Farming Profitably,
Making Great Wine

 Another holistic solution that involves piecing together the many parts of vineyard operations.

The goal is simple – build plant resiliency to ensure longer term plant health (increasing profitability) in the face of extreme weather events.

A resilient, robust plant will not only make better fruit, but will handle extreme heat and cold more successfully.

For us, this begins with strategies to encourage deep rooting. This not only gives the plant access to more nutrient, water, and microbial resources but further provides more storage during challenging events. A bigger “bank”.

We accomplish this by understanding the soil, the potential, and building irrigation and other strategies to maximize this outcome.

This is where plant resiliency begins (but not ends).

Cover cropping has become a power Swiss army knife in improving soil and plant health.

From reducing compaction to improving nitrogen cycling to reducing herbicide use – the benefits and uses of cover crops are varied.

Our clients have a wide range of experience and interest in cover cropping and where appropriate, we work to integrate into broader management planning.

These activities encompass a wide range of the work we do with clients.

From irrigation audits to our precision irrigation system to annual scheduling and terroir mapping…

One of our core beliefs is that in irrigated systems – irrigation is the #1 driver of performance. The affects on vine health and wine quality are significant and many symptoms are downstream of irrigation issues.

Appropriate fertilisation is a key component for continued farm production and quality.

We used to believe it to be the number one tool in managing yield and quality, we’ve now realised this is far trumped by irrigation.

But there are significant affects that over- or under-fertilising still have. And there are important strategies that need to be incorporated. For example, we often see foliar as as superior strategy to soil-applied fertilisers.

Our solutions here encompass soil mapping, our specialized bioavailability sampling,

It can also incorporate reducing

Geographic Information System (GIS) is the use of GPS and other instruments to map various physical features in the world.

This can be as simple as accurately mapping row lengths and acreages for crop prediction, or creating attractive maps for certificate application or use in the tasting room or other marketing.

Coupled with other tools like soil mapping it can be used to model water flow over a property or identify frost pockets or other features.

The uses of GIS technology is broad and valuable.

Through both our own research and development work as well as work with clients, we have developed an expertise in identifying and securing grants for clients.

In 2023, we helped clients secure over $364,000 in grant funding – free cash in pocket for our clients.

We now offer a service helping you identify and acquire grants – for whatever activities you’re looking to engage in.

We’ve helped secure grants to cover compost purchases, irrigation system purchases, soil mapping, soil sampling, netting, compost spreaders, and much more.

Labour has become a major issue across the wine world. We feel fortunate to have discovered SCDC, a French trellising company that works the way we do. They have farm clients approach them with issues – and then they come up with a system.

We provide their full range of products – from spreaders to end posts to irrigation hangers to netting, heated cabling, you name it.

Their simple but genius tools reduce your labour hours. In a survey of their clients, they heard their spreaders saved on average 30%.

Learn more here>

Unlike most UAV companies, we are farmers first and UAV pilots second. We waited years to get into drone mapping until the technology had matured enough to bring real value to farmers.

We use multispectral as a key tool in providing a holistic look at vineyard health and performance – particularly over time.

It allows the creation of Management Zones which can significantly improve labour efficiency and crop production. It is the current gold standard in yield estimation. And it allows annual monitoring of overall vine health as well as disease and other pockets.

There is a reason that it is popular in a soil and terroir-focused country like France (which is also where we have learned many of our techniques).

We kept banging into problems with clients that, when traced back, led to irrigation.

Often, the challenges were in the system themselves. They were labour intensive. And if they were “smart” irrigation systems, seemed to be built by and for engineers.They lacked the basic functions that a farm-hardened system needs – while also having the tools to make irrigation easier for better results.

So that’s why we developed our system – with and for our clients. For those who need a smarter system that actually works on a farm. And does so with some smarts, that doesn’t make your life harder.

Precision viticulture forms the basis of the work we do. It’s about leveraging technology in the service of our clients’ goals.

Fundamentally, we seek to marry new technology with old farming approaches. It’s about using technology in service of talented people, not to replace or over-complicate.

We use our precision viticulture tools – whether GPS, drones, or Chemboxes – to farm more profitably and make better fruit.

As part of our work, we have used numerous different sensors in pursuit of our client’s goals and aspirations.

This can involve different types of soil moisture sensors and weather stations, or multiple temperature sensors to help determine varietal locations.

These tools serve specific purposes. No sensor is perfect (soil moisture sensors all have weaknesses), but with their limitations well understood they can support the right vineyard site.

A grab bag of solutions (and a package we offer), site preparation and assessment is about two things:

1. Determining the suitability and potential of an unplanted site
2. Finding the best ways to maximize a planted or unplanted site

This first involves ruling out “no go’s” in a potential site. Are there major toxicity issues? Is there an underground river not visible to the eye? We’ve seen this happen a few times in our work resulting in either low value varietals planted in those areas or an abandonment of a potential purchase (which would’ve been a money sink for the client).

The second goal is find where to put the right varietals and rootstocks. Or in the case of a planted site, how to best manage current production. Perhaps a single block of Cabernet Franc should be split up into a premium and table wine sub-block?

The goal ultimately is to avoid red flags and maximize what exists through a variety of tools.

We specialise in both standard and bioavailability sampling. Many of the talks we have given revolve around the evaluation and challenges of understanding the soil beneath our feet.

We work with clients on choosing the appropriate tests, evaluating and implementing the results.

Increasingly this is involving evaluating the soil microbial community, although this work (and research) is in it’s early stages. We encourage clients to use this data, but understand it’s current limitations as we still have so much to understand about the soil community.

The greatest single service we provide is our terroir mapping. We use a special electrical conductivity (EC) instrument to measure the subsoil to one-and-a-half meters to identify soil conditions and vine performance.

This work identifies soil texture and water availability at the vineyard scale. Scientific research has repeatedly shown, and we see with our clients, the impact that this terroir mapping has on wine characteristics and quality.

The data is then ground truthed with soil pits which reveals the half of the vineyard we never see.

This is the solution we always see a “Oh now this makes sense!” from our clients. It is a must for every future and planted vineyard.

In many regions, crop protection from both deep winter freezes and spring frosts have become an issue. And as a warmer climate has allowed us to expand winegrowing regions – it has also pushed into more regions where this occurs, but not predictably.

We provide specialised snow netting and heated cabling to guard against both winter damage and frost.

Unlike geotextiles, the netting is left on year-round in special receivers at the top of the post. It takes far less labour to unravel and re-hook, simply having to be pulled down to a receiver at the bottom of the trellising or hooked into one at the top.

The snow netter may also double as heat shade, with one panel (on the sun side) being unraveled during extreme heat events.

The heated cabling works in conjunction, helping to keep sap and buds warm during cold events. It also may serve to warm the plant and accelerate ripening during cold summer and falls.