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The Compost Cycle and Natural Farming

Our composting program is a big part of our sustainability goals, allowing us to ‘give back” to our soils in a very natural way.  Healthy soils lead to healthy vines, and healthy vines produce balanced fruit and vibrant fermentations.

The compost cycle is fundamental to life on earth, and fascinating to understand.  In a well-functioning natural system (somewhat simplified):

• Animals feed off plants.
• Animal waste and other dead plant material are decomposed by microbiology into their raw constituents.
• Another set of microbiology (“humifying” microbiology) then creates short and long chain humus (a clay/organic complex) that serves as a resilient and long term storage of nutrients.
• A further set of microbiology, fed by sugar and other stimulants from plants, then breaks down the humus to release nutrients to feed the plant

This last step is crucial, and is the fundamental difference between natural and conventional farming systems.   Conventional agriculture feeds the plant directly though the use of artificial nutrients (often mined or created as the by-product of industrial processes), bypassing the first steps in the cycle.  While this can be a cost effective practice in the short term, it can do significant environmental damage, including acidifying the soil, breaking down soil structure, reducing soil carbon and increasing the chances of damaging nutrient runoff.  Pre-settlement reserves of long and short chain humus in agricultural soils were quickly depleted, and now generally replaced by artificial substitutes. 

At Yarrh, we’ve gone some way to replicating (and accelerating) the natural nutrient cycle by introducing a composting program.  We use winery waste (eg stalks, skins, seeds from the vintage), manures, straw, green waste and a little clay, to produce a highly humified compost (replicating Steps 2-3 above), then spread this through the vineyard.  This composting process takes about 6 weeks, and first goes through a breakdown process (Step 2) for about 2 weeks, then through a build up process (Step 3) where humus is created, and a stable state reached. 

When spread in the vineyard the cycle continues, with soil macro and micro biology incorporating the compost into the soil and reacting to stimulants from plants to release nutrients (Step 4).  Rather than force feeding the vines, we allow them to decide what they want and when they want it.

We don’t yet have a fully functioning natural system, but the place is certainly looking a lot healthier and happier over the decade we’ve been doing this.  The vines are strong, worms thrive, clovers go mad, and our soil’s water holding capacity buffers us from dry and hot conditions.  We still need to supplement the natural system at times, but at much lower rates than we’d done in the past - mainly a small, well timed shot of nitrogen in late spring when vine demand peaks.

Come out and taste the difference!

After a decade or so of conventional growing (heavy reliance of artificial fertilisers, herbicides, chemical pesticides) we noticed that our soils were deteriorating, and our vines were requiring more and more inputs to stay in shape – we were chasing our tail.

While the dogmatism (and bureaucracy) of pure organic growing didn’t appeal to us, we knew there was much to be learned from more traditional forms of farming, and modern adaptations of these practices.  To my grandfather, a dairy famer in southern Western Australia, recycling manure back onto grazing paddocks was simply the way things were done.

So we spent some time looking at what others were doing in both viticulture and broader agriculture to improve soil health and sustainability.  It’s a jungle (pun intended!) out there!  SO MANY OPINIONS, so little proof, so many with something to sell, but some common themes begin to emerge, and some elemental truths revealed themselves:

• Stop feeding the plant directly, and allow the plant to feed itself
• Nurture biodiversity
• Build your soil carbon (and hence soil structure)
• Intervene only when necessary

Although it sounds simple, this takes a while to work through, and apply to your own land, crop and circumstances.  Goals are one thing, putting practices in place to achieve them is another.   Over a number of years, we put in place:

• Permanent Vineyard Sward – nurture soil microbiology and create a home for “beneficials”
• Composting Program – accelerate the natural carbon cycle, boost soil microbiology, allow the vines to feed themselves, recycle “waste”
• Minimise artificial inputs – reduce impact on soil microbiology and other “beneficials” and improve sustainability by minimising the use of herbicides, artificial fertilisers and harsh pesticides.

The last one seems to be the most controversial – you’ll notice it says “minimise” not “eliminate”.  We now use less than 10% of the herbicide we used to use, mainly to control invasive weeds such as blackberry and serrated tussock (a huge problem for local graziers).  In a dry year, we may use an early season contact herbicide on some blocks to keep competition for resources (water, nutrients) down for the vines.  While this isn’t pure organics, it certainly reduces our diesel use!

