Episode 108: Increasing the Nutrient Density of Wine Grapes with Nicole Dooling and Michael Frey

Hi friends, this is John. Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. You won't believe the fun conversation we're going to have today. I've been looking forward to this discussion. I'm joined by a farming couple, Michael Fry and Nicole dueling from Mariah Vineyards, who have a really fascinating story of the journey that they have been on with their vineyard in California. Michael and Nicole, welcome to the show. Thanks for all the work that you're doing. Can you tell us a little bit about your personal journey, your story, both the two of you as individuals, what brought you back to the farm and what has been happening with your enterprise?

First of all, thank you very much for having us and I think, yeah.

Thanks for having us on. I mean, I listen to your podcast all the time, so it's amazing to be on the other side of it, I guess. Long story long, no, I'll try to make it short. But I guess we should start with. Mariah Vineyards is a high elevation dry farm vineyard in the Mendocino Ridge ava. It is the, as far as I know, still only non contiguous AVA in America. It consists of the first coastal ridgeline in Mendocino County.

When you say high elevation and dry land, what does that translate to in terms of moisture, rainfall? What, what does that look like in terms of a farming environment?

So our vineyard, well the AVA is anything above 1200ft. So it's kind of this peak, mountain top, peaks of along this ridgeline. Our vineyard sits at about approximately 2400ft, which is quite high for, for, you know, a vineyard in California. And our, well, whatever is normal anymore is, I don't know, but we get.

Normal is becoming pretty changeable, isn't it?

Yes. So climate variability is definitely, definitely an issue. So I mean what the level of rainfall we got when I grew up up there versus what we get now is obviously different. But we get on average anywhere from, you know, in a dry year, you know, 50, 60 inches of rain to well over 100, 120 some is I think one of the biggest years we ever had. Do we get some substantial rainfall? Obviously it's concentrated in the winter months or fall and winter and spring months. We get snow often depending on the weather systems. So that's. And then dry farm. We are, for well over 20 years the whole vineyard has been dry farmed, meaning that we do not irrigate. So we rely on the rain that we receive and the groundwater reserves for our growing season.

When farmers in Nebraska and Karen says we'll hear you refer to dry farming as 50 to 60 inches of rainfall a year. They, they might laugh a little bit about that, but.

Yeah, true, true.

But you know what, I totally get that. But the point is, is that we, there is no we are in our context or our eco region is, allows us to do so. So why wouldn't we kind of thing. You know, we also are on this mountaintop, off the grid. I mean I grew up, we had a generator when I was a kid and it's been fully on solar for well, a long time now. But you know, there isn't, there's no tap into the city water system. There's no, you know, excess electricity. I mean, I guess there is with solar now, but you know, we don't have this possible. Like we don't have really another possibility. I mean we do have a pond, but you know, in dry years, to really think about irrigating a 30 acre vineyard with one little pond is you.

Have the benefit of growing a crop that has a very deep root system and that can access water down deep, assuming that it is available. If you're farming at such a high elevation. What does your, what do your soil types look like? Do your soils have the ability to infiltrate and hold water down deep? What does that look like?

It was, it was previously forest, so we have about 12% organic matter.

Wow.

So and that was, that was a big part to, to go, to go on the regenerative journey actually is climber resilience. So, so there was one, one side was climber resilience, the other side was differentiation in the market. Please excuse my, my pro climate resilience because, because we have this hundred inches of rain and it's important for us that we have living roots in the soil. It's important that our soil is like a sponge. It's important for us that, that, that we store the water that we get to survive the drought during, during the summertime.

So that's why we are 100% cover year round vine rows and vine alley. Like. Well, I guess everybody has a different way, but our, our entire vineyard is fully covered all year round. We don't have any bare soil and that's incredibly important for obviously retaining the, the high levels of rainfall we often get. It's also important to hold that moisture in our soil as well as keep our soils cool. You know, we don't get valley heat like a lot of other places in California, but we still get some heat. We are, you know, we had, what was it, 2022. I mean we had a five day stretch of 117 degree weather and then two days later it rained nearly five inches. Wow, it was extreme. So, you know, there's a lot of reasons why we, we definitely have permanent cover everywhere and throughout our, you know, even through the winter seasons we, you know, we go out and we put right, we seed rye grass and put straw on our vineyard roads, the roads that cut through the blocks because over the growing season, you know, attractor passes and stuff, it gets, we want to ensure that like even our roads are not that they're soaking in water and has, have living roots in them.

