Safe Pest Management: Wolff Vineyards

The proportion of regular wine drinkers willing to pay more for sustainable wine has significantly increased in the past two years (IWSR, 2023).

Your customers will only know that your wine was made sustainably if you tell them!

Using storytelling to share with your customers the specific things your brand does that are sustainable and why they are important (i.e. telling your Sustainable Story) helps make it clear that yours is a business that truly walks the walk when it comes to caring for the people and the planet. It builds an emotional connection and fills gaps in consumer knowledge of sustainability.
 

Have you started telling your Sustainable Story yet? Get started with these 3 easy steps: Download the "Our Sustainable Story" worksheet: • Worksheet for Print • Worksheet for Electronic Filling Gather your whole team to fill it out: • Viticulturist, winemaker, tasting room, sales, marketing. Share your stories!

 

Plant and animal pests are a common issue for all winegrowers. Read on to learn how in an effort to conserve water and promote plant health, Jean-Pierre Wolff of Wolff Vineyards discovered a unique pest mitigation strategy!
 

Safe Pest Management at Wolff Vineyards

In 2017, Jean-Pierre Wolff decided that rather than replanting his vines on the same rootstocks, he would convert to drought-resistant rootstocks and plant them three feet into the ground.

Deriving inspiration from an African palm farming technique, Jean-Pierre uses PVC pipes to deliver water and nutrients directly to the root zone. There is no wait time for the nutrients to be pushed to the roots, and no water is being wasted through parts of the soil that contain no roots.

Along with the tremendous water savings resulting from his deeply planted vines and subsurface irrigation technology, Wolff has discovered an “indirectly obvious” benefit - fewer weeds!

Since water and fertilizer are applied through PVC pipes that lead directly to the root systems 3-feet underground, native and noxious weeds with shallow roots can’t access these resources, and therefore can’t thrive.

Vertebrate pests have also had little success in establishing themselves in these areas since they don’t typically dig to the depths at which the roots lie.

Read the third story in the Sustainable Stories Series in Grape & Wine Magazine!
 

It's your turn!

If you're a member of SIP Certified, we know you have sustainable stories of your very own that your customers would love to hear. That's why we created an easy-to-use template to help you talk about sustainability with your team and your clientele.

Click below to get the Our Sustainable Story worksheet, and get started with your team:

Worksheet for Print | Worksheet for Electronic Filling

 

Coming soon...

A BRAND NEW online course for your staff!

In just a few weeks, you and your staff will have access to a brand new, 30-minute online training course to help teach them how to talk about sustainability with your customers… … and we need YOUR help! Please take 3 minutes to take our 5-question survey. We will use your feedback to make sure the course includes information that you and our staff will find useful. Thank you for taking this quick survey!