Podcast Interview: The Year of plenty Podcast

I was honored to be interviewed by Poldi Wieland on his every thoughtful podcast Year of Plenty

This episode is a conversation with Craig Camp who has been heavily involved in the wine industry for over 30 years. After learning about wine production in Italy, he has worked with many different vineyards, been on the board of directors for several winegrowing associations and was named on the list of  “Wine’s Most Inspiring People of 2021” by the Wine Industry Network. Today, Craig runs Troon Vineyard. A holistic biodynamic vineyard in the beautiful AppleGate Valley region of Oregon.

Overview:

• How Craig got involved in the wine industry?

• What is viticulture & what makes a wine truly a wine?

• The story behind Craig’s biodynamic vineyard in Oregon?

• What is biodynamic farming and how can it be applied to wine making?

• How Craig makes wine compared to conventional vineyards

• Why healthy soil is important and how it is crucial to a biodynamic system?

• Interesting facts about the grape vine

• Things to be aware of when shopping for quality wine

"Holistic Wine Making with Biodynamic Viticulturist, Craig Camp"

Exploring

In agriculture, as in most things, finding truth is not an exact science — it’s an exploration. There are few things more humbling than farming. While nature makes farmers humble, for those that don’t farm, the result seems to be quite the opposite. Social media tends to bring out the most aggressive behavior for those that don’t actually do what they are spouting opinions about. In the wine community, a favorite target for those that don’t do is biodynamics.

You don’t have to talk to too many biodynamic winegrowers to understand that they are not practicing some sort of belief system but are pursuing exploration in search of what works on their farm. There is no more critical cornerstone of biodynamic farming than the concept of the whole farm as a complete organism. The framework of biodynamics only provides a starting place in this exploration. Once the basics are in place — the evolution begins. A most biodynamic concept.

Are there winegrowers who go full-Steiner? Of course, there are. As in most human pursuits, the whys and hows are as diverse as the people involved. However, while some high-profile biodynamic winegrowers also buy into anthroposophy, in my experience, the majority are far more, shall we say, down to earth.

While posting on social media on our biodynamic practices at Troon Vineyard, it is a common experience to have someone launch an attack on the way we farm. Those that focus their ire on us are rarely farmers. This seems to be a sport preferred by those armed with deep agricultural knowledge from Wikipedia and Google. Part of the blame here falls on the biodynamic movement as we let the more flamboyant practitioners and practices grab the headlines. From my perspective, farming biodynamically is more about hard work than spirituality. Oddly enough, the most spiritual thing may be the hard work itself and the connection it builds between you and your farm.

What is spirituality on a farm? It is a connection to the complexities of nature and reverence for what we don’t know. There are a lot of ways for an individual to interpret those mysteries. For me, I admire those that are willing to explore the unknown more than those that claim to know everything.

As biodynamic farmers, we need to embrace science just as the early practitioners did. With few resources other than their passion, including a passion for science, Maria Thun, Ehrenfried Peiffer, and others did their best to apply scientific structure to their biodynamic practices and, in my opinion, deserve more credit than Steiner for the direction of modern biodynamics.

There is an enlightened form of biodynamics practiced today, which respects the past, but is fueled by the emerging science of regenerative agriculture. On our farm, we have extensive data showing better utilization of available soil nutrients, decreased populations of microorganisms associated with poor soil health, reduced levels of water stress, and dramatically improved YAN levels at harvest.

The thing is — if it wasn’t working we wouldn’t keep doing it.

To us, the planets seem very far away, but in the scale of the Universe, we are very close together. The Solar System is just that and to pretend that these relationships do not have any effect on the Earth is more than just a little arrogant. Not knowing is not the same thing as knowing. These relationships should spark our curiosity, not kill it.

As noted by Guido Masé in the article Can Moonlight Affect Plant Growth in Permaculture Principles, “All plants grow differently during different phases of the moon — this has been observed in scientific research since the 1970s and, more recently, documented on the microscopic level by observing changes in rootlet growth. But as to why — this question is still unresolved. Easy explanations of its effects can often be misdirection – the moon may seem to lay out a trail for us, but this trail often leads to places we’d never expect. But just as tidal forces served to shape early life on our planet, the more hidden effects we are just starting to understand may be essential to maintain healthy life on earth today.”

Next time someone tells me on social media that our farming is a load of shit, I will just agree with them as we use almost four hundred tons of it a year. I won’t bother to tell them how much healthier our soil is now, how the health of even our old, sick vines has dramatically rebounded, or how much our grape chemistry has improved. Some people have opinions and some people farm. As strange as it may seem, there are many people who don’t grow anything that want to tell us how to farm.

The thing is — the way we farm is working and we’re going to keep doing it.

Certifiable

Cynics often claim wineries get certifications as a marketing ploy. They’re right, but not in the way they think. We are selling something — an idea. That idea is regenerative agriculture. Those that think it’s a slick wine marketing concept need to have a conversation with our accountants. 

That’s not to say that biodynamics and regenerative agriculture can’t be profitable, indeed they can be, should be, and better be. As they say, you can’t farm green if you’re in the red. However, you may need to be patient for the profit — it’s worth the wait.

There are many reasons to get organic certifications — all of them good for the planet. You need a framework, a foundation to get started on a complex project based on long-term goals. Rigorous certifications like Demeter Biodynamic® and Regenerative Organic Certified™ (ROC) give a farm an outline of how to move forward. The process sets goals and milestones that help define the work that needs to be done and how to do it. This is critical when you are held to a high standard that demands you progress and improve. 

There is no endpoint in the process — you never reach agricultural nirvana. Even if you improve every year, you’re only taking small steps forward for the next generation. There is no finish line, this is a race where the leaders are the ones not moving backward. Continual, gradual improvement is the mission. Building an additional one-percent organic matter in our soil may not sound like a lot to you, but for us, it’s a cause for celebration. 

The certification process is a time of introspection and planning. We thoroughly reviewed what we accomplished and discussed what worked and where we fell short. We then plan out strategies for the next season and beyond. By the time the inspector arrives, we are prepared in a way you can never be without a formal process and demanding standards that must be achieved. The challenge is always planning how you will improve and move forward. Each year we add additional layers to our practice. 

Your first certification, while an achievement, is only the beginning. It means you have finally arrived at the starting line. Ultimately, you have to build on the outline that the certifications have developed and discover the ideal framework for your farm. While the overall concepts of regenerative agriculture are the same everywhere, you need to sculpt them for your farm — an art that takes years, even generations, to develop fully.

There’s a lot of greenwashing out there. Many “sustainable” certifications sound good on paper but still allow far too many poisons and shortcuts in the field and cellar. While many sustainable certifications are focused on the needs and problems of the producer, Demeter and ROC are concentrated on providing the consumer with a logo on a label that can reliably mean something to them. While I cannot doubt the best intentions of most involved in the many sustainable certifications, their programs fall short of what is needed to save our planet and have been co-opted by big agriculture. These greenwashed logos on labels dilute the meaning of all similar logos on wine labels and only confuse the consumer — which is often their intention. Why achieve a more demanding certification when you can slap a sustainable certificate on your brand without giving up Round-Up and so many other dangerous applications in your vineyard?

Every major grocery chain features organic vegetables, but those sections are dominated by big agriculture, and big organic ag is often not regenerative agriculture. This dilution of the term organic combined with corporate greenwashing of the term sustainable makes more meaningful certifications a necessity. 

There are many uncertified, perfectly legitimate practitioners of regenerative agriculture who are just as dedicated to that vision as we are, but by not getting certified and putting those logos on their labels, they are not pushing the movement forward. Yes, they are improving their soils, and capturing carbon, and touching all the bases except one — evangelicalism. Our job is not to change just our farm, but to change all farms. 

