The Californian who wants to save wine… and the planet

(Fulton, California) The hour is (very) serious in California, between droughts, forest fires, heat waves, the earth which shakes, etc. One man, Darek Trowbridge, is trying to counter the effects of climate change, one hectare at a time, while continuing to produce the best wines there are. We visited him, with the Quebec winegrower-researcher Véronique Lemieux, very curious about the work of this pioneer.

Eve Dumas
The Press

With his straw hat, his denim shirt and his elongated figure, Darek Trowbridge would be as much at home on a ranch as in a vineyard. But he doesn’t have the manners of a spaghetti western cowboy. He is an affable, generous, committed man. Right at the start of the harvest—they begin in mid-August under the blazing California sun—he has reserved his entire morning for us.

We find him at Old World Winery’s main address in Fulton, Sonoma County, an hour north of San Francisco. Quickly, he gets us into his truck to begin the tour of the vines with a plot that is quite new to him, close to a few rows of grapes from the giant Gallo. It was at the invitation of its owner, a certain Greta, that the winemaker began to cultivate these four acres of zinfandel and various apple trees.

“I take care of it like it belongs to me,” he says, as we take refuge in the little wood at the end of the field, for a tailgating-style tasting (tail gate). You should know that in California, few artisanal winegrowers own their vines. It’s too expensive. They therefore rent plots or buy grapes. Since Darek considers himself a farmer and wants to see healthy soil and plants, he rents and grows them.

At our request, the “pastoral winegrower”, as he likes to call himself, first pours us some cuvées from the 2020 vintage, harvested hastily while forest fires threatened to burn the vines or, at the very least, to give an ugly smell or a nasty taste of smoke in wines (smoke stain). We were too curious to know, through the taste buds, how he had gotten out of it. Several estates simply decided not to make wine that year, as the conditions were so difficult. Single Cloud 2020 (a co-fermentation/comaceration of white and red grape varieties) emerges from the thick cloud of smoke as if there had never been a fire. It’s fresh and fruity.

We continue with older vintages: Abundance 2015, another blend of whites and reds (Muscadelle, Chasselas, Trousseau Gris, Mondeuse Noire, Abouriou and Zinfandel); Four Horsemen 2011, a blend of Portuguese grape varieties (touriga nacional, tinta madera, tinta cao and sauzao) grown in a vineyard with horses; Zinfandel 2010, Merlot 2009…

There are a few ciders throughout that help put the palate back in place. Even without these beautiful fermented apple juices, the tasting would have been so digestible the reds have retained their freshness, despite the density and evolution. You can feel the life that continues to teem in these wines.

A precursor

The day is hot, but that has nothing to do with the 45°C that the region experienced three weeks ago. Nevertheless, we end up taking refuge under the surprisingly lush foliage of old abouriou vines (a very old Basque variety) almost 100 years old, in the second vineyard where the truck dropped us off.

Those venerable, beautifully twisted feet Darek rents to his family. His mother — who never made wine — comes from a line of winemakers who have been growing grapes in the Russian River Valley since the 1880s. The Martinellis now have nearly 200 hectares of vines.

Darek, the clan’s black sheep, has always wanted to make wine his own way. Two decades later, this “way”, both very instinctive and very scientific, is exactly what the planet needs. The man has the health of the environment and his community at heart.

This is what touches Véronique Lemieux, who is trying to do something similar with her experimental and biodiverse plot at Vignoble La Bauge, in Estrie. “His quest is not linked to money. It is much wider. He has a life plan. He could decide to keep his discoveries and innovations to himself, but he does the opposite because he wants to see change in his region, in the world,” says the founder of Vignes en ville.

When Darek started, his hands-off, “old-fashioned” approach was a bit disturbing to the big, established fields. The name Old World Winery alludes to the “old world” of wine, mainly European, before chemistry got involved after the Second World War. Also insecticides, fungicides, herbicides and any other “-cide” are banned from the vines. The accompanist adds nothing — apart from a minimal dose of protective sulfur — and takes nothing away from the wine.

Today, almost all young people who start making wine have a minimal intervention approach. That said, less than 1% of the wine produced in California can be considered “natural”, we learn in the very good documentary Living Wineof which our host is one of the protagonists, with Gideon Beinstock of the excellent Clos Saron and the young Megan Bell, of Margins Wine.

Without irrigation

What makes the Old World approach so special right now is the focus on soil health, on efficient carbon capture, on water conservation. Obviously, all the cultivation is done dry here (dry farming), without irrigation. The winemaker is awaiting news about winning a $2 million USDA Climate Smart Commodities Program grant that would help his carbon capture social enterprise flourish.

His work is already partially funded by the California Healthy Soils Initiative program. “It pays for 50% of my equipment. Of these “materials”, the most important is undoubtedly RCW (fragmented ramial wood or mulch in English), which he inoculates with mycelium.

It was a professor from the Faculty of Forestry at Université Laval, Gilles Lemieux, who coined the term BRF. He documented its role in soil aggradation, the reverse process of degradation. RCW can be incorporated into the soil or used as a mulch on the surface.

Darek takes us to see his mountain of wood. Véronique Lemieux couldn’t be more excited! She also has her mound in La Bauge, which was partly extended to the foot of the vines during planting this summer. RCW is a natural protective barrier that creates an environment conducive to better soil microbiology.

A small experimental plot next to the cellar bears witness to this. “Some time ago, we started putting RCW under the hens to control odours. Regularly, we removed this soil and put in new mulch. Then, once, we forgot to do it and when we went back to the hen house, we realized that the wood had completely decomposed to create a new type of soil,” says Darek. This land has been spread over the plot and the vines growing there are exceptionally tall and healthy!

Véronique Lemieux dreams that the Quebec and Canadian governments will fund soil research. “When I returned from California, I called Steven Guilbeault’s office [ministre de l’Environnement et du Changement climatique]. There really is something to do with soils for carbon capture. It’s a little embarrassing for us, I find, to see all that is being done on the other side of the border. I thought that Canada was more generous and that in the United States, it was mainly the private sector that funded this type of research, but in this case, it was the American government. »

Since human beings will surely never stop drinking wine (and therefore making it!), perhaps we should speed up the transformation of this agricultural activity into an asset for the environment?

Note that Darek Trowbridge’s wines are distributed by the La QV agency. Three cuvées are currently available for private order. They can also be drunk in the following restaurants: Boxerman, Hélicoptère, Rose Ross, L’âtre (Joliette), Le Mapache (Val-Morin) and, in Quebec, at St-Amour, at Arvi, at Kraken cru.