Foundations of Regenerative Organic Viticulture with Jordan Lonborg

“To care for what we know requires care for what we don’t, the world’s lives dark in the soil, dark in the dark…”

“…Forbearance is the first care we give to what we do not know. We live by lives we don’t intend, lives that exceed our thoughts and needs, outlast our designs, staying by passing through, surviving again and again the risky passages from ice to warmth, dark to light.”

- “A Small Porch” by Wendell Berry

Forbearance is the restraint or patience we exercise even when we feel the urge to act. I love the idea that this is how we care for the things we don’t understand. In the face of our own ignorance, we show we care by restraining ourselves from acting. To acknowledge that we need to patiently observe, study, and learn more is how we show love to the things that are complex, invisible, and rooted in histories that we haven’t shared.

We could apply this to anything, really, to our relationships with each other, to the way we use the ocean, and in this episode we apply it to soil… or what I call the soil-plant community.

My guest for this episode is Jordan Lonborg. Jordan has been working in vineyards in the California central coast, and all over California, for decades. He spent 9 years at Tablas Creek where he helped transition it to becoming the first Regenerative Organic certified winery in the world. He’s now a regenerative consultant managing biodynamic, organic, and regenerative viticulture and transitions at Coastal Vineyard Care, one of California’s largest vineyard management companies.

I got to see Jordan present on the importance of soil testing at the recent Mindset symposium produced by Anna Brittain. Soil testing is one of the important ways that we show forebearance and care for what we don’t know, and we talk about many aspects of the new best practices in soil testing to better understand the biology of the soil, rather than just the chemistry. Jordan explains why, to better understand nutrient cycling we can’t just get a standard soil test. But this is just the tip of the iceberg in this in-depth conversation.

We talk about rhizophagy, and why this might be the most important discovery in Jordan’s lifetime. We talk about some of the less well known but amazingly important roles of mycorhizal fungi. We talk about the underground brain, plants as farmers, and the incredible feedback loop and trade between plants and soil microbiology. And we talk about how all of this is impacted by fertilizers and fungicides, and why hybrid grapes need to be part of every regenerative viticulture discussion. And Jordan talks at length and with passion about the belief that most people have that you transitioning to regenerative organic viticulture will necessarily cause you to lose yield for a while. Jordan has found that he can actually flip this and enable transitioning to result in immediate yield increases. And he discusses foliar feeding and how important he is finding foliar nutrition sprays are to vine health and, surprisingly, soil health.

This is the cutting edge of soil science in relation to viticulture, and Jordan’s enthusiasm is infectious. Get ready to take some notes and have a blast learning about the amazing community of life we depend on for our wine and know so little about. Enjoy!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Jordan’s presentation from the Mindset Symposium has a lot of great information, as well as a way to contact Jordan:

Baselining and Understanding Soil Health

Caine Thompson and the regenerative organic vs conventional side by side trial at Robert Hall winery in Paso Robles gets mentioned, and I recorded a really fantastic episode with Caine last year:

Also, we talk about Pierce’s Disease, and this is a really urgent issue in California right now… not because Pierce’s Disease is new to California, but because the big moneyed interests in California wine just realized that they can capitalize on the fear caused by the discovery of sharpshooter insects on vines sold at Costco to get the government to subsidize their pesticide and herbicide costs. We need to speak out about sane, ecological approaches and offer real alternatives to the conventional approach to “pest control” and we need to speak up urgently and immediately. And I just recorded an article offering a sane perspective and some real solutions for California winegrowers:

Finally, my book Wine Liberated: The Ecological Revolution and the Vintners Inspiring Change is largely dedicated to exploring these themes in wine, and has an entire chapter dedicated specifically to regenerative organic viticulture. In fact I had originally used the Wendell Berry quote for that section of the book, but later removed it. Wine Liberated is available for pre-order, releasing in November from Chelsea Green.