Putting your certifications on the label is a means of communication, and any brand messaging can be construed as marketing. But the Demeter and ROC logos are essential to communicate to consumers that are devoted to supporting producers who are committed to both the environment producing fruit, vegetables, and livestock that meets both their standards of quality and integrity. Connecting with those customers is an essential element for those that practice regenerative agriculture. With no margin, there is no mission. There are customers who share our values and want to support them. It is our job to connect with them and certification logos clearly carry our message and mission to them. Those consumers consider that a service, not a marketing hack. 

Wine has advantages as we have labels to display logos and produce products that can sit on a shelf for extended periods, an advantage not open to many biodynamic farmers. Shipping perishables is challenging for small farmers. This puts winegrowers in a unique position to promote the idea of certifications beyond organic. Telling the story of how we farm is a responsibility, communicating to customers about why they should buy regeneratively farmed products is how we build demand for all ROC and Demeter products — and that’s a sure way to convince more farmers and retailers to change their ways. 

Regenerative agriculture is not just about your farm — it’s about all farms. 

The Unbroken Circle

Oddly enough, at Troon Vineyard, the end of the previous harvest coincides with the beginning of the new. As we picked our first grapes of the 2021 vintage last week, we also emptied and pressed off our amphorae wines from the 2020 vintage. Ten months after we put the freshly picked vermentino into our amphorae, we are completing our last step of vintage 2020 while we pick our first grapes of 2021. To me, this always feels like the previous vintage is reaching out and touching the next. 

As a biodynamic winery, we aspire to understand nature’s rhythms and cycles. This requires our focused attention as humans seem to have lost the ability to naturally connect to those rhythms that the rest of Earth’s beings sense so well. Indeed, there is no more obvious example of those cycles than the seasons on a farm as we move from dormancy in winter to bud break and flowering in spring, veraison in the summer, and harvest in the fall. 

But there are so many more cycles that occur that, while we don’t sense them, we can see, feel and taste their results. During these last months, the wines aging in amphorae have gone through a complex dance as the characteristics of these unique terracotta vessels circulated the wine and lees in their distinctive way. In our soils, beneath our vines, an incredibly complex population of mycorrhizal fungi, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, and earthworms have gone through their complicated, intertwined cycles that only now we are starting to understand. Above ground, our diverse wildlife: myriad birds, mountain lions, snakes, coyotes, rabbits, bears, and seemingly infinite varieties of rodents and insects live their natural life cycles alongside ours. These cycles were unbroken for millennium until humans started to break them. Now, more than ever, we not only have to foster them but, once again, become part of them ourselves. 

We also picked the last grapes from an older block to be replanted next spring. For those vines, that is the end of their life cycle. Something to be respected and, for us, pulling vines is always a bittersweet moment. I hope we have alleviated some of their struggles during their last seasons as our efforts dramatically improved their health in these last years. Next spring, we will plant new vines, and a new cycle of life will begin. This vintage, we are also picking our first fruit from vines we planted three years ago. They are now strong and vigorous and ready to go onto this next cycle in their lives. 

During the same week, we buried our recently harvested stinging nettle, which after a year, will be transformed into Biodynamic Preparation 504. Just before we buried the new, we dug up last year’s stinging nettle, now rich, feathery BD 504, to be applied to our new compost piles this autumn. Another cycle was completed and started again. 

Agriculture has a natural rhythm — unless we disrupt it. On a biodynamic farm like Troon Vineyard, we are surrounded by natural cycles, and it is our job to nurture those rhythms. Plants have developed incredibly effective natural systems over the millennia. Most of the problems with agriculture today deal with the devastating results caused by our disruption of those systems. It’s time to listen to nature instead of trying to tell it what to do. 

At dawn this morning, we picked syrah for the first time from one of our new blocks planted in 2019. Hopefully, the beginning of a new unbroken circle. 

Farming Energy

“Knowing what you don’t know is wisdom,” says Adam Grant in Think Again. Admitting to what you don’t know and can’t explain is a hard thing to do. It’s an even harder thing to embrace what works but that you can’t explain.

Not too long ago, I wrote an article titled The Pace of Knowing about a piece in The New York Times discussing the recent discovery that the Moon has a tail, much like a comet, that envelops the Earth every thirty days or so. My point was that there is much that is not understood in agricultural science. 

Recently, a similar revelation came to my attention while reading The Ideal Soil, A Handbook for the New Agriculture by Michael Astera with Agricola. That concept is paramagnetism, which is now starting to gain attention in soil science. Paramagnetism refers to the soils ability to interact with the Earth’s magnetic and electrical field. This led me to read another book, Paramagnetism by Phillip Callahan, Ph.D., which documents his research into this field. Dr. Callahan comments, “As in the case of plants, water is diamagnetic. The atmosphere, because of the oxygen, is paramagnetic. Some of my preliminary experiments at night, during the full moon, indicate a paramagnetic/ diamagnetic, plant, moon, water and soil relationship in nature. We know that the moon, which is highly paramagnetic, has a very strong effect on tides, which are of diamagnetic water.”

Actually, there are two forces at work here, paramagnetism and diamagnetism:

“Paramagnetism is a form of magnetism whereby some materials are weakly attracted by an externally applied magnetic field, and form internal, induced magnetic fields in the direction of the applied magnetic field. In contrast with this behavior, diamagnetic materials are repelled by magnetic fields and form induced magnetic fields in the direction opposite to that of the applied magnetic field. 1 Paramagnetic materials include most chemical elements and some compounds; 2 they have a relative magnetic permeability slightly greater than 1 (i.e., a small positive magnetic susceptibility) and hence are attracted to magnetic fields. The magnetic moment induced by the applied field is linear in the field strength and rather weak” - Wikipedia

What does this information about the Moon and paramagnetism mean for agriculture? I don’t know. But I’ve always thought that’s where the power of biodynamics laid — biodynamics is a discipline that respects the unknown and it is in that respect that you find the wisdom that makes biodynamic agriculture so effective. While these discoveries may raise more questions than they answer — isn’t that the point?

What do we know? We know that commercial, chemical agriculture that ignores natural systems has been a disaster. These strategies have created a quicksand that is sucking in farmers and their soils in a destructive cycle that requires ever more chemical inputs that always lead to increased costs, lower profits, and more and more problems with pests. These are simple facts. 

Considering agriculture feeds the planet, it is hard to understand why we know so little about how natural systems actually work. The explosion of research and discussion into mycorrhizal and other soil systems is relatively new and there is much more that needs to be learned. You can tell we’ve turned the corner as now the big agricultural chemical companies are rushing to patent biological plant and soil applications in their tradition of patenting seeds — they can smell the money. The thing is, we don’t need them, and they know it. The basics of biodynamics — composting and a range of fermented applications that are all full of biology — combined with connecting with the natural rhythms of nature are available to all farmers patent-free.

As research continues, it becomes more apparent that there is actual science to be found in the practices of biodynamics — that’s why it works. Is there a scientific basis for every biodynamic preparation and practice? Of course not, but we don’t know the ones that don’t work or those that only work in certain situations. Until we discover more about these practices, I feel perfectly comfortable and confident to work within the framework required to achieve the Demeter Biodynamic® Certification because they are working on our farm. 

Respecting what you don’t know is the essence of biodynamic agriculture. Each year brings more discoveries in agricultural science that connect with biodynamic practices. This will eventually lead to more conflicts with Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical concepts, which, to say the least, do not meld well with modern science. Steiner clearly felt he had the answer to literally everything, which is not a course for wisdom. Steiner had some great insights in his lectures, but what we call biodynamics today was really founded by the research of Maria Thun, Ehrenfried Pheiffer, and others. Our goal needs to be to build on and continue their research — their science. 

