Drew Herman – Assume Superiority, Farm Scared, and Pretend Like You Know What You’re Doing While Killing Your Plants
Imagine if you were a thousand foot tall giant. How successful would you be at helping a 5 foot tall farmer collect her chickens eggs? Drew Herman is back for a second episode jam-packed with information and laughs. If you haven’t listened to the previous episode with Drew, I highly recommend checking it out first. It was episode # 74, published back in July of 2022 and was titled Microbial Democracy for a Healthy Vineyard and World. In this new episode, Drew discusses the game changing discovery of rhizophagy and what that means for the way we farm wine… and he manages to crack me up with memorable quips about once a minute. Drew wants to impress upon us how each new discovery about the soil microbiome and the way plants function with it shows how little we know. We discuss plants’ incredible genetic intelligence and the need to start assuming that they know vastly more than we do about how to take care of them.. We discuss recently discovered fallacies about fallowing and soil pH. We talk about the desperate need to reintroduce breeding new vines as standard practice in wine, and the stunning genetic potential in a seed, including a full arsenal of microbiology that actually teaches it how to grow. Given our deepening understanding of our ignorance, Drew beseeches us to stop blundering around with fertilization and pesticide programs, the impacts of which we really don’t understand. The vines we farm, as it turns out, are much better farmers than we are… and our efforts to help them usually just get in their way. Like a mushroom foraging expedition, there are non-sequitur delights scattered throughout this conversation all the way through to the end when Drew discusses the importance of voles and how to manage them in the vineyard. He also offers numerous free resources to deepen your knowledge and learn how much we have to learn.
Drew is vineyard manager at JK Carriere wines in Oregon, but I think his true gift may be in making deep soil science as fun as playing in the dirt… hopefully playing in the dirt sounds fun to you. If not… well, just think of something fun, and then associate that with Drew.
Enjoy!
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Sponsors:
Centralas Wine - delicious, ecological wine
Catavino Tours - amazing, wine tours
Oom - recycled bottles for wine
VT Vineyards - plant your own vineyard
Dr. Andrew Smith of the Rodale Institute -The Future Is Organic
Sandra Taylor - Sustainability & The Business of Sustainable Wine
Roni Ginach - Roni Selects, Importing Natural Wine
Pam Marrone - Creating Biological Pesticides From The Earth
Ricky Taylor - Alta Marfa & How To Make the Impossible Possible in Texas
Jeff Lowenfels - If You're Growing Grapes Chemically, You're Doing It Wrong
Brook Williams - Owning Biodynamic Vineyards
Doug Swim - Amy Atwood Selections, Natural Wine Distribution, & Agricultural Artists
Abe Schoener - Los Angeles River Wine Co. & The Scholium Project
Chloe Miranda - Los Angeles Sommelier
Matt Clark - Grape Breeder, University of Minnesota
Andy Brennan - Uncultivated Apple Cider, Aaron Burr Cidery
Rudy Marchesi - Biodynamics, Demeter, & Montinore Estate
Mimi Casteel - Regenerative Viticulture & The Future of Agriculture
Karl Hambsch - Owner of Virginia's Only Organic Winery
What Is Organic Wine & Who Is Adam Huss?
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