It’s been almost a decade since we put these practices in place - so what’s changed?  Has it been worth the effort?   There have been some setbacks (Cabernet DOES NOT LIKE competition for water and nutrients), but on the whole we have seen a huge leap in vine health and fruit quality.  The most visible signs are:

• Vines that find their own balance (fruit/leaf ratio) in any given year – time spent looking after the soil is offset by less time spent mucking around with canopies.
• Vineyard resilience – improved soil structure and water holding capacity means the vines are able to deal with dry spells and hot conditions much better.
• Improved biodiversity – the vineyard is full a bees, moths, bugs, spiders, lizards, and heathy soil microbiology quickly breaks down organic matter.
• More vibrant wines (now we’re getting to the relevance!)– flavours, colour, sugar and acid are coming together earlier, resulting in more flavourful, better balanced wines.

A friend of ours, interested in what we do, said “so if you’re not organic, and your definitely not bio-dynamic, what are ya?”.  I think we’re rational farmers who want to produce the highest quality wines we can, while leaving our soils and farm in better shape for the next generation.  But that’s hard to put into a natty label, isn’t it?

Best way is to come out and taste the difference for yourself.  We love people who care not only how their wine tastes but how its made!

From our Spring 2011 Newsletter The Tin Shed.  The move away from cork closures is now just about complete in the "New World" of wine making:

I have recently decided to stop buying wine that is sealed with a cork.  I’m frustrated with the amount of corked wine I come across. The wine has been tainted by TCA (2,4,6 richloroanisole) and it robs the wine of its fruit, leaving it tasting flat and smelling of musty, mouldy cellars. TCA, which is harmless, gets into the cork through poor storage after it is harvested from the tree.  If it is allowed to get wet, a fungus grows in the cork and produces TCA.  Up until recently it could not be removed and it is difficult to detect unless you test every cork and who is going to do that.

An alternative cork closure - the diam cork - is TCA free, having been ground up and subjected to super critical CO2 which extracts the TCA, and then reconstructed.  However, unless you are a regular buyer of the same wine, you don’t know if a diam cork is being used until you get the bottle home and open it.

I had gotten into the habit of buying two bottles if it had a cork, thinking that if one is corked I’d have another chance with the second bottle, but this has proved fallible as both bottles from my latest purchase were corked.  So no more cork.  Ah, but the romance of popping the cork I hear you say – and I say times change.

We have been drinking wine for thousands of years, but cork has only been widely used for the last four hundred years.  Before that it was a bit of leather or cloth, before that a bit of wood with wax and before that a layer of oil.  Cork is just one step in the progression of closures used to preserve and protect wine.  The favourite is now the screwcap and this will probably be superseded down the track, but for the moment it is a better seal than cork.  It has a lot going for it - there is little or no bottle variation so the wine is more consistent, the seal is more airtight so flavours are better preserved,  the wine still ages,  the risk of taints is virtually nil and there is no need to carry ‘round a corkscrew.

I have to say I don’t come across the problem so much with sparkling wine, I think a bit of TCA might add to the yeasty character of some sparkling wines and so is more acceptable, but I’ll have to consider that one a bit more, no doubt when I next have a glass or two.

 FW

From our Spring 2011 newsletter The Tin Shed:

I was at a second hand book store last week and bought some old lifestyle magazines. Why? Because I like to see how we saw ourselves in the past and how we have changed, or not as the case may be.

These magazines were about 10 to 12 years old, and I have to say food wise we haven’t changed much at all. Baby fennel, goats cheese, chorizo, bags of mixed lettuce are just as fashionable now as they were then.

One tag line on a front cover made me scoff – “Why Pre-mixed Drinks Have Had Their Day” What a bold statement. Pity it hasn’t come to pass.  I’ll put that up there with “Child Poverty will be a Thing of the Past”.

What I did find interesting was the changes in wine. In an article on the top wines under $20 (even better value now) headings included Riesling, Chardonnay and Miscellaneous Whites and Reds. And guess what was under Miscellaneous Whites – Sauvignon Blanc! Not miscellaneous anymore as last year it became the top selling white in Australia, making up 30% of white wine sales. Pinot Noir was a Miscellaneous Red – again a surprise for only 10-12 years ago.

FW

Keywords

The Tin Shed

From the Archives

2011

Food and Wine

It’s getting close to 10 years since we adopted a more organic approach to our viticulture.  He’s our thoughts from 8 years ago, from The Tin Shed – Spring 2011:

Constant improvement is the name of the game, always searching for better ways to make distinctive wines that better express our unique terroir.  We believe that healthy soils managed in a more sustainable and natural way is a key part of that, and this has led us down an organic path.  The 2010 season was our first managed organically, and the results to date are better than expected, given that farms often goes through a dip in production during transition.  Perhaps this is because we have been reducing our chemical inputs steadily over the preceding years anyway.

