Steps Towards Sustainable Agriculture, Summer 2005

Fetzer Vineyards

Barney and Kathleen Fetzer started the Fetzer Winery in 1958 on 720 acres in Mendocino County’s Redwood Valley. They sold their first wines in 1968. In the 1980s, the winery passed into the hands of their 11 children. The children operated it until 1992 when it was sold to the Brown-Forman Corporation, which owns several wineries and distilleries.

In May 2005, CalMAX interviewed Fetzer’s longest term employee, Patrick Healy, and one of its newest employees, Ann Thrupp. Healy has worked for Fetzer since 1976 and is now the winery’s Environmental Manager. Thrupp was hired in 2003 as Fetzer’s Manager of Organic Development.

Fetzer has a history of sustainable practices, said Healy. “The kids grew up in the country working the soil, they knew the difference that using and not using pesticides could have on the environment. The Fetzers were forward looking, like their friends the Freys, who have an organic winery in Ukiah.” Healy has his own history of sustainability, having lived in the woods with no phone and no grid-based electricity for 16 years. After seven years, he did install solar power.

In 1984 the Fetzers bought the Valley Oaks Ranch to develop as an entertainment and educational food and wine center. In 1986, they hired Michael Maltas, who had studied biodynamic agriculture, to develop a 5-acre organic garden. Still in cultivation today, the garden has over 1,000 varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers. The garden’s success and the family’s environmental orientation led them to convert to organic production. By 1990, all 2000 acres of their vineyards were organic.

Organic farming is only one part of the sustainability orientation which was heavily emphasized by former company president Paul Dolan, explains Healy. In 1998, about 16 employees met with Dolan and the senior vice-president for about a year, trying to figure out what sustainability meant. “We wanted to envision a sustainable Fetzer in 20–25 years and then be able to translate that vision to the 350 employees we have. What we came up with was ‘E3,’ the triple bottom line: equity (social sustainability), environment, and economic. We felt that any big decision should satisfy all three of these. So if it was not good for the environment, the employees, or the company’s finances, we wouldn’t do it.”

Healy noted that they have made a couple of exceptions to the E3 rule. Their installation of solar panels and use of bio-sweet fuel additive (discussed below) did not meet the economic bottom line. These exceptions were made, explained Healy “because our theory is if no one supports these alternative measures, there won’t be demand or change. We want to be on the leading edge.”

Growing Grapes Sustainably

Fetzer annually produces about 9.25 million gallons of wine (44.4 million bottles). Of this, about 11 percent is produced from the organically grown grapes on their 1,600 acres. They buy the rest of the grapes from about 150 California growers, whose grapes are produced on a total of 12,850 acres.

As the Manager of Organic Development, Ann Thrupp works with their growers to provide information about organic practices and encourage conversion to organic production where possible.

“Wine grapes are easier to produce than other organic fruits mainly because they are a processed crop,” explained Thrupp. “Wine grapes will all go into a hopper and be fermented. What is important is the quality and flavor of the grapes and juice, not the visual appeal. Customers who are buying fruit to eat want it to look a certain way even if that does not affect the flavor.

“Growing grapes sustainably involves a systemic approach,” explained Thrupp. “Growers look at the whole; see the relationships between the ground, insects, and the plants. It involves cultural practices and management rather than chemicals. Observation and adaptation to local conditions are important, instead of following standardized or pre-scheduled applications. Attention is paid to building the soil, careful monitoring of the plants so that diseases or pest problems can be treated early on, and fostering biodiversity by having other plants besides just vines in the vineyards.”

Biodiversity provides habitat for beneficial insects and birds and also breaks up large blocks of grapes, inhibiting the spread of pests and disease. Some growers have extended biodiversity to raising animals and other crops with the grapes. Chickens are allowed to roam among the vineyards in Fetzer’s Bonterra vineyards. Fezter is also experimenting with grazing sheep in the fields before the buds emerge to keep down weeds. A few vineyards in California are growing vegetables between the vines, and one vineyard has cows grazing among the vines.

