There it is explained that “With Le Coeur, Pierre strives to showcase the elegance, finesse and complexity that Tannat can express when meticulously farmed and vinified.” 

But the story is more complicated than the tasting notes suggest. 

“Winemaker Pierre Seillan planted Tannat in Alexander Valley, unbeknownst to owner Jackson Family Wines proprietor and chairwoman, Barbara Banke,” explained David Thompson in a story about it in The Napa Wine Project.  

“He had her sample the 2009 vintage of this wine in a blind tasting. She really enjoyed its character and asked him what the variety was. He told her Tannat. She replied, ‘we don’t have any Tannat planted.’ The secret had to be let out of the bag at that point. And he told her he had been making wine from this variety. She told him, ‘We have to bottle this.’ 

Subsequently, it was bottled under the label Le Coeur; the 2009-2011 vintages were released as a three-year vertical in 2022 and 2023, vintages 2012-2014 were also released as a three-year vertical. 

Joseph Swan also produced a Tannat for a time, from Matthew’s Station Vineyard in the Russian River Valley. Most of the time, Tannat serves as a blender. Westwood makes a proprietary blend made mostly of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Counoise that includes small amounts of Grenache and Tannat from Sonoma County with age-worthy tannins and rich berry flavors. 

Today, true Tannat from Sonoma County is harder and harder to find. In addition to B. Wise and Imagery there’s Foley Estate Tannat from Alexander Valley, which the producer describes as “one of our most distinctive wines aromatically… with lush aromatics of red raspberry, blackberry and chocolate.” 

Tannats to Try

Wise Estate 2018 Moon Mountain District Tannat

Foley 2019 Sonoma Estate Alexander Valley Tannat 

Imagery Estate 2018 Upper Ridge Vineyard Pine Mountain-Cloverdale Peak Tannat 

Le Coeur 2011 Alexander Valley Tannat 

Westwood 2019 Sonoma County Legend Proprietary Red Blend 

By Virginie Boone

Sideways author Rex Pickett will be in town this week at the Sebastiani Theatre in Sonoma for a showing of the movie. Gallons of ink have been spilled on the ups and downs of this film, which came out in 2004, an adaptation of Pickett’s book, set mostly in the Santa Ynez Valley of California’s Central Coast. 

For many, Sideways is short-hand for when the fortunes of California Pinot Noir went up and the misery of Merlot began, based on plot points and dialogue in the film. 

Studies have backed up this supposition. A Sonoma State University study in 2009 indeed showed that growth in Merlot sales decreased after the film while Pinot Noir sales increased.  

The study looked at prices and cases sold of both Merlot and Pinot Noir from 1999 to 2008, essentially before and after the movie, scanning data from U.S. retail chains. It also looked at the data for Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon, two “non-Sideways” red wines. 

At the time, Merlot was the largest red varietal seller in the U.S., followed by Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Pinot Noir. While we know now that the fortunes of certain wines changed, interestingly, the study concluded something crucially important – Sideways had a positive impact on overall wine consumption. 

“While our results show that Sideways did increase wine consumption, the rising tide of consumption did not lift all varietals evenly,” the study said. “Our results clearly show that Merlot suffered a small decrease in both price and sales volume, while Pinot Noir benefited from the movie… by significant increases in price and sales volume.” 

But another interesting side note is this – Merlot sales went down most dramatically for lower-priced segments (under $10 per bottle) of the wine, but higher-priced Merlot ($20-$40), “saw a significant increase in case volume despite the movie’s negative portrayal.” 

Same with Pinot Noir: “the highest price segment of Pinot Noir saw the largest increase in sales volume… before and after the Sideways release.” 

In the end it concluded that “the positive impact on Pinot Noir appears greater than the negative impact on Merlot.” 

A follow-up study in the Journal of Wine Economics in 2022 confirmed the economic impact with a cautionary note, saying that with the increased demand came increased plantings of Pinot where it didn’t really belong, leading to many mediocre wines, just as had happened with Merlot. 

Axios wrote about this aspect of the data, which was assembled by eight co-authors from the University of California at Davis.  

