John KempfRegenerative Agriculture Entrepreneur

Sheep integration at Wilson Creek Winery

8 Mar 2026 · 1 min

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Greg Penneroyl and Pedro Vaseco brought sheep to Wilson Creek Winery's Viognier block in year six of regenerative farming to boost soil health after initial gains plateaued. Soil tests validated the move, and seed treatments showed dramatic germination increases. The sheep partnership aims to enhance biodiversity and vine performance.

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Good morning, Greg Penneroyl, Vineyard Manager at Wilson Creek Winery in Temecula, California, here with Pedro Vaseco, our much-trusted Advancing Eco-Agriculture Advisor. And we are out on Block 11 Viognier. And Pedro, this is now— we are on about our 6th year on this block of doing regenerative ag, and we got to a point we saw great progress and it started to stall a little bit. It just wasn't going as fast. And looking at the whole concept of quorum sensing and diversity, we realized we needed to integrate animals. So we brought sheep in. The way we did that is a partnership with a sheep herder. We don't actually have our own flock. However, the data that we've gotten from our soil tests and our sap analysis and the interpretation that you've provided helped us to justify that this was the right thing to do. It didn't hurt a bit for the COVID crop that we use Seed Flare and BioCoat Gold. I just saw a huge difference in the germination rates. I had a couple bags left over from previous year in a previous block and it You can just see the difference, and the sheep seem to like it too. So everybody's happy. Hopefully the winemaker will be happy and our guests will be happy. Thank you, Greg.