At Troon Vineyard, and at most biodynamic winegrowers I know, we are leaving behind the Steiner side for the science side of biodynamic agriculture. Our role is to facilitate the natural systems of the plants on our farm by working with the energy and life that created those systems. 

We are farming energy. 

Three Bubbles

A trio of bubbles. That's what we are now releasing at Troon Vineyard from the 2020 vintage. Each is distinct. An essential tenet of biodynamics is intentionality, and each of these méthode ancestrale wines was conceived with intention. 

While each of these wines are different styles, they are all pétillant naturel wines. As with everything we do at Troon, it all starts with farming. The foundation of the intentional winemaker. You have to visualize what you want to accomplish and then farm the vines with that vision in mind. 

We selected the blocks for these wines before bud break, and every choice made during the vintage was based on making sparkling wines. All of these wines were made from our older blocks, which suffer from the red blotch virus. This virus slows the ripening process, which not a bad thing when making sparkling wine. This enabled us to pick grapes with high acidity and lower sugar, but with rich flavors. All of these vines will soon be replaced as part of our replanting program, but everything we have learned in making wine from them will allow us to build and improve on our sparkling wines moving forward. In the future, what will they be made from? We'll let you know, but watch for sparkling wines made from grenache blanc, picpoul, and clairette blanche. 

Within hours of harvesting the fruit for the Piquette! and Pét tanNat are whole-cluster pressed into stainless steel tanks, while the grape bunches for the FIZZante are loaded into a stainless steel tank for whole-cluster fermentation. After that, the process is more or less the same for all three wines. The wines are slowly fermented with native yeasts. Then comes the tricky part — all happening during the mêlée of harvest. The sugar levels are checked daily; when making pétillant naturel wines, you have to bottle at precisely the right moment when there is just enough sugar left in the wine to finish fermentation in the bottle and produce just the right amount of sparkle. As the wines are actively fermenting, when the moment is right, you have to drop everything and get the wines in the bottle — non-stop — so that the first bottle has the same amount of sugar as the last bottle. Then they finish fermentation in bottles over the winter. 

While fun may have been the inspiration for these wines and is undoubtedly the reason to enjoy them, these light-hearted wines are a lot of work to make. Once the process begins, everything is in motion until the wines are bottled. Then these wines are all hand-bottled, a slow and physically demanding process. But when they are finished, and we open the first bottles, it is always a celebration — these are bubbles after all!

2020 Piquette!

We call this charming, fruity, yet dry sparkling wine “frugal farmer fizz” as it’s crafted from the pomace of our white and rosé wines. Those frugal farmers wasted nothing and used the juice and skins left after pressing the wines they would sell to make wine for themselves and their workers. Our piquette’s mélange of varieties changes vintage-to-vintage, but our vision for the style of this unpretentious naturally bottle-fermented wine never varies. After pressing our estate white and rosé wines, there is still substantial juice left in skins as we press very gently. To that, we add a touch of water, then let it macerate overnight in the press. The next day, we press that juice into a stainless steel tank, where begins a native yeast fermentation. The resulting sparkling wine is a delight. Fresh and fizzy with bright fruit flavors. Our 2020 Piquette! is not disgorged and has no added sulfur.

2020 Pét tanNat

Pét tanNat is a distinctive pét nat crafted exclusively from our Estate Tannat, this naturally bottle-fermented sparkling wine is made in the ultra-brut style — the driest of the dry. Richly flavored and complex with just that touch of rustic, authentic charm that defines pétillant natural. Tannat grown in our Applegate Valley vineyard has very low pH, which means high acidity — just what you want for sparkling wine. This was our second year making this wine, and we let it get a bit riper than last year as there was more than enough acidity, and we wanted a more richly flavored wine. When making the first vintage, we thought the wine would be pink, but as you see, the wine has the copper tinge of some blanc de noir Champagne. Unlike our other sparkling wines, we believe there is potential for development in the bottle over the next several years. Our 2020 Pét tanNat is disgorged and finished with a sulfur level below 15 ppm.

2020 FIZZante

For many years one of my favorite food and wine pairings has been Lambrusco Secco and pizza. We were inspired by those vivacious red sparkling wines of central Italy when we created FIZZante. FIZZante combines explosive dark red fruit flavors with a lifting effervescence to produce an exceptionally refreshing naturally bottle-fermented dry sparkling wine. For this wine, we chose a block of sangiovese and montepulciano, and whole-cluster fermented them together. This was our last vintage from these varieties, as that block will be replanted this month. While you may think we chose these varieties because of their Italian heritage, that was not the case. We chose these varieties for their acidity and freshness. We will continue making this wine in the future, but the varieties could be carignan, counoise, and cinsault as our first plantings of those varieties come into production this year. Try FIZZante with your favorite pizza to create a new life-long obsession. Our 2020 FIZZante is disgorged and finished with a sulfur level below 15 ppm.

Talking About Biodynamics at Troon Vineyard

Biodynamic consultant Andrew Beedy and I had a great conversation about Biodynamic farming with Chris Sawyer on The Varietal Show!

Neutral Oak

The wine was a technical perfection. It was made with beautiful, ripe fruit by a talented, technically proficient winemaker. The color was gorgeous, but there was one big problem. I could not bear to drink it. 

The wine tasted like a big California pinot — not, as they said on Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that. The problem was that this wine was from Burgundy. 

New oak and I have parted ways. The heavy use of new oak in this wine made it simply undrinkable — for me. I tried over three days, the whole weekend, returning to taste the wine each night, but the result was always the same, and the majority of the bottle ended up going down the drain. Everything I wanted to taste in this wine, the flavors I could tell were there, were now forever lost under a heavy layer of oak. Few things can destroy terroir more than new oak barrels. This was a wine that had lost any sense of place. 

I realize this falls under the “personal preference” category, but sometimes I wonder if that is true. When I Iooked up the winemaking information on this wine, I found they used 70% new oak on this pinot noir. Is that an authentic choice? Drinking a very oaky wine is like trying to listen to a conversation at a rock concert. You miss a lot of what is being said. 

The best wines let you look inside of them and have beautiful transparency. Once you succumb to the pleasures of more delicate wines, tasting wines with characteristics like prominent new oak flavors make you feel like these wines are screaming at you — perhaps a Screaming Eagle, if you will. 

My transition happened over the years, as, when we tasted through the barrels each vintage, my favorite wines were from older barrels. The wines in the new barrels were essentially undrinkable, and we would rationalize how they would add complexity to the final blend. All they added was overt oaky flavors that overwhelmed the elegant nuances of the wines in the older barrels. 

As you delve into the complexities of more delicately styled wines, you soon make a discovery — there is no such thing as “neutral oak”. 

Drinking wines without significant new oak used in their aging is kind of like going to a spa for a palate purge. Once your system is flushed out, everything feels different and, in this case, tastes different. Soon, as Steve Jobs said, you start to “think different.”

Once your palate is open to the experience, you soon understand the term “neutral oak” is a misnomer. Now, when you taste wines out of those three-year-old barrels you thought of as neutral, you can taste the oak flavors they still impart to the wine. The same goes for even older barrels. For white wines, their impact is even more pronounced. 

What do we want from barrels at Troon Vineyard? Obviously, not to leak, but most importantly that they do no harm. They must not overwhelm the flavors of the variety and the vineyard. Besides simply holding the wine, the role of a barrel is to provide a controlled rate of oxygen to the wine. This is why different shapes and sizes of barrels have come into use in various wine regions due to trial and error over the centuries. Those reasons were not always about wine quality, but for ease of transportation in regions like Bordeaux, where export markets were established long ago. From huge botti in Barolo to puncheons in Cornas to the slight differences between Bourguigone (228 l.) and Bordelaise (225 l.) barriques, there were many reasons these sizes were selected, but those reasons were always commercial, efficient storage and, although they might not have known it, for the controlled introduction of oxygen into the aging wine. The idea of heavy use of new oak is a very modern one, and in the past, even if they had liked the flavors of new oak, new barrels would have been an expensive luxury few could afford. 