Now we are faced with a few difficult decisions – do we formally certify our operations as organic, and do we label our wines as organic?  Separate but related issues.  There are a number of organic certification bodies in Australia, and if you pay them they will monitor your operations and allow you to use their certification logo.  Certification gives consumers confidence that organic protocols are being followed, but what do consumers think of organic wine?   Does it spell quality, as we want it to, or does it remind them of second grade fruit?  Also, do consumers relate differently to fresh organic products as opposed to products manufactured from organic ingredients (like wine)?

Most likely we will certify, and then decide whether or not to declare it on our label.  I actually think that over time organic protocols will merge with more traditional protocols and a “best practice” will emerge – and that will be a good thing!

From our 2014 Newsletter The Tin Shed.  We held several sourdough demonstrations, and I like to think there’s a few still at it out there!

While on a road trip in the US last year, we visited the Russian River wine region of California and while browsing a bookshop in Healdsburg (as you do) picked up a CD copy of Michael Pollan’s “Cooked – A Natural History of Transformation”.  It was great listening on long car trips - an exhaustive history on why we cook our food the way we do.  We were, of course, immediately attracted to his section on fermentation in all its various guises.

The discussion on bread, and sourdough bread in particular, caught our attention.  We’ve been making our own bread for ages but we had not taken the next step of “wild fermentation” breads, as we have with our red wines.  Michael introduced us to Chad Robertson and his life’s mission to make bread with soul - the perfect country loaf.  I love the painting (opposite) by Emile Friant (1888) that inspired Chad’s mission.

Similarly inspired, I’ve been mucking around with Chad’s instructions for making a basic country loaf in his book “Tartine Bread”.  After many tasty but somewhat dense test loaves, we’ve hit on an approach that works well with our local flours, and even includes a secret ingredient!  A few other important points:

steam is critical to baking good bread

managing the fermentation well is the most important skill to develop

sourdough doesn’t have to be that sour (in fact “sourdough” is a bit of a misnomer)

sourdough starters are simple to manage

small changes in approach can make a big difference to the results

you need to develop a feel for your dough and be flexible

It’s been fun, and we’d love to share some of our bread recipes with you – Fiona makes a great ciabatta too.  Learn how to make basic sourdough bread (or bring along your own bread and share your secrets!) at our winter solstice celebration – bookings required!

NM

An excerpt from our newsletter in 2014 – we were (and still are) chuffed to be rated so highly by Mr Halliday and his team:

Now a 4 ½ Star Winery  – In his  2014 Wine Companion, James Halliday has rated Yarrh Wines as a  4 ½ Star winery.  We are very pleased with this, and it marks another milestone in our development.  What does 4 ½ Stars mean? “Excellent winery able to produce wines of high to very high quality, knocking on the door of a 5-star rating. Will normally have one wine rated at 94 points or above, and two (or more) at 90 and above, others 87-89.” James Halliday is now no doubt the best known wine critic in Australia, so his ratings are an important indicator to many that they are dealing with a high quality producer.  Highlights of the wines he rated this year -  2011 Riesling 94/100 (“Outstanding”), 2011 Shiraz 90/100 (“Highly Recommended”). 

From our newsletter The Tin Shed of 2014, the beginning of our “Mr Natural” range of wines…

For some time now we’ve been fermenting our reds using “natural ferments” – no added yeast.  We wanted to see if we’d left anything behind taking this step so we divided our first pick of Shiraz into three batches.  The first batch dubbed ‘Mr Natural’ was allowed to start fermenting naturally and although it took longer to get going, it completed fermentation close to the other two. The second had some nutrient added – still a natural ferment.  The third had nutrient and yeast added.  All the ferments progressed well, though at times the aromas and activity did vary.  The batches were pressed separately and put into separate barrels.  All have excellent colour  (very important for tannin development) but have quite different flavour profiles.  The natural ferments tend to be more savoury while the added yeast tends to create more fruity notes.  The wines are still very young and not complete so it’s a bit too early to have a firm opinion on what might be best, but we will continue to explore and contemplate more natural, low input winemaking.

For the first time this year we also made a sparkling Rosé.  It was inspired by a wine dinner we attend in January, hosted by wine judge and writer Mike Bennie.  The wine dinner was titled “Wines you need to know about.” and started with sparkling wines made using the technique “methode ancestrale”.  The wine is bottled before fermentation is complete, so bubbles are created in the bottle.  These wines are often a Rosé made with no added yeast, no sulphur dioxide, unfined and drunk fresh, either during the vintage or in the following spring. 

