In the next two years, California’s Central Valley will experience a transformational change in agriculture: the end of open agricultural burning. It is likely that other regional air districts around the state will adopt a similar prohibition of open agricultural burning in the years to follow.

Under SB 703 (Florez) Chapter 481, Statutes of 2003, open burning for agricultural crops is phased out under a prescribed schedule. This schedule will result in the near-complete prohibition of agricultural open burning in the Central Valley beginning Jan. 1, 2025.
In preparing for this, the California Association of Winegrape Growers (CAWG) worked with other agricultural industry associations in 2021 and successfully advocated in the State Legislature for nearly $180 million in funding for the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. This one-time influx of money in part provides funding for the District’s Alternatives to Agricultural Open Burning Incentive Program. This stipend program is intended to help growers pay the high costs of alternatives to open agricultural burns during the phaseout.

For decades, the disposal of old orchards and vineyards has commonly involved burning. For vineyards, the materials used in trellising, such as end posts, t-posts and wire have created unique challenges in how to dispose of vines when removed. That is why up and down the Central Valley, you may see piles of pulled vineyards left sitting waiting to be disposed of.

In 2003, opponents to SB 703 warned of the very situation in which we now find ourselves. The analysis by the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources, dated June 30, 2003, stated, the following:

“Bill opponents state that while the agricultural community is willing to pursue means to reduce or eliminate burning when feasible, it is important that alternatives to burning be established BEFORE the prohibition is enacted.”

Unfortunately, that advice was not heeded.

Alternatives
To address this situation, CAWG will be advocating in the legislature in 2024 to obtain additional funding to develop viable alternatives for disposing of vineyards. However, this will be difficult as almost every alternative comes with unique challenges. The alternatives and associated challenges are outlined as follows:

Chipping and Mulching: This alternative involves the grower to either hire a company to chip or mulch the piles of vines on-site or ship those piles to a facility equipped for chipping and mulching.

There are three specific challenges with this alternative:
Economics. Most of the machines used to chip, mulch or grind vines don’t work well with metals. This means all metal would need to be removed first, which can be a very costly endeavor. Additionally, if the vines are being shipped to a facility, shipping costs can also be expensive.

Disease. When old vines are removed due to disease, chipping and mulching is not a viable option as this would potentially result in putting disease back into the soil or spreading the disease to nearby vineyards. The federal Tree Assistance Program (TAP) provides financial assistance to eligible growers to replant. A condition of the TAP program is the diseased vine cannot be reincorporated into the soil and best practices prioritize burning.

Market Demand. Increased forest management (preventing fires) and the recent prohibition of putting food and other organic waste into landfills has resulted in a substantial increase in the supply of compost, mulch, wood chips and other similar groundcover. This means if a grower decides to dispose of old vines through chipping and mulching, no one may be waiting to buy that material. So, what is the grower to do with that material? While there is a beneficial use of this material in a new vineyard, there is only so much a grower can use.

Air Curtain Burners, also called FireBoxes: These act as an air pollution control device by reducing the particulate matter, smoke or black carbon created by burning wood waste. This alternative to traditional open burning mitigates the amount of smoke released from open agricultural burning. This also creates a valuable byproduct that can be tilled into the soil. The downside is that while some growers can afford this equipment, most cannot. Additionally, there is limited availability of these burners.

Low-Smoke Ag Burning: This is an important option (for 2024 only) in dealing with vineyard management waste. Low-smoke agricultural burning, when using best practices, takes into consideration concerns of public health as well as climate change. The challenge here is how long a grower needs to wait for approval of a burn day. Depending on several meteorological factors and how many people want to burn in that area, a grower with a permit to burn could wait for several months to get approval, and that grower is not guaranteed to be able to burn their full permitted amount in one day.

Biochar: This is one of the smartest alternatives that also offers incredible benefits. One ton of biochar is equivalent to three tons of CO2 sequestered. By turning old vineyards into biochar, carbon remains trapped in its solid form, thus creating a carbon-negative cycle. However, few Pyrolysers (an oven that creates biochar through pyrolysis) exist in the Central Valley. Additionally, there are economic challenges in shipping.

