There's Still Time to Source Carneros Pinot At this point in the season, a good Pinot Noir opportunity isn't just about finding available tons. It's about knowing where those tons are coming from. This 2026 Contessa de Carneros Pinot Noir comes from a Los Carneros site that has supplied fruit to Frank Family for the past decade. The vineyard features stone-filled soils, low yields of just 2–3 tons per acre, and night harvesting to help bring the fruit in cool and intact. Approximately 8–10 tons are available, with buyers able to take part or all of the offering. With August underway and harvest approaching, sourcing decisions are becoming decidedly less theoretical. For wineries still looking to round out their 2026 Pinot Noir program, this is an opportunity to connect with an established Carneros grower while fruit is still available. View Listing Every winery has its own path to a successful vintage. Some programs are built around long-standing vineyard relationships. Others take sh

There is, for good reason, a lot of reporting right now on climate change and how it's affecting the grape harvest. Everywhere you look, wine regions are experiencing harsher-than-normal conditions. It would be easy to write a post about how hot it is and stop there. But, I want to pick out something else: this is a story of climate volatility, not just heat. A Cold Night in Bigfork, Montana This hit home for me in 2022, when I was asked to evaluate a future winery, and existing vineyard in the Bigfork area of Montana. Two years earlier, in 2020, the growing season had been warm, and the owners felt good about what climate change might mean for grape growing that far north. But, climate change isn't just hotter weather. It's climate volatility. In that same warm year, Montana got a sudden, early, catastrophic cold event. The weather through September and into early October 2020 stayed mild, highs in the mid-50s, with only two nights that dipped to freezing. Because of that, most of the

On June 30, Mark Sherfy, MBV and Ziv Attia, PhD will be at the UC ANR Connect Demo Day at the UCANR Hopland Research and Extension Center. These are the events we enjoy most. Real vineyard conditions, technology in the ground, and conversations with growers focused on practical outcomes, not theory. Water remains one of the biggest variables in wine grape production. Costs continue to rise, allocations remain uncertain, and every irrigation decision carries real financial consequences. In many cases, the difference between protecting quality and protecting margin comes down to timing. At Phytech, we combine continuous plant monitoring, soil and climate data, and high-resolution satellite imagery to help growers make better irrigation decisions at the block level. “The vine tells you what it needs every day. Our job is to help growers translate that signal into action.” — Ziv Attia, Head of Agronomy. “Growers aren’t looking for more data. They’re looking for confidence in their deci

The biggest challenge in ag technology isn’t innovation. It’s building tools that actually work on the farm. In a recent episode of Sustainable Winegrowing with Vineyard Team, Craig Macmillan sat down with Matthew Hoffman, PhD , General Partner and Head of Farms at Reservoir, to discuss a growing challenge in ag tech: how to bridge the gap between promising ideas and practical vineyard solutions. Reservoir is taking a unique approach. Instead of developing technology in isolation, the company partners directly with growers to help startups test and refine tools in real farming environments before they reach the market. Their work focuses on specialty crops, including winegrapes, where vineyard variability, labor demands, and regional differences make technology adoption especially complex. Why Grower Feedback Matters As Hoffman explains in the episode, many startups entering agriculture have strong engineering talent and funding, but limited experience in production agriculture. Grower

Across agriculture, regenerative practices continue gaining momentum as growers, land managers, researchers, and policymakers look for ways to improve soil stewardship, reduce operational pressures, and build long-term resilience. But as adoption increases, many conversations are beginning to focus less on theory and more on implementation, especially when it comes to weed management. That topic emerged repeatedly during the recent American Regeneration Conference held at Sovereignty Ranch in Bandera, Texas. The two-day event brought together leaders across agriculture, science, policy, and land management to discuss the future of regenerative systems and the practical realities surrounding adoption at scale. Representing Contact BioSolutions, maker of FireHawk® Bioherbicide, Managing Director Dr. Frank Glatz participated in roundtable discussions centered on regenerative agriculture, operational challenges, and the growing interest in additional weed management tools. While regenerat