Cover cropping is an important part of sustainable grape farming, explained Thrupp. It helps protect soil against erosion, improves soil structure, adds organic matter, increases microorganism diversity, retains moisture, creates habitat for beneficial insects, and adds fertility. Having cover crops can be an adjustment for some non-organic grape growers, because they are used to having bare dirt around their vines rather than other plants.

Some cover crops are tilled in, depending on the soils and the condition of the vines, notes Thrupp. If the soil needs more organic material, for example, the cover crop may be tilled in. Also, if the soil is weak in nitrogen, growers can plant a cover crop that fixes nitrogen, like legumes, and then till it in.

There are variations in the level of tilling. These include under-the-vine, between the vines, and tilling every other row. Under-the-vine tillage is a common form of weed control in organic vineyards as an alternative to herbicides. If organic growers do not till under the vine, they may instead decide to mow or flame the weeds, noted Thrupp.

Maximizing yields is not a goal for wine grapes, explained Thrupp. In growing grapes, managing the vigor of the plant is a way to control the size and sugar content of the grapes. For example, if the plant is putting out too much green growth, grasses can be used as a cover crop to take up nutrients in the soil, deliberately creating more competition for the plant.

For fertility, Fetzer uses about 2 tons of compost per acre, which goes on the fields after the fall harvest. They make their own compost on-site with the clippings from plant prunings and the remains of the crushed grapes. The mixture is supplemented with cow manure that Fetzer buys from an organic dairy in the Alexander Valley. Occasionally Fetzer has used fish emulsion in the drip system, noted Thrupp.

Pests/Diseases

The only major disease that grapes are susceptible to in the North Coast region is powdery mildew, noted Thrupp. In most years that is not a major issue in Mendocino County. It can be prevented with organically approved sulfur spray or sulfur dust, which is usually used according to weather and need. She noted there are other occasional disease problems in Mendocino, such as botrytis and phomopsis, but they seldom cause significant loses.

Fetzer has not had major insect pest problems. The chief pests are leafhoppers, which can be prevented or minimized by removing leaves near the grapes and by encouraging populations of parasitic wasps (which eat the leafhopper larvae).

Mites are occasionally a problem, and they are worsened by high heat and dust. Dust is reduced partly by cover cropping and by avoiding excess use of tractors and other vehicles in the vineyards, and keeping roads maintained. In some areas, beneficial predatory mites are naturally present in or near vineyards, and they keep the harmful mites under adequate control.

Other California vineyards have had problems with exotic pests, like the glassy-winged sharpshooter, which transmits Pearce’s disease that significantly harms the plant’s growth. This pest probably came into California through nursery imports and has been a serious problem in some areas, but it has not yet been a problem in Mendocino County.

Water

Water management is very important in good viticulture, explains Thrupp. Excess water can lead to rot and mildew. The water use in Fetzer vineyards varies greatly, depending on the soil type, the health, and age of the vines and the climate. “We are doing dry farming with no irrigation in some vineyards and in others we have used up to 80 gallons per vine per year. Even when there is no irrigation, water is still vital for frost protection. Most vineyards do have overhead sprinklers to prevent frost in early spring.” At Fetzer, they also use the overhead sprinklers in an occasional hot spell in the summer to cool down the grapes and prevent sunburn.

Fetzer’s irrigation water comes out of the Russian River. Annually, they use an estimated average of 72,000 gallons per acre, about .22 acre feet per acre. According to the Irrigation Training and Research Center, Cal Poly State University, “premium wine grapes in California require 0-1.5 acre-feet/acre of irrigation water depending on management, location, and precipitation".

Organic versus Nonorganic Farming

Farmers have chosen to grow their grapes organically because of environmental issues as well as quality issues, explained Thrupp. Makers of wine from organically grown grapes believe that the chemical inputs from pesticides and herbicides affect the flavor of the grapes.

Farmers who have not converted to organic methods are concerned about weed control, cost, and loss of options, noted Thrupp. “Part of weed control is a perception issue, and it is easier to spray under the vines to get rid of weeds. In terms of costs, studies show that the costs are actually very similar, maybe 5–10 percent more for organic in some cases and in other situations, organic costs less. There are transition costs, including for new equipment, like the under vine mowers.”