Biomass: Vines can be used as alternative fuels within energy conversion chains, driving renewable energy exploration as an alternative to traditional agricultural biomass burning. The ability to convert grapevine biomass residues into energy is potentially a valuable alternative to explore in the future. However, there would need to be an expansion of markets and availability. Unfortunately, policymakers in Sacramento currently do not see biomass as an effective tool in fighting climate change and protecting clean air.

CAWG has created a hotline for its members who find they have reached a dead end in getting approval to burn. It is recommended that CAWG members diligently go through the steps provided on cawg.org’s Ag Burn Hotline Webpage (under the Resource Tab) before completing the form for CAWG’s assistance.

Driving up Soda Canyon Road on Napa’s east side, the neighborhood under the Vaca mountains looks different these days. Gone are many of the old wood frame houses, replaced today with new, boxy homes built of fire-resistant materials.

The October 2017 Atlas Fire was the big changemaker. The fire destroyed 781 buildings and over 51,057 acres of vegetation.

Chris Vandendriessche remembers what life was like before the fire when his family’s winery, White Rock Vineyards, had just one insurer. In 2017, the family lost all the structures on their property, including the 1870’s stone winery that had been converted into a family home for his parents (who founded the family winery), the modern winery a few hundred yards away and the small tasting room adjacent to it.

With money from their insurance claims from Travelers Insurance, the stone house innards were built anew, preserving the stone structure on the building’s outer shell. The winery caves were restored.

But today, Travelers no longer provides their coverage.

“Before the fire, we could have one carrier that insured the entire property, liability, equipment, all the houses, caves, the entire thing was at one company,” said Vandendriessche. “After the fire, nobody wanted to take on that much risk because that meant you were exposed to all the potential damages in a fire. And since then, we’ve had to take eight or nine companies, each one taking a little tranche of the insurance needs of our business.”

But each year, the family still must seek new coverage and new insurers.

“Every year since the fire, two or three of those companies have backed out, and we have to find new ones. The prices have tripled for less coverage. So, that’s our insurance picture.”

The Vandendriessche’s insurance agent, Jim Stetson, Agency co-owner of Leavitt United Insurance Services, deals with properties all over the state. He says the rising rates are highly localized and that insurance rates for vineyard and winery owners in other parts of the state have not been affected by the wildfires.

“For somebody with little to no wildfire exposure, we can still get basically the same kinds of programs that we had in the past,” he said. “It depends on the wildfire risk, the property values and loss control, and brush mitigation. If you’re in American Canyon or Lodi or Sacramento or somewhere like that, the wildfire concern isn’t going to be really an issue. But in a lot of the other areas, you are going to be exposed to that.”

Wine Warehouse Insurance Affected
It also depends on where wine is stored, Stetson said.
“Aggregation can be an issue; that’s where carriers only want to have a certain amount of limit in one area so that if there’s some kind of catastrophic wildfire event, they’re not losing it all in one event. So, they don’t want to have too much value, say over $100 million, in one five-mile area.

“We see that at the wine warehouses in American Canyon right now, where there’s aggregation issues with certain carriers where they have too many clients storing wine or producing wine in one location.”

Insurance Tied to Bank Loans 
The insurance issue is complicated because it isn’t just about insurance. Insurance is linked to winery finance since banks require insurance to lend money.

“2017 brought increased awareness of the problem, and that’s when the insurance industry started pulling out,” said Michael Miiller, director of government relations at the California Association of Winegrape Growers (CAWG).

“Basically, where our growers are is they have a property that has a structure on it. And if they have any kind of line of credit already lending at all, they have to have proof of insurance as a condition of that lending, which means they have to have insurance.”
“We’re in a crisis situation,” he said.

Mixed Reviews for the FAIR Plan
The state of California has stepped in to create the insurer of last resort: the FAIR Plan. FAIR Plan’s policy numbers more than doubled between 2018 and 2022 from 127,000 to 272,000 (including homeowners as well as businesses.)

“Right now, it’s the only option available to people, to many, many people,” said Miiller. “And when your safety net is all you have, that’s not sufficient. They have a limit to how much they can cover.”

In March 2023, the California Department of Insurance announced it would up FAIR Plan caps for commercial businesses coverage amounts “from $8.4 million to $20 million per location, and under its Division II Business Owners Program, from $7.2 million to $20 million per location,” according to a department press release.

Stetson explained that the FAIR Plan is not a state run program but is run by the insurance companies themselves. “A lot of people think it is [state-run], but it’s a pool of all the admitted carriers doing business in California.”