The magic in barrels is that they let the wine breathe, but they are not alone as other very old wine storage methods also allow oxygen into the wine at ideal rates for developing young wines. We already have five amphorae and concrete tanks are also very exciting and both last a bit longer than your average barrel. Both are investments I am hoping to expand in the near future. 

The use of high percentages of new oak and the rise of cult wines are intertwined — the more dollars than sense school of winemaking and wine buying. Now the key to making a mediocre wine seem expensive to the average consumer is the heavy use of “oak alternatives”, which is simply adding wood chips to wines in stainless steel tanks to add the sweet flavors of oak to a wine. You get the flavor, but no oxygen, but no problem; they can just add that too. Winemaking is transformed into beverage alcohol production.

There is nothing wrong with liking heavily oaked wines. If you like that flavor, go for it; there is no arguing taste. But you are giving up something as those wines taste more-or-less the same, no matter where the grapes were grown. To handle all that new oak, you have to harvest super-mature grapes, and overripe fruit loses not only its unique taste of place, but the very nature of the variety itself. Suddenly pinot noir starts to taste more like hollow syrah. To make matters worse, you’ll end up paying more as all that oak is costly, and those that make these massive wines in massive bottles also have massive egos, which demand massive prices. 

Quantity should not be confused with quality. The restaurants with the biggest portions do not have the best food. Wine quality should not be defined by the amount of flavor, but by the quality of the experience. To have that experience, you have to taste the wine itself, not the aging vessel. Even with the best speakers, if you turn the volume up enough, the music will be distorted. 

When buying wine you should get what you paid for — wine. 

The Pace of Knowing

“The pace of knowing on our part does not alter how creation works,” Michael Phillips in Mycorrhizal Planet

A recent article in the New York Times revealed that the Moon has a tail, much like a comet. “It almost seems like a magical thing,” said one of the astronomers. For a few days each month, like clockwork, a stream of sodium particles from the Moon wraps around the earth’s atmosphere. That tail is dusting the Earth with sodium. 

“But even invisible, knowing the Earth has a meteor-fueled moonbeam is satisfying enough — a reminder of the Moon’s dynamism.” Says Dr. James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist, “I think we definitely take it for granted.”

While we can’t sense the passage of this beam around the Earth, It does not mean that other beings on the planet cannot. There is much we still do not understand about the cycles of the natural world. Nature’s smallest beings sense many things that are invisible to us. 

The more you pursue the science of regenerative agriculture, the more connections to biodynamic practices you discover. That is not to say the reasoning behind those practices are the same, but the practices themselves often closely align. 

“As the second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and the soil, silica has been largely ignored by agronomists. Silica is crucial, however, as it provides plant defense against pests and fungal/bacterial disease and reduces plant stress. It is a cell-strengthener and an activator for many plant functions,” says Nicole Masters in her thought-provoking book For the Love of Soil.

“Soil application of colloidal silicon increased plant-available Si, but only foliar application increased the total silicon concentrations in leaves, yield, and cluster weight. Moreover, the wine produced from the silica-treated grapes were ranked better in sensory evaluations,” states the Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences in the article Effects of silicon amendments on grapevine, soil, and wine

One of the biodynamic preparations that raises most eyebrows (although all of them do for some) is BD 501 — the silica mentioned above. Silica is now routinely applied in many crops throughout the world. I’m sure most of the silica applied in agriculture is not buried in a cow horn first. Is the biodynamic method better than simply applying silica? I don’t know. However, I do know that silica prepared in the biodynamic way does make a difference in the vineyard. Our neighbors and good friends Barbara and Bill Steele at Cowhorn Vineyard have refined this practice over almost two decades of biodynamic farming. They use multiple precisely timed applications of BD 501 to encourage their Rhône varieties to reach higher brix levels in their cool Applegate Valley site. The proof is found in their exceptional wines. 

While Rudolf Steiner got a lot of the “hows” and “whats” right in his lectures, the “whys” are clearly not always on the mark. Steiner saw cow horns as kinds of radio telescopes that captured cosmic energies and transferred them to their contents. He was clearly right about silica, but cosmic energies? I think terms like “energies” and “forces” are just names for things we don’t understand. There was a lot that was not understood about plant biology in the 1920s, when Steiner gave his lectures (he died a year after giving them), while we understand much more today, there is still much that is not known. 

Having made our own BD 500 and BD 501 at Troon Vineyard for several years now we’ve had our own experience with burying cow horns to make these preparations. One thing is clear — the cow horns work in the sense that the final product is ideal for the job. Do they work because they are the perfect size and material or because of those cosmic forces? I admit there is a little bit of the “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” mentality here. Will other containers work just as well? I look forward to others doing that research and letting me know. I’d be happy to change, but I would prefer to not be the one experimenting as my immediate concerns are getting great fruit quality in the vintage at hand. 

There is one cosmic energy that no one doubts — the Sun. Apparently, now the Moon can join that club. Not only does the Moon’s gravity gives us tides, but once a month the Earth is enveloped in its tail. Like a timepiece, the moon showers us not with mysterious cosmic energies, but a dusting of sodium. We can’t see it or feel it, but to the microbiology in the soil and plants, it may sound like Big Ben striking noon. 

There are so many aspects of biodynamics that are now entering the mainstream of agricultural science. Composting at lower temperatures to increase fungal and bacterial populations. State-of-the-art compost tea brewers aerate compost tea overnight, which also builds those populations, as does the biodynamic practice of dynamizing. Even farming by the Moon may have to be reevaluated. It was obvious to many of us that biodynamics worked. All you had to do was to taste the wines. While we knew it worked, we were not very comfortable with the “whys” as presented by Steiner. Slowly, but surely those gaps are being filled by the new science of regenerative agriculture. 

It is my hope that the new Regenerative Organic Alliance and Certification will bridge those gaps. It embraces both USDA Organic and Demeter Biodynamic Certification, but fully incorporates the rapidly advancing science and knowledge that is happening in agriculture today. 

It’s not magical forces, but the Sun, soil, Moondust, mycorrhizal fungi, and manure that make agriculture work. As Michael Phillips wrote, “Nature does what needs to be done if we let her.”

Humble — something we should be when it comes to the natural systems. There is so much we do not know. Nature works, that’s truly magical.

Growing Forward: A Panel Discussion on Regenerative Agriculture

“Craig Camp, who has been heralded for turning around Troon Vineyards in Oregon’s Applegate Valley points out that in their replanted vineyards “biodynamics is the framework we integrated into our process. Regenerative organic is the next step.” Wine Industry Network.

Please join us for a panel discussion about regenerative agriculture with Paul Skinner, Paul Dolan and Jordon Lonborg and myself as we discus the future of winegrowing.

Inspiration

I have been more than fortunate to be literally immersed in a world filled with inspiring people during my whole career. People that lift you and make you reach for ever higher goals. To be called inspirational is obviously an honor, but, in fact, it is far more humbling. To be inspiring you have had to be inspired. You stand on the shoulders of so many.

Needless to say, I was more than flattered and honored to be named to the “Wine’s Most Inspirational People 2021” list in their article:

Craig Camp: Leading the Way for Vineyard Rejuvenation from Conventional to Biodynamic Farming

I have been deeply involved in fine wine, both the business and making of it, for almost four decades. The people that have inspired me are too many to count, but I will name a few anyway.

