Tablas Creek is a California Green Medal winner!

[Editor's note August 2020: We are proud to announce that in addition to our organic certification (maintained since 2003) and our Biodynamic certification (maintained since 2017) we are proud to have become the United States' first Regenerative Organic Certified™ vineyard in 2020. This certification program incorporates the highest standards of soil health, resource use reduction, animal welfare and farmworker fairness. For more on the significance of this achievement, we invite you to read the blog published by Viticulturist Jordan Lonborg.]

This week, I made the long drive up to Sacramento to accept an award that I'm as proud of as any that we've ever received.  This award is a 2016 California Green Medal, a program created by the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance last year to encourage and spread the word about the state's wine-led push to make grape growing and winemaking more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable.  From the award:

The awards recognize wineries in three categories, for their innovations in bringing greater sustainability to their environment, their community involvement, and their business practices.  There is also an umbrella award for their vision and leadership in promoting sustainability in all three categories.  The application is essentially identical no matter which category you're going for. So, we applied for all of them, as all three are areas in which we've made a real effort. That said if I'd had to guess at a sub-category in which we'd have been recognized, it would have been for the environment.  So, it was something of a surprise, but a happy one at that, that we were chosen for the community category. The event produced a beautiful video in which they announced us as the award winner:

What, specifically, have we been doing to promote sustainability?  Here's a partial list:

Water Use

• Property developed to wean vineyard off irrigation. We can now go into a second year of drought before needing to supplement
• 35 acres of wide-spaced vines (12x12 or 10x10) planted totally without irrigation
• Have been the subject of a case study on dry farming by CAFF and hosted a series of dry-farming seminars since 2012
• Converted to steam-cleaning barrels saving thousands of gallons of water per year
• New 50-acre property in process of being planted entirely without need for irrigation

Soil & Nutrition Management

• Vineyard has been certified organic since 2003 and farmed organically since inception in 1989
• Cover crop includes legumes and is returned to the soil through mobile flocks of sheep, alpacas and donkeys, reducing need for outside fertilization
• Cover crops are harvested annually to provide fodder for our animals when they cannot be in the vineyard
• Nutrition is supplemented through the compost pile maintained on-site from our prunings and the skins, stems and seeds at harvest
• Compost teas, made in house and used as foliar sprays, reduce the amount of sulfur needed to apply to the vineyard
• Biodynamic applications provide crucial micronutrients to the vineyard

Pest Management

• Biodynamic practices including interplanted fruit trees and native plants, encouraging natural insect controls of pests
• Network of owl boxes and trapping program controls gopher population without poisons
• Planted cover crop outcompetes weed seeds
• Weeding is done mechanically using custom “tournesol” tractor attachment
• Organic soaps and oils used as needed to control pest populations

Biodiversity and Wildlife Conservation

• We've farmed biodynamically since 2010 with own mixed flock of sheep, alpacas, and donkeys to graze cover crops, reduce organic fertilizer needs (down 30.1% vs. 2010-2011) and eliminate tractor passes
• Interplanted fruit trees and sections of property left to native vegetation attract and provide habitat for beneficial insects
• Wetlands area filters wastewater with the roots of cattails, reeds, and rushes while providing wildlife habitat
• Beehives house three wild-caught swarms of honeybees
• Vineyard blocks are designed with wildlife pass-throughs in each

Energy Efficiency & Greenhouse Gas Mitigation

• Installed a 35kW solar bank in 2006
• Installed an additional 50kW bank in 2015. We're still assembling data, but know that solar provides a majority of our annual power needs
• Winery and office outfitted with motion-sensitive lights, dramatically reducing wasted electricity
• Electric car and Tesla charging stations, installed early in 2016, are free for customers to use while visiting
• Reduced wine club packaging material in 2014 by 50% for most picked-up packages
• In March, we began the use of a hub system to transport wine shipments to the East Coast and ship from there, reducing shipping air freight and carbon footprint

Human Resources

• Employees compensated beyond the industry standard with fully funded medical, dental and vision benefits, employer-matching 401k plan, educational support, wine shares and annual profit-sharing bonuses to both part-time and full-time employees
• Employees encouraged and supported to continue education as it pertains to their positions
• Our core vineyard team of 10 is employed year-round, allowing them to build a life here and allowing us to benefit from their expertise

Solid Waste Management

• Replaced plastic water bottles with reusable stainless steel canteens, saving 19,000 bottles/year (760 gallons crude oil & 2700 lbs CO2)
• Switched to lightweight glass (16.5 oz/bottle) in 2010, reducing case weight by 26% and total glass weight by 45 tons/year.
• Have been leaders in move to package in reusable stainless steel kegs; in 2016 we will keg 7700 gallons of wine (22% of total production) reducing bottle needs by 38,500 bottles
• Use 100% post-consumer recycled product and soy inks for brochures

Neighbors and Community

• We have partnered on events with organizations like must! charities, local animal shelters, and arts organizations
• Donated more than $100,000 to support local youth and arts programs since 2002
• Our founder Robert Haas created the "Winery Partners" program for the Foundation for the Performing Arts Center and served on its board from 2008 until his death in 2018. This program raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support arts access in San Luis Obispo County 
• Sponsored 16 local youth sports teams since 2010 
• Within the local wine community, we helped create the Paso Robles Rhone Rangers chapter and led the community effort to approve 11 new AVAs
• We've organized and hosted industry seminars on organic farming, dry farming, and Roussanne 
• Jason Haas has served on boards of Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance (current Chairman), Rhone Rangers (former President), and Family Winemakers of California

The four recipients were all well represented at the event, and all seemed eminently worthy. We congratulate them all! The other three were Jackson Family Wines (Leader), McManis Family Vineyards (Business) and Halter Ranch (Environment). The four of us, together with Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, the keynote speaker at the event:

It did not escape notice that two of the four honorees were from Paso Robles, or that Halter Ranch and we are neighbors. That two wineries from Paso Robles were winners is a testament to the innovation in this community, as well as the leadership provided by the Vineyard Team (until recently the Central Coast Vineyard Team), based in Atascadero. Their educational seminars and the fun Earth Day Food & Wine Festival (which just happened last weekend) have done a great deal to demystify sustainability to a broader base of vineyards and wineries here than maybe anywhere else.

Looking forward, I feel like the wine community is uniquely positioned to lead California agriculture toward sustainability.  We grow a crop that originated in a part of the world where water was scarce, which does best in arid areas without great fertility. The areas are generally not well suited for grain or row crops. Grapevines are very long lived, so vineyards can invest in long-term solutions. We produce a product from that crop that is value added, where efforts we make in producing better grapes can be rewarded by the market. And we largely have direct relationships with our customers which allow us to leverage any good work we're doing into better loyalty. All of that is true for any American winery. In California, we have the added advantage of living in a climate where rainfall is seasonal, so weed control can be handled mechanically with a minimum of expense, typically just once a year, in the late spring. And our very low humidity means that we face much less pressure from fungal diseases compared to most wine producing regions. In essence, if anyone can do it, we should be able to.

And I feel that if we have the opportunity to put sustainability at the forefront of what we do, we have that obligation. It was great to spend some time celebrating others on that same path.