Transitioning one vineyard from conventional to regenerative is an incredibly intricate and challenging process. If you are a regenerative-focused vineyard management company, now extend that to multiple clients.

Your clients are keen to see regenerative transformation, but if your team are collecting data without a unified framework, you’re probably missing the full picture of what’s actually happening; let alone a clear plan for each vineyard’s unique situation.

Having fragmented data, along with owners’ eagerness to see regenerative outcomes, is the pressure point where costly mistakes can occur. As Jordan Lonborg, viticulturist at Coastal Vineyard Care Associates (CVCA), advises: you must see regenerative techniques as end goals, not decisions to be rushed into. 

When you move too quickly and apply practices without slowing down to learn and understand the vineyard’s ecology, the results are rarely regenerative. Jordan Lonborg recalls a cautionary tale of a client who, in their excitement to implement new practices, brought 300 sheep onto a property before the infrastructure or the biology was ready. On Jordan’s next visit, only a few days later, he found it very difficult to get his spade into the ground due to the soil compaction caused by the animals grazing in one area for too long. Jordan describes feeling shocked by how quickly you can lose years of hard work:

Without observation, data records, and baselines for each vineyard client, you could run the risk of investing time and energy into practices that are incompatible with specific vineyards. For instance, Jordan notes how simply putting in a cover crop might actually work against vine health and nutrition depending on your context and what is compatible for those specific soils.

Enterprise Vineyards, a regenerative management company based in Sonoma, California, emphasise that a single visual indicator can be dangerously misleading without context. For example, a vineyard scout might spot a red leaf and immediately suspect a virus or a nutritional deficiency, potentially triggering an expensive and unnecessary intervention. In reality, the root cause could simply be localised shoot damage from recent high winds – a detail easily missed if it wasn’t recorded.

How to put the observation framework into action? Sectormentor provides the foundation and structure. Think of it as stablisers for a consistent and shared observation framework as a team. Whether it’s earthworm counts, infiltration tests, or phenology dates, Sectormentor ensures that every team member is synchronised.

Both Vinescapes and Vineworks, two vineyard management consultancies with clients across the UK, demonstrate this; every team member uses Sectormentor daily, giving visibility on what’s happening across all managed sites, whether you’re in the vineyard or the office. This is the observation framework loop operationalised to a vineyard management company scale.

This also creates a culture of internal accountability. As Rob from Vinescapes notes, when the team sits down to review results, the data “refocuses the mind.” You are held accountable to the soil health improvements you committed to, backed by data that everyone can view.

Instead of fragmented reports and spreadsheets, all your data for each vineyard client lives in one place. Soil labs, regen indicator results, and field photos create a holistic picture of each site. This builds a historical narrative for every block. When a vineyard owner asks why you aren’t grazing yet, you can show them the infiltration data and the current soil health scores. You can point to the baseline and explain why the site isn’t ready for that step yet.

Having data records of each block fulfils the ‘respond’ step of the observation framework loop; for companies like Vinescapes, the ability to see which cover crop mixes are performing across different soil types, or how different pruning strategies are affecting sap flow across the portfolio, is game-changing:

For a vineyard management company, being able to provide proof of progress is a commercial and reputational win across your entire portfolio. Even further, if you can detect a vine health issue before it’s visible in the canopy, or an issue with your cover crop and soil compatibility, then you’ll save time and money, while keeping clients happy and vineyards nurtured.

Similarly, being able to keep vineyard clients ‘in the know’ alongside your work is crucial; this prevents any hasty action, like Jordan’s grazing story. Vinescapes work collaboratively with their clients, so that they can eventually take over management with a more informed knowledge of their land; this is not only regenerative farming, but a regenerative business model.

If you’re running a multi-site vineyard operation and want to explore whether Sectormentor fits the way your team works, get in touch at info@vidacycle.com, or book a demo here.