Wine & Spirits - October 2021 - 18

Spirits
A FIELD OF RYE AWAITING
HARVEST NEXT
TO A SWAMP OAK
bEHIND THE bARN AT
bRANcHWATER FARMS
Considering
the Climate
How distilleries are reducing their footprint
By CHANTAL MARTINEAU
n 2014, when Kevin PiKe and
Robin Touchet bought the
18th-century Hudson Valley
farm they hoped to turn into a
grain-to-glass distillery, Pike took
one look at the swamp behind the
old cow barn and thought, " I better
drain that. " But the swamp,
he would learn, was actually wetlands,
a crucial part of the local
ecosystem and a habitat for frogs,
snapping turtles, great blue herons
and a family of beavers.
" My original instinct was to
get as much tillable land as possible, "
he says. " That was the
wrong thinking. Instead of thinking
about what the land needs, I
was thinking about what I need. "
Pike and Touchet were new to
farming, which meant they were
open to new ideas-or new ideas
based on very old ideas. As their
Branchwater Farms evolved, the
couple were drawn to regenerative
farming principles as a way
to improve plant health without
using commercial fertilizers.
They planted cover crops, like
clover, which adds nitrogen to
18
I
the soil while shading out weeds,
and decided to refrain from tilling.
Mycorrhizal fungi, found in
the top 12 inches of healthy soil,
have been discovered to promote
an exchange of nutrients between
plants and soil. Keeping the fungi
intact allows the rich diversity of
soil's organic matter to thrive.
The couple grows corn and rye,
as well as the wheat they use to
make Branchwater Gin. In summer
their fields look wild, with
buckwheat, another cover crop,
and milkweed attracting butterflies
and other pollinators. Apple
and pear orchards for brandy will
come next. Touchet plans to graze
a flock of ducks in the orchards,
hoping they will gobble pests;
their manure can be used immediately
as opposed to nitrogenrich
chicken poop, which must
be composted first.
" We're trying to grow the soil
into a living thing, " says Pike, " as
opposed to something that gets
plowed, chopped up until
it's
dead-then you have to start all
over again. "
WINE & SPIR IT S Oc TO b ER 2021
The idea of farming in harmony
with nature appealed to
Touchet and Pike, who see themselves
as stewards of their land.
But regenerative agriculture is
more than just a feel-good way
of raising crops. Designed to
boost biodiversity both above
ground and below, the principles
of regenerative farming also
offer a way to sequester carbon.
The rotation of crops allows for
an ongoing cycle of carbon capture
through photosynthesis. Forgoing
tilling keeps carbon stored
in the soil rather than releasing it
into the atmosphere. Of course,
Branchwater Farms' biggest carbon
sink is its 75 acres of mostly
wooded land; only 25 acres are in
fields. Pike and Touchet hope to
enlist their neighbors to pool 500
acres in a land trust, protecting
it from development even after
they're gone.
cLIMATE NEUTRAL OFFERS cARbONNEUTRAL
cERTIFIcATION TO A VARIETY
OF INDUSTRIES, INcLUDING SPIRITS.
in the oPening Pages of her
new book, A Good Drink: In Pursuit
of Sustainable Spirits, Shanna
Farrell asks " what the disrupted
climate [means] for the future of
alcohol. " An interviewer with UC
Berkeley's Oral History Center,
Farrell has been researching how
distilleries are responding to climate
change, and agriculture certainly
plays a part in her findings.
But Farrell's biggest concern-
the focus of her interdisciplinary
graduate work in environmental
studies-is water. Distilleries use
vast amounts of it and produce an
estimated 12 times more wastewater
than alcohol, according to
a study published last year.
" [Distilling] is just such a waterintensive
practice and nobody
really knows how much they're
using, " Farrell says. " Especially
if you're using municipal water. "
In A Good Drink, Farrell
describes the impact of yellow
dent corn in American whiskey
production. The ubiquitous,
high-yielding variety is typically
farmed using pesticides that can
seep into groundwater. She travels
to Mexico, where droughts
have impacted dry-farmed agave
necessary to tequila and mezcal
production. Increased demand
for water-intensive crops destined
for export, like avocados, has led
to a shrinking supply of groundwater
available to agave farmers.
Sugarcane, used to make rum,
Farrell learns, may have the largest
footprint of any commodity
crop, requiring about nine gallons
of water per teaspoon of
refined sugar produced. What's
more,
clear-cutting forests
to
plant cane is rampant, resulting
in less vegetation to buffer runoff
after storms and polluting
waterways.
Farrell recalls working on
the book in late 2018 while the
smoke hung in the air from the
Camp Fire, which destroyed the
Wine & Spirits - October 2021

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