So I definitely want to come back and talk more about the COVID crops and how you're maintaining those and the species diversity that you have. But let's bookmark that for a moment. I'd love to hear more about your journey to the farm, Michael. You started speaking about some of the motives that you had for pursuing a regenerative approach. Nicole grew up there on the Vineyard on the mountaintop as she has been describing. What brought you to the farm and what has your pathway been?

When I was 35, I quit my life in Switzerland. I had a pretty amazing job in the management team in a food company.

Wait, your life? You started?

Yes, I started, but there was, but I always had a big drive to see the world. I watched documentaries about the beauty of the world and I really, really wanted to see that with my own eyes. So I started the world trip actually for one and a half years, traveled once around the globe and met my future wife in Peru, Nicole, not the other one. And that was the beginning of a journey where I came back to San Francisco, we visited the vineyard, we were up there and I was stunned by the remote location on this ridge top. It's surrounded by pristine forests. It's, it's on, on spring, it's no light pollution, it's on solar. It's the problems that you face during harvest are bears and, and, and, and, and mountain lions and all this stuff. So I, I, for me it was just spectacular, this place up, up on this ridge top. So, so, so there was a big spark about the beauty of the place on one side. And then the second thing was a close family friend, Paul Dolan, sparked us with, with regenerative agriculture. We had lunch with him and he started speaking about the capabilities of, of bringing back biodiversity, the capabilities of sequestering carbon, the, the capabilities of, of just to create a system that is teeming with the environment and not extracting the environment. And for Nicole and I, that was just mind boggling. And the spark that we have inside of us ever since.

And he sent us to the Regenerative Earth Summit in 2019 in Colorado in Boulder. And we didn't really know what regenerative really was or what this was, but we trusted and Paul's, you know, and so we, we just went and it was, it was this spark that, you know, there's these people, I mean, all different types of farmers and I mean, some of the heavy hitters of the regenerative movement, you know, like Mad Ag Elizabeth, like Charles Eisenstein, I mean, there was Will Harris, you know, all these Savory Institute, all these people were there and we didn't really know who they were. We were just talking and hanging out and learning about it and realizing that there's this amazing way in which we can farm better. And, you know, we just, we walked away just completely inspired and came back to, to the vineyard, to my parents. And we're, we were like, we, we've got it. I mean, not to say that they were farming badly or anything, but we just, we've, we've got to do, we've got to do better. We got to do this, like, let's, let's, let's be better at, let's be better farmers, you know, and that started this whole path down the. Being a pilot vineyard for the Savory Institute's Land to Market, ecological outcome verification. And we just, we are so inspired by regenerative agriculture and the possibilities on which it can create, you know, a more lively ecosystem as well as, you know, now we go down the path into nutrient density and things like that. But this, this idea that we can do things better. And we said, we'll jump in, we'll support. And that was really what brought me home, was this inspiration around regenerative farming and learning how to be a farmer. It wasn't because, and I mean, I, I've kept my day job, you know, because we all know farming is not always the most lucrative of a way to sustain yourself. So. And I love nursing, so I'm, I've just been balancing between the two and trying to learn as much as I can. So that's really what brought me home.

Nicole, tell us a bit more about your journey before you came back home. And then also, what has the relationship been like with your parents as you are, the young people coming in with very new and very different ideas than what they've been exposed to before. What has that been like?

Well, I mean, for me, the vineyard was my home. My dad was a farmer or My parents were farmers and I mean, it just was what I grew up with. I didn't think it was really weird or abnormal until I went away to college and realized like, nobody else like has parents that are farmers. You know, I just kind of did my own thing in life and went in my own direction. And I think Michael, you know, between Michael's, you know, coming and walking and seeing the vineyard and you know, he looks at it with these eyes of just like, wow, this place is truly unique, truly amazing, truly beautiful. And you know, and then I'm thinking, wow, geez, they planted three acres of vineyard. You're like, whoa. Like, I knew my parents were pioneers on some level, but like, you know, that's, that's his life and his passion and I respect that. And I think it made me look at it a little bit differently and not just like, oh, this is my home. This is like, whoa, no, this is something that they've created and has to be maintained, but also preserved and needs to continue. It can't, you know, a lot of farms get sold out and things like that. So looking at it with Michael was a little bit more. I, I just looked at it in a different way and that, you know, I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to help with, with that. And then realizing my parents could really use some help was also, you know, part of it too. So yeah, I just kind of. We just jumped in headfirst and you know, I balanced my time between my ER shifts and going to the vineyard and, and helping and that's just been our back and forth life for what, well over five years now. For me. It's it's also, you know, it's this ability to like to come back and help be part of the next generation and, and learn from my parents and the knowledge that they have of that land and how they've done things. But also, I mean, I'm not, I didn't go to school and learn about viticulture or enology or soil health. I mean, I had an aquatic biology degree from, you know, my undergrad. But like, I don't have, I don't have this knowledge base to, to really, I just have, I don't know, I guess the energy to learn and to take what they've done and what they've learned and bring that with what we are learning in the regenerative agriculture space and try to like, balance that into our context on the vineyard and make some, you know, some knowledgeable, informed decisions to continue the health and vitality of that vineyard which has led us obviously to, to the work that, you know, you guys are doing.

