We were recently featured in WineBusiness Monthly for our work with Johan Vineyards, exploring how they use Sectormentor to manage regenerative experimentation while maintaining yield. Read the full PDF or an excerpt below.
Excerpt from the article:
Why would a Biodynamic grower want a high-tech KPI dashboard? How does it add value?
WOOD: I inherited Vidacycle’s Sectormentor application from the prior vineyard manager, Dan Rinke, and he was one of the first to adopt it in Oregon when it first came out. Before I came to Johan, I was doing consulting vineyard management work, so I was an old-school spreadsheet guy. Sectormentor is intuitive; it has a desktop and a phone app and a bunch of real techies over there that help keep it all working smoothly. When I first started working with it, the historic data had not yet been migrated. They helped us import and integrate the data so that it’s all in the same place when doing queries or running reports. Our system has 150 sample stations across 50 blocks that we take data from. It would have been very onerous to import those ourselves. I have been using it for phenological timing data, as well as for counts and pruning weights. Now that we are joining the 1BC there are a bunch of soil-based challenges. The Sectormentor is already set up to handle the additional data requirements of the 1BC. I’m looking forward to tracking soil health markers and tightening up my below-ground farming game.
Which feature of this technology provides the most insight into your farming practices? What do you measure with it and how is the data captured?
WOOD: I track all phenological timing and weights on the desktop version and the mobile app. They give you little GEO tags, so you can just hold your phone up to access data or log sample points. It could be row 127 in block 12-H, vine 63.
Who else works with this application? How are you using this in the field?
WOOD: I’ll go out with them to show them how to load the data. The ability for them to scan the sample location and eliminate the possibility of transcription errors is huge. The beauty of this system is that it does not take a lot of training to use so pretty much anyone can use it when collecting samples. I don’t have to worry about language barriers or transcription errors: the data always comes out very clean, thanks to the GEO tag system.
Even our winemaker, Morgan Beck, uses the Sectormentor data. She loves it when we are tasting through several different wines and we are able to identify a flavor difference and be able to trace it back to farming practices. Having 15 years of data at your fingertips, accessible in seconds, is so convenient. It certainly sparks some creativity when relating growing practices to wine quality.
Does the system work as expected? Were there any “bonus” discoveries?
WOOD: I can’t really say that I have new insights, rather than it just takes me 1/10 of the time to get them. Even when we are tasting wines and we taste something weird, we can fetch the data on the spot, no follow-up required. The further down the dry-farmed, no-till rabbit hole you go, the more insights you need to be responsive. It allows us more insights and allows us to be more responsive with our vineyard decision-making.
What was the most important outcome of adopting this technology that growers can use?
WOOD: I think in the context of regenerative transitions it is important to address what everyone is so scared of: losing yield through the transition.
We’re trying to retain yields while converting some blocks to more regenerative practices. That’s possible, and you need the data to make this transition smooth. The data that I’m watching to retain my yields is the percentage of short shoots on a vine—you need to know the truth about short shoots! If you see a block in no-till transition go from 15% to 25% percent, you know that you are in a sensitive position. If you ask too much of it again, you risk a real drop in vigor and upwards of 40% short shoots. We have found that when you see those numbers, it is important to lower your bud counts by 10% or so for the next year. We have been able to do this without corresponding yield declines.
The data allows me to be proactive and do a better shoot thinning the year before, and it seems to be working. This philosophy aligns well with what Simonit and Sirch say in the pruning class I took last year. I’d rather have a couple less shoots per vine with larger clusters and healthy leaves that provide the vine with more benefit to its overall health than a couple meager clusters with seven berries on them. Farming this way, over time, our percentage of short shoots went down, cane weights went up, and we are retaining the same yield but on a healthier vine. We have some blocks that are 10 years under a no-till system. These vines will be smaller, but it’s better to have smaller beefier shoots than short shoots. You can have a smaller vine but bigger fruits. We think the larger shoots give back to the roots whereas the smaller shoots don’t.
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