Mentors like Becky Wasserman, Christopher Cannan, Neil and Maria Empson, Barry and Audrey Sterling, and Angelo Gaja introduced me to the wines of the world. Don Clemens and Scott Larsen first showed me how special a wine could be as they shared their best bottles with me. Then there are those inspirational people I grew alongside, winemakers like Tony Soter, Cathy Corison, Richard Sanford, Josh Jensen, Cecil DeLoach, Fred Fisher, Joy Sterling, Dick Ward, and David Graves, Manuel Marchetti, Andrea Sottimano, Tino Colla, Andrea Constanti and Dominque Lafon. Sharing their voyage, even in a small way, continues to inspire me every day.

Inspiration also comes from younger, energetic people who are making a new future in wine, many of whom I have had the honor to work alongside. Winemakers like Thomas Houseman, Jeff Keene, Tony Rynders, Nate Wall, and James Cahill, viticulturists like Jason Cole, and marketing and salespeople like Kim McLeod, Nadia Kinkade, Meg Ordaz, Nate Winters, and Ashley Wells. Then there is Paul Mabray, the pioneer that takes all the arrows while driving winery marketing technology forward for the entire industry.

Inspiration is a continuum. One cannot inspire without being inspired. It is a debt that can only be repaid by paying it forward. The most inspiring people don't set out to be inspiring. They just show up every day and do the work. That's the most inspiring thing of all.

And Now for Something Completely Different

Well, that was interesting. Goodbye 2020.

I was really looking forward to 2020. It was going to be a benchmark year as, after three years of intense effort we were going to receive our full Demeter Biodynamic® Certification. Finally, Troon Vineyard, always a vineyard with unfulfilled potential, was going to show what it could do.

Obviously, far, far more important, and more terrible, things happened. 

In late February, I was on the Slow Wine Tour as we had achieved another Slow Wine award at Troon Vineyard. San Francisco, Seattle and Denver in four days. Then, during the first week of March, while I was in San Francisco for the Oregon Wine Trail tasting event, I was unnerved to see the desk clerk at my hotel was wearing a mask when she checked me in. Then, at the packed event, people made nervous, feeble jokes about not shaking hands, while making clumsy attempts at bumping elbows. COVID had arrived. 

Then everything imploded. 

Our tasting rooms and our restaurant customers were closed down, sales events were canceled and the world came to a stop. Or so it seemed at first. 

While everything else closed, the farming just kept going. Farms can’t stop for pandemics. The winery became an eerie place. Most days I was alone in the offices and vineyard crew was spread out over the entire farm. It is easy to social distance on one-hundred acres. The cellar team would alternate days so only one person at a time was in the cellar. Despite the challenges, the work got done. 

Actually, the work in the vineyard was a comforting thing. With the entire world in an uproar, the quiet and beauty of the vineyard and the surrounding mountains made it a calming and safe place.

Selling wine was not a safe and calming place. A major segment of our customers simply vanished overnight as restaurants and wine bars were shuttered. For a small biodynamic winery producing wines from varieties that are not mainstream commercial pop hits, this was not a good thing. 

But then something very special happened.

Our regular customers, wine club members and locals, stepped up to support their local businesses when they needed it most. Our walk-in and online orders took off. Then there were our retail store customers who could have settled for the big, well-known commercial brands, but stuck with small producers like us. It is a favor we will do our best to repay forever. 

Then, thankfully, good weather arrived. 

In summer things felt lighter as we could have outdoor tastings at our tasting rooms and the energy that our guests brought to Troon revitalized our team. We are lucky to have a large patio and lawn at the winery and a courtyard at our Carlton tasting room. Outdoor tastings were not going to be an issue, as even in normal summers everyone prefers to be tasting outside. Social distance was not a problem as we easily spread out tables across the lawn. During the long, warm sunny days of summer in the Applegate Valley we were busy as outdoor wine tasting felt like a safe option. 

Then the fires arrived. 

The winds were predicted, but their actual arrival was unnerving as everyone was aware of the danger — a danger that was more than realized. Our neighbors in the towns of Talent and Phoenix saw their communities destroyed. Simple Machine Winery in Talent lost everything. Many winery and vineyard workers lost their homes. The first day of the fires, the skies were blue at Troon, but then the smoke settled in for a few weeks. Once again, we had been luckier than many. The main problem we experienced was that the smoke curtailed our outdoor tastings. Certainly a minor inconvenience compared to what so many suffered. The wine community came together with the Rogue Valley Wine Country Cares fundraiser to raise $57,000 to support housing costs for those that lost their homes. The wine industry is filled with good people. 

Then it was time for harvest. 

There is never a day filled with such unbridled optimism at a winery than the first day of harvest. We all did our best to maintain that facade. As dawn broke on that first day, we started picking in particularly heavy smoke. I wore both a N95 and a surgical mask and the pickers struggled to work in their masks and the smoke making an already difficult job that much harder. The cellar crew all wore N95 masks, now to ward off both smoke and COVID. Not one person complained. While we could not see each other’s smiles, you could still could still hear the jokes and laughter. 

When we briefly removed our masks as Troon Vineyard winemaker Nate Wall made the traditional Champagne toast as the first grapes arrived, it was clear that neither the smoke or COVID could steal our optimism for this new vintage.

Finally, the smoke cleared and most of the vintage was completed under blue skies surrounded by beautiful vistas of the Siskiyou Mountains. Once again we were lucky as our wines were not affected by the smoke. The fires were too far away from Troon so we were not covered with the fresh smoke that can impact the wine.

It is always strangely quiet when the vintage is over.

Harvest interns always bring a lot of energy, fun and enthusiasm to the harvest crew and their departure marks the official end of harvest. It also makes the winery feel quieter and a bit empty. It is always a time for reflection and looking forward. Now that the smoke had cleared the late October weather was unusually warm, customers returned to our tasting rooms and their support once again buoyed our spirits. 

Then in November everything imploded — again.

Just as other businesses had done, we had carefully planned how to keep our tasting rooms open for indoor tasting during the winter months. The social distance between tables had been carefully measured, firm mask requirements and disinfecting strategies had been put into action. Everyone on the team was committed to the safety of our guests and each other. I have been inspired by the commitment of everyone at Troon during this year. You could always see their deep respect for each other on their faces — because they were always masked. 

Then, as COVID dramatically spiked we once again were limited to outdoor tastings. Winter outdoor wine tastings are not an inviting prospect in the mountains of Southern Oregon.

But then something very special happened — again.

Yet again the Troon team pivoted and recreated our outdoor patios with heaters, blankets and windbreaks to make guests as comfortable as possible. Once again our customers have come through for us braving the elements to taste and buy our wines. You can never look at these people that supported you during this difficult year the same way again. We are very lucky.

All of us are looking forward to 2021. 

As you look to the next vintage you are always filled with optimism. I know 2021 will be a special vintage. We learned many things this year. We know more about each other and more about our customers. We are better than we were at the start of 2020. Both more efficient and more empathetic. Smarter and more creative. Tougher and more humble. 

Most of all we have to treasure our good fortune in 2020. We were able to hold our own while so many others had the business that they had dreamed of and sweated over for years devastated. We were able to make exciting wines in challenging situations. More than anything we did not lose anyone to this terrible disease, although some of our team lost extended family members. The lessons of vintage 2020 are to count your blessings. 

We practice regenerative agriculture at Troon Vineyard. Regenerative means to put in more than you take out. In 2020, that did not only apply to the vineyard. 

Well, this will be interesting. Hello 2021.

The Space Between the Notes

Recently, while tasting an old vine cinsault from Chile it occurred to me that the moments I enjoyed most about this delicate wine were those that I could not easily grasp. A long time ago, I realized I want some space in my wines. Space for me. Many wines fill all those spaces and leave nothing left to your imagination. They fill every space with their own noise leaving nothing for you to think about. I don't want a wine to complete my sentences for me.

