John is a 6th generation California farmer whose family has been continuously farming in California for 160 years starting in the Sacramento Delta in 1850. He has farmed many different crops throughout the Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Imperial Valleys plus a couple of years near Los Mochis, Mexico. John now concentrates on farming 45 acres of winegrapes in the Avila Valley and Paso Robles.
Proposed Federal Ag Child Labor Regulations Overreaching
Mercy, Mercy! Please deliver us from these nanny-state unregulated regulators who have set their sights on agriculture child labor laws. If you have chanced upon my columns in the Avila Community News, Cal Coast News, or at our blog inthevines.com, you know that I have been lamenting the lack of work ethic in our youths and young adults. Well, here comes another codling work-ethic killer. The Department of Labor (DOL) has issued a set of proposed regulations that all but keeps kids from working on farms to include those owned by extended farm families.
Among some of the proposed new rules, with more pending, would include;
- Operation of Ag tractors – Prohibit workers under 16 to operate or assist in the operation of tractors to include tending, setting up, adjusting, moving, cleaning, oiling or riding as a passenger or helper. This includes the operation of power-driven equipment by any power source (animal driven also) other than human hand or foot power (i.e. forklifts, lawn and garden tractors, milking equipment, ATVs. etc.). Guess we have to go back to 16th century technology!
- Prohibit hired farm workers under 16 from the cultivation, harvesting and curing of tobacco (huge in the South), entering GPS settings on any moving equipment, detasseling corn (big deal in the Mid-West), or be on a ladder more than 6 feet (convert to all dwarf orchards?). No longer exempt student learners who have received equipment operating certificates from Ag. Extension Services. Instead they will have to enroll in a 90 hour systematic school instruction above the 8th grade level (translation = more government jobs).
- A young man or woman under 18 cannot work for companies that store, market or transport farm-product raw materials. That would include grain elevators, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and auctions. Those under 16 could not work around any breeding stock to include sows, cows, sheep, and horses with their newborns. This would probably include working during breeding, branding, castrating, herding by horseback, vaccinating, and most other common animal husbandry chores like just catching poultry. So is this the end of the FFA & 4-H projects and county fair auctions many of which also involve young city kids?
- Prohibits for any under 16 to work on any farm construction, scaffolds, roofing, and handling any ag chemicals no matter how benign (to include organic).
- Exception would be farm kids working directly with their parents. They would not be exempt if they worked for a family corporation, partnership, or LLC that has an uncle, aunt, cousin, grandparent or a non-family partner involved which would eliminate 95% of all farms.
Where do I start? Maybe my own experience will show what is common on a family farm. We, to include most my school buddies and relatives, started working summers at least by the 5th grade (10 years old) at 85 cents an hour and a few years later we even worked during Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter vacations. From these jobs, we paid for our entertainment, cars (hot rods in the late 50’s), and most of us paid for our own college education and gained an unparalleled work ethic. My dad always said “I can pay for your education anywhere you want to go but you will appreciate it much more if you pay for it yourself”.
I got my driver’s license at 14 and was driving an old dump truck on the dangerous two lane levee roads in the Sacramento Delta (river on one side and pear orchards on the other 25 feet below) delivering sugar beets and grain to the receiving sites. I drove tractor full time mowing, disking, cultivating, hauling pears, etc. in the summers starting at 11 and sprayed our pears at 14 with a caterpillar tractor. Later, still under 16, I moved sprinkler pipe and hand loaded full pear and tomato lug boxes in the fields. When lug boxes were replaced by half-ton bins, I hauled them out of the fields by tractor and then loaded onto trucks with a forklift. We also did dozens of other normal farm chores. I am not looking for a medal or pity for this because where I come from this was business as usual and I profited from it in so many ways. This is what we do growing up on a farm and it is expected and accepted because the many generations before us did it also with much less sophisticated and inherently much more dangerous equipment and we all survived – so no big deal!
My kids also worked from an early age in our agri-business operation (heck, my daughter is still at it!). I already have my 9 year old grandson, Drake, helping me in the vineyard and it is a very special bonding time for the both of us. He drives the ATV Mule and hops off and helps me pick up grow tubes, big rocks, trash, prunings, etc. He has started his own garden at his home completely on his own initiative. He also has a good feel for running a bulldozer. He might not be our 8th generation California farmer but by God he, and the other three, will know the value of work by the time they are out of college. Because we are structured as a family LLC (Salisbury Vineyards), these rules may try to prevent that from happening but rules or no rules, they will work on the farm!
I guess the DOL thinks that we farmers can’t be trusted to properly train our kids and non-family kids to do the jobs safely. They have to think they know better, in their tiny cubicles over there in Washington, and need to step in and protect our kids from us ignorant, bib overalled, uncaring hayseeds and stifle work ethics, life long skills and accomplishment to boot. So who do we replace this large population of farmworkers with – union workers or worse yet more illegal immigrants? Is that the idea here? Farming is not just a way to make a living but a lifestyle that has been passed down through many generations.
Over half of the present day farmers are elderly and about to retire or give up major responsibilities (most of us expect to die with our boots on). We have always needed to start the next generations early on and train them to work safely and with responsibility. When they are all-knowing teenagers, forget about it because the chance to instill caution, safety, responsibility, work ethic and a desire to be farmers has passed. These proposed regulations will definitely hinder interest in agriculture as a possible and desperately needed career choice for our youths. Sure, there have been serious accidents in agriculture and there are cracks in the system, but you don’t have to treat the safety problem with a sledgehammer and draconian age restrictions that are contrary to a historic lifestyle.
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy”. Ernest Benn
inthevines.com
What a lousy growing year but some of us remain hopeful that quality will be good for certain varietals. If nothing else, the wines will be lower in alcohol with higher acidity – more of a French style. In our case, once finished, we will pick about 80% of normal due to a few problems with some of our smaller blocks. The first record breaking spring freeze on April 8 caught our eastside Pinot Grigio block and completely wiped out the crop but the newer west block was unscathed. Our Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon escaped this first frost because we didn’t have bud break yet but we lost about 15% as a result of the following frost.