So that was. I come back to your question about generational challenges, but also the positive of the several generations on the table. I think the first step that we did on, on Mariah Vineyards aesthetic, on, on an outcome base, it was, it was the first step that we did was try to understand what's going on underneath the ground and above the ground, hand in hand with, with the Savory Institute and the OUT and the ecological outcome verification. We looked at organic matter, we looked at the mineral cycle, water cycle, biodiversity and all that stuff, and then started implementing new cover crops. Increased biodiversity. We brought sheep back. You mentioned, you mentioned on your podcast with Charles Eisenstein, regenerative agriculture is all about relationships. And when I heard that, when I listened to the podcast, I can spot on. So we started building relationships back on the vineyard. Ever since, everything that we implement leads to something else. So we increase biodiversity. And then the sheep came and then we had a mildew outbreak. And we learned and we learned and then we went to SAP analysis and nutrients in the wine. And now we are in pruning systems about SAP flow. It's a constant path of exploration and learning and absolutely stellar. I absolutely love.

It's an amazing rabbit hole. This.

Back to the, back to the generational things. It's absolutely amazing to have the possibility to learn from somebody that farmed the property for 40 years, that knows 40 different seasons, that tackled a lot of problems. That's, that's the positive side. On other side, there's a lot of discussions because there's a mindset how, how a vineyard has to look, it has to be maintained, the grass has to be short. It's. It's the simplification of an ecosystem. Right?

It was initially there had to be, you know, dirt in the vine row because I'm dry farming. I don't want the COVID crop to compete with my vines. And sorry.

And then on the other side, it's a simplification of the ecosystem. And then on the other side, Nicole and I came back and say, we want to embrace complexity. Let's just increase biodiversity. We want to have a flourishing, thriving ecosystems with plants and buzzing stuff. And these two worlds are clashing, are clashing constantly. But, but I also think that, that these clashes and these frictions are leading to good, to good change. Just, it's in loops. It's in loops that, that we are making progress. But the trajectory is definitely the right one.

When I hear what your pathways have been. And what you've been describing there is this quote that comes to mind. I forget who it's attributed to, but something along the lines of confusion is the beginning point of learning. Or in other words, before you can learn anything, you first have to arrive internally at the place of acknowledging that you don't know. And that can be difficult for people who have a lot of experience or who have a lot of education in a certain domain. And so in that sense, I actually think it's been probably a strength for you and a significant opportunity for you that you didn't have a lot of things you came in already recognizing that you didn't know. And that is what has made the learning journey so much fun.

I totally agree with that. And it also, in a weird way, like, only because I know that with this new method of, you know, kind of pruning around more vine health, SAP flow. My. My mom made a. An interesting comment around the fact that it's probably easier for us to understand and learn this. This approach to pruning than it's been for them because they have these. They have these other ways that they learn or that they were taught, ingrained in them that for us, it's almost easier because we, We. We didn't. We aren't so ingrained in these other methods of farming, not just pruning. So I think that's been. You're right. I think it's been a bit of a blessing where, you know, you know, we sit at the dinner table and it's like, I mean, I have this crazy idea. Does it really. What if we try it like this? And my dad's like, either, like, no, that won't work because of X, Y and Z in the past, this and that. And then I'll be like, well, what about this? You know, and we can kind of talk through different things. You know, it's just this constant conversation, which I will admit can be exhausting, but it can also be incredibly rewarding and really amazing to kind of think through and tackle problems together with new ideas, you know, new, you know, we are learning about what's happening in the viticulture space and in the regenerative agriculture space. And about these, like what Michael mentioned before, these, like, duh, like, why didn't we think about pruning for Sapphilo before? You know, it's these things like that, that it's exciting to do that together and to. To bring forward the next generation on the vineyard.