Why some wineries get recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — and how yours can too. Consumers are changing how they search for wineries. Google still matters, but more people are now using AI search tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and voice assistants to ask direct questions like: What winery in Napa has views and doesn’t require reservations? Best dog-friendly winery near Charlottesville open on Mondays Best winery for a girls trip in Paso Robles Which wine club is best for Cabernet lovers? Family-friendly wineries near me with outdoor space AI Visibility Is Already Driving Real Results This shift is not theoretical. Recent website analysis from Duda found that AI-crawled websites generated: 320% more human traffic 270% more form submissions 250% more click-to-call actions For wineries, that could mean more tasting room inquiries, reservation requests, event leads, and online sales opportunities. As consumers increasingly ask AI tools where to visit, what

The Great Digital Divorce: Why 2026 is the Year to Fire WordPress and Hire an AI Agent For years, wineries have been trapped in a "bad marriage" with their websites. You pay thousands in monthly retainers just to keep the lights on, or wait days for a junior developer/assistant to change a tasting room photo (or even worse, take time out of your day to handle it), and live with the nagging fear that a single WordPress update might crash your entire storefront.  That era is over. The "Great Digital Divorce" has arrived. The $100,000 Anchor For decades, if you wanted a high-end, custom-built site that actually performed, it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. WordPress was the "affordable" alternative that offered functionality to the masses, but it came with a hidden tax: it was built on 20-year-old logic. It relies on clunky databases and "dynamic" files that are slow, vulnerable, and increasingly expensive to maintain. Here’s the reality: AI has changed expectations around in

Most conversations about AI in agriculture lead nowhere. There is plenty of speculation, plenty of marketing, and very little shared understanding of how AI is actually being used inside real vineyard operations.  There is no manual. No proven tools, and even fewer examples that go beyond theory. That is what makes this story different. Rather than discussing what AI could do someday, this article looks at what happened when a professional vineyard management team, operating at scale and under real economic pressure, put AI to work on the unglamorous parts of their operation: scheduling, coordination, and administrative complexity. The outcome was not what most people would expect. The biggest gains did not come from automation itself, but from what changed once friction was removed from daily work. First, You Have to Start With a Real Problem A vineyard operations leader managing large-scale acreage described a situation many vineyard operators recognize immediately: an operatio

It’s not hard to see the promise of AI on a vineyard: process a ton of information and get meaningful answers quickly. The problem is that no one knows how to get started. There are no clear standards, few proven playbooks, and almost no shared examples of AI delivering measurable results inside real vineyard operations.  How can you use AI on your vineyard? Keep reading... This article looks at how one vineyard management team approached AI not as a trend to adopt, but as a constraint to manage. They had too much information, too many variables and far too little human capacity to process them all. This is how they did it. The Question You Should Be Asking First A vineyard operations leader managing large-scale acreage described a situation where scale magnifies every inefficiency. Across thousands of acres and dozens of properties, the team was already using sensors, labor tracking systems, equipment data, compliance tools, and agronomic models. The problem was not lack of infor

Green shoots: Is this a “transitional moment”? With spring getting underway, this month’s California Report assesses vineyard conditions, grape demand, and whether the bulk wine and grape markets are seeing the first tentative green shoots of  recovery: Is the industry in a “transitional moment” before growth returns later this year or next? We dive into recent reports that case-good sales declines in the US are slowing, using the latest SipSource US wholesale depletions data to pick out some sales trends. The convergence of pricing toward California-appellation levels on all but a select handful of wines theoretically enables bulk wine buyers to make their decisions based purely on which samples best meet their quality/character specifications. This has opened up product development and scope for wine companies to attack potential retail opportunities. With wine aisles growing shorter, this is a challenging time to “buy the dip” with inn