That seems to be the goal of so many wines these days. They want to take all the work of tasting away from you. Of course, in the process, they take most of the pleasure away. This is the season for "top 100" lists from all the major media. Heck, one is even making top 100 lists by country. You can be sure that these lists are chock full of wines that require little participation on your part. Just cough up the big bucks to buy them, pull the cork, pour into the right Riedel, take a sip, and the rest is all taken care of for you. Thoughtless winemaking creates wines that require no thought. It is an easy recipe.

Of course, most of the winemakers that make these loud wines are far from thoughtless as it takes substantial technical skill to execute the manipulations required to make these wines. Oddly, it requires serious technical skills to make all highly manipulated wines be they mass-produced million case brands or highly allocated unicorns, costing hundreds of dollars a bottle. It is surprising how similar the winemaking process is for these two extremes of the wine marketing world. Obviously, the cheaper wines come from lesser vineyards with much higher yields per acre, but the farming itself and the extensive use of cultured yeasts and a myriad of other additives makes them soul mates.

The other thing they have in common is they require little of your attention. For inexpensive wines, this is a well-deserved point of pride – take a gulp and enjoy your dinner. With expensive wines it is more paternalistic – they know what makes a wine great so you don't need to worry about it. They've punched all the buttons – new oak, big fruit, heavy bottles – so just take a gulp and enjoy your dinner. These wines remind me of what the doctor said to the woman about to give birth in Monty Python's Meaning of Life skit "The Miracle of Birth." When she asks what she should do, he replies, "nothing, you're not qualified."

Overwhelming your senses is not art. If you are listening to Mozart and keep turning up the volume eventually, the beauty of the music is lost and just becomes more noise.

The wines that are most interesting to drink are not seamless. It is in those seams that the compelling moments live. Those spaces make the experience of wine your own. I feel cheated by wines that take those spaces away from me by insisting on filling in all the blanks themselves.

“Music is the space between the notes,” said French composer Claude Debussy. In the spaces of a wine are the notes that make it unique.

Video: Talking Biodynamics and Troon Vineyard Wines with Amy Gross on Wine4.me

It was a pleasure to spend time with Amy talking about our wines, Biodynamics and Oregon’s Applegate Valley!

Interview on the Organic Wine Podcast

I spent a entertaining hour discussing biodynamics regenerative agriculture at Troon Vineyard and life in Oregon’s Applegate Valley with Adam Huss on his Organic Wine Podcast.

“Today we take a trip to the country to meet Craig Camp, the General Manager of Troon Vineyard in the Applegate Valley AVA of Southwest Oregon. Troon is a certified organic and biodynamic winery and estate vineyard that focuses on blends made from the grapes of Southern France, which seem to do extremely well in this northern area with a hot Mediterranean climate.

Craig was brought in to regenerate every aspect of Troon, and we had a very enjoyable conversation about everything that is happening there that he has helped implement. From soil testing and replanting and staff education to sheep dogs to organic vegetable gardens and more, even from the outside it’s exciting to hear about what he’s doing, and you can hear the excitement in the way he talks about it.

Craig has a personal story in regards to wine that I can relate to as well. He fell in love with wine far away from where it was grown, and over the course of his life and several career changes, he worked backwards toward an understanding of how the finest wine begins in a healthy, probiotic soil.”

— Adam Huss

Listen to My Interview on The Organic Wine Podcast

Dirt is Not Terroir

It was the early eighties, and I was yet again rereading several chapters of Edmund Penning-Rowsell’s tome The Wines of Bordeaux. I had just spent the day tasting in Graves and Sauternes from the tank and barrel with renowned French wine exporter Christopher Cannan. Now it was night, and I was getter ready for bed in a small, dimly lit guest room above the offices of his company Europvin in the city of Bordeaux. We were visiting the Chateaux he worked with throughout all the appellations of Bordeaux. Each night before sleep I would review the appellations we had visited that day and those we would visit the next. That week long visit to Bordeaux was followed by a week in Burgundy with Becky Wasserman and my nightly reading changed to Burgundy, then a brand-new book authored by Anthony Hanson.

The next year I made a similar trip to Italy. Setting off with famed Italian wine exporter Neil Empson, we visited almost every wine area of Italy to taste at nearly every estate in his extensive portfolio on a three-week tasting marathon. In my bag was a well-worn copy of Burton Anderson’s Vino, the Italian wine bible of the day. My reading pattern was the same as when I was in France, reviewing each night on where we had been and cramming on where we were headed the next day.

I have been lucky over my career to have made multiple such trips to France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Australia. Top that off with many, many trips through the wine regions of California, Oregon and Washington. On each trip I would devour the current wine literature of each region before, during and after each visit.

I was obsessed with wine books and literally would buy and read whatever came out each year and my bookshelves overflowed with dog-eared, wine-stained volumes. This was the era of my life when I was a wine importer and distributor based in Chicago. Then, two decades ago, I made the transition from wine distribution to wine production and my reading list began to change. Slowly but surely instead of reading books about wine, I began reading books about farming. I recently realized this when I noticed that the last five books I’ve read all have the word soil in the title.

Even though my reading materials have changed, I am still as obsessed by the concept of terroir as I was decades ago in that small room in Bordeaux. However, what that means to me has changed significantly.

Those books presented terroir as something magical. That each site is a unique expression of the soil where it was grown. Then you actually start to grow wine and a new reality presents itself.

Take Oregon and Burgundy for example. In the Willamette Valley the soils are volcanic or sedimentary acidic soils. Summers are almost desert-like with no rain for months. Burgundies are grown on alkaline limestone soils and there is rain throughout the growing season. There’s not much in common here except one thing — outstanding pinot noir. Time after time experienced professional tasters find it difficult to tell which wine is Willamette Valley and which is Burgundy.

Burgundy and the Willamette Valley are not alone in this for the same experts can confuse California and Washington Cabernet with Bordeaux and California Coast and Oregon Syrah with Rhône wines. Each of these areas are very different from each other. How it is possible that all can produce wines whose provenance confuses the experts?

The reason is we have always made the cornerstone of terroir the type of soil the vine grows in — limestone, volcanic, granitic, sedimentary and so on. But it turns out that it’s not the exact type of soil that matters as much as the life in the soil itself. It has been this realization that changed my reading from wine books to soil books.

Terroir is not an expression of inert dirt, it is the individual expression of living soil and how a healthy plant intertwines with that soil. Dirt is not always soil. Soil is a system teeming with life.

Obviously, there are distinct sites. Terroir is a combination of many things. Climate and mesoclimate are critical, then there is the human element — row spacing, trellising and picking the right variety for the right place. For example, planting cabernet in a cool climate and pinot in a warm climate is not a great idea. But it takes grapes grown on healthy vines on living soils to make an expressive wine with a distinct character.

What makes for a living soil? Here is where you find the reason that biodynamic wines have a unique liveliness that stands out. Sustainable agriculture is not enough. That only means that you are killing the life in your soils more slowly than industrial agriculture. It is only with regenerative agriculture that you can build soil that creates distinctive, individualistic wines.

Plants and the microbiology in the soil have a complex symbiotic relationship. The plant takes a large percentage of the carbohydrates it produces through photosynthesis and pushes this exudate out through its roots to attract the microbes it needs to extract nutrition from the soil. It can change the mix of exudates depending on its requirements at the moment. A healthy plant decides the microbiology in the soil by the mix of gourmet microbe treats it sends out through its roots. That microbiology then returns the favor by processing the nutrients in the soil into a form the plant can utilize. The healthier the plant, the healthier that microbiology becomes. The healthier that microbiology becomes, the healthier the plant becomes. Not a bad system.

Then we come in and screw it up. The application of pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers destroys nature’s well-tuned system. In that system is to be found what makes a vineyard unique. It is an essential element of what we call terroir. The grapes that make distinctive wines come from vines in vineyards where nature’s system is humming along. Our job as farmers is to assist the plant and soil in regenerating that balance year after year. This is vital when you have a perennial crop like vines that do not lend themselves to crop rotation.

