Just as we aim to farm in the service of nature, we seek to farm in the service of our community. In the spirit of reporting to our community “shareholders,” I offer this 2024 review. It’s lengthy, but there is much to report: a fantastic harvest, widespread recognition of our environmental approach, and the slow emergence of plans for our next chapter.
Loss of biodiversity may be humanity’s greatest threat, even more than climate change. Food production is the primary cause. At Dodon, we seek to reverse this trend and thus enhance the ecosystem services that will allow us to reduce our physical and chemical footprint…
Every season, I’m dazzled that the buds break, shoots grow, inflorescences bloom, and fruit sets and ripens. It’s a bit like the sun coming up in the morning. Who can complain after that miracle? But some vintages are more successful than others. And despite the challenges, 2022 was more triumphant than most.
It has been more than a year since I last wrote to the club. Focused entirely on the logistics of keeping our staff healthy and employed, I had lost the ability to concentrate or convey a coherent story, even a summary of the 2020 vintage.
But now the 2021 harvest is over, and the wines are aging. So, it is time to reflect on what has happened and what it means and to uncover the more significant lessons from the vintage.
Just as we aim to farm in the service of nature, we seek to farm in the service of our community. In the spirit of reporting to our community “shareholders,” I offer this 2024 review. It’s lengthy, but there is much to report: a fantastic harvest, widespread recognition of our environmental approach, and the slow emergence of plans for our next chapter.
Biodiversity provides essential services to our community, including pest control and pollination, yet it is declining at an alarming rate, primarily due to agriculture. In response to this crisis, Tom is a member of the leading team of the Porto Protocol’s Living Vineyards project that seeks to establish ecosystem restoration projects on 20% of global vineyard acreage by 2030.
This initiative “envisions a world where the art of winemaking harmonizes with the preservation and restoration of the natural environment, setting a new standard for responsible viticulture.”
Living, vibrant ecosystems are crucial to achieving our environmental, community, and winemaking goals. Over the past decade, we have implemented farming practices that encourage diverse native and naturalized plants in and around the vineyard while discouraging invasive plants that can easily dominate the landscape and provide habitat for detrimental insects.
On Monday, June 26, Tom spoke at the opening reception of the 2023 State Environmental Protection meeting hosted by the Environmental Council of the States (ECOS). ECOS is the national, nonpartisan association of state and territorial environmental agency leaders and is led by Ben Grumbles, the former Secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment. Tom was introduced by Kevin Atticks, current Secretary of the Maryland Department of Agriculture, and the former Executive Director of the Maryland Wineries Association.
Several people who reviewed or heard Tom’s comments regarding the nexus of agriculture, health, the environment, and social justice suggested that he share them….
Loss of biodiversity may be humanity’s greatest threat, even more than climate change. Food production is the primary cause. At Dodon, we seek to reverse this trend and thus enhance the ecosystem services that will allow us to reduce our physical and chemical footprint…
Growing grapes, making wine, and distributing the final product require the same steps as producing and selling food. And as Dodon’s connection with the local food system has grown, I’ve become increasingly aware of its deep-seated problems. Despite enormous federal subsidies, it fails to provide healthy diets. Production is focused on just a few grains, primarily used to feed the cows and chickens that supply dairy, eggs, and meat. It contributes about thirty percent of all greenhouse gas emissions…
Every season, I’m dazzled that the buds break, shoots grow, inflorescences bloom, and fruit sets and ripens. It’s a bit like the sun coming up in the morning. Who can complain after that miracle? But some vintages are more successful than others. And despite the challenges, 2022 was more triumphant than most.
It has been more than a year since I last wrote to the club. Focused entirely on the logistics of keeping our staff healthy and employed, I had lost the ability to concentrate or convey a coherent story, even a summary of the 2020 vintage.
But now the 2021 harvest is over, and the wines are aging. So, it is time to reflect on what has happened and what it means and to uncover the more significant lessons from the vintage.
When Polly and I first envisioned the vineyard, we recognized the opportunity to create a beautiful place that guests would want to visit, to linger, to converse, and to enjoy each other's company over a glass of wine. You can imagine then how difficult it has been to conclude that the pandemic prevents us from safely hosting indoor activities…
The year started normally enough. The autumn had been good to us. Warm weather, absent the extreme rain of 2018, meant healthy vines entered dormancy. We enthusiastically embraced new cover crops, created a novel composting program designed to stimulate mycorrhizal fungi, and bought a flail mower to mulch vine pruning wood in the vineyard.
Things may have seemed simple in 2019, but they were not.
After the rains of 2018, the 2019 vintage brought welcomed change. Unusually dry weather that started in mid-July helped make the harvest, at first blush, delightfully simple. The vines politely stopped growing at veraison, focusing their energy on ripening the fruit. The vineyard team was, well, in the vineyard, the work progressing quickly and efficiently. Picking, sorting, and processing seemed almost effortless. The wines made themselves.
As I reflect from the comfort of an air-conditioned office, the vineyard team is hedging for the third time this year. Usually, we only hedge twice, but the excess foliage that resulted from last year’s heavy rainfall is creating too much shade. The temperature will soon be 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the 27th time this season. The high humidity, now 97% according to the weather station, means that neither the vines nor those who tend them get much benefit from evaporative cooling.
Maryland farmers are confronting the challenges of changing weather patterns that are the result of carbon pollution and warmer temperatures. Following heavy rain last September, more than in the previous five Septembers combined, red wine production in 2018 from our vineyard in Davidsonville was less than half the amount it had been the year before.
If you take a tour with a winemaker, the topic will frequently turn to soil. Depending on where you are, you might hear about the kimmeridgian limestone of Burgundy, the montmorillonite (aka blue) clay of Pomerol, or the alluvial gravel, clay, and sand of the Rutherford Bench. In many winemakers’ minds, the soil defines the wine, trumping both climate and human influences. To hear a winemaker tell it, the soil of their region or vineyard is unlike the soil anywhere in the world, and without doubt the very best for growing wine grapes. I’m as guilty as anybody of this hyperbole, and to support my case, or perhaps to atone for boastfulness, I set out to understand the origin and implications of the soil at Dodon.
As a farmer and grape grower, the effects of climate change are hard to miss, and the news is getting worse. Even the best-case projections regarding temperature, sea level rise, floods, fire, disease, and agricultural output are frightening. Partly due to changes in the climate, extinction rates among all species are about 1,000 times greater than they would be in the absence of human activity. Pulitzer prize winning author Elizabeth Kolbert has called this phenomenon The Sixth Extinction.
Polly and I are spending the holidays with our granddaughter, Juana Magdalena, in a little town called City Bell, just east of Buenos Aires. Polly’s three daughters are all here too, almost as much fun as Juana. As the summer solstice passes, our days are filled with family, exercise, asados, newspapers, a bit of sightseeing, and, for me, Spanish lessons. There is a fruit and vegetable farm within walking distance, and freshly butchered meat and chickens on the way, with none of the planting, weeding, feeding, watering, and picking chores of farm life.
Tuesday, October 2 was a beautiful, if somewhat warm, autumn day – the kind of day that we hope for in early October, when we are typically just starting to pick the black grapes. But this, the final day of picking in 2018, signaled the perplexing character of the vintage. The image of Dodon’s weather vanes pointing toward each other on an otherwise lovely morning is its lasting symbol.
Polly is the inspirational leader of the Dodon team. She keeps all of us going in the right direction, gets her hands dirty when needed, and looks out for the human side of the vineyard and cellar. She brings these same qualities to her career in public health policy where she has recently been recognized as an Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. It’s a rare honor, conferred on only a few non-nurses each year. The formal announcement can be found here.