As for the Chardonnay, we just couldn’t keep up with the organic mineral oil sprays to combat the Powderly Mildew that was an epidemic on the Coast thanks in part to a late rain and a gloomy summer (was there one?). As a result, the Chardonnay was down at least 40% and I wasn’t real proud of the grapes when we delivered them to Harold Osborne, our winemaker. However, after tasting the juice he did his usual “silk purse out of a sow’s ear” which makes it easier for me, the farmer. Even though we dropped a third of our large second year grafted Paso Zinfandel (onto Cab), we should have dropped at least one-half because we are having trouble getting it ripe.
The Pinot Noir was the bright spot as we delivered close to our normal tonnage and with good quality before the early October third rain (1.25 inches). The same is true with our Albariño, this is our second crop year, which is turning out to being a tough and prolific grower and an incredible white wine to boot. At Salisbury Vineyards, we sold out of the first year’s production of 100 cases in just two months. We will pick our cool-weather Syrah on-time even though part of it was affected during bloom time by that late spring rain. Statewide they are calling for the crop to off 10% but I have to believe it is going to be much more. My friends up north say that October’s rain seemed like it went on and on and was devastating. We should get a better idea in mid-November on the final tally.
Now for a report on our Citizen picking crew. After a “Call to Arms” for local unemployed citizens to pick grapes that started in our monthly column in the Avila Community News and our blog inthevines.com, we were picked up by Cal Coast News, Lewis Perdue’s international “New Fetch” wine blog (you should get it if you want to know what is going on in the wine business worldwide), ‘Wines and Vines’, WineBusiness.com and by KSBY’s television newscast. We had over 80 inquiries for the jobs. We had forty come in and fill out a five page application from which we picked 22 to come in for an interview with four of those not showing up. So we took the 18 remaining and started picking on a Wednesday. That day cost us over $500/ton which is three times the normal. The next day it picked up a little. I was becoming worried because we were getting behind as the Pinot Noir was quickly getting ripe. So we brought in one of our veteran documented crews on the third day. They (75% women) lapped the citizen crew. The fourth day was a Saturday and four of the “citizen crew” didn’t call or show up and at the end of the day we let another six go because they just weren’t up to the job and hadn’t showed any improvement or desire to do so. It was obvious this was their first time in the field or else the first job ever for the younger pickers (some were “volunteered” by their mothers).
That left us with eight, one of whom could only work two weeks resulting in the “Magnificent Seven” (out of 80) and quite a diverse group it is. The leader is a retired Lt. Col. Air Force Chaplin plus an unemployed waitress, graphic designer, a young man from Transitions Health, and three young fellows with various degrees of college education. Three members of this crew do quality control by taking leaves and bad bunches out of the bins plus picking while the others are pure pickers. To date they are averaging around $12/hour. At this point, I wouldn’t trade them for anybody but unquestionably they will not be back next season because they will all certainly get better jobs in the meantime. We had to really chaff through the straw to get the kernels and this process is not sustainable. We are bit lucky here because we are fairly near urban populations. But what about those in the remote rural areas where most of the ag-jobs are? How do they get the unemployed, hours away, to the fields? How are they going to be able to do this with such an unreal dropout rate of over 90% in our case?
Nationwide there is an acute shortage of farm workers to include California. Washington apple growers are running radio ads offering $120 to $150/ day to pick apples with few takers. Washington state officials figure that the agriculture labor force is about 72% “document challenged”. Georgia figures they are 5,200 jobs short for field workers. Alabama, which brought it on themselves with the country’s toughest immigration laws, is reporting huge shortage of labor for construction, agriculture and poultry. Texas is looking for pickers for organic crops without much luck. When these crops are not picked then all the people, mostly US citizen, who process, ship, sell, provide goods and services to all parts of the agribusiness chain also don’t work. The domino effect is tremendous.
Farmers are stuck to the land and do not have the privilege of an Apple or Gap that can move their production to countries with many low wage workers with little protection for the workers. We pay top dollar, regularly inspected by OSHA, EPA, Air Quality Control, Dept. of Pesticide Regulations, Regional Water, and on and on. We supply the safest food in the world at a reasonable price that must rise just by supply and demand if this labor situation is not brought under control. The alternate is the importation of foods grown with $8/day labor with the lack of government oversight on food safety.
We need a guest worker program now. The Obama administration has initiated twice as many immigration enforcement cases against businesses in the first seven months of this year as compared to the year before. The labor pool is drying up because of fears of the migrant worker that are finding out that the business owners can’t risk the penalties and the need for legal documentation. We need a guest worker program with USDA certified employers where taxes are paid, proper wages and working conditions are required, drivers are licensed and insured (most car pool to work), and they must go home for a month or two annually to visit families and take care of business. In a few years, most won’t be back because they will have made enough money to buy a farm, market, or be able to use their acquired skills in business and live where they really want to be – Home.
“The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!” Anonymous
“A Call to Arms” especially to you who say Americans will do the work instead of undocumented immigrants! You suggest that if farmers paid enough for these ag-labor jobs then the unemployment rate will diminish. Farmers find this humorous as most of have been paying well over California’s minimum wage of $8/hour for years. At our operation, we pay a guaranteed $80/day for 6 to 8 hours/day to pick winegrapes starting around the second week of September. That’s provided we finally get some sunshine around here and not this way over-extended “June Gloom”. The wages usually average out to around $12-$13/hour because we start at 7 a.m. and knock off around 1:30 p.m. in order to get the fruit to the winery relatively cool and before the big rush for the crusher.
