You’re a California native and grew up in the East Bay. Can you tell us about your family and childhood? Do you have siblings? Where did you go to high school? Did you play sports?
I grew up in a suburban East Bay town with lovely nature, but quite disconnected from agriculture. I am the middle child of three brothers, none of us athletes. I went to Monte Vista High School, a fairly stereotypical, large public high school that took its football and other sports programs very seriously. As a young teenager I became an avid backpacker and ended up running outdoor trips for UC Davis once I was in college.
As a child, what were family gatherings like; did they include wine on the table? When did you first taste wine? Do you remember what it was and how it tasted?
There was no taboo around alcohol and wine was often on the table during my childhood. To be honest, most of my first wine experiences would have involved Manischewitz during Jewish Holidays and my Bar Mitzvah—that is not a fun hangover.
My parents’ first got into wine on camping trips in Sonoma Valley, going to Valley of the Moon Winery and other tasting rooms in the 80s. By the time I was old enough to remember, their preferences were firmly influenced by the Parker era, so I had not been exposed to a lot of old world wines or other styles until I left home. Their palates have shifted a bit since then—especially with all of that Ridge and Bedrock wine.
You have a degree in Viticulture and Enology from UC Davis, but when you enrolled there, it wasn’t to major in agriculture. Can you share the evolution of your academic journey?
In 2010, I entered Davis as an International Relations major having been interested in journalism and politics throughout high school. I did not click with the IR program in the first couple of quarters and began taking intro courses in viticulture and enology. Much of my decision to switch majors was predicated on the idea of entering a program that the University clearly values and showcases. I was only nineteen years old and knew very little about wine, but I thankfully recognized that this major also taught a trade and offered a built-in career path.
Things clicked academically once I was in the V&E program, and I was especially inspired by Dr. Andrew Walker who taught a few of the core viticulture courses. Davis is a fantastic program, and yet the cliché is true that real education begins when the classroom ends.
I first worked in cellars including Rockwall in Alameda, Freeman in Sebastopol and then I took a job on a field crew in the Central Otago region of New Zealand. I worked a full vineyard season shoot thinning, leafing, fruit dropping, bird netting and harvesting on a wildly steep site called Misha’s Vineyard. That vineyard experience contributed to landing the seasonal job at Ridge in 2015 and then full time with Bedrock Wine Co. in 2016.
We’ve heard you are keenly interested in regenerative farming. Can you explain briefly what that is and why you’re practicing some of its tenets in the vineyards you’re working with?
Regenerative Viticulture is such a rabbit hole, but its goals and essence are quite simple. The goal is to farm in such a way as to produce wine grapes profitably while actively improving soil health year after year. The healthier your plants and soil become, the less inputs are needed (water, fertilizer), which brings down costs. In the end, organics is a list of things you can’t use; regenerative is a framework to improve the soil while farming.
Most soils contain all the mineral nutrients needed to support healthy plants; what is missing is the biological function to mine and cycle these nutrients, making them plant available. The primary food source for soil microbes is the photosynthate (sugars) exuded from plant roots—amazingly, healthy plants will excrete up to 80% of the carbon they fix from the atmosphere into the rhizosphere (soil root interface). In exchange, microbes fix nitrogen and dissolve minerals, which supply nutrients to the plant. While doing this, the microbes aggregate mineral particles with glues, stabilize the soil, improve water and air infiltration, and sequester carbon. This is the universal relationship that creates healthy soil, and this is what we try to foster in the vineyard. In a way, healthy plants create healthy soil first, not the other way around.
You’ve worked with such storied producers as Ridge and Rock Wall Wine Company. Are there important lessons that you’ve learned along the way from the icons, such as David Gates? Have you mostly focused on Zinfandel?
Working with Ridge and David was my first true exposure to great organic farming. It is difficult to think of a core tenet of organic farming that I didn’t learn there; I certainly did not learn most of those things at University.
I think working with old vines, and specifically zinfandel-based field blends for most of my career, has given me a unique perspective on viticulture. Many of the blocks I work with have over a dozen intermixed varieties, and some have up to twenty altogether. So much of classic viticulture is about the pursuit of uniformity, which certainly has its importance, but I like to think I can comfortably embrace chaos a bit more.
Your primary position now is Director of Viticulture with Bedrock Wine Company, but you also have a consulting business and work with Lichau Hill, a tiny (3 acre) Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard in the Petaluma Gap. That’s how we got to know you. How did you start working with the owners, Roger Mead and Hsiomei Hung? Have you made changes to the vineyard since taking on your work there?