Our sparkling Rosé was made from a small batch of Tumbarumba Pinot Noir.  Fermentation started like clockwork, but then at what point do you bottle the wine?  It turns out we bottled a little too early – it’s rather (very) fizzy but it tastes very pleasant, fresh, fruity and refreshing. It is a little cloudy as the yeast lees have not been removed (as you would with “méthode champenoise” ) but I think this adds to its charm and character – as Neil points out its very much like a Coopers Sparkling Ale.  It was available for tasting at the recent Wine Harvest Festival and

was very well received.  So the challenge for next year is to tone down the bubbles and make it just as pleasant to drink.

FW

Key Words

Winemaking

From the Archives

2014

A

Here’s an except from our Autumn 2013 Newsletter the Tin Shed, from the early days of Sangiovese in the Canberra District:

Sangiovese is taking off in the district, and aficionados of the variety will be in for some real treats over the coming years, with some of the best known winemakers in the district really focusing on the variety.  We were one of the first to plant the variety in the district (2001), and had the opportunity to put one of our best vintages (2008 – sorry – sold out) up against some other local, interstate and international examples at a recent tasting organised by Alex McKay of Collector Wines.

There were 24 fantastic wines from the best regions of Italy (Chianti, Montalcino) and Victoria as well as a good range of local wines.  Quite a range of styles were in the tastings, from fresh and bright to deep and brooding.  The best examples had mouth watering savouriness, complex but moderate fruit and truly epic persistence.  We were very pleased with the response to our 2008, with comments like “ripe nose, fresh spice notes, warm mid-palate, ripe tannins, balanced fleshy finish – silver” from one of the best local palates in the business.  Not bad among $250/bottle examples from Italy!

NM

An extremely wet early spring dried out nicely before we had any serious growth, leading to a disease free canopy and dry flowering, with excellent soil moisture levels powering strong canopy growth.  A light frost on Melbourne Cup day hit our Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc, but not as badly as it first looked, thank goodness.  The vines were well set up, but required constant supplementary watering during the heat of December and January.  Just when we were beginning to worry about continued heat, the weather gods shone on us and it cooled just as we hit veraison (berries softening, filling out, colouring up), when it really counts.  Fruit looked good across the board.

Picking dates were generally spot on the long term average, with Shiraz one week earlier.  Some bigger than planned picking days kept everyone on their toes, with our picking crews performing magnificently.  Picking grapes for 12 hours stretches endurances to the limit!

The numbers in the winery looked good (sugar levels, acidity, nitrogen), but more importantly the flavours were there, along with balanced ripeness in skins, seeds, stalks.  Big increases in volumes through the winery (to meet growing demand, particularly for Riesling, Shiraz and Sangiovese) also made for long but satisfying days.  So far, Fiona is happy!

NM

We enjoy growing our own food.   Living and working in the same place (and having plenty of space) makes it somewhat easier for us than for most, but it still takes a concerted effort to make it worthwhile.  This year we grew tomatoes (five months of fresh tomatoes!), cucumbers, zucchini, beans, potatoes, figs, garlic, chillies, spring onions, artichokes, radish, silver beet, lettuce, kohlrabi.

Herbs, too – parsley, mint, basil (fresh pesto!), tarragon, dill, Vietnamese mint, lemon grass, oregano, thyme, sage, bay, rosemary.  What a treat it is to go grab some fresh herbs when cooking, and what a difference it makes to your dishes.  In fact, if you could grow nothing else, herbs are where you get the most bang for your buck.

And finally, chickens.  We’ve kept about four Isa Browns for many years now and the eggs are fantastic.  Not only do chickens recycle your kitchen scraps (can be hard to properly manage in a composting system) into more food, but also produce excellent manure for the veggie patch.

Growing your own food has benefits beyond flavour and freshness:

• You get some good exercise!
• Your more mindful of what is seasonal and cook/eat in a more seasonal fashion
• Your respect for farmers increases, knowing what it takes to grow good food
• You’re more thankful for the range of fruit and veg you can get at your local market/supermarket
• Your ability to pick good produce from bad/ordinary/old/decaying produce increases
• You get closer to the season – you pay much more attention to what’s going on around you – mindfulness…
• You realise how difficult it must have been to live in a truly self-sufficient way, and how hard it would have been to get through winter/spring with a full belly

With the wine, vegetables, herbs, eggs, our own lamb and beef (thanks neighbour Dave!), and olive oil on the way, we’re truly appreciative of the benefits of growing your own.  Now for the orchard….

NM and FW