We usually work a 5 day week with some breaks in between ripening until the end of October and then wait on our cool-weather Syrah picking it around Veterans Day (11th minute, 11th hour, 11th day of the 11th month and you can add the 11th year this time). Requirements are that you fill out a job application, provide us with documentation for our 2011 I-9 and W-4 forms, participate in a safety briefing, take only the normal breaks, keep up with the crew doing your share, can lift 35 pounds, and follow picking instructions which is basically, “If you wouldn’t eat it, then drop it because we don’t want it in our wine”!
We supply the cotton gloves and shears. On occasion, depending on the need, we may go the full eight hours but it is not the norm. Three quarters of the work is in Avila Valley and one quarter in Paso Robles. We expect the pickers to work in both vineyards and provide their own transportation. Call Salisbury Vineyards at 805-595-9463 between noon and 5 p.m. Looking forward to a huge signup! I truly hope to be pleasantly surprised seeings how we just hit 12% unemployment in California. For those of you who would like to just come out for a couple of hours and experience the harvest, you are more than welcome (work for wine?).
We really weaseled out on our part of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement-1994) which included a requirement that Canada, Mexico, and the United States allow full access to each country’s highways. Pressure from the trucking labor unions and their unfounded claims that Mexican trucks and drivers were unsafe, had environmental problems and shouldn’t be allowed on our roads, prevented the implementation. Also, there was their falsehood that U.S. trucking jobs would be threatened when in fact it would open up both Mexico and Canada for new hauling opportunities. Nothing was said or done about problems with Canada’s trucks. Know why? Teamster can organize in Canada but not in Mexico. So during the Clinton years, trucks from Mexico were allowed only to go a few miles north of the border in the buffer zone. Mexico won a formal NAFTA challenge that ordered the U.S. to open the borders in 2001 or face severe trade sanctions.
The newly installed President Bush tried to implement the order but was blocked by a group of labor and environmental groups in U.S. Federal court. This verdict was over turned in 2004 by the U.S. Supreme Court. President Bush then worked with Mexico to implement a successful pilot program for Mexican trucks (only 96) to be allowed access. The Department of Transportation’s study during this test concluded that long haul Mexican trucks were safer than our trucks to include their short haul trucks in the border buffer zone. However, again under pressure from certain members of Congress and trucking labor unions the new President Obama, who as a Senator voted with the labor unions, signed a law ending the 18 month truck access program. Do you see the political trend here?
So what’s Mexico to do after 15 years of being singled out but impose severe tariffs ($2.4 billion) in 2009 on our U.S. trade which was applied against a lot of agri-products including table grapes (45% tariff) and wine (20%). Our table grape shipments alone dropped from 5.5 million boxes in 2008 to 1.6 million (70+%) the following year. Wine also suffered with our country’s third largest trading partner.
It is estimated that $900 million in U.S. agricultural products alone have been impacted by the tariffs imposed in retaliation by Mexico. Unions said jobs would be threatened if the trucks were allowed to cross the border and what happened? Well, many jobs were lost alright but not for the self interest unions but for those in many of other industries who were severely affected by the crippling tariffs. Finally in July this year, we owned up to our obligation and signed an agreement with Mexico allowing access to trucks on both sides of the border. The order will be fully implemented soon and tariffs will be cut back or eliminated as a result.
Of course, there was an immediate bill by Rep. Peter DeFazio, (Dem-Oregon) to block the administration from going through with the agreement – why is that not a surprise! We will see if the “Quesos Grandes” in Washington finally have the fortitude (was going to use another Spanish word here but this is a family column) to say no to the Teamsters.
A side note as to safety and cost. I was in Mexico farming tomatoes near Los Mochis, Sinoloa while NAFTA was being negotiated and signed. I had to transport my tomatoes by Mexican trucks, which after inspection on both sides of the border, had to be unloaded just north of the border into a warehouse and then picked up later by an American carrier. This delayed the tomatoes from getting to the markets in Phoenix and San Diego by at least two days plus I had to pay for all the warehousing and the unloading and loading of the trucks. Besides the added cost, the time delay and extra rough handling didn’t help my fresh vine-ripe Roma tomatoes one bit.
This trucking agreement was to have eliminated all this. I would have had the choice of a Mexican or U.S. truck to pick up my tomatoes in the field, get inspected, and sail right through the border on to the markets – cheaper and better quality as a result. Having been in the truck business most of my life, I can attest to the high quality of the Mexican trucks and drivers that I used. At that time, because of NAFTA, most of them had been gearing up to be qualified to haul goods and produce into the U.S. with top of the line equipment only to have the door slammed shut on them. This really has been a sorry chapter in our dealings with Mexico no matter what you think about NAFTA or Mexico for that matter. Ah, politics – you gotta love it!
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy”. Ernest Benn, British Publisher.
Some have said: “I get a headache from the sulfites in the wine but when I go to Europe and drink their wine, I don’t get them because they don’t use sulfites” – not so. There is a lot of misinformation out there about sulfites (sulfur dioxide and its other forms) and wine. Sulfites are added to wine and many foods to fight oxidation, microbial contamination and premature aging.
Lisa Gross in the January 1911 issue of “Wines and Vines” did an excellent article on the subject because sulfites have been getting a bad rap starting back in the ‘70s and early ‘80s with the salad bar controversy. Those of us who were around in those days probably remember that many people where getting sick after eating in restaurants. At that time, food processors and many even now used a bunch of sulfites in many foods to include canned, dried, and fresh fruits and vegetables plus veggie syrups, juice, fresh and baked products, chips, seafood, candy, beer, wine plus a whole lot more. The processors put in prescribed and exact amounts of sulfites but at the restaurants the amounts added to salad bars were being applied “willy-nilly” in large amounts by untrained hourly employees – “If a little bit is good, then more is better!” They were spraying it on by the bucket loads and even those not allergic where getting sick.
This brought about several studies and it was found out that there are a very small number of asthma sufferers who can have problems with sulfites. There are an estimated 22,000,000 Americans with asthma of which 20% have severe problems and 5% of that group (220,000 or 1% of the total asthmatics) are very sensitive to sulfites. The FDA outlawed sulfite sprays on fresh foods and required warnings for 10ppm and above on prepared foods starting in 1986. European wineries, which also use sulfites, do not have to put sulfite warning on their wines except when they are exported to the USA.
