The Root of the Matter
Strictly Vineyards on Growing Grapes without Glysophate
by Torrey Douglass
“When it comes to grapes grown in Anderson Valley and Mendocino County, each grape has been touched at least once by someone’s hands,” remarked Travis Foote, General Manager of Strictly Vineyards, a vineyard management company located just outside of Boonville. “It’s not a hands-off approach, especially here in AV, where wines aren’t mass produced through industrial farming.” Grape growing, regardless of vineyard size, is a complex and intensive endeavor, and Strictly Vineyards helps farmers, vineyard owners, and wineries navigate the profusion of challenges that await anyone brave (or foolish?) enough to try their hand at it.
By his own admission, Travis “fell into” vineyard management as a career. After college at Penn State, he came to California to help his aunt and uncle open their new winery and tasting room, Balo Vineyards. He planned wine flights, set up the payment system, and got all the necessary details organized for the tasting room to open in May of 2012. Then, mission accomplished, he headed back east to Philadelphia. But once winter rolled around, he found himself reconsidering his choices. Anderson Valley offered less snow and more sun–and more wine, so he turned around and came back, settling in Boonville and taking on the manager position for Balo’s Vineyard.
Travis was completely new to the field (hah!), and there was a lot to do and even more to learn. He tapped into the valley’s community of grape growers and winemakers, reaching out to experts like Paul Ardzrooni, Norman Kobler, and Jason Drew with his questions. “They were very generous with their time,” he remembers, “and they’re still supportive to this day.” His expertise grew as he learned on the job, and soon he was approached to manage other vineyards. Not long after, Strictly Vineyards was formed to provide vineyard management services such as feasibility studies, new vineyard installation, and ongoing care and maintenance.
According to Travis, the whole winemaking process requires more sweat and effort than folks assume. “A lot of people don’t realize how intensive it is. They go into a store and buy a bottle of wine and assume [it comes out of] a romantic lifestyle. Yet from the farming, to the winemaking, to the selling, it’s a much more intensive process than it looks and not as romantic as it seems.” Still, despite the hard work, he prefers the vineyard to the office, reflecting on how gratifying it is to see something through, from the start of the growing season to harvest. “You can hold something in your hand that you’ve helped to grow, something tangible,” Travis shared. “It can be challenging, and every year’s different. No year is the same, whether you’re dealing with smoke, wildfire, or drought.”
Regardless of the year’s challenges, weed control is a perennial and indispensable part of maintaining a vineyard’s health and vitality. Opportunistic, tough, and aggressive, weeds hoard the water and nutrients that would otherwise nourish the grapes, resulting in lower yields and weaker vines. And with other challenges to address, from finding enough workers to kinks in the supply chain making bottles pricey and hard to find, it’s not surprising that vineyard owners are tempted by the convenience of the one-and-done weed killer, glyphosate.
The most widely used herbicide in the world, glyphosate was developed by the agrochemical company, Monsanto, in 1974. It’s the main ingredient in their weed-killing farm and garden product, Roundup, which is known as a broadspectrum herbicide, meaning it kills all plants rather than targeting specific species. Glyphosate, aided by other chemical components in Roundup, is sprayed onto a plant’s leaves, where it is absorbed into the plant’s vascular system and travels throughout the plant, including down into its roots. The formula interrupts the production of the biochemical components of proteins that are required for growth, causing the plant to die all the way down to its roots and making regrowth impossible.
On the surface this seems like an elegant solution—apply it once in the spring, the encroaching weeds die, and weed control is achieved for another growing season. But there is a different story taking place beneath the soil. Research by Robert Kremer of the University of Missouri has found that glyphosate, typically entering soil through spray application or released from the roots of treated plants, can be carried along waterways to neighboring fields and watersheds. The herbicide also sticks around, persisting in the soil more than four years after its last application.
A study by Environmental Science and Research International compared the effects of chemical and mechanical weed control methods on grapevines. The results showed that glyphosate decreases root mycorrhization—the symbiotic relationship between a vine and the beneficial fungi attached to its roots. In root mycorrhization, the fungi transmit nutrients from the soil into the plant in exchange for sugar produced by the plant through photosynthesis. This relationship allows the fungi to survive underground on the roots, while enabling the vines greater access to the soil’s nutrients. This and other studies have shown that using glyphosate decreases the nutrient content of the final harvest, partly due to its impairment of the mycorrhization process.
While glyphosate weed killers like Roundup reduce the nutrients in grapes, they add another component: the glyphosate itself. A 2019 study of beer and wine by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group found measurable levels of glyphosate in all five Northern California wines it tested—including two that were certified organic. The safety questions around glyphosate seem a little more personal when we’re unwittingly welcoming it into our bodies via that sip of syrah. Mice studies have linked consistent glyphosate exposure to liver disease, and in 2018 a jury decisively concluded that Roundup caused a Vallejo school district groundskeeper to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when the backpack container he was carrying broke and drenched his back in the formula.
Yet when product safety questions arise, Monsanto points to EPA reports that Roundup poses no risks to humans when used properly. Those claims are less than convincing when put into context by Carey Gillam’s book Whitewash: The Story of a Weed Killer, Cancer, and the Corruption of Science. A journalist and research director at public health advocacy group U.S. Right to Know, Carey Gillam included Monsanto’s own internal documents in her book, demonstrating how, time and again, the EPA’s assertions that Roundup posed a cancer risk and should come with health warning labels were shut down by the political pressure the multi-billion dollar company brought to bear.
Fortunately there is a glufosinate-based alternative that is considerably less harmful—this is the approach Strictly Vineyards encourages its clients to adopt. It’s a “broadcast burn down” application, killing the plants on which it lands down to the soil–but not under it. Says Travis, “Its price is on par with glyphosate, and it has a shorter half-life than Roundup and other glyphosate products. Also, it’s contact, rather than systemic, so it does not travel into the root system of the plants it is targeting. If the application is timed correctly, it’s only needed once a year.” Glufosinate cannot be described as benign–it’s an herbicide, after all–and should always be handled with care. But it is not considered a cancer risk, and it is significantly less detrimental to the environment. So for conventionally farmed vineyards, it’s a better option
In a county that markets itself as “America’s Greenest Wine Region,” leaving glyphosate behind makes sense. Grape growing and winemaking is a significant part of the local economy. Jeopardizing that through short-term solutions that cause long-term harm threatens Mendocino County’s future resilience. Reflecting on Anderson Valley in particular, Travis said, “It’s a different climate here than Napa, Sonoma, even Ukiah Valley. We’re 15 degrees cooler and get more rain. We’re perfectly positioned to grow world class pinot noir, and produce some of the best wines in California.” For that to continue into the future, it’s essential to protect the health of our harvests, soil, and water. And for that we must understand the consequences of choices made in the vineyard—both above and below the ground.
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