It found that the real change after the movie was “that vineyards produced more Pinot Noir grapes in valley areas of California that are ill-suited to growing Pinot Noir,” and “that large winemakers wound up growing not-so-good Pinot Noir grapes in inhospitable land, then blended the wine produced from those grapes with the good stuff from coastal areas, thus stretching their supplies further to accommodate higher demand.” 

This bears out in California Grape Crush Tonnage numbers: 

2022 Merlot tons/crushed: 188,459

2022 Pinot Noir tons/crushed: 236,496 

2004 Merlot tons/crushed: 292,256

2004 Pinot Noir tons/crushed: 70,062 

Sonoma County growers on the other hand, were already focused on high-quality Pinot Noir grapes by 2004. Thanks to early pioneers like the Dutton family, Rochioli, Joseph Swan, Williams-Selyem, Merry Edwards, Gary Farrell and Dehlinger, to name a few, when Sideways was released, there were already more acres of Pinot Noir (10,136) in Sonoma County than Merlot (7,391). 

Pinot’s importance continues. It remains Sonoma County’s most valuable grape, with a total value of $170 million in 2021. It accounts for nearly half the total value of all red wine grapes, according to the Sonoma County Crop Report, and nearly the same amount as all white grapes combined.  

Sonoma County Grape Tonnage: 

2022 Merlot tons/crushed: 6,331

2022 Pinot Noir tons/crushed: 40,542 

2004 Merlot tons/crushed: 22,855

2004 Pinot Noir tons/crushed: 22,673 

In the end, it’s highly likely Pinot Noir would have continued its growth in Sonoma County with or without a movie. But Merlot did not deserve to be so universally maligned in the process. A new generation of wine drinkers already don’t know about this movie, but maybe we need a new one that will boost overall wine consumption without picking favorites. 

By Virginie Boone

When it comes to American farming history, there aren’t a lot of household names. But one of the more famous ones is John Deere, whose name is nearly synonymous with the modern tractor, many of which exist in Sonoma County vineyards. But who was John Deere?

Born in 1804 in Vermont to English parents who remained in the United States after the Revolutionary War, Deere lived a long life (1804-1886) and invented the first commercially successful steel plow as a young man in 1837.

Deere went to Middlebury College and soon after apprenticed as a blacksmith. After 10 years working in Vermont, where he perfected a polished steel hay fork, he moved to Illinois in search of work. It was in Grand Detour, Illinois that he figured out how to make a better plow for the local conditions, made out of polished steel instead of cast-iron. Clay soils in the Midwest were notoriously challenging for machinery, the dirt sticking to plow shares with frustrating regularity.

By the late 1840s, Deere was manufacturing 2,000 plows a year. He soon moved to Moline, Illinois because it was on the Mississippi River, a thoroughfare to transport goods. At the time he was getting steel from England, which shipped steel across the Atlantic and up the Mississippi.

When he was able to get steel from Pittsburgh he could work faster, and he began to ship plows via the Mississippi across the Midwest. By 1855 Deere was selling 10,000 plows annually and became known as the creator of “The Plow that Broke the Plains.”

By the time he incorporated as Deere & Company in 1868, he had patented several other tools, including a Hawkeye riding cultivator and sulky plow. By the time of his death in 1886, his company’s manufacturing facility encompassed nine acres and had electricity throughout, a rarity, turning out 180 types of plows as well as wagons and buggies. Soon enough, it also made bicycles.

Following in his footsteps, John’s son Charles ran the company from the age of 16, guiding Deere & Company for nearly 50 years.

In 1918 the company released the first John Deere tractor, and a legend was born. Deere’s great-grandson Charles Deere Wiman oversaw the launch of the Model A and B Tractors during the Great Depression, followed by William Hewitt, who married Wiman’s daughter and became the last family member to run the company. Hewitt introduced the four and six-cylinder tractor lines.

Innovation continues to this day. Deere & Company is a Fortune 100 company with $52 billion in net sales and revenue and 82,000 employees, a world leader in agriculture, forestry and roadbuilding equipment.

It also cares about small farms and sustainability with goals to deliver a fully-autonomous battery-powered electric ag tractor to the market in the next several years and dozens of electric and hybrid-electric product models and low/no carbon alternative power solutions.