That means each new change requires negotiations between the department and the FAIR Plan.

By summer 2023, the department had still not implemented the increases announced in March and said in an email to Grape & Wine the higher limits would most likely be available by end of 2023. That leaves many businesses exposed again during the 2023 vintage.

“The FAIR Plan does not cover things like faster water damage or falling objects, freezing pipes,” said Stetson, “so there’s some gaps there.”

He said commercial insurers are starting to fill in some of the gaps. “That’s starting to come back online and provide a little bit of relief.”

Miiller pointed out that even when the $20 million limit is implemented, the amount is per policy, not per structure. “It would be better if it were per structure,” he said.

The CAWG official criticized the state’s insurance regulators for being slow to act.
“We’re looking at how they set rates, we’re looking at the expediency of rate approvals and those kinds of things. There’s a lot that can be done at the Department of Insurance to speed things up. And they’re just not doing it. When you look at when Lara expanded the FAIR Plan, it took them forever to approve their rates.”

“When there’s no product on the market, growers have no options,” he said.

Still, despite wildfires in Oregon, the situation is quite different there, Miiller said.

“You can find growers in Oregon who aren’t having near the problems that they’re having in California. Their regulatory system is entirely different.” That’s because Oregon does not set commercial insurance rates.

The Crisis Continues… for Some
Miiller warned that the crisis, however unevenly distributed it is, is far from over.
“If we don’t start looking at this like the emergency situation that it is, we are quickly going to see a bunch of industries that are going to pay some serious consequences because they can’t buy insurance. Insurance isn’t an option. You have to have it to be in business. If it is not available, the dominoes start falling.”

“So, from my perspective, I think there really needs to be somebody to step up and say, ‘Hey, we have an emergency. And I’m going to implement these emergency actions to start to address this problem.’”

Yet, when it comes to insurance, some areas of the state are stable, said Stetson. “For folks in the Central Valley, if there’s no wildfire risk, the options are pretty much what they were [before 2017]. If there’s wildfire risk, then we have to start getting more creative.
“If there’s no wildfire risk, that’s the carrier’s main concern. We have seen a little bit of a rate increase, but there’s still a lot of carriers playing in the space.”

Reducing Risk
What can property owners do to reduce risk in the eyes of insurers?

“It’s a moving target,” Stetson said. “Defensible space is always the first thing that people do, cutting back brush, removing low hanging branches and getting ladder fuels off the property or away from the buildings. That’s definitely helpful.

“Some people have contracted private firefighting companies to consult. Some will spray fire retardant seasonally around the production buildings, and then they sometimes have them on a retainer to come in…so if there’s a wildfire event, they will help defend the property.”

Sprinklers make sense, he said, but there’s no guarantee installing them will bring a return on the investment. “Unfortunately, it’s difficult to ask somebody to spend that much money because it’s not necessarily a guarantee of an offer of coverage. The insurance companies can make somebody put in a six-figure sprinkler system, and then that same carrier that asked him to do that next year could pivot,” he said.

“A lot of people in the brushy areas are stuck in the process,” he added.

Another limitation of the FAIR Plan: It doesn’t cover wine in tanks. “Anything not bottled yet is excluded from coverage,” said Stetson. “So that’s a pretty big issue for people because typically, once it’s case goods, they can move it to a third-party storage location and find palatable, affordable coverage from an admitted carrier.”

According to the California Department of Insurance, counties where 25% or more homes are in high fire risk, these are the top-ranked counties, by highest exposure first: Tuolumne, Trinity, Nevada, Mariposa, Plumas, Alpine, Calaveras, Sierra, Amador, El Dorado, Mono, Lake, Mendocino, Siskiyou, Butte, Lassen, Shasta, Tehama, Santa Cruz, Humboldt, Napa, Del Norte, Modoc, and Placer.

While our planet’s nickname “the Blue Planet” might imply that water resources are plentiful and available, this is not actually the case. Over 97% of Earth’s water is unusable salt water, and 2% is unavailable freshwater stored in glaciers and ice caps. This means less than one percent is freshwater that is accessible to humans to fulfill our daily water needs.