Coming back to the Willamette Valley and Burgundy comparison, perhaps their shared qualities come more from the life in their soils than their geological provenance.

I still read before and after vineyard visits. However, these days they are not wine books, they are soil books. It is in the soil you find great wine.

Regenerative Agriculture

Troon Vineyard is now both Demeter Biodynamic® and CCOF Organic Certified. Certainly, that’s an accomplishment that I am more than proud of attaining in the minimum required three years. Yet, there are parts of both certifications that have always made me uncomfortable.

The USDA Organic certification has been largely taken over by industrial organic farms. For example, the massive national distribution of certain organic salad brands. It even allows hydroponic agriculture. The concept of “organic” agriculture that does not involve soil certainly does not meet the standards I would set for a natural food growing system.

Then there is biodynamics, which I was drawn to in two ways. First, I had tasted too many excellent wines made biodynamically and I aspired to make wines with that kind of life and energy. I wanted to make better wine and was convinced this was the way to achieve that goal. Second, was the focus in biodynamics on rebuilding soil microbiome through a proactive series of probiotic applications based around compost, compost teas and other fermented applications. I believed that the tenets of biodynamics created an ideal framework to rebuild our soils and, indeed they did at Troon Vineyard. As with almost every biodynamic winegrower I know, I was drawn to the regenerative farming concepts of biodynamics, but was less than comfortable with Rudolf Steiner and the Anthroposophical side of biodynamics. Like most biodynamic wineries, we focused on the practical aspects of biodynamics and more-or-less ignored the Anthroposophical side.

Apparently, many others had the same feeling I did as there is now a new certification that incorporates the best of both organic and biodynamics while actively incorporating the human element. This new certification includes an essential word — regenerative. Called the Regenerative Organic Certification it combines the restrictive nature (telling you what you can’t use) of organic certification with the proactive, probiotic nature of biodynamics and creates a more complete structure for rebuilding soil. As it says on their website, “farm like the world depends on it.”

My search for a framework for regenerative viticulture soon transformed into the broader view of the “whole farm” concept that defines biodynamics. Practicing regenerative agriculture is more than simple organic viticulture. Biodiversity creates more biodiversity and is the key to regenerative agriculture. At Troon Vineyard our viticultural inputs now include cider apple trees, vegetable gardens, sheep, chickens, grains, bees, pollinator habitats and compost — lots and lots of compost.

The Regenerative Organic Certification excites me as it incorporates all the things I find important about the Organic and Biodynamic® Certifications while also resolving my concerns with both. I also find the addition of social fairness as a cornerstone of the program brings an important element not included in the other programs. Obviously, industrial farms would have difficulties meeting this requirement. The animal welfare requirements, which are also included in the Demeter Biodynamic® Farm Standard, are also important additions as many animals on organic certified farms, while better than industrial feed lots, do not live in humane conditions.

We will certainly keep both our Organic and Demeter Biodynamic® Certifications. You have to be certified organic to achieve the Regenerative Organic Certification and the framework of biodynamics has achieved all I had hoped and more.

The focus on regeneration is what is key to me. We have to put back more than we take to establish a natural food growing system. Farm like the world depends on it — because it does.

Here is some recommended reading on regenerative agriculture:

Dirt by David Montgomery

Hidden Half of Nature by David Montgomery

Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepard

The Soil Will Save Us by Kristin Ohlson

Dirt to Soil by Gabe Brown

The Third Plate by Dan Barber

Demeter Certification

It started in a grown over abandoned cow pasture three and a half years ago and ended with Champagne on the patio at Troon Vineyard last week. 

The start was picking the site for the compost piles. The Champagne toast was to celebrate what we have achieved in these years in-between. Troon Vineyard is now one of only twelve wineries in Oregon to be certified Demeter Biodynamic® in both the winery and vineyard. To add a bit of icing to the cake, both the vineyard and winery are now also certified CCOF Organic. 

Searching with me for a compost site in an abandoned and overgrown pasture over three years ago was biodynamic consultant Andrew Beedy. The new proprietors of Troon Vineyard, Dr. Bryan and Denise White had fully committed to the concept and investment required to transform Troon Vineyard from industrial agriculture to biodynamics. Now Andrew and I started the project forward. If you were standing there that day with Andrew and me and then came back to Troon Vineyard today, you would not recognize you were on the same farm. Only Grayback Mountain, still majestically towering over the Applegate Valley, would tell you that this spot was Troon Vineyard. The distressed, dilapidated and diseased vineyard that was Troon Vineyard in 2016 has been replaced by a living farm. Today, everywhere you look is activity and, most importantly, life. 

While media tends to focus on buried cow horns and other photogenic aspects of biodynamics, the heart of biodynamics is the people who practice it. A farm is not a natural occurrence in nature. Mother Nature does not plant grapevines in nice neat rows. Our goal and I believe the goal of biodynamics, is to let the natural systems of nature function as normally as possible in the rather unnatural environment that is a farm. 

It takes a village to achieve a goal like Demeter Biodynamic® Certification. Fortunately we built a dynamic team to accomplish this goal. Proprietors Bryan and Denise White have provided a solid foundation for us to build on. Biodynamic consultant Andrew Beedy and viticulturist Jason Cole provided the framework for our vineyard crew, led by ranch manager Adan Cortes, to transform not only the vineyard but the entire property. Our cellar team, winemaker Nate Wall and assistant winemaker Sarah Thompson fully embraced biodynamics and daily keep us moving forward as we expand and deepen our practice of regenerative farming and winemaking.

Troon Vineyard CCOF Organic Certification

For me, I will admit this is an emotional moment as I remember first seeing this vineyard in 2016. Today, when I stand in the same spot where I first surveyed this vineyard, surrounded by the majestic beauty of the Siskiyou Mountains, I can clearly recall feeling that this was a special place and a special vineyard. To see the possibilities I saw transformed into reality sometimes seems like almost a dream, but it is a dream come true.

Certification was a goal and now it is a goal achieved. It fact it just means that we have arrived at the starting line. So much of the work over the last three years has been repairing and restoring and we are far from done with those jobs. Now the goal is to more deeply understand this vineyard, this farm, and to make the practice of biodynamics our own. To achieve certification you are given a set of rules to follow. If you check off all the boxes you achieve certification. Now, as a jazz musician must master the scales before they can improvise, that we have learned to work within the framework of biodynamics, we must learn to go beyond that framework and discover the natural system of this farm. That will be our ultimate goal. Our job is to learn what this farm needs and then do our best to provide for those needs. The next years will be focused on building biodiversity. We will be welcoming some new members to our biodynamic team as next spring a flock of sheep, more chickens, and the requisite guard dogs (Pyrénées of course!) became part of our farm.

We celebrated our certifications with a Champagne toast. We toasted not only to what we accomplished, but what we will accomplish in the future. Becoming one of the few Demeter Biodynamic® Certified wineries and vineyards is a true milestone. Now, on to the next one. 

Rebirth, Regeneration, Rediscovery

“Troon Vineyard is a story of rebirth, regeneration, and rediscovery,” reads the lede in the Oregon Wine Press article “Troon Renaissance” in their July issue about the transformation of Troon Vineyard. The author, Barbara Barrielle, could not have better captured the spirit of what has been accomplished at this small vineyard in the Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon. 

When I first visited Troon Vineyard in 2016, I felt a connection to the vineyard from the first day because I could feel the potential of this site. I can still clearly remember that day as I stared at the vineyard with the dramatic backdrop of Grayback Mountain and the Siskiyou Range. I felt that this was not only a site with potential, but with soul. The serene beauty of the Applegate Valley is unmatched by other American wine regions and, while the site and the valley were beautiful, the condition of the vineyard was not. This was a vineyard that needed to be born again. 