Its sustainability efforts also include the remanufacturing of core parts and components, essentially rebuilding yesterday’s machines instead of farmers always having to buy new, an opportunity to reduce the carbon emissions that having to make a new engine or other parts emit.

In fact, Deere & Company is working with the REMADE Institute to develop cutting-edge sustainable manufacturing technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as increasing its renewable energy use, especially with wind and solar.

It is this commitment to innovation and sustainability that brought representatives of Deere & Company to Sonoma County last week for the Farm of the Future Summit to explore ways to work more closely with local growers via the Sonoma County Winegrowers.

From a steel plow that changed farming forever in the American Midwest to tractors used on farms across the world, John Deere helped change agriculture. His legacy lives on.

By Virginie Boone

What will it take to continue farming in the future? How can agricultural shareholders develop resiliency and sustainability to confront the challenges of the present and future? What will it take to innovate and adapt?

These questions and more were up for discussion as thought leaders from around the United States convened in Sonoma County last week for the first-ever Farm of the Future Summit hosted by the Sonoma County Winegrowers.

These leaders were invite-only and came from such forward-thinking companies as John Deere, American AgCredit, Jordan Energy, Alaska Airlines, Wells Fargo, Agrology, Wilbur-Ellis and Pellenc, with impactful discussions led by Professor Emeritus George Day of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

The invitation to participants was clear – to bring their best thinking and ideas to work towards solutions that have real benefit to Sonoma County winegrowers, agriculture and beyond.

This was the SCW’s “man to the moon” call to action, a leveraging of the organization’s leadership in sustainability and its desire to keep moving forward and find real, meaningful solution-based collaboration to support the future of agriculture, technology and climate stewardship.

It was in 2014 that the SCW committed to being 100% certified sustainable in all its vineyard acres. A year later it drafted a 100-year roadmap to preserve agriculture here. In 2017 it launched the Center for Ag Sustainability, a think tank to support long-term agriculture in Sonoma County.

In 2019, 99% of Sonoma County’s vineyard acres became certified sustainable, which led to a partnership with the California Land Stewardship to pilot the first Climate Adaptation Certification for agriculture. All of this activity has now culminated in the Farm of the Future innovation accelerator.

The SCW’s partnership last year with Ford Pro to offer electrification for farming through Ford electric vehicles helped to create an innovative path for SCW to think about other types of collaboration and other partners in sustainability, another step forward to the Farm of the Future.

The Farm of the Future is in fact a living lab for innovating and partnerships, a way of playing offense against farming’s challenges, rather than defense. Sonoma County’s unique profile as a winegrowing region built primarily on multigenerational family businesses is an asset for trying new things – these families are invested more than anyone else in their futures.

Sonoma County’s range of wine grape varieties that it grows – more than 100 and counting – is also interesting, a wide canvas for trialing and adapting to environmental and consumer pressures and preferences. Pilot programs with growers here can cover an array of test subjects.

Partners are needed to tackle many areas of concern. Within the area of climate mitigation and adaptation there is the need for electrification and solar, strategic vineyard planning, water optimization, building soil organic matter, nitrogen accounting, reducing till and mow passes and soil compaction, composting instead of burning, reducing off-site soil and water losses, plant tissue and soil nutrient analyses.

But of course there are always unexpected conditions effecting farmers, from drought to frost to labor and regulations.

The goal with Farm of the Future is to be able to respond faster to climate and marketplace impacts, pilot opportunities that can be scaled and shared, use data and technology to support best practices, and progress toward an ESG scorecard for agriculture.

A follow-up to last week’s summit will include case studies and white papers documenting processes and recommendations for moving forward. The summit has now also created a collaborative network of climate stewards and forward-thinking change agents thinking about Sonoma County agriculture, with the shared desire for innovation to happen faster and more efficiently.

The future of farming is one of the most important conversations impacting the world today, the future of our food source, national security, open space, working lands, sustainability and climate stewardship. Sonoma County should be proud of its leadership role in this ambitious endeavor.