So I think we have a big chance and you know, My parents in law welcomed us up there and, and are giving us a lot of opportunities to try and to test and to play. So I don't take that. Absolutely not for certain. And then on the other side, since we started, I think we can also show some results. We were the first land to market verified vineyard there. That allowed us to differentiate the fruit, that allowed us on to do some optimization. On the business side, we launched wine. So during this process, during this process and all this friction, there's some rewarding results coming out of it. So I think that confirms our path forward.

Yeah, I really appreciate the perspective and the appreciation, kind of the respect for the effort of the previous generation that you bring forward. And I find that there is this very common conversation where I'm hesitant to call them the previous generation, but the older generation that currently owns a lot of land and has a lot of equity in farming operations are often very jaded by the economic realities that they've gotten to experience in agriculture. And they're often very discouraging of young people who want to come into the space, particularly young people who studying around regenerative agriculture. And they become inspired, they get this spark and they become inspired. They want to try new things and try a different approach and a different pathway. So within your experience and what your pathway has been, what have been, have you had, have you discovered any particularly valuable tools for bridging the disconnect between the experience reality of several decades of farming experience as contrasted with a different perspective?

The first thing that comes to mind is I, I think it was one of your podcasts, like it's a couple years ago now, but it was a podcast I was listening to and I was in the vineyard fixing some wires, listening to this podcast. And I don't even remember which farmer it was or who it was, but on this podcast there, this farmer, you know, somebody said, well, somebody must say, you have, you know, you've got 40 years of experience, you know, and blah, blah, blah, you must know all this stuff. And he's like, you know what? My answer is always, I have 40 different experiences. And for me, that is something that like really stuck with me. And I bring it to my dad all the time and I say, dad, you know, like, I know that you've, you've gone through this and I know you have these different things, but like, this is your, this is going into our 44th year or his 44th year, and it is a completely different experience than all the rest of the 43 years. And so for me, that's A little bit of like, we need to think of this, this growing season or how we. How we approach it. Not necessarily with. With disregard for the past, but with an open mind for how. I mean, our climate is completely, you know, it, It. It's. It's different. Things are really different. You can't just apply a recipe every year and expect it and to not think through things. So for me, that's been. That's been a way in which I'm like, but remember, you know, and it works often, but sometimes it doesn't.

I think. I think farming. I think as a farmer, it's a lot about show me. You know, you can, you can. You can talk a lot about benefits of regenerative agriculture or practices or you name it, but I think it's a lot about show me out of a farmer perspective. So I think we, when we brought. When we all went to educational classes, when we all were on the ground, the second generation and the first generation, and we hear the first thing when we invited people up on the Vineyard and we walked together and spoke and learned, I think that changed a lot. I think just to go up and throw theory around, I think that's not the path forward. My personal opinion.

Agree. And that's been, that's been. We've been very, I think, really, like, we are. All four of us are really integrated in this and, and we really, you know, it's. It's a team effort and I really. There's some challenges involved, but mostly it's. It's. It is rewarding. I mean, I get to. I get to learn and work with my parents, you know, and. Which can be challenging, but can also be incredibly amazing. Like, I'm learning so much, or we, we both are, you know, and I think it's brought new life. I mean, I know it's brought new. You know, they've been up there for a long time, you know, and there's, you know, definitely some arthritis in my, you know, and. But like, they're. They're doing great and they are still heavily involved in farming. Like, we are not. This is not, you know, this is a group of us that is trying to. To ensure that we keep that vineyard thriving and healthy, to withstand whatever gets.

Thrown our way while keeping our private relationship flourishing. You know, it's all about flourishing.

Relationship. Relationship, you know, to, like, I have a deep relationship with that land that is my home. More than anything, that is my home. I don't want it. I don't want to lose it, but I have a New respect for what? For the relationship my parents have with that land and how valuable that that relationship is. No matter how, you know, the challenges involved in the generational fluctuations and mindsets and things, it's all worth it in the end. If I, you know, just was like, all right, just figure it out yourself, you know, like, you know, I would, I would be sad to see if something, if we, if they couldn't support it or I had to sell it or something like that. So I have a vested interest in ensuring the dream that they've created can follow through into generations to come.