USDA’s Erika Cross gave this staggering analogy: “…if the world’s water supply were 26 gallons, our useable supply of freshwater would be half a teaspoon” (Cross 2022).
Of all our water daily uses, from hydrating ourselves and our pets to washing our hands and our cars, water for agricultural crops is one of the most important and demanding.
With the country’s population growth of nearly 100 million between 1980 and 2015, how can it be that water withdrawals for irrigation were relatively steady during that time span? The USGS posits the effects could be attributed to water conservation efforts and greater water use efficiencies (USGS 2018).

Managing agricultural water use in a responsible way can have a positive impact on water conservation while also maintaining a stable food supply for years to come. Growers can use responsible water management strategies that conserve and optimize their use, ones that increase water efficiency without decreasing crop yield. The sustainable winegrowing community does just that.

Water Sustainability in Viticulture
From water application tools and strategies in the vineyard to capturing, treating and reusing winery wastewater, sustainable wine brands use practices that minimize their water use, optimize efficiency and reduce groundwater pumping.

Agriculture can feel like a battle against natural elements. Growers must learn to work with elements out of their control, including wind, frost, degree days or a family of ground squirrels that decides to call their vineyard home. Although the same can be said for precipitation, supplemental water application is one of the few inputs the grower has significant control over.

So, how does a vineyard manager know when to irrigate the vineyard and how much water to apply? As well as using visual cues from the vines themselves, sustainable winegrowers use hard data from plant and soil moisture monitoring devices to understand how their crops and the land respond to their practices. Using this data, they make informed irrigation decisions and only apply water when it is needed.

Low-volume irrigation systems are one of the most impactful water conservation tools in the grower’s toolbox. Drip irrigation is a sustainable winegrower’s go-to method. This type of irrigation system typically uses an impressive 20% to 50% less water per-acre than a sprinkler system (EPA 2017).

In a drip system, emitters are placed along an irrigation line that runs along a vine row a few inches above the soil. The emitters slowly drip water directly onto the planted areas at the base of the vine. This is a contrast to sprinkler systems, which spray high volumes of water over large areas, both planted and not. The slower, more targeted application of water delivered by drip means a greater percentage of what is applied is actually used by the crop, less water is lost through leeching and runoff, and water isn’t applied to areas that don’t need to be irrigated.

Responsible water management does not stop in the vineyard. It can take anywhere from 2 to 20 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of wine (Wine Business Analytics 2014) depending on a winery’s water management practices. Between using water to clean and sanitize equipment, as a wine additive and as a processing aid, gallons can add up.
Sustainable winemakers don’t let the runoff water from tasks go to waste; they recycle it. Winery wastewater can be stored in an irrigation pond or aboveground or belowground holding tanks on the property. Wherever it is stored, wastewater must be treated before being reused.

After proper treatment, recycled water can be used for more cleaning and sanitizing of winery equipment, as an equipment coolant, for frost protection in the vineyard and even for irrigating grapevines and landscaping. If you’re concerned over whether the quality of grapes and composition of the soil could be harmed by recycled water, there’s no need to fret; several studies show that when managed correctly, winery wastewater has no negative effects on the health of grapevines or vineyard soils (Hirzel et. al. 2017; Buelow et al. 2015).

Sustainability in Action: Shale Oak Winery
It’s not just winery wastewater that is captured for later use. With proper architectural planning, rainwater that falls on roofs and driveways can also be collected and used for growing wine grapes. Some wineries are designed with rainwater capture in mind, like Shale Oak Winery in Paso Robles, Calif.

When rain falls on the roofs of Shale Oak’s winery and tasting room, it is directed through a water passage that flows to a water feature. While this water feature offers patio tasters a sense of serenity, it was designed to be more than a visual pleasantry. When it fills up, the overflow goes to a sump pump, where it begins its journey to the vines.

Shale Oak captures most of the rainwater that falls on their property through this roof collection system, and by utilizing the natural flow of the terrain. The water that falls on their grounds, driveway and parking lot are diverted to numerous waterways that lead to an underground cistern. All this water that would otherwise have run off their property will join the water collected from the roofs to deficit irrigate their vines.

At the top of Shale Oak’s hill sit five 100,000-gallon water cisterns. This is where the rainwater from the wet season is pumped and held until the dry season. During the hotter, drier months when the vines are in critical growing stages, all the rainwater they captured is carried out to drip irrigate their five acres of vines and hydrate their landscaping.
Since this water capture strategy was designed into every element of their layout, Shale Oak significantly reduces their pumping needs. In fact, Sean Walter, assistant winemaker, stated, “Our 500,000-gallon capacity, most of the time, can get us through the whole growing season if we have a significant rainfall throughout the wintertime.”