By Virginie Boone

Sebastopol will host the 50th Annual Gravenstein Apple Fair August 12 and 13 at Ragle Ranch Park, a fundraiser for Farm Trails’ initiatives to serve and preserve local agriculture, also known as Farms Forever, in Sonoma County.

As part of its 50th Annual fundraiser, Farm Trails is working with Sonoma County Zero Waste and will be 95% zero waste.

The fair includes a VIP ticket ($150) that includes access to the Lounge Tent by Shelter Co. Under its shade will be the Artisan Tasting Alley, a showcase of local premium products where guests will meet and mingle with the producers behind these food and beverage offerings.

Some of those producers include Alley6, Bohemian Creamery, Dehlinger Winery, Hog Island Oyster, Goldridge Organic Farms, Spirit Works Distillery, Tilted Shed Ciderworks and Two Shepherds. Dutton Goldfield is among the hosts of the complimentary VIP Bar, with Golden State Cider and Seismic Brewing Company.

General admission is $23 in advance or $30 (cash only) day of. In addition to wines from local producers such as Iron Horse, MacRostie, Merry Edwards, Sonoma-Cutrer, Balletto and Kistler, among others, the popular event features live music on two stages, local food, arts and crafts, farm animals and activities for kids.

The fair started in 1973 as a way to mark the peak of Gravenstein apple season, put on by Sonoma County Farm Trails as a fundraiser and celebration of this important Sonoma County crop. Every dollar spent contributes to local farmers, artists, chefs and community groups.

Ultimately, it’s the apples that tie it all together. Famed horticulturalist Luther Burbank was among the first to praise the Gravenstein as an exceptional apple in terms of both flavor and versatility. The fair makes a point of emphasizing that versatility in the form of apple fritters, pies, juice, cider and more.

Back in the 1930s, the Gold Ridge district, as the area around Sebastopol was known due to its rich, fluffy soils, produced at least 90% of the Gravenstein apples in California.

A green-yellowish apple with red piping, the Gravenstein, or Grav, is an early-ripening variety of apple known for its tart flavor. Many believe it originated in western Europe, possibly northern Germany or Denmark. There is a Castle Gravenstein in Denmark, making the case for that being its original home.

Here in California, Russians were the first to grow Gravensteins in the early 1800s on the hills above Fort Ross. Horticulturalist and Massachusetts-native Luther Burbank had enough success with potato seeds to pay $150 to get to Santa Rosa by the early 1870s, joining three of his brothers who were already in the area.

By 1885 he established an experimental fruit and tree farm called Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol, which he maintained for 40 years.

Burbank is credited with saying, “It is the best quality of all known apples… if the Gravenstein could be had through the year, no other apple could be had through the year, no other apple need be grown.” He is also credited for calling the Gravenstein, “the moneywinner in Sonoma County.”

In 1869, William J. Hunt introduced both the Gravenstein and Lawton blackberry to Sebastopol. Hunt was also the developer of the first dehydrator and founder of Hunt Brothers Cannery.

Grav credit is also given to Nathaniel A. Griffith, who established a 78-acre ranch on Laguna Road called Griffith Wood in 1883. He is considered the “Grandfather of the Gravenstein,” who along with grapes and other kinds of apples, had 35 acres of Gravs, making him the largest grower of his time.

By the 1890s, railways helped connect Sonoma County’s apples to markets on the east coast.

Famous “apple men” of the time included R.E. Oehlmann of Manzana Products; Oscar and Alfred Hallberg (of Hallberg Ranch); Will Hotle and Lew Hart of Gold Ridge Orchard; Carl Silveira and Jack O’Connell of Barlow Cannery; Louis and Walter Frei, owners of a large orchard; A.H. Morgan of Vine Hill Ranch; the Barlow family who started the first commercial applesauce business in the United States; and James O’Connell and Al Garcia, who had one of the biggest dried apple processors.

Sebastopol, due to its right combination of soil and weather, is one of few places in the world where the Grav has thrived, so much so that Gravs are now considered the oldest continuing agricultural endeavor in the county.

Come and celebrate this living legacy of Sonoma County agriculture in August at the 50th annual Gravenstein Apple Fair.