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Traditional vines

Though technology offers alternatives, a few local growers are choosing to keep up the dry farming tradition

BY MEGHAN SAPP

They’re doing it the old-fashioned way, just like the Phoenicians and the Carthaginians did. The Egyptians were doing it too, about 5,000 years ago. And here in SLO County, they’re some of the last.

Agriculture is a gamble, because even though technology can tame Mother Nature to a degree, the market will never be housebroken. Be it the romance of old days or purely economic reasons, some local grape growers are flying without a safety net to keep up the old traditions of dry farming.

In urban terms, dry farming means no irrigation–just what the skies decide to deliver. Last year was a bumper crop for Peachy Canyon Winery in Paso Robles thanks to the right amount of rain at the right time. This year, they may not be so lucky, but that’s the risk they take.

When Doug Beckett started Peachy Canyon in 1988, he took a gamble. He planted 12 acres of Zinfandel without any irrigation. Over the years he has planted 180 acres of traditional vineyards, but he kept the dry farmed vines in place.

"We’re probably one of the last dry farm vineyards planted in the county," Beckett said. "Our vineyard has never seen a lick of water from our well."

Particularly in red wine grape production, water plays a large role in determining the final concentration of various solutes needed to make high-quality wine. According to Australian Richard Smart, a visiting professor of viticulture at Cal Poly, when vines are stressed, the shoots don’t grow as long, the leaves are smaller, and the canopy is more open, allowing more sunlight on the leaves and the fruit.

"The stress itself causes the vine to produce the products anthocyanin and phenols, both of which are important for red wine quality," he said.

The berries are typically a bit smaller and normally some of the great red wines of the world, particularly syrah, come from more distressed vines. Cabernet sauvignon wines typically are not affected as severely by water stress, said Smart. Whites, which are not dry farmed locally but are elsewhere in the world, require less water stress than reds, but it is still necessary to stop the fruit from growing.

"It is likely that the tendency to dry farm will continue for some ultra-premium quality wines," he said.

Unpredictable weather isn’t the only downside to dry farming. Fewer vines are planted per acre to reduce competition for scarce water resources. And because the plants look more like grape bushes than nicely pruned vines along trellis lines, machines can’t be used to prune or harvest. The need for skilled hand labor increases production costs, sometimes significantly.

"The quality will always outweigh the economic savings of machine picking," Beckett said.

Beckett didn’t risk his 12 acres on just luck, however. Because those vines are located 800 feet higher than the city of Paso Robles, the rainfall is greater than one might expect in other parts of the region. The soils, what Beckett calls "chalky calcareous," do a better job of holding on to water than the looser soils on the eastern side of Paso.

If he wasn’t in the winery business, he says, he wouldn’t be able to pay the property taxes on the land due to the low yields of the dry farmed vines.

He averages one ton of grapes per acre, while his competitors, and his traditional vineyards, need to average three to four tons per acre just to pay the bills. If he’s lucky, the dry farmed vineyard averages about 500 to 550 cases of wine per year.

"Any time you put all your eggs in one basket and depend on Mother Nature, you’re taking a gamble," he said.

But it’s those low yields that growers are looking for when they continue the tradition of dry farming. UC Extension Farm Advisor Mark Battany, who has done research on wine grapes in Spain, says there are areas throughout the state of California that have enough rainfall to support non-irrigated grapes, like on the west side of Paso Robles, but soils and rainfall can vary widely. Going just slightly east will reduce the success rate of dry farming. On the west side, rainfall can easily reach over 30 inches per year while on the east side, most years average below 20 inches. That contrast in rainfall makes a huge difference when it comes to wine grapes.

"The quality or the yields could be very inconsistent from year to year but that’s part of the charm of [dry farming]," he said.

According to Battany, dry farming isn’t a black-and-white issue in SLO County. "With dry land grapes in this area, you could be producing a similar grape [to those grown] in an area with less natural water, but irrigated," he said. "In some areas there is just no water available so there isn’t an option to irrigate. In much of Spain, even if they wanted to irrigate, in many areas they just can’t."

Some local vineyards are completely dry farm while others are irrigated with only a small amount of water. The same water stress effect of dry farming can be created with timed irrigation.

Contrary to popular belief, grapes do not need very much water to survive and only slightly more to produce fruit, which is why vintners have discovered the "stress" technique. The plant, which originated in the Middle East, has thousands of years of desertification in its genes.

When the seafaring Phoenicians adapted a winemaking process and used it as a fundamental part of their trade, they also brought with them wine grapes that they planted near their Iberian port in modern-day Cadíz, Spain. The plants adapted well to the hot climate and rich soils that could hold water long enough for the vines to produce fruit.

That tradition of dry farming continues today throughout much of Spain. More hectares of vineyards are planted in Spain than in both Italy and France, but because of lower yields, Spain’s actual wine production is much lower than production in those two countries famous for their wines. According to the USDA, one-third of the European Union’s vineyards are in Spain. However, EU stats show that Spain accounted for only 13.1 percent of world wine production in 1999, while Italy and France together accounted for 53.9 percent of production in the same year.

In fact, up until 1996, irrigation of vineyards was illegal, primarily due to water scarcity. In California, crops and wine grapes have been irrigated since agriculture began in the state. Hundreds of years ago, the Spanish were irrigating because the climate in most areas requires it. Vineyard irrigation continues to be illegal throughout much of the European Union in "humid" countries. Despite the ban, growers and researchers have been "experimenting" with irrigation for the last 20 years, said Victor de la Serna of Madrid, Spain.

"I find that other vine-growers in Spain are taking a very empirical view of this, and basically ‘giving the vineyard what it needs,’ " he said, "generally programming one long watering once a month before véraison (bloom) if there are no rains, giving some 30 liters of water per vine every time."

But de la Serna finds this approach too haphazard. He prefers more scientific methods of monitoring water use in grapes, but quickly reminds, "There are many schools of thought on how much you should replace, from 40 percent to 100 percent."

"I personally would not subscribe to dry farming," said Smart. "Modified irrigation practices are the way to go. Partial Root Zone Drying, a new technique from Australia, somewhat tricks the plant into thinking it is stressed, but you get the same yields as irrigated while saving on water application. I believe it will have lots of application in the future." Æ

Managing editor Meghan Sapp can be reached for comments or story ideas at [email protected].




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