Organic Farming

“Organic farming is really just good farming." - Ames Morison

Since the 1990’s we were pioneers in the area by farming organically with no artificial chemicals, fertilizers or pesticides used to grow our wines. Instead, we promote healthy, living soil that nurtures, feeds and protects our vines and embrace age-old, low impact farming methods like crop diversity allow the vineyard to shine through in the fruit.

Our commitment to preserving the land is first and foremost in the vineyard, relying on natural predators instead of chemicals. At its most basic, that means having and following a farm plan that describes how we farm including not using synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. Rather than attacking that problem when it arises, we try to be more proactive and do more extensive leaf and shoot removal in those areas, relying on sunlight and airflow to do the heavy lifting rather than chemicals.

Other ways we aim to create healthy soils include:

• Making our own compost on site to build soil fertility

• Using cover crops to pull Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide out of the air to improve our soils

• Encouraging a wide variety of animals to help us with our farming

• Beneficial insects prey on vineyard pests

• Barn owls, hawks, and coyotes prey on gophers that like to gnaw on vine roots.

• Leveraging our site specific knowledge to know when to mow, cultivate, irrigate, and harvest for lightest impact to the land

• Leveraging an array of cover crops to maximize soil health

• Planting an insectary blend of flowering plants such as Sweet Alyssum, Purple Tansy, Buckwheat, Queen Anne’s Lace. These have a very long flowering period and attract beneficial insects that prey on the bugs we don’t want

• Hand pruning and hand harvesting all grapes grown at Bell Mountain