Sulfite exposure can aggravate the symptoms of asthma but contrary to popular opinion does not cause headaches. That myth probably comes from where we have to put “Contains Sulfites” on the wine label which makes people think that it is a warning for headaches. It also doesn’t seem to be a histamine problem either except in rare cases.
It is now thought by some experts that tannins are the problem. They are flavonoids in the wine that comes from the skins, stems, and seeds. The skin of reds which gives color to wine usually has more tannins than do whites. We ferment reds with the tannin-loaded skins and seeds; whereas, with whites we usually crush the whole clusters or individual grapes and ferment the juice. Wine can also pick up tannins from oak barrels which also need to be sulfured when unused to prevent contamination.
Tannins in big reds to include French reds, Port, Cabernet Sauvignon are usually high when young. These are filled into Bordeaux bottles with a hip shoulder on them; whereas, lower tannic Burgundy red wines (Pinot Noir, Sangiovese) are filled into sloped shoulder bottles along with Chardonnay and other whites which should give you an idea of tannin levels. Other possibilities for red wine headaches may be from the release of prostaglandins or from strains of certain yeast or bacteria found in wine. You can look up red wine headaches on the web for different over the counter remedies you can take an hour before drinking wine that may prevent headaches.
Back to sulfites. Renaissance winemakers, and probably before, burned sulfur and forced the fumes into barrels to sanitize them. It was legalized in 1487 by German royal decree. Fumigating barrels in this way could have over-sulfured barrels and affected the wine. Now with experience and food grade sulfur, winemakers have much more control over the product which is classified by the USDA as “generally regarded as safe”. When the grapes are brought into wineries and dumped into the auger at the crusher or later during fermentation, anywhere between 20-50ppm of potassium meta-bisulfate is added to control wild non-grape yeast and spoilage bacteria. This gives the native grape yeast from the vineyard, which we rely on in our winery, a head start in the fermentation process. Now with better sanitation and refrigeration amounts can be much less especially if your fruit and winery are clean.
Most all wines contain sulfites because sulfur dioxide is naturally produced during fermentation. The main thing that is checked throughout the wine process is the free sulfur dioxide level which should be around 25-35ppm at bottling which is a level that only the very sensitive person would pick up. After time in the bottle, the amount could be down to 5-10ppm depending on pH, sugars, varietals, and oxygen levels. Because there is always some sugar left in wine before it is bottled, if stray yeast gets in the bottle before capping and not checked with sulfur, we could have a lot of trouble on our hands.
Many growers spray or dust sulfur on grapes as a fungicide which adds more sulfur to the natural sulfur on the vines. Instead we use an organic mineral oil, same basic material as in lipstick, as our main fungicide to prevent Powdery Mildew. We also have cut down on the use of barrels, using mostly older neutrals, to less than 10% which minimizes the tannins absorbed from the wood into our wines.
For the most part, we use stainless steel tanks and FlexTanks which are polyurethane food grade tanks that lets in air but not out (passive micro-oxidation). These contained tanks allow us to keep more of the fruit flavor in the wine (not flavored with oak). They are much easier to store and sanitize than oak barrels which can get real funky and must be stored in cool storage (expensive) and sulfured when empty. We also don’t have to do the expensive and labor intensive top-off operations to make up for the “Angel’s Share” that escapes from barrels. So, in conclusion, we need sulfites in our wines to give you a fresh safe product and don’t buy into it is the reason for red wine headaches. By the way, the one you get 6 hours after drinking a bunch of wine is called a hangover!
Ivan: “Why do you take aspirin with Champagne?” Alice: “Oh, Champagne gives me a headache.” Author, Author (1982)
John Salisbury – inthevines.com
July 2011
California agriculture has some real possible tough sledding coming down the pike this summer. Revised Card Check, E-Verify, new regulations from the Water Quality Control Board & Air Resources Board, and increased audits by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service) just to name a few. Many of you probably think “way to go” but standing in front of the bull’s-eye most of us in agriculture are thinking of the old Charley Brown song and the part – “Why is everybody always picking on Me?
This Card Check idea is completely out of wack with our American ideals. It passed both the California Senate and Assembly. To his credit, it was just surprising vetoed by Governor Brown. The Los Angeles Times, of all papers, even urged Gov. Brown to veto it because they reported it only benefits the union and not the farm workers. This one-sided law would have allowed unions to wait in the fields, go to homes, or anywhere else farm laborers gather and sign up the people to form a union. Up to now, after petition signup, it has always been decided by the secret ballot process whereby the employee cannot be harassed by either side on which way to vote. That would have all changed with this law because a farmer would have to recognize a union just from the submission of petition cards signed by a simple majority of employees.
You can not tell me that these workers weren’t going to be pressured into signing after encountering these bounty hunters, probably fairly intimidating, who know where they and their families live. There were penalties in this new proposed law for employers if they tried to interfere with farm labor organizing efforts but none for the unions that might intimidate or coerce farm workers into signing up. Once signed with the farm worker’s address, which is a requirement to be on the petition, this information would also become public record and be on file with the State. That alone might keep some from signing up because ICE would also know where they live. If many of the farm workers in California are illegal, why and how can they even legally sign these petitions?
In any case, it sure puts them into an unnecessary tough position and against everything the Agricultural Labor Relations Law signed by Gov. Brown in 1975 has been about – a legal and fair secret up or down vote on union representation without fear or pay back. This was a short-cut last ditch attempt by the United Farm Workers who have been having trouble signing up workers. Along with E-verify of I-9 employment forms, which is a data bank which has already shown serious flaws, it would have put added pressure on employers to serve as immigration enforcers with nowhere to turn. “Damn if you do and damn if you don’t.”