And I'm confident that when, when you come from that place within and you show up in that way, that that is, that is felt and appreciated and that is, that is considered as well. So you describe you've now been on this journey, I think you said, for the last five years since you were first exposed to the idea of regenerative agriculture. How has your operation evolved over the course of that five years? What pieces have you been able to bring forward and to gain some experience with what perspectives have you gained? I know you mentioned you're now doing cover crops differently from what you have in the past. You're pruning for SAP flow. You mentioned the use of SAP analysis. What has the, what has the evolution looked like or what has the development looked like over the last five years?

I think that the special thing at Maria is that you're sitting on a ridge top, you're sitting on your own spring and it's. You're drinking the water that comes out of the mountain. So it's really, so you really have a lot of skin in the game actually, because whatever you put on the ground and whatever you do has a direct impact on what you put in your body through water. And all the stuff I think Mariah developed. I think plants are healthier. I think there's more life, there's more plant species that are coming up naturally. There's way less bare ground that was that than it was before. So we have 100% ground cover now.

Bring us along on the journey. What were the steps that you took? I guess I would also ask the question of what steps would you advise other people to take in a similar or different sequence?

I think the first step that we did was learning about the holistic approach, not a reactive approach, long term thinking and whatever you do that. The Savory Institute was influential in that. The second step that we did was 10 short term site on the property, three long term site to measure, to create the Baseline of the property like it was and then learning from there based on outcomes. I'm a big fan of outcomes and, and results. And from there we, we realized that our biodiversity, for example in the vineyard.

Could have been better.

Could have been better. So, so we, we implemented, we see that more perennials, we, we palatable sheep stuff. Palatable sheep stuff to bring in sheep. That was the next step to grace, to, to grace and to roam. Then the next step after that was the cultivation. I think the cultivation was the biggest transition actually. It was a, it was a cultivation underneath the wine row. First with a wheat, with, with a wheat badger, then with an undercutter. And now we have hundred percent ground cover. What results in different challenges with how do you mow that during the season that you don't have too high grasses. And now the next step that we've so I'm so, so that was with the COVID Then the next step in the COVID that we're working now on is low growing, low growing plants that we don't have to mow.

So yeah, I mean there's, for us, we normally don't have a big frost issue at our elevation. Our bud break is much later, things like that. We do have a couple swales and lately with climate changing, we've had some frost attacks that have, you know, caused some problems. So our only way to defend really we don't have sprinklers is, you know, we don't have frost fans like that isn't. So our only way to preserve our crop from frost after bud break is, is, is mowing and keeping that airflow. I mean, I guess there's things you can spread like copper and stuff like that, but that's not really what we want to do. So so in that sense, you know, we, we have to be mindful around our mowing and also letting that grass grow enough that it is, you know, doing its job or flowering or you know, fixing nitrogen, whatever we want that cover crop to be doing. So it's definitely a balancing act that we don't have it all figured out. We're learning and you know, but this, this idea about, you know, to really create a low growing pollinator friendly, you know, species or different species that can be in that vine line or you know, in the vine row that you may not even ever have to mow, that it never gets tall enough to get into your canopy, but it never gets tall enough to be a super big issue with airflow. I mean that's, that's a biological answer to, to some of the biggest problems in the vineyard industry is, I mean, vine row management is something that everybody still just like has different. I mean, that's why people strip spray, right? You know, like they can sit on a four wheeler and spray out whatever lysosate or some chemical that they want through their vine row instead of spending, you know, 300 and how many ever hundreds of hours tilling the ground or mowing the ground. So, you know, there's a balancing act between, you know, ground compaction, you know, tractor time, labor costs, diesel carbon emissions, as well as chemical inputs that, you know, there's a better way that we can do this and how we get there, I'm not sure. But having a plan to try to, to work with nature to create something that works better in our vineyard is kind of my big goal on this year is to work on that.

I think, I think we, we, we overtake ourselves. I think your answer to the answer to your question is first it was on the land that we focused on to increase. We were driven by soil health. And that extended now to the plant. That's how SAP, SAP analysis came in. It makes sense, it makes sense to understand your soil and total nutrient digestion and all the stuff and what the plant can, can take up and where you have imbalances. And then the next step after that was, you know, was also a dull moment to understand the natural wine, a perennial creeper. What does it need? How does it grow? Where are the fruitful buds? How can we prune that? We actually work together with the wine and not put it back in a system that is harmful for the plant that we try to, to grow.

So I want to dig into some of these pieces, but first I want to make sure that you're aware you may actually have a significant opportunity for frost protection. With plant nutrition, we've been able to gain about 6 degrees Fahrenheit a day.