In 2017, the Regenerative Organic Alliance (ROA), a group of farmers; business leaders; and experts in soil health, animal welfare and social fairness, started a path to empower farmers to adopt a new farming approach. Paso Robles’ Tablas Creek Vineyard heeded the ROA’s call. In August 2020, it became the first winery ever to earn the Regenerative Organic Certification from the ROA.
“The appeal for us is that you are required to move toward using less energy, using less water, capturing carbon out of the atmosphere, and basically helping contribute to some of the long-term environmental challenges and big-picture issues that we are facing in the world,” said Jason Hass, manager and partner of Tablas Creek.
The ROC process was created to encourage farmers around the world to adopt regenerative organic farming practices, seen as essential to halting the environmental damage older agricultural methods can cause. According to the ROA, farmers need to "farm like the world depends on it" in order to "heal a broken system, repair a damaged planet, and empower farmers and eaters to create a better future through regenerative organic farming."
The ROC is divided into three main pillars: soil health, animal welfare and social fairness. The soil health pillar ensures that the farm is improving the soil’s organic matter; conserving tillage; implementing crop rotations; and restraining from using genetically modified organisms, synthetic inputs or soilless systems. Animal welfare safeguards the animals’ five freedoms: freedom from discomfort, fear and distress; hunger, pain and injury; and freedom to behave normally. Lastly, the social fairness pillar focuses on how farms manage labor. This encompasses aspects like wages, working conditions, team building and inclusivity. All of these goals were created with the desire to solve the big picture environmental issues our planet is facing.
Tablas Creek set out to strive for excellence since its founding in 1989, starting as certified organic and having become certified biodynamic in the past decade. Biodynamic is an alternative farming method that focuses on a holistic, ecological and ethical approach to farming.
Tablas Creek was fully immersed in many of these practices before it knew about the potential of the ROC. The challenge was to figure out how to measure practices already implemented to improve the soil carbon content and ensure ethical animal treatment to see what remaining work it had to do to become certified.
“We could see this in the cover crop growth every year and the health of the vines, the vineyard and the quality of the grapes — the soil was thriving,” Haas said. Moving forward, Tablas Creek needed to become more systematic in measuring and record keeping. A certification like this was not going to be easy to track, and it was going to take effort from everyone at the winery. With help from the ROA, Tablas Creek was able to start more accurately quantifying its practices and see for itself the amazing results it was achieving.
Haas and viticulturist Jordan Lonborg focused their attention on the social fairness aspect of the certification. They said this wasn’t necessarily because they needed the improvement in their team, but because this part of the certification was the most exciting to them.
“Understanding and recognizing that people who work the ground are as important, if not more important, than what you are trying to accomplish on the farm. That’s really what drew us in,” Lonborg said.
Tablas Creek brought in a third-party agency to lead the team in a weeklong training that focused on comprehensive team building skills and communications skills with management, owners, and each other. Lonborg described the effects the training had on staff, noting “they are all hard labor workers, every day, all day. I have never seen them so tired as I did at the end of this week. And we weren’t doing anything physical. This is all brain work. It was wild.”
The new and improved team took what they learned and applied it right away with weekly roundtable meetings to discuss their ups and downs. Lonborg noted the cultural communication barrier often seen between management and labor workers in the agricultural industry was initially hard to break down. Showing the workers that their opinions were valuable opened many doors to success. The team as a whole was able to accomplish more in their discussions and dove into what the workers believed was necessary. This training will be carried on with future employees; it is a new way of business for Tablas Creek.
“The benefits of that training you can’t put a number on,” Lonborg. He also explained that team has seen improvements in mindfulness and efficiency, and “that alone was worth the cost.” Although it may not affect the direct consumer, Tablas Creek takes great pride in dedicating time to focus on its staff and ensuring their practices are in line with ROC standards.
The social advances made have allowed Tablas Creek to better target the challenges in other parts of the certification. Lonborg and Haas mentioned that one of the main standards for soil health includes no tilling. Lonborg explained how having a 30% dry farm and being in the dry part of west Paso Robles, with high clay and limestone content in the soils, their land was not conducive to having no-till practices.
“From a dry farm perspective, if you don’t incorporate some level of tillage in some of those blocks, your soils will crack, forming deep cracks, and with cracks, you lose moisture,” Lonborg said. Tablas Creek and the ROC agreed that rather than looking at the amount of tillage they were doing, they should look at actual soil samples and evaluate if carbon levels are high with the soil still improving. Being allowed to incorporate some till into their practices also enables Tablas Creek to manage the rodents without using pesticides. Tablas Creek truly justified the use of minimal till and has found ways to incorporate tillage while still improving soils.
Moving forward, Tablas Creek has many goals. “I am proud we are the first winery to be certified regenerative organic, but I hope were not the only one for long,” Haas said.
Many wineries have already showed interest in making the same improvements and working toward ROC. Several wineries are Sustainability in Practice (SIP) certified, a rigorous sustainable vineyard, winery, and wine certification, so the ROC is the next step in setting themselves apart. These certifications also show that the winery is dedicated to enhancing the future of the environment. ROC certification will look different across the board for interested wineries. Haas mentioned that this type of certification, although attainable, will depend on what the farms’ current practices look like. It is helpful that the ROC has three levels of certification: bronze, silver and gold. Tablas Creek received the silver level this past year and hopes to earn gold in the next round of certifications.
Aside from being an influence for the other wineries, Tablas Creek also has plans to keep improving its practices. It is currently looking at investing in a commercial-scale biochar machine that would allow it to capture the carbon from burn piles and put it back into the soil. This would significantly decrease its carbon footprint and improve the soils. Tablas Creek’s practices show the many possibilities for improvement in modern day agriculture.
Photo by Tablas Creek.
Article header photo by Tablas Creek.