“Some farmers are very interested in adopting organic practices. But others resist going organic because they don’t want to lose the possibility of using certain chemicals, closing off their options. Some are afraid they could get infested with an exotic pest, like the vine mealy bug, and then be unable to treat for it. However, they may not realize that organic methods and products are available for effectively controlling some insect pests. There are even promising future prospects for using biological control and methods for some of the exotic pests.”

Another issue is the use of sulfites. “There are two approved label claims that can be used for organic wines, according to the National Organic law,” explained Thrupp. “One label option is ‘organic wine’ which means there the wine is made with organic grapes and does not use added sulfur dioxide or sulfites in the winemaking process. The other label option, used by Fetzer, is “made with organically grown grapes” which allows for the limited use of added sulfites in winemaking. This is not an issue in Europe where “organic wine” is allowed to have sulfites, noted Thrupp.

Before becoming involved in wine grape production, Thrupp spent more than ten years in developing countries doing research and education about sustainable agriculture. “I saw the influence of the agricultural practice of the United States in other countries, so I wanted to come here and work on developing more sustainable agriculture here in California. I chose the wine industry because it is a trend-setter and forward looking, and generally interested in responsible approaches. People look to it for innovation.”

Thrupp’s work goes beyond Fetzer. She is also the managing director of the new California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance (www.sustainablewinegrowing.org), which seeks to promote sustainable winegrowing practices among California’s wineries and vineyards. Half of the state’s wineries have used the Alliance’s self-assessment workbook, which helps them look at their current level of sustainability and how they can improve it.

Waste

Fetzer started looking at its waste stream in the late 1980s. “We were spending too much money on garbage service,” explained Healy. “In 1989, we contracted with the county to haul our own waste and bought a compactor garbage truck. In 1990 we were hauling 1,724 tons of garbage. With the fuel and the tipping fees, we weren’t saving that much money. In 1991 we began to seriously recycle and by 2004 we had come down to 81 tons of garbage, a 95 percent reduction.”

Fetzer now has three bailers for cardboard, film plastic, and office paper. They recycle plastic, glass, metals, wood pallets, wood debris, oil and tires, noted Healy. “We have handled material in a variety of ways. Sometimes we haul it, sometimes it is collected.” They sell to various brokers, so he does not know where all of it goes. Their cardboard is collected by an Oregon-based company. Valley Recycle out of Napa takes their glass and the film plastic. A company in Ukiah takes the milk cartons. Another company takes the grow tubes. They donate used computers to the local adult school in Ukiah.

While they try to find a home for all of the material, PVC piping has been a real challenge, noted Healy. When they replace a vineyard, they have to take the whole irrigation system out.

“We are a business so we have to deal with the material as economically as possible,” explained Healy. We aren’t losing money on the recycling, which includes the cost of a full time recycler, plus the electricity to run the balers.

Of the 81 tons of waste that they still send to the landfill, Healy noted that a lot comes from their employee housing which accommodates 90-100 people. “There is a lot of food waste which we are still trying to get out of the waste stream. We could probably reduce our remaining waste by half if we got everyone to recycle. This is part of translating our sustainability vision to all our employees. All employees are prompted to think about these issues and it takes time to change behaviors.”

The driver who hauls the dumpster fills out a sheet and notes how full the bin is and what it contains. If there are excesses of recyclable materials, they follow up. Currently non-recyclable items in the bin include Styrofoam and materials made of mixed mediums. Healy also estimates that several tons come from people illegally dumping in their dumpsters.

To reduce food waste, they give away excess edible food from their food and wine center and then compost the rest. Healy explained that one of their backhoe drivers, Dave Kirsch, does the composting in his off-hours. Kirsch shreds their soiled paper towels and composts those along with food waste from the lunch rooms and the food and wine center. Kirsch digs a 4-foot hole with the backhoe for the waste and then covers it with dirt; it gets eaten by worms and termites. After about six months, he digs it up and finishes it above ground.

Fetzer has one barrel composter used for composting food. hey also compost all their pomace (grape seeds and skins) on-site. This produces about 4,000 tons which is used on their landscaping.