Learning how responsible producers like Shale Oak Winery go the extra mile to protect natural resources has a myriad of positive effects on the whole food system. It fosters deeper connections between agricultural producers and consumers, brings attention to sustainably minded growers and their good work, and helps consumers understand more about the agricultural systems we depend on every single day.

“Food disconnect” is a term used to describe the average consumer’s lack of knowledge about where their food comes from and how it’s made. When it comes to wine, most people only see the finished product: what’s in their glass.

If your wine brand practices sustainability, there’s yet another level to this disconnect with your customers. While consumers name food and beverage as one of the most important industries when it comes to sustainability, more than one in four U.S. adults said they don’t know what makes a product sustainable (Morning Consult 2022).

This highlights an opportunity to showcase the time and careful consideration that went into your wine’s production. By highlighting your dedication to sustainability, you create a deeper connection with your customers. Wine drinkers gain valuable (and engaging) insights into agriculture. Plus, it lets them know that when they support your brand, they also contribute to a more sustainable food system.

In the next issue of the Sustainable Story Series, we share the story of a San Luis Obispo, Calif. winegrower who unintentionally discovered a unique pest mitigation strategy while developing a vineyard planting method that significantly conserves water by using everyday hardware store materials.

Back when Matt Trevisan was new to California’s wine industry, he received a piece of advice he’s never forgotten: “Wine is made in the vineyard.”

Those words stayed with him as he made his way, year by year, into viticulture and winemaking. Trevisan had no family background in the business, but he had fallen in love with all things wine while attending California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He soon was apprenticing at wineries in the nearby Paso Robles area, picking grapes, driving forklifts, learning how varietals were grown, how wine was produced and bottled.
In 1998, Trevisan and his wife Maureen took a leap of faith and started their Linne Calodo winery. Two years later, they bought their first piece of land, located in the Willow Creek District just west of Paso Robles. It was the beginning of their estate vineyard, but it wasn’t until 2005 that they were able to plant its first five acres. In 2012, they bought 48 more acres nearby, calling it Stonethrower Vineyard and planting vines a year later.

Trevisan had already begun questioning the accepted belief that California blended wines were inferior to varietal wines. He set out to craft his own red blends and create wines with high-integrity growing and winemaking. Over the next few years, Trevisan and Linne Calodo would specialize in limited red blends, helping break new ground in Paso Robles winemaking.

Out of Linne Calodo’s passion-driven production came Rhone-variety blends with names like Rising Tides and Overthinker as well as Zinfandel-driven blends such as Cherry Red. Trevisan’s most popular wine, a blend of Zinfandel, Syrah, Grenache and Mourvédre, was created through a long, frustrating process he feared was a mistake. Instead, the result was a delicious blend, which he aptly named Problem Child.

But Trevisan never forgot that wine begins in the vineyard. The California native practices what he calls “nature positive” farming. It’s based on age-old ways of farming that work with the land’s limited resources. Linne Calodo vineyards rely on natural solutions and manual labor instead of chemicals and carbon-heavy activities.

Over the past 25 years, Trevisan has made his mark. In July, he was named San Luis Obispo County’s 2023 Winemaker of the Year. The recognition came from the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance in partnership with the San Luis Obispo Coast Wine Collective, the independent Grape Growers of the Paso Robles Area, The Vineyard Team and past award recipients. The annual award recognizes dedication, stewardship, innovation and leadership in the country’s wine community.

Just before this year’s grape harvest began, Trevisan shared more of his story with Grape & Wine.

Q. Where does your winery’s name, Linne Calodo, come from? What does it mean?
Linne Calodo is a series of calcium-based soils, mapped out by the U.S. Geological Survey, that predominate here on the west side of the Santa Lucia Mountains. When we chose our winery’s name, we looked for something unique that represented our neighborhood.