Once again, it brings up the need for secure borders and a guest worker program that brings these workers out of the shadows to work in the fields under the protection of the government. Along with no guarantees for citizenship, they will be held accountable for taxes, driver’s licenses, insurance, place of residence and work, and not getting into trouble or face a quick ride to the border. It would let them go safely back and forth across the border and in time, for many, have enough money to stay home and start a business like many of the Braceros did decades ago. Mexico needs these comparatively cash-rich entrepreneurs to come home and start businesses.
It was only after the Bracero program was dissolved, and the border closed, did the workers start bringing their families across the border causing some of the social problems we have today. These farm workers would much rather live amongst their families and friends in Mexico and Central America, even if just seasonally, where their wages ($10+/hour/here versus $1/hour or less/there) buys so much more. A guest worker program fills the needs on both sides of the border.
Don’t start with me that we would be creating a second class of workers because that is what we have now. With an official guest worker program that would cease and these workers and employers would be held accountable. They would have option to go home anytime they want. Plus, we will know who they are, where they live, who is responsible for them, and tax them to offset their social costs. With all the unemployment in California, there are very few in that group looking for work in the fields that you drive by daily. I can tell you it is a .001% increase if that much. Face it; Americans will not do the work! Without these fine hard working family- oriented workers, your food prices would be astronomical.
Reforma, a Mexico City newspaper, did an article taking information from Mexican state and federal authorities, National Human Rights Commission, and newspaper articles reported that since 2007 at least 100,000 illegal immigrants (more than twice the size of San Luis Obispo) from Latin America were abducted and disappeared on their way through Mexico to our border. There was over 150 in one mass grave near my grandmother’s (Estrada) ancestral home outside of Durango, Mexico. These numbers do not even take into account the toll of Mexicans trying to cross the border and then disappeared thanks to the cartels controlling the border. Imagine the fear for these people, just trying to feed their families, that are accosted on both sides of the border by these thugs who beat, rob, rape, and kill. Then if they make it through that gauntlet, they still have to cross the hostile desert.
Read Joseph Wambaugh’s true story “Lines and Shadows“ to get an idea of what really happens at the border and this was written 30 years ago! It is time to make sense out of this mess and create at least some sort of a bridge to let in and control these workers of whom we are all so dependent. The sad truth is that nobody has the guts and nothing is going to be done for at least two years because of the upcoming elections. This problem should have been taken up before health care. Look for more of my take as a farmer on immigration.
As many of you know, we have trolley tours in the vineyard usually on Sundays in the summer after Schoolhouse Rock or anytime we can at least fill up half of the trolley. The idea is to get folks out to the vineyard and show them how, why, and what we do to produce fine wines. It constantly amazes me, I guess since our family has been doing this farming gig for over 160 years in California, that some people have never been on a farm nor have any idea where their food comes from. After reading part of the following Letter to the Editor, we need to promote more farm visits in agriculture because I fear this person is representive of way too many consumers. It started out in part writing about a controversy in San Francisco about the selling of live chickens near Chinatown and generated into this: “To all you hunters who kill animals for food, shame on you; you ought to go to the store and buy the meat that was made there, where no animals were harmed.” – nuff said!
“We could learn a lot from crayons… Some are sharp; some are pretty; and some are dull. Some have weird names; and all are different colors: but they all have to live in the same box.” – Anonymous.
Avila Valley Grapevine – June 2011
Truffles anyone? How about wine and what it does to your teeth and throat? Here is the lowdown on both starting with teeth. Both white and red wines fight germs that can cause sore throats and dental plaque. In an article posted by Dr. Todd Welch in “Current Culture”, he pointed out that is because of a mix of compounds that offer a persistent antibacterial effect. It is not so much the alcohol and acidity, but the combination of carbon containing compounds found in wine. Red wine has a more powerful combination than white but not by much.
Now don’t start gargling with wine because the downside is the acids in the wine will softened your protective tooth enamel. It is suggested that you wait at least an hour before brushing after eating any acidic foods and drinking wine. Same goes for brushing your teeth right before drinking wine or any other acid product because it is the abrasion effect from the brushing which leaves the teeth unprotected. Let your saliva go to work for a while which can re-mineralize your teeth and prevent damage. Swishing out your mouth with water and swallowing as you drink wine also helps and is something I regularly do at long tasting events – also mainly so I don’t get bombed!
Don’t think that sipping white wine instead of red is going to help the look of your teeth because you can still get dark dental stains. The tannins, when combined with the acidity, hold compounds that saturate and weaken your teeth’s enamel. So when you have that cup of tea or coffee after dinner and that last glass of wine, you are helping to stain your teeth. A good thing for the cheese industry is that you won’t see the staining with foods like cheese which offsets the compounds when served up with wine.
Procedures for teeth whitening have been around for thousands of years. Whitening products were used back to 2000 B.C. from human waste products and natural ingredients. Egyptians and Romans used wine vinegar and pulverized pumice applied to chew sticks to whitened teeth. Also, a bit gross, many physicians of the time prescribed human urine for teeth whitening which was real forward thinking in that ammonia, found in urine, is still used to clean teeth enamel. Later, establishments with the red and white barber pole, besides getting a haircut, were a place where caustic nitric acid would be used to whiten teeth. It was alright for a while but the problem was that the enamel would wear down leaving a mouthful of pulpy, decayed teeth. Nowadays there is bleaching, whitening strips, lasers, whitening toothpastes, and dental rinses used.
The top 10 foods and drink for protecting your gums and teeth are: celery, green tea, kiwis, parsley, shitake mushrooms, wasabi, water, cranberries, wine, and coffee. They promote saliva, anti-oxidants, vitamins, or anti-bacteria compounds that prevent plaque, gingival, and periodontal problems even through some may stain teeth if you don’t heed the above information. For me, because mine were looking a little ratty, I took advantage my dentist Dr. Mark Leopold’s (Leopold, Murphy, & Main) annual First Three Thursdays in June fund raiser for the Women’s Shelter of San Luis Obispo. For the half-off price of $195 and the check made out to the Shelter, I got my teeth whitened and a feel good tax write-off for a great cause to boot!