In 2016, the rebirth of Troon Vineyard began. This was no easy task as the owner at that time did not share my vision of the potential of the vineyard and the wines. For years, Troon had been focused on what I would call “gimmick” marketing. Funny labels and contrived marketing spin were the strategies. Also, key staff members had been driven off by, shall we say, less than enlightened management practices. I still cringe when I think of the loss of one, particularly talented staff member due to insensitive treatment. Fortunately, at least, she moved on to another winery in the Applegate Valley and remains a friend to this day. I had been brought in to put the business in order so that it could be sold. I saw it as a short-term project, and I was getting ready to move on when Denise and Bryan White arrived and decided to purchase Troon. In the meantime, I'd fallen in love with this vineyard. Thankfully, they did too. For it would demand a labor of love to not only restore the vineyard but to restore honor to a tarnished brand.

Troon Vineyard had been in a dark period for some time. To say the brand was tarnished would be an understatement. I was brought in to put a bandaid on it and then to move on once first-aid was applied. That’s all the owner at that time wanted, and I just wanted to get out of Napa and have some time to find a compelling vineyard in the Willamette Valley. It did not take me long to realize I had found that vineyard, but it was in the Applegate Valley. Without an owner that is connected to the vineyard and the soil, there is no hope. The vineyard convinced me to hope anyway.

What is now Troon Vineyard was divided at that time. The west ranch was being farmed using the nuclear option by the family that had purchased it in a sale that had broken the property apart. Knowing little about farming, they pushed the vines to their limit using every chemical trick and allowing the vines to overproduce and exhaust themselves. I’ll always remember reading their spray list and seeing a product called Venom. Any product with such a name needed to be checked out. The first thing I saw on the product label was that it killed bees - all of them. These poor plants would never completely recover from this abuse, but, hopefully, the soils and the bees could. Fortunately, the east ranch was still under our control, and there I pulled the plug on chemicals in the vineyard and the cellar. It was not an easy task as the winemaking and vineyard team at the time had never been asked to aspire to make great wines, so they had not.

We had to not only regenerate the site, but the people that worked it.

In 2017, the regeneration of Troon Vineyard began. The essential step was the purchase of the Troon Winery and the west ranch by the Whites. They had already purchased the half of the original property that had been sold off and then they purchased the Troon Winery site to reunite the entire estate. The other big step was the arrival of biodynamic consultant Andrew Beedy. A huge leap forward was made as, now that both vineyard blocks were under our control, we were able to move immediately and totally to organic and biodynamic agriculture on the entire estate. Then plans were initiated for a range of research projects to dig into every aspect of the vineyard. There was a lot to learn.

This year also was the start of our compost program, which required us to produce over two hundred tons of biodynamic compost a year. That’s a lot of manure. Fortunately for us, our neighbor here in the Applegate Valley is the Noble Organic Dairy with thousands of cows eager to contribute to our cause.

Regenerative agriculture became the foundation of everything we did, and biodynamics provided the framework to build on. We were searching for the soul of this vineyard. It had been there all along, but we had to rediscover it. 

In 2018, the rediscovery of Troon Vineyard began. Vineyard Soil Technologies from Napa Valley arrived and dug over seventy five-feet deep soil pits. A team of soil scientists spent a week in the pits researching every aspect of the vineyard. At the same time, we began our project with Biome Makers, as they created an annual database on the bacteria, fungi, and yeasts that made our soils unique. Master viticulturist Jason Cole came on board to manage the redevelopment of the vineyard. We wanted to understand how every aspect of the vineyard changed as we implemented biodynamics. We needed all the data we could obtain to help us make the right decisions. 

There were a lot of decisions to be made as we had decided to replant the entire vineyard. The existing vines were simply beyond saving. The biggest issue was extensive red blotch virus infection, but the vines had also been weakened by the years of conventional farming. Weak vines are easy targets for other vine diseases, and these vines had become an encyclopedia of afflictions. As devastating and expensive it was to have to replant the entire vineyard, there was a silver lining as we could now choose the right varieties for this site and plant them the right way. Instead of having to deal with a hodgepodge of varieties, some less than ideal for the site, we could replant with a plan. That plan would be to focus on the varieties of southern France. Those varieties would include syrah, grenache, mourvèdre, cinsault, counoise, tannat, malbec, negrette, bourboulenc, marsanne, roussanne, viognier, clairette blanche, bourboulenc, vermentino (rolle) and picpoul. Many of these varieties will not appear as single-variety wines but will be part of blends. 

Blends are to become the heart of Troon Vineyard as we create the new Troon.

In 2019 we recreated Troon Vineyard as the replanting project began as we planted ten new acres of vines. Some of these were new areas, never before planted, and others were replanting of vineyards we had removed the year before. It is always a sad experience to remove vines - even sick ones. Planting new vines is the flip-side of that emotion as there is nothing that fuels the spirit of optimism more than putting vines in the ground. We are planting not only for ourselves but for future generations. There are few things that “pay it forward” more than planting a vineyard. These vines will produce wines we’ll never taste, made by people we’ll never meet.

The work that began in 2016 was recognized in 2019 as we were awarded our first Demeter Biodynamic® and CCOF Organic certifications. There are separate certifications for the winery and vineyard. Therefore, we received our full certifications for the winery, but our “in-transition” certifications for the vineyard. We’ll get the final Demeter Biodynamic® certification for the vineyard in 2020 as it takes three full years of biodynamic farming, and in 2019 we were a few months short of that goal. 

The older vines were now really showing the impact of our biodynamic regenerative agriculture program. They were healthier and producing better fruit. Our good friends in the Applegate Valley, Barbara and Bill Steele, at Cowhorn Vineyard, had graciously agreed to sell us some of their biodynamic syrah, grenache, marsanne, roussanne, and viognier to get us through the shortfalls of our own production as we replanted. So we had grapes from our own estate that were dramatically improved in quality combined with excellent fruit from Cowhorn to work with, but, as with a great violin, you need a virtuoso to play it to show what it can do. That talent arrived as this vintage was made under the guidance of new Troon Vineyard winemaker Nate Wall. Nate is an incredibly sensitive and passionate winemaker whose love for the site equals the Whites and my own. His background in science (B.S. in Biology and M.S. in Environmental Engineering) was ideal for our philosophy of searching for the science in biodynamics. His extensive experience making pinot noir in the Willamette Valley provided the light, minimalist touch needed for wines from the Applegate Valley. 

The confluence of a healthier vineyard, better fruit, and the right people made the 2019 vintage a milestone vintage for Troon Vineyard. The wines from this vintage finally give a glimpse of what this special vineyard is capable of producing. The first of our new generation of wines included wines released in 2020: Piquette, Pét tanNat (100% tannat pét nat), and Kubli Bench blends that included an Amber (orange wine) and a Rosé. Another orange wine, Amber Amphora Vermentino, has been aging on the skins and stems in three amphorae for the better part of a year and will be released this fall. While most of the 2019 red wines (which we are equally excited about) will not be released for a few years, we did produce a 100% carbonic maceration Grenache, which we are enjoying chilled this summer.

So in 2020, Troon Vineyard has been reborn, we have regenerated the vineyard and the wines and created a team that has rediscovered the soul of a vineyard. Joining that team in 2020 is the energetic and creative assistant winemaker Sarah Thompson. This will be the year we receive our full Demeter Biodynamic® certification that will recognize years of hard work and investment. But these achievements only mean that we have arrived at the starting line of a race that never finishes. There is no such thing as a finish line in winemaking.

Regeneration is a constant. Every year it begins again only building on the work of the preceding years. Agriculture is a relay race. We can only do our best for the land, the plants, and our wines and then, finally, pass the baton on to the next runner. Hopefully, they’ll run the race with the same intensity that we ran our leg.