Zinfandel is a very challenging variety. It ripens unevenly, it has tight clusters making it prone to rot, and it can shrivel. Farming Cabernet Sauvignon in comparison is a lovely change of pace.
Cody Rasmussen is the Director of Winemaking for Bedrock and Owner of Desire Lines, the latter of which has been making wine from Lichau Hill for a number of years. Cody introduced me to Roger and Hsiomei at a Bedrock harvest party. The first year I was directly consulting for Desire Lines, but Roger and Hsiomei decided it would make more sense to have me monitor their whole vineyard.
There are many things we have changed, but I am most proud of the elimination of certain chemistries. We got the vineyard onto a fully organic fungicide program this year after a few years of preparation and observation. In short, this transition is made possible by careful attention to vine nutrition to boost the plant’s natural immune pathways. From a soil health perspective, synthetic fungicides are the first thing I aim to eliminate. Soil function, especially in perennial systems, hinges on happy fungi, and conventional fungicides are not narrow-spectrum within the fungal category.
Lichau Hill enjoys a unique microclimate, where it’s possible for Cabernet to ripen in the Gap. With climate change, what varietals do you think will prevail in the Petaluma Gap? Will we see more Cabernet in the future? Rhone Varieties? Other later-ripening reds?
It certainly seems that the Gap will be able to support many varieties going into the future, especially with the range of elevations. It is amazing how often Lichau Hill is above the fog layer or in the warm inversion which is perfect for Cabernet. I love how resilient Cabernet is to things like sour rot and botrytis with its loose clusters; it makes it wonderful for a climate where the vineyard is often dripping wet during ripening. In the Bordeaux/Loire vein, I would love to see more Cabernet Franc plantings.
I am also a big fan of cool climate Syrah, in fact, the wines that Bedrock, Pax, and others made from Griffin’s Lair are some of my favorite California wines.
It is a fine line, especially with 2025 and 2023 so fresh in the mind. I have seen Grenache and even some Syrah sites struggle to ripen in places like Bennet Valley these last couple of cool seasons, but of course they are glorious in the warm seasons. I guess that is life when you are on the edge of where a variety can ripen.
Can you share how you work with winemakers to make decisions on farming practices such as pruning, irrigation, and canopy management throughout the growing season? How often do you check in on each vineyard property that you’re involved with? For this year’s harvest, when were the grapes picked at Lichau Hill?
I work very closely with the winemakers, owners and the vineyard teams. In the case of Lichau Hill, I am often pruning, shoot thinning etc, with Victor Rosales Morales, who does almost all of the hand and mechanical labor, excluding harvesting. The kind of knowledge and attention he brings is a huge reason why the vineyard does so well. I can recall times when I am working in the vineyard with Victor, checking in with Roger, and calling Cody on the same morning to dial in how we want a given pass to look.
This kind of coordination is especially important in a year like 2025 which was cold and quite challenging for sites on the climactic fringe like Lichau Hill. We reduced the crop a few times to react to the cold summer and that required getting everyone on the same page early to make sure those drops had the desired effect. This year, the last of the grapes were harvested on October 23rd.
What’s the trickiest situation you’ve had to deal with in the vineyard, and how did you resolve it? Did you reach out to other viticulturists to get suggestions?
The trickiest situation is during transitions from conventional farming to a regenerative approach, particularly when it comes to the reduction of tillage. Many farmers experience a drag in both vigor and yield. Our first attempts. eight to ten years ago, were no exception. We learned a huge amount from Jason Jardine and his incredible work at Hanzell Vineyards, which helped us set up our first successful biological farming programs.
In the past five years, there has been an explosion of information about Regen farming systems coming out of all kinds of crops, not just grapevines. We are now able to wean vineyards off synthetics, reduce overall inputs, and improve soil without any sort of yield loss.
Do you have any experience or interest in making wine? Would you ever consider owning your own vineyard? Or to establish your own wine brand?
I actually do make my own wine! But a tiny amount. I make Fino-style sherry from 1890s-planted, dry-farmed, own-rooted Palomino, interplanted within Bedrock’s Evangelho Vineyard in Contra Costa County. This vineyard is a survivor amongst the suburban sprawl of the East Bay, bordered by housing tracts, construction sites and a PG&E powerplant, which actually leases half of the acreage to Bedrock. There are some fantastic articles written about the vineyard from the SF Chronicle and others.
The vines are interplanted amongst Zinfandel, Carignan and Mourvedre. A few friends and I pick them out into a couple bins each year, and I make the wine in a traditional Spanish style: aged under flor yeast in solera system. The label is called Soleras del Pacifico.