The most fascinating pieces of machinery at the winery these days have nothing to do with winemaking. Our new Favorite Things are the two giant Caterpillar D11Ns that are crawling back and forth across the neighboring 2,150 acres we just purchased. These are the triple-XL of tractors and those big boys are suited up for work.
Two months ago, we purchased two parcels of land directly across the road from our Matchbook winery. Neither parcel has been farmed for the past 20-odd years, which, in a nutshell, tells the story of the economics of traditional farming in the Dunnigan Hills. But in the past few years the economics of nut trees and, suddenly this year, of vineyards prompted us to expand our farming operation. That’s where the giant Cats come in. As the land sat fallow, the ground compacted. Before we can plant anything, we need to do a little ground work.
Picture this project much like starting a garden in a brand new subdivision. The soil may have been good at one time, but now it looks like cement. This part of the Dunnigan Hills has nice red, rocky soil, which is perfect for good drainage, but in its current state it is, well, hard as a rock. Just as all the gardening books recommend double digging and a pile of compost for that brand new yard, we need to do the same thing, just on a very large scale. We have three mountainous piles in the middle of our new property: one that looks like black dust, one that looks like white chalk and one looks like dark, loamy soil. The black dust is actually ash that is the residue from processing rice hulls. It is not only filled with microbes and potassium, it’s free. Our favorite price point. We begin all our vineyard developments by spreading the ash all over the ground. Then we fire up the pair of D11s, equip them with one enormous slip plow and rip the soil six feet deep. Three times. This is a slow, but essential effort and that deep plowing and the ash turn the hard tan ground into beautiful loose, black soil. That’s just step one. After smoothing out the rough edges, we lay out the planting rows with a GPS laser and spread gypsum (chalky, white calcium) and rich, loamy compost down each new vine row. This is all mixed in together to create a perfectly lovely little planting bed for the 500 acres of vines and 250 acres of olive trees to be planted in the spring.