Organics at Mission Hill
Rob Achurch and the viticulture team at Mission Hill are spending a lot more time in the vineyards as Mission Hill transitions to organic growing.
Mission Hill Family Estate is transitioning all of their vineyards to certified organic.
One of the three largest wineries in the province, with an annual production of 100,000 cases from 1,200 acres of company owned vineyards, Mission Hill Family Estate began the move towards full organic production in the 2017 season.
Rob Achurch, the viticulture manager for MH, spoke with O&V about the company’s vision, and the process.
“The owner (Anthony von Mandl) has a drive that he wants to see the land in better shape than he found it,” says Achurch. “He wants us to be good stewards and he wants the vineyards to be organic.”
There is a perception that putting an organic label on a wine is an excuse to charge more for it, regardless of quality, Achurch admits. “I don’t agree with that and it’s not our focus,” he says. “The owner is not doing this so he can charge an extra dollar for his wine.”
With a degree in viticulture from Charles Surt University in Australia and 10 years experience working in wineries down under, Achurch came to Mission Hill Family Estate in 2013. “It’s pretty neat to be a part of a chance to change the face of viticulture in the BC industry,” says Achurch. “But it has got to be done well.”
Doing it well requires a distinct philosophy change, Achurch admits. ”You can farm organically with a conventional mindset,” he says. “You can spray just as much using organic chemicals, but the way we are looking at it is not just about farming conventionally using organic products, it is about getting the land working healthily for us.
“Let’s see what we can do to reduce our whole use of pesticides,” adds Achurch. “In my mind that is a strategy that makes more sense. It’s better for the environment, it is better for the consumer, and it is better for my workers. An organic spray is still an input.”
Mission Hill Family Estate has been slowly moving along the organic path for a number of years, Achurch says. “We have been decreasing our herbicide use,” he says. “That was not a push to be organic but a push to be better for the environment essentially.”
Any new plantings or replants have been done with steel posts and any new irrigation infrastructure is completely underground to keep it out of the way of machinery.
The company has one 36-acre certified organic vineyard in Oliver that produces grapes for a “Terroir Collection” organic wine.
“We purchased an organic orchard in 2006 and planted Merlot,” says Achurch. It’s been a great learning vineyard he says, that has allowed the company to develop techniques for organic production over the last 12 years. “We are not going into it blindly.”
Those techniques will require resources and a change to the company management system, Achurch points out. “If you are not using herbicides to kill the weeds you have got to put a guy on a tractor with a plow,” he says. “While it used to take two days to spray a hundred acres, now it’s going to take him two months to plow it, so you have to increase equipment and increase labour to be able to get that job done in a timely manner.”
“The old saying is one guy for every 10 acres,” says Achurch. “But that will change. One guy and one tractor with one implement are simply not going to be able to manage the same area.”
Europe is a huge influence on the organic viticulture scene, Achurch says. “A lot of German and French vineyards have been organic for many, many years,” he says. “That is where I am finding the goodie bag of tools and equipment and ideas, because they have been doing it for so long.
“We have other blocs that we have been managing organically for the last year or two in preparation and we rolling out the program in stages. “Our vineyards in the north in Kelowna were managed all organic this year and we will be bringing that program further south in chunks as we go.”
There will also be changes to irrigation practices. “Our vineyards are 100 per cent drip. We started making that conversion quite a while ago and it’s made a huge difference,” says Achurch. “But we actually kept our overhead structure in place, because I do believe we will have to use it when we are farming organically to irrigate crops between rows.”
“Traditionally viticulture is monoculture and you get into that mind set where as organically I don’t view it as monoculture any more,” says Achurch. “You are viewing what is happening on the ground and what is happening between your plants. You consider that as part of the bio-diversity and part of the living vineyard as a whole.”
Mission Hill Family Estate will now be making a lot of compost. The company has bought two Sittler windrow machines and will be recycling all their grape materials and working with organic straw and vineyard materials. Achurch acknowledges that the slow release properties of compost-based nitrogen will be different. “We’ll need to sit back and see what our soil has got and what it needs to grow the plant healthily.”
Achurch admits there might be some minor drop in yield. The organic vineyard in Oliver is thinned down to 3.5 tonnes per acre. “Yield is not as pressing an issue if we are looking at 3 tonnes. If a block wants to crop 5 or 6 tonnes and it naturally decreases to 4 it may save us money because we are not thinning as much.
“I think we are in a unique position where at 1200 acres we own a tenth of the grape producing land in the Okanagan valley,” says Achurch. “If we can take all 1200 acres successfully organic more farmers are going to see that organic farming is not the devil, it’s not unapproachable, it’s not unattainable if we can do it and do it well.”