OK, now about Truffles. Truffles are primarily underground mushrooms that are fairly rare and hard to grow. Looking at the main growing grounds around the world, particularly in France, it seems that they can be grown wherever you grow Pinot Noir winegrapes. So this winter we are going to plant a test plot of host Hazelnut and Oak trees. The trees come inoculated with the fungi for the French black truffle also know as the Perigord truffle named after the province in France where they are famous. They are also grown in Spain and other suitable places and are one of the most prized (and expensive @ $1,000+/lb) delicacies in the world. There are thousands of truffles in the world but few are edible.
Working with truffles expert Dr. Charles Lefevre in Eugene, Oregon, we plan to raise these ¾ to 2 inch black diamond shaped jewels on the hillsides of our Avila Valley vineyard where we can’t grow long straight rows of grapevines. Truffles grow in and around the roots of the inoculated trees mostly a couple of inches deep usually in a circle about 4 to 5 feet from the tree trunk. The hard and delicate part is to find and harvest them without damaging the root system. Traditionally, pigs are used which root them out but they also eat them or a dog trained to smell them out. I am going with the dog which has the added benefit for me because I have needed an excuse to get my grandkids a dog ever since my old white lab, Mich, died a while back. In some cases, a “burn” area of grasses above the truffles caused by the phytotoxic activity from the truffles below along with the presence of hovering flies gives them away.
Well drained soils need to be high in pH (around 8) because the truffle fungi can thrive in such a moderately alkaline soil; whereas, other competing fungi may not. As with the vineyard, in some places we will have to add a bunch of natural lime to raise the pH to the desired levels. This is critical if you are going to raise truffles because competing native fungi from native oaks, shrubs, conifers, and other nut trees can take over hence no truffles. Therefore, virgin land a hundred feet from other trees is desirable. If we are invaded by outside murderous fungi, then I guess we will end up with some real nice mature tree landscaping!
The convenient thing about the harvest is that it happens during the winter from late November through February after our winegrape harvest and when things are slow in the vineyard. Harvest timing is critical because plucked truffles only last a couple of weeks before they start to deteriorate. So after-harvest handling and distribution is a big deal because of the short shelf life. However, with a three to four month season we can string out the harvest depending on demand because of the built-in underground storage.
We will prep the ground this summer and plant this winter. It will take 3 to 5 years before we see our first truffles with full production in about 10 and hopefully above 35/lbs/ac (high of 100 lbs per acre). The wait time, along with declining farm ground in Europe, are probably reasons why the production of truffles has fallen from 1000 tons globally in 1900 to only 100 tons nowadays. You have to think generational when planting winegrapes and orchards.
Schoolhouse Rock starts on June 19th on Sundays 1 to 4 with a trolley tour to the vineyard at 4. Also, Scott Liddi has moved into our new kitchen and will have his famous Italian sandwiches & salads available daily in the tasting room.
“We don’t care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles”. Mark Twain
AVILA VALLEY GRAPEVINE – MAY 2011
John Salisbury, inthevines.com
Well, ol’ Jack Frost nicked us the second weekend of April in Avila Valley. It got down to 32.5 just long enough to nip some of our Pinot Grigio and the Pinot Naturale block. Usually, we would have sprayed at least one application of our organic mineral oil and a shot of Copper Hydroxide (Kocide) which somewhat controls the ice nucleating bacteria and can afford protection in a light frost. The problem is that a few weeks before we had seven inches of rain and our vineyard was still soaked. To have gone in and sprayed would have torn up our year-around cover crop requiring us to disk it up which would bring back the noxious weeds we have been suppressing with our annual native grasses. My Dad always said that after a late heavy spring rain farmers should go on a two week vacation away from the farm and the temptation to start working the ground too early.
Adding to the problem, I outsmarted myself. We like to prune these colder east facing blocks last because the thinking is the later you prune, the later you have bud break. Well, this set up these blocks perfectly for the late occurring freeze because they were at their most vulnerable stage. This was not one of those mistakes that were too much fun to only make once! We may lose about 30% of our production in these couple of blocks. Overall, the rest of the varietals are looking great with a full crop predicted after looking at the young clusters just forming.
The good old USA is now number one – more wine drunk here than anywhere else on the planet. We just edged out France’s 3.85 billion bottles in 2010 by putting down 3.96 billion bottles. Wow, that is a lot of wine! Nobody thought you homegrown winos had it in you to knock off France anytime soon. There is, however, a big per capita difference in that the French each drink around 12.2 gallons a year; whereas, we only drink around 2.6 gallons a head a year. So we have a market that is hardly developed and with the millennial generation making up an increasing share, it is looking quite rosy for the wine industry.
California produced about 61% of this wine consumed with the rest coming from overseas (in the low 30% range) and from the other 49 states which all now have a least one winery. Overall increase was up 2% for California to all markets in the world, including the USA, with a retail value of $18.5 billion. When you figure in the employment, travel, hospitality, taxes paid, suppliers, etc, the wine industry is doing its’ part to keep the economy going.
So if we have consistent increase in sales and demand, then why was last year’s total grape acreage (including table and raisin grapes) the smallest in 13 years? As of 2010, over 113,000 acres have been taken out from a total of 955,000 acres showing in 2000. Low prices, especially for raisins and table grapes, plus a huge crop in the middle of the economic meltdown were partly responsible. Also, water uncertainly and more attractive crops like almonds, pistachios, pomegranates, and other profitable crops have taken a big toll on all types of grapes. Bearing acres of winegrapes is around 93% with only 7% non-bearing (mostly in the Central Valley) which take 3 to 5 years to become mature.
