2025: a year in review
An optimal vintage for whoever is buying If this year is defined by a singular emotion, it’s anxiety. That’s nothing new in farming, however I’m talking about anxiety over the abysmal grape market rather than any natural phenomenon. Many of us were so busy scrambling for buyers, we may have forgotten to notice just how […]
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire
Let’s look at some maps Last week I was in the middle of writing a post about how great this year was turning out. I thought, just as long as growers can avoid something disastrous, this could be a great vintage. Within 24 hours, the Pickett fire grew from a small blaze north of Calistoga […]
Direct measurement of evapotranspiration (ET)
Who (or what) is this eddy you keep talking about? Efficient water management has never been more critical for agriculture and specifically for viticulture. High-end viticulture needs to manage water to not only cut costs, but to keep quality high in a market of oversupply and buyers who hold the upper hand over the grower. […]
What does a prolonged heat wave mean for the vintage?
It could be worse… We are wrapping up a particularly hot July. The last time I had to write about heat stress was 2022, so this year seems to be making up for 2023’s persistent coolness. We all remember 2022. We had a couple hot days in late June that did quite a bit of […]
I got frosted…now what?
How to hedge your losses I had an macroeconomics professor preface the start of the semester stating that any question asked in his class was answerable with “it depends”…or “China”. While I don’t remember a ton about that class or the intricacies of U.S. tariff policy towards Chinese manufacturing, I find that at least the […]
Does a lot of rain mean a lot of aquifer replenishment?
Let’s ask a hydrogeologist! I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Timothy Parker of Parker Groundwater Consulting in Sacramento, CA. Timothy Parker began his career as a regulator working in contaminant hydrogeology. He got involved with fresh water while working for the California Geological Survey, doing watershed assessment and timber harvest oversight, and […]
2023 Growing Season: The Napa Edition
A couple weeks ago I was asked by Tim Carl over at Napa Valley Features to write a review of the 2023 season with a focus specifically on Napa. Check out the original post here and be sure to browse the rest of this remarkable publication. 2023 has been a weird one. While the rest […]
2023: It was the best of vintages, it was the worst of vintages…
Yesterday marked the official end of the growing season and what a season it was, amiright?? 2023 has proven to be polarizing. For some growers and winemakers, this was a remarkable year for quality, and others are just thankful to have crop insurance. Let’s take a look at why this is. I wrote about how […]
