Jordan Wine Country Table - Vol. 18, 2023 - 7

NEWS
F
armers love a challenge. Their lives' work is at the mercy of Mother
Nature-every day of every year. Brent Young, who leads all agricultural
operations at Jordan Vineyard & Winery, spent the last two years facing the greatest
challenge of his career. It wasn't the pandemic, planting thousands of grapevines
or creating a fire protection plan led by cattle. It was planting wildflowers.
After sharp declines in the Western monarch butterfly
population made international news headlines in 2019, Jordan
Winery took action to create native plant habitats for bees,
butterflies and other vital pollinators. Because Young is an
expert in growing grapes and other fruits, as well as vegetables,
he embraced the challenge of being the caregiver for more
plants on Jordan Estate. About 3,400 more plants, to be exact.
Over 24 months during the pandemic, Young worked
with San Francisco-based Pollinator Partnership, the world's
largest nonprofit dedicated to the protection and promotion of
pollinators and their ecosystems, to determine the best locations
to create habitats across the vast winery estate.
If you follow @jordanwinery on social media, you know
owner John Jordan loves to build things-outdoor tasting spaces,
new guest suites and now a new lobby-and the concept of
cutting corners is not in his DNA. Rather than adding a few
small pollinator habitats near the garden or the chateau with
easy access to water, Jordan approved the planting of eight acres
of pollinator sanctuaries across four sites of open land. That's
six football fields. Young's team planted 3,400 plants from
100 species, and scattered 200 pounds of wildflower seeds across
four sites. Each is dedicated to a different pollinator group: one
for hummingbirds, one for native bees, one for native bees and
butterflies, and one for monarchs and other butterflies. They
paid special attention to selecting plants that support specific
pollinators and finding suitable sites for those plants near creeks
or lakes-because there would be no irrigation.
" We are trying to establish native species naturally with
planting and sowing seeds on a large scale, " Young says.
" This model will work as long as we get rain. "
In 2020, the winter rains didn't arrive until March, and even
then, it wasn't enough. August, September and October of that
year were the state's warmest on record. Sonoma County's
2020-2021 rain year was the driest, according to the Sonoma
County Gazette, and 2022 was the second-driest year on record
in Sonoma County since reporting began 128 years ago.
This is not the kind of record-breaking news anyone, especially
a farmer, wants to hear.
" You have to remember that Mother Nature is in control, "
Young says. " She takes her time. This is going to be a slow process. "
Veteran Jordan vineyard foreman Manuel Lemus, who has
worked at the winery for more than 40 years, watered the young
pollinator sanctuaries by hand at least once a week. But when
duties of the vineyard, such as thinning grapes during veraison,
took priority during summer, the pollinator sanctuary plants had
to fend for themselves in the face of a historic drought.
Billy Synk, pollinator habitat specialist for Pollinator
Partnership has been working in habitat restoration for 13 years
in Northern California and has observed dramatic changes
in the amount, frequency and distribution of seasonal rain.
" Natives are still the ideal species to grow long-term because
WINECOUNTRYTABLE.COM 7
Young surveying
pollinator plantings
at the Jordan Estate.
" You have to remember that Mother
Nature is in control. She takes her time.
This is going to be a slow process. "
BRENT YOUNG
Director of Agricultural Operations
http://winecountrytable.com
Jordan Wine Country Table - Vol. 18, 2023

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