Q. How did your life’s path lead to winemaking?
I am a first-generation vineyard farmer and winemaker. I went to Cal Poly intending to major in aeronautical engineering. But then I switched to biochemistry. Along the way, I met multiple individuals involved in the wine industry, including people connected with Fetzer and Robert Mondavi. While at Cal Poly, I helped with harvest on the James Berry Vineyard. I really fell in love with this business. After I graduated in 1995, I went to work for Justin Winery, doing an apprenticeship there. The next seven years of my life were with Justin Winery and Wild Horse Winery and Vineyards, where I managed the warehouses and did any job I had to do.

Q. When did you buy your first vineyard property?
While I was working full-time at Wild Horse, my college roommate and I started making wine after hours. With the approval of Kenny Volk, who owned Wild Horse at the time, we used the facility every day from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. When we started Linne Calodo in 1998, a lot of people, including other winemakers, helped out, both picking fruit for us and helping us process. I used the bottling line at Wild Horse to bottle the first vintages of Linne Calodo. That was a great time. In 2000, before the market really moved, my wife Maureen and I bought a property of 77 acres here in Paso Robles. It wasn’t until 2005 that I was able to plant my first estate vineyards; it was just five acres.

Q. You started that from the ground up?
Yes. In 2012, I bought another 48 acres across the road. Starting in 2012, we put vines in the ground on that and did full development. There was no power on that property, no wells, no roads or anything. I didn’t start with a chest full of money. It’s been a slow grind.

Q. What do you mean by “nature positive” in your vineyards?
It’s to let Nature take its course. I’m really just a steward of the land. We farm no-till, no herbicides. We spray only organics for mildew control. It really goes hand in hand with my winemaking style. When I pick grapes, it’s about letting them go through a natural process to become wine.

Q. Are you doing anything differently from five years ago?
No-till agriculture is something I had tried before and couldn’t figure out, using no herbicides out there. It’s a very labor-intensive process we’ve enacted, which is basically treating our vineyard like a home garden for our winemaking. We’re out there hand-weeding pretty much every square foot and trying to get invasive species out by hand.

Q. Do you irrigate your vineyards or dry farm?
I have both. My Zinfandel and Grenache vineyards are dry farmed. I’ve been experimenting over the last two decades how to create sustainability of grapevines. What’s the spacing of the grapevines? What are the irrigation or non-irrigation methods? I may irrigate when planting a vineyard but then pull back and end up on a vigorous enough root stock and clonal selections to where I’m really working backwards on the vine. It’s just a lot of fruit thinning and shoot thinning along the way to get the grapes to maturity.

Q. Why has Linne Calodo focused on limited red blends?
When I started making wine, people were still acidulating wines, changing tannin contents. It was fairly chemistry heavy. I understand chemistry and, yeah, I can manipulate things. I can do organic synthesis and create a pharmaceutical. But winemaking is not about that. It’s more like cooking. It’s more like putting different spices together to change the flavor characteristics. When you grow different grapes, you grow different flavors, with different acid and tannic levels. It really opens up the door to creating a composition that is exciting, artistic and enjoyable for everyone without just doing it through the use of chemistry manipulation.

Right now, I’m growing probably 11 different varieties, and they all have different flavors. And that’s not even talking about clonal selections or root stalks or soils and hilltop versus lower on the hill and south-facing versus east-facing versus north and so on. There are so many different qualities that exist in grapes. When you do blend them, it really makes them pop.

Q. Where do you think demand for wine is headed?
I think we’ve outpriced ourselves, in some ways, from getting the Gen Zs and the next generation to see wine as being approachable. I just recently woke up to the fact that even my own tasting fees were too high for the Paso Robles region. When I started, there were 26 wineries in Paso, and wine tasting was $5 or free. I raised my prices to $20 and $30 and $40. We all did that. I think I was wrong, and it’s time to re-think it.
We all rode a wave of thinking we needed to be more and more exclusive. Maybe we need to be more and more inclusive instead. I believe we are at a fork in the road with tasting fees. At Linne Calodo, we’ve lowered ours back down to $20. If we want to win over the younger generation, we have to make it easier for them to get in the door and fall in love with great wine.

Q. Today, the Paso Robles region is home to more than 40,000 vineyard acres and 200-plus wineries. Is there any doubt anymore that it’s a world-class viticultural area?
No, it is a world-class region. It’s just still growing. We’re still learning exactly what the best grapes and training methods are. It’s suffering all the same challenges of any fast-growing region. But there is a fine group of us trying to figure out better, more sustainable, more ecologically friendly ways to pass this on to our future generations.