Energy

Fetzer has analyzed its contribution to greenhouse gases, explained Healy, and is seeking to reduce those by supporting green energy, using solar power and using biodiesel fuel.
Since 1999, Fetzer has been paying for “green energy” through 3 Phase, a small company in southern California that buys energy from geothermal, biomass, solar, and wind and puts it on the PG&E grid (so it is co-mingled will all other electricity sources). Fetzer also pays PG&E a transmission fee. This originally cost Fetzer more to support the alternative energy, so according to their sustainable guidelines, they had to make up the cost by conserving energy in other ways, explained Healy.

Fetzer’s first target for conserving energy was refrigeration, which Healy explained, is always a winery’s highest use. Wine wines are cold stabilized after being fermented. In this process, the temperature is brought to 26 degrees and held for 2–4 weeks to precipitate out the tartaric acid. Wines naturally produce the harmless white tartrate crystals but they are removed for aesthetic reasons and because customers might think they are shards of glass.

As an alternative to the cold stabilization, for the last two years, Fetzer has been renting an electro dialysis unit. This equipment has two fine membranes that separate the tartrate crystals from the wine. It can run 24 hours a day, Healy explained, and uses about 20 percent of the amount of energy that would be required by refrigeration. They have been waiting to see improvement in the membranes, which are expensive and have to be changed frequently. The membranes are a paper plastic combination, so could not be recycled. However, because they are so small, they would only create a minor amount of waste, Healy noted.

From 1999-2003, Fetzer saved 500,000 kilowatt hours by installing solenoids and program logic controls in their twenty 60-horse power compressor motors. These motors pump the glycol which is used to chill the wines. Prior to the upgrade, excess power was used to activate the motors. After the upgrade, the excess was eliminated and only the exact amount of energy needed to meet the actual cooing demand is now used.

Fetzer also put timers on the natural gas boilers so that water would only be heated when needed rather than having the boilers cycle to keep the water constantly hot. Hot water is used for cleaning the barrel, cleaning tanks and sterilizing the filler bowls in the bottling process.

Fetzer’s administrative offices have a 40-kilowatt photovoltaic system on the roof that provides 75 percent of that building’s demand.

In 2002, Fetzer began using biodiesel blends in all of its 15 field tractors to help lower greenhouse gas emissions, explained Healy. By the next year they were using biodiesel in half of their 12 big rig trucks that haul wine and glass. In both cases, they use a “B-20” blend that is 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent regular diesel. They also add bio-sweet, which is made from spent pharmaceutical materials, to the fuel mixture. This reduces nitrous oxide (NOX) and increases mileage by 3–6 miles per gallon.

Typically the biodiesel blend they use costs about $1 per gallon more than regular diesel. However, in the current year, Healy explained, Congress passed a subsidy for biodiesel producers and their supplier has passed that price break on to them.

Other Resource Conservation Measures

Other efforts to conserve resources include reducing the weight of cardboard boxes and reducing glass bottle weights, noted Healy. “Our cardboard boxes are 30 percent postconsumer content and the bottles are 30–40 percent postconsumer. We have been able to put pressure on vendors because we are a big business, so we can get higher postconsumer content.”

Fetzer tried reusing wine bottles, Healy noted, “but it was too difficult for us to get the supply of bottles we needed from those companies who were collecting and washing the used bottles. This works for smaller wineries which don’t need as many bottles as we do.” He also explained that larger wineries also now use proprietary glass, which means a specific bottle is designed just for them. Because wineries do not have a returnable system set up, he noted, it would be very difficult to collect and sort the proprietary bottles and get those back to the winery of origin.

Fetzer continues to work on its wine labels. They use more expensive soy-based inks on their organically grown Bonterra wine. However, on the other wine labels they use petroleum-based inks. The petroleum based inks off-gas and cannot be composted.

Green Building

When the winery was sold to Brown-Forman, part of the agreement was that winery operations had to be moved from Redwood Valley to the current location in Hopland by 2000. The winery needed new facilities, and then-president Paul Dolan wanted the greenest building possible for the administrative headquarters, explained Healy. The company spent $25 million on the building and hired its own construction crew.

