A Step Forward for Regenerative Farming
A group of Paso Robles wine growers
We may not hear much about Earth Day in the current political climate in Washington, D.C., but of course for winemakers, every day is Earth Day. As Spring colors burst forward and vine buds shake off winter’s last chill (and hopefully avoid frost), Mother Nature reminds us to look around and appreciate the fragile beauty that sustains us.
Speaking of sustainability, the new buzzword is “regenerative.” It’s a type of farming that goes beyond sustainable, organic or biodynamic in its primary focus on soil health. You’ve probably heard parts of it before, in talk of carbon sequestration, capture or even carbon farming. I first wrote about regenerative farming in 2019 when I profiled Oregon winemaker Mimi Casteel in The Washington Post, as she was gaining prominence as a passionate advocate for “no till” viticulture. The following year, the Regenerative Organic Alliance launched its Regenerative Organic Certification, or ROC, with Tablas Creek Vineyards in Paso Robles the first winery authorized to put the ROC seal on its labels. As of early this year, only 16 wineries worldwide had achieved the ROC certification, but the word “regenerative” is on the lips of winegrowers everywhere.
The following is adapted from an article I wrote for the April/May 2025 issue of The SOMM Journal with the title, “A Single Step,” about an effort to proselytize regenerative viticulture in Paso Robles.
A Taoist proverb tells us a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. That’s the spirit behind the “1 Block Challenge,” a pilot program initiated early this year to lead wine growers on a journey to regenerative farming.
The 1 Block Challenge, or 1BC, is an initiative of the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation in partnership with the Paso Robles CAB Collective and the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance. Participating wineries will farm one vineyard block (of any size they choose, even a few rows) regeneratively and compare results with their other vineyard blocks over a year or more.
“Our vision is to make Paso Robles the most regenerative AVA in the country,” said Linda Parker Sanpei, executive director of the Paso Robles CAB Collective. (CAB stands for Cabernet and Bordeaux, reflecting a grape and style of wine Paso excels in.) “This is one of the most exciting initiatives in the world of wine today.”
“Regenerative” is the new evolution in sustainability and environmentally friendly farming in response to climate change because it advocates practices that capture carbon in the soil instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. The most controversial of these is a restriction against tilling the soil. If you hear growers drop the phrase “no till,” they’re talking regen. It’s a sharp break from the common practice of planting an annual cover crop on every other vineyard row, then tilling it into the soil to add the plant’s nutrients. Regenerative viticulture rejects this practice because tilling disrupts the topsoil’s biomass and releases carbon into the air. A permanent cover crop strengthens topsoil by building a root mass that encourages earthworms and other beneficial organisms. It also helps retain water, a vital advantage in drought-prone California.
The Regenerative Viticulture Foundation was founded in 2021 by Stephen Cronk, a British expat who followed the Peter Mayle paradigm and uprooted his family to Provence to establish a successful rosé house called Maison Mirabeau. He had become interested in regenerative farming but couldn’t find a resource to help him learn about it.
“No one was teaching it, none of the unis [universities] at Davis, Geisenheim or Montpellier,” Cronk said. So he set up the RVF to help educate wineries and encourage them to transition to regenerative farming. He teamed up with Caine Thompson, head of sustainability for O’Neill Vintners & Distillers and managing director for O’Neill’s Robert Hall Winery in Paso Robles. Thompson also serves as a technical director for the RVF. They hope to launch similar pilots in New Zealand, South Africa, Portugal and Canada.
“The regenerative wines had a lot more body and structure … [W]e weren’t really thinking of this as a way to improve wine quality. But if that’s a bonus, great!”
- Stasi Seay, Hope Family Wines
Thompson initiated a trial at Robert Hall in 2021 to compare regenerative farming with the certified sustainable practices already in use there. The results were impressive enough after one year that he decided to convert all 140 acres at Robert Hall to regenerative farming. O’Neill Vintners and Distillers is now converting more than 600 other acres of its vineyard holdings to regenerative and is “starting the conversation” with its grower suppliers as well, Thompson said. (In addition to Robert Hall Winery, the O’Neill wine portfolio includes Ram’s Gate winery in Sonoma County and the brands Line 39, Fit Vine, Harken, Rabble, Substance, Charles Woodson’s Intercept, and Allegro Cellars.)
“We found that the vine is more resilient to climate extremes, particularly in hot years,” Thompson said of his trial at Robert Hall. “We’ve got a healthier, stronger canopy, with a darker leaf, almost like umbrellas protecting the fruit. The quality of fruit improved because there’s no dehydration or shrivel, so there’s more pure character allowing the fruit to express the terroir of site, soil, season and time better than the adjacent vines that suffer in the climate extreme.”
Thompson and Cronk presented these results to 60 fellow Paso Robles growers at a workshop in late January to introduce the 1 Block Challenge. The workshop included a comparative tasting of wines made from the Robert Hall test block against wines produced in the control block. They convinced 25 growers and wineries to participate in the challenge.
1BC participants will be asked to commit to at least three basic tenets of regenerative viticulture for at least one vintage: No use of synthetic herbicides, maintaining a permanent cover crop, and minimal or no tillage between the vine rows. The group will meet monthly at one of the participating vineyards for updates and to share notes.
Hope Family Wines was already adopting some regenerative practices, so joining the 1BC was an easy leap, said Stasi Seay, director of vineyards and community relations for the company that includes Austin Hope, Treana, Liberty School, Quest, Troublemaker and Austin wine brands. Hope Family stopped using herbicides on its 43 acres of vineyards six years ago and has required its approximately 4 dozen grower suppliers to become certified sustainable. Now is a good time to introduce new farming practices because many vineyards planted around the turn of the century are being replanted, Seay added.
The next steps for Hope Family are to install beehives and pollinator plants around the vineyards to promote biodiversity and use sheep to graze the vineyard cover crop.
“It’s hard to get a herd in here these days, because a lot of people in Paso are using them,” Seay said.
Biodiversity does have downsides. “When you’re not tilling, the gophers and ground squirrels move in, because the soil isn’t being disturbed,” Seay said. “You’re not discing, but you need to be trapping.”
She will leave two of the 43 acres as a control and hopes to convince the winemaking team to produce small trial lots the way Robert Hall did.
“The regenerative wines had a lot more body and structure than the conventional vineyard,” she said of the tasting at the workshop. “That was intriguing to me, because we weren’t really thinking of this as a way to improve wine quality. But if that’s a bonus, great!”
At Copia Vineyards, Anita and Varindar Sahi began farming their primary vineyard in Paso’s Willow Creek District regeneratively last year. They also began planting in a new vineyard in the Adelaida District, using regenerative farming on one of the 12 blocks there. Varindar Sahi said he will use that block, planted to syrah, in the 1BC, and another syrah block as a control. The vineyard had been farmed conventionally before the Sahis purchased it in 2022 and ripped out the vines.
“I know there will be a difference in the soil, but I’m really eager to see how regenerative farming affects the chemistry of the grapes, the acidy, pH and phenolics,” Varindar Sahi said.
Thompson expressed confidence that the 1 Block Challenge will be a small but transformative step for those who take part.
“If regenerative farming is going to change the world, which we believe it can and will, you have to bring everyone along on the journey, and allowing them to participate as a community will build confidence,” he said.
And that Taoist proverb? A less prosaic, more literal translation would be “A journey of a thousand miles begins under one’s feet.”
Was just chatting in the baseball stands with a young person interested in regenerative farming in Napa. I think now is a great time for further experimentation and transition to occur for those who can and are willing to invest in this. We all should be!