So doing the numbers, even with all the vineyards you see around the state, we don’t have enough grapes in the ground to fuel the increase in sales. Banks are not lending and with prices for labor, metal products (stakes, wire, clips) plus our PVC pipe and drip tubing (petroleum products to include gas and diesel) going through the roof, not a lot of acres are being planted especially at $25,000/acre. This leaves the door open for more imports especially by some of our big wineries that are buying cheap foreign bulk wine and adding it to your California brand. They can put in up to 25% and still call it a California wine. Maybe it is time for a disclosure of point of origin on wines. This is all the more reason for you to buy wine from small local wineries (plug). In any case, we are seeing a lot more activity from wineries wanting to tie up production and inquiries about bulk wine for sale. We usually sell about a third of our production to other wineries but have decided to keep most of what we produce and, for the first time, start selling wine outside of the tasting room.
It doesn’t take much of an imagination after watching the problems in Japan to think – what if? If we have some sort of disaster, do we have enough food available? The U.S. has only about an 11 day food supply within our giant food chain. Think of all the fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats that are available and if they vanished practically overnight because of a disaster especially here in California which is the major food supplier to the United States. Not only would the crops be perhaps temporarily not grown, they probably couldn’t get processed and delivered on a large scale rapidly anyway. What would be worse is if we have to rely more and more on foreign imports of food from countries not particularly our friends like with oil.
There is the more realistic problem of farmers giving up because of high production prices and increasing governmental regulations. With the food dollar going up, farmers are not seeing much of it because we get just 12 cents of every dollar spent on food here. Over three times what the farmer receives is eaten up in labor and energy intensive activities like packaging, transportation, and food processing plus all the other middlemen whose hands are out taking their cuts. Especially so are the commodity brokers who have never set foot on a farm and are reaping in huge speculation profits just sitting in front of a computer. Unless farmers can get value added prices (grapes to wine, farmer’s markets, etc.), they are at the mercy of buyers and rising production costs they can’t pass on.
A common example: When I grew and packed my own vine-ripe tomatoes near Los Mochis, Mexico eighteen years ago, I would average around $6 per 25# box (24 cents a pound). The next day they would be in the market in Phoenix and San Diego at $25/box ($1/pound). I took all the risks and did all the work to include paying for them to be trucked to Nogales. It hasn’t changed a bit so please don’t get on us farmers because your grocery bill is going up.
It is well to remember that there are five reasons to drink wine: the arrival of a friend; ones present or future thirst; the excellence of the wine; or any other reason”. Old Latin saying
AVILA VALLEY GRAPEVINE – APRIL 2011
John Salisbury – inthevines.com
We had concerns in January with all the hot weather that bud break would come early but cooler temperatures that followed slowed the process down. We were pretty optimistic at the beginning of the week of St. Patrick’s Day for a successful bud break especially in the early bud breaking Pinot Noir and Chardonnay which were pretty much on schedule. Unfortunately, the following week brought on another deluge of rain, similar to the last two weeks of December, and screwed up any chance of an even emergence. Where we wanted nice sunny and warm weather, we got the quite the opposite. The later bud breaking varietals, Cab, Zin, and Syrah will probably be OK.
We had the tops of the rows on the hills popping out where it was a little warmer and more sun; whereas at the bottom of the hills we had little or no bud break. Depending on the weather throughout the spring and summer, we can only hope that the maturity of the grapes within the rows will even out so that we will have a uniform harvest. We now are on frost control watch. This is the time the young buds and leaves are at their most vulnerable condition.
In the last article (seen at inthevines.com), I went into the winegrape’s family tree and pointed out that the family history is quite incestuous. After a little more digging it turns out, according to Sean Myles at Stanford, is that Traminer has been around for thousands of years and has 20 first-degree relatives. We know it more as strain of Gewurztraminer (Gewurz means “spicy” in German). From it came Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Semillon, Riesling, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Muscat Blanc, and Tinta Madeira among others. The origin of vinifera, which is the family line of most of our modern winegrapes, seems to have its origin in the Near East and moved into Europe where it mixed with the local sylvestris. It is amazing what DNA testing has found out about this closely related family tree which was thought originally to be several different families.
Also, a while back we talked about storing wine in a cool dark place to protect the wine. A question often asked about is at what temperatures you should serve wine. It does make a difference as learned from personal experience, Snooth, Lewis Perdue and others (To take information from one person is plagiarism; to take from many is research!). Temperature can affect how the wine tastes by affecting the smell, acidity, tannin, and sugar. Take aromatics (smell) which greatly influences what you will taste. Because the molecules are expanding when you pour, the warmer the more smell but too hot and you smell more alcohol than fruit. Too cold prevents the molecules to burst out and stay tied to the wine. You want your white wine in the 60 to 65 degree range which means you need to take it out of the refrigerator at least 20 minutes before serving.
Red wine should be served around the same temperature and not at the prescribed “room temperature” which was suggested long before central air heating. In fact because of warmer houses, it is not out of line to put a light red like Pinot Noir in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before serving.
The colder the wine, especially reds, the more tannic they will taste. When we taste at the winery right out of the tank especially when being cold stabilized (in the low to mid 30s), we really have to heat up the wine by swirling the wine glass in both hands for several minutes to warm up. Sometimes we even take a short cut and run the glass under warm water to get the fruit to come forward. The same goes for enhanced acidity when cool for both reds and white. In order to get the refreshing quality of the wine from the acid, especially whites, it is one of the reasons we chill them. Sweetness is accentuated by being warmer so what you are looking for is the balance between sweetness, tannic, and acid and that is often determined by the temperature of the wine. Experiment yourself by tasting a white right out of the refrigerator and then at different time interval afterwards and you will see right off the changes in smell and flavor of the wine as it warms. Then you can determine for yourself the temperature you like your wine and the resulting flavors.
Another way we look for balance is in the timing of what and when we harvest. For our whites, we pick at around 22.5 to 23.5 brix which calculated in the field with a handheld refractometer as long as other factors, especially the taste of the berries, are in place. Brix is a unit of measurement of the sugar content of winegrapes which results into alcohol after fermentation. The ratio is around .58% alcohol to sugar. So a 23 brix reading will result in around 13.3% alcohol in the bottle. The lower the brix of the grape results in more acid in the wine which is what we often look for in our whites. Especially so with Pinot Grigio which we like to serve first in the tasting room so as to refresh the palate – Champagne is another example.
