Full Circle Wool Collaboration (pt 1 of 2)
The first step to making quality wine is farming the fruit that goes into fermentation. In addition to working with grapes from our partner vineyards, we are lucky to have the responsibility of stewarding our own estate. Alta Orsa’s property is particularly special; farmed by hand using organic practices since the first vines’ plantings in the late 1980s. Continuing and expanding these efforts to include biodynamic and regenerative practices have been an important focus for our team, which will be a topic we will visit in this series of posts.
This February, we partnered with local fiber artist Marie Hoff of Full Circle Wool to experiment with adding sheep to our landscape. This small flock of 17 ewes took up residence in our vineyard blocks, and spent the month hard at work “mowing” the rows while fertilizing the vines.
We were excited about this trial with Marie, because there are so many ways this practice resonates with the needs of our unique property.
High-density vines means intensive amounts of human-power.
Anyone that has visited our estate knows that our vines are planted very closely together. In fact, it is impossible to fit heavy machinery between our rows of vines, so therefore everything is truly farmed by hand! Enlisting grazers to assist with managing the grasses that grow in our vineyard lightens the load for the human members of our team, allowing them to focus on more fine-tuned work, such as the task of the hour: pruning.
Fewer greenhouse gas emissions between the vines.
In previous years, our estate has put hours of use into our weedwackers, rather than herbicides, in order to control grasses. We are excited to cut back on our fossil-fuel consumption during this year’s mowing season–by the end of their time on property, Marie’s sheep will have helped us manage about 3 of our 9 blocks of vines.
Grazers in a landscape can aid soil health.
Our mountainside is a rugged, rocky terrain, with very little organic matter. Protecting the quality and quantity of our top soil is a huge priority of our land stewardship. We have never tilled our soils, and we actually welcome the support of grass and cover-crop root structure that coexists with our vines’. We have had our eye on research that supports the idea that proper density and rotation of a grazing flock can increase soil health, and we are thrilled to be a part of the conversation for seasons to come.
In addition to the benefits above, Marie herself is a passionate, thoughtful force in our community, and it has been a joy to get to know her better. To learn more about her story and projects, check out part 2 of this entry on our collaboration!
Part 2 COMING SOON…