Stewardship

“I don’t know if you could spend time in a place like Alder Springs and not become an environmentalist,” says Stu Bewley, who values the profusion of native wildlife on the Ranch as much as he does its viticultural potential. Bewley sees no inherent conflict between the two: “I really feel that grape growing success can only come with sustainability, that in the long run you can’t grow high quality fruit with an industrial agro-business approach. But the questions about how to farm truly sustainably haven’t all been answered.”

This is just the kind of open-ended challenge Bewley has always relished. Using Alder Springs as a laboratory, he’s brought in some of the most innovative minds in engineering and restoration to try new approaches, like a cutting-edge frost-spray-system that could reduce the common practice of using sprinklers to prevent freezing – with the potential of saving millions of gallons of water in California vineyards each spring. Working with renowned environmentalist Danny Haggins of the Pacific Watershed Associates, Alder Springs has implemented a system of outsloped roads with rolling dips that prevent erosion. “We had to redo the first section five times before we figured it out, but the benefit to the watershed and to other vineyards who may implement this system made it worthwhile.”

One of the great natural treasures of Alder Springs are its five year-round steelhead and salmon streams. To prevent erosion into these fragile waterways, Bewley has installed extensive French drains, plants his vines with extra-wide setbacks from streams, and cultivates a permanent cover crop of nitrogen-fixing clover and grasses between rows. He has also actively partnered with the Department of Fish and Game on a handful of stream restoration programs. Logging damage from the 1940s was causing soil to run off into the streams, and using revenues from the vineyard, Bewley has fixed these problems. He has also implemented the Chevron Drainage System™, which prevents surface erosion. Perhaps most importantly, to avoid tapping into the streams for irrigation, in 1993 Bewley decided to dig a series of ponds to collect rainwater for irrigation, ponds so thoughtfully designed that they have not just met all his water needs, but simultaneously become vital gathering spots for wildlife.

To the extent possible, pest and weed control are done organically. Bewley is in his sixth year of an organic research project to prevent weed growth by planting short species of grass which eliminate the need for herbicides or undervine tilling. A robust population of barn owls – comfortably accommodated in several dozen nesting boxes – keep gophers in check. Wild turkey also pitch in with pest control, as do beneficial insects, like predatory mites and spiders. “Our objective is to control everything naturally,” says Bewley. “We always use nature as our first line of defense.”

Just 140 acres of the sprawling Alder Springs Ranch are dedicated to viticulture, which is exactly how Stu Bewley likes it. The rest of the rugged 6,000-acre property is a crazy quilt of cool evergreen forests, arid manzanita thickets, craggy peaks and sun-dappled valleys. This diversity of terrain provides habitat for a staggering diversity of native California plants and animals. On any given day you might see a silver osprey clutching a steelhead trout in its talons, a black bear foraging for blackberries, a grey fox skulking through the tanoak, and a family of river otters. When he bought the Ranch in 1991, Bewley resolved to not only preserve the rich ecosystem, but actively strengthen it. And he has done so. “The frogs came first, seemingly out of nowhere,” recalls Bewley. “And after that the wildlife just exploded: lizards, ducks, herons, these little birds that patrol the shore called killdeer.” Recently, for the first time in memory, once-endangered bald eagles and peregrine falcons have been seen nesting at Alder Springs.