Red wines which we want to be fruity and lush we often pick at 24 to 25 brix resulting in bolder and higher alcohol wines – 13.9 to 14.5%. A red picked at 24 brix and staying at 14% or below in alcohol is a great number because at 14.1% the Federal taxes are increased by half again as much.
A side note: In the Sacramento Delta at the union of the Sacramento River and Georgiana Slough that borders our original family homestead established in 1850, the California Department of Water Resources is coming up with a way to hopefully save Chinook salmon by using our property as a staging point. The Georgiana at Walnut Grove is the route that leads some of the young ocean bound salmon off of the river through dangerous waters loaded with predators to the big state and federal water export pumps near Tracy.
Over 65% of the young salmon that take this tight route don’t survive because of the danger being eaten by the plentiful stripped bass and other predators in the slough or being sucked into the pumps and being sliced and diced. Kind of a Bates Motel (Psycho) scenario – you can check in but you might not check out! At the mouth of the slough, they are installing equipment that will make a curtain of bubbles blasted with bright flashing lights and noise that hopefully will convince the salmon to stay in the river. There they pass through the safer and wider west Delta and San Francisco Bay and out to the Pacific Ocean. A lot of fingers crossed on this one and we will keep you advised.
What is a good definition of a good wine? It should start and end with a smile.” William Sokolin, wine writer
AVILA VALLEY GRAPEVINE – MARCH 2011
John Salisbury
inthevines.com
This is the time of year for our annual State of the Wine Industry report. Each year in Mid-February the California Department of Agriculture puts out its Preliminary Grape Crush Report on the previous year’s harvest. I’ll try to summarize and not bog you down with too many figures.
All in all, the future for the wine industry seems bright since more and more of you are having one to two glasses a wine a day. Surprisingly, the benefits of alcohol was just backed up in the recent “2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans” (the Pyramid) put out by the USDA. The Wall Street Journal (2/2/11) reported that the Guidelines created by the leading health researchers in America stated in Chapter Three: “Alcohol consumption may have beneficial effects when consumed in moderation (up to two drinks daily). Strong evidence from observational studies has shown that moderate alcohol consumption also is associated with reduced risk of all-cause mortality among middle-aged and older adults and may help to keep cognitive function intact with age.”
Now, in the past, I have been chastised by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, which goes by Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), for reporting health statements about the benefits of drinking wine in this column. Does the USDA’s stance on alcohol give me a green light to continue? Since I was told in no uncertain terms to knock it off or risk losing our alcohol license, I think I will check before going into reported studies on how moderate wine drinking will give you the reduced risk of strokes, upper digestive tract cancers and other cancers (thanks to grape’s plentiful anti-oxidants that are enhanced in the winemaking process), diabetes, kidney stones, etc. Do the USDA Guidelines mean that I can report that alcohol is associated with living and remaining mentally alert longer? Let’s find out, but most likely I have just stepped in it again!
Now let us get back to the Industry Report where the actual winegrape tonnage crushed into wine was a big surprise. Because of the screwy weather (extended June gloom, record heat spell at the beginning of harvest, more gloom just a few weeks later and then the rain), it was expected that the harvest would be up to 15% less than average. It came in as the third biggest crop behind 2005 the granddaddy of all and just 3% less than the second biggest harvest in 2009. One thing that hasn’t been clearly investigated is how much of what normally would have been table grapes and raisins went into wine because of weather problems. The early white and Pinot Noir grapes did take more of a hit being down 6% from 2009 as compared with the red varietals that came in later only down 1%.
The leading wine varietal once again was Chardonnay with 16.4% of the volume followed by Cabernet Sauvignon at 11.2%, Zinfandel (9.9%), French Colombard (all in the Central Valley @ 8.2%), Merlot (7.8%), Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio/Gris (3.7% each). Pinot Grigio (Italian) and Pinot Gris (French) are the same grape with Grigio and Gris translated as “grey” which they really aren’t but have a tinge of that color. They are, year in and out, always the prettiest grapes of all in the fruit bin.
OK, now for the juicy part of the story – did you know that there has been very little sex among winegrape varietals in the last 8,000 years? Wouldn’t you figure that they, like other living things, would get horny by now! Even more shocking is that with what little sex that has taken place in all this time has almost been completely incestuous. Studies by Dr. Sean Myles, a geneticist at Cornell University, were reported to the National Academy of Sciences and published by The New York Times (1/24/11). They have shown that grapes have gone through very little breeding since they first became domesticated. For example, Merlot is intimately related to Cabernet Franc which is the parent of Cabernet Sauvignon whose other parent is Sauvignon Blanc which is the daughter of Traminer which begot Pinot Noir the parent of Chardonnay. How’s that for a thumbnail sketch of a family’s lurid ancestry.
Dr. Myles found that 75% of the thousand or so grapes he checked in the USDA’s extensive archives were closely related as parent and child or brother and sister. “Previously people thought there were several different families of grapes, Dr. Myles said. Now we’ve found that all those families are interconnected and in essence there’s just one large family.”
It all makes sense when you think about it because by just breaking off a shoot or a pruning and putting it in the ground or grafting onto a rootstock, a vine can be developed true to the parent. This is all a benefit to the grower because it gives us uniform crops plus we do not have to rely on bees for pollination nor have the danger of cross pollination leading to other mixed varietals of dubious quality in the vineyard. What we have now is that our winegrapes are still closely related to their wild ancestors with the exception of better berries, sugar content, colors, size, etc. that have been developed by plant breeders. We do have that occasional “Wild Child” mutant that pops up now and then which has lead in a few cases to better rootstocks and clones.
“Wine is inspiring and adds greatness to the joys of living.” Napolean