Construction started on the 10,000-square-foot building in June 1995; the building was completed in 1996. At a cost of $149 per square foot, the cost was in the middle of the range for a commercial building, noted Healy. The walls are made of a mixture of dirt, cement, and water at a ratio of 1 yard of dirt to two bags of cement. This material is mixed and blown with a pump hose onto a plywood backing, where it adheres to the plywood frame. When it reaches a thickness of 18 inches, it is screed off and the plywood is moved to do the next section.

All the wood in the building is recycled, explained Healy. “We got wood from all over the country. A lot of redwood came from Arcata. We also got 12 by16-foot 70-year old timbers from a railroad trestle in Minnesota. The redwood was dark so we stained it with recycled paint to lighten it.” The carpet is wool, he noted.

The building was situated for the best solar orientation for the photovoltaic panels. The budget for the building was cut during construction so they were not able to install the panels initially, but they had the building wired so that the panels could be added in the future, Healy explained. In 1999, the California Energy Commission initiative gave them $3.50 for every watt saved and with those funds they were able to add the panels.

Water Used in Wine Processing

“Water is our deal this year,” says Healy, “We already have significantly reduced water usage at the winery, but we want to do more.” Fetzer’s water for the winery comes from 3 wells. In 1999, they were using 24 million gallons from three onsite wells for the winemaking process. By implementing several water conservation measures, they were able to reduce this to their current level of 18 million gallons per year. This is about 2.1 gallons of water for every 1 gallon of wine. Healy notes that the industry standard is 6-8 gallons of water for every gallon of wine.

Fetzer started tracking water usage, Healy explained, by putting meters on every well and in every building. The cost was high, but the meters allowed them to track where the water was going and any spikes in use. Fetzer has a Water-in and Water-out Department that reads the meters weekly.

Initially, they found big leaks which they were able to repair, resulting in a huge savings, Healy explained. They put nozzles on all the hoses so that they were easy to shut off when they were set down. They installed new heads with more intensive jet sprays for the barrel washing to put the water under greater pressure so that less would be used. They use ozone to treat the barrels. “If you shoot ozone into the barrel, it kills anything,” noted Healy, “so it is has to be used very carefully to protect the safety of workers.” They have also used sulfur sticks to kill mold and bacteria rather than soap and water.

They also found out that they could reduce sterilization time of the bottle filler bowls, which resulted in a significant water and natural gas savings. The bowls get a constant flush of clean 190-degree water. They reduced the time of the flushing from 45 minutes to 25 minutes. This saved about 1.5 million gallons a year, Healy noted.

Fetzer has also sought to use fewer chemicals in water treatment. They use ultraviolet light instead of chlorine to treat the well water supplying the winery. They also have to make sure that the water does not get contaminated with anything, because although the ultraviolet light kills any bacteria in the water, it only lasts for 30 minutes. “Chlorine keeps on killing and killing,” explained Healy. “The half life is 80 years.”

Fetzer has its own wastewater treatment plant which includes a reed bed to filter the water. The treated water is used on the vineyard before fruit appears on the vine. When the grapes have set, they use the treated water for landscaping or watering the hillsides. They are not allowed to discharge it into the Russian River.

Next Steps

Fetzer just completed a two-year contract with Lawrence Berkeley Lab to create a benchmarking tool specifically designed for wineries. They held three workshops throughout the state in May 2005 to which wineries were invited to learn how to use the tool to assess their energy and water efficiencies. The wineries enter their particular information and the program provides an assessment, explained Thrupp. The program also includes many different ways the wineries can improve efficiency and shows the payback and conservation effect of each one.

“An important part to moving sustainability forward at Fetzer is to keep the sustainability programs in the forefront of people’s daily attention,” says Healy. “It is part of our culture, but we don’t want the sustainability vision to slip into the background. We keep figuring out new ways to remind people, to engage them in the vision.”

Contact information:

Patrick Healy
(707) 744-7469
patrick_healy@b-f.com
Ann Thrupp
(707) 744-7558
ann_thrupp@b-f.com
Fetzer Vineyards
13601 East Side Road
Hopland, CA 95449
1-800-846-8637
www.fetzer.com

Last updated: August 01, 2008