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@ Ben Justman🍷
2025-06-08 13:53:45
High Elevation Wine Farming Works without chemicals
(while most other regions depend on them)
If it's not cold, and it's not dry, you're going to have pest, disease or fungus problems. Most U.S. wine regions don't offer both which is why farming organically is nearly impossible.
On the extreme difficulty end of the spectrum, Virginia (2% of US wine production) is too hot and too humid. Summer rain fuels black rot, downy mildew, powdery mildew, and botrytis. Only three vineyards in the entire state are certified organic.
The Finger Lakes (0.5%) are cold, but still humid. Same diseases.
California (81%) is dry, but pest pressure is extreme. They fight Pierce's disease, phylloxera, and leafroll virus with a mix of chemicals and integrated pest strategies.
Fighting all of these issues is while remaining organic can be like fighting against inflation by holding treasury bonds. Its just not affective enough and is the main reason why only 0.4% of the wine grapes grown in the USA are produced organically.
The best way to avoid these issues is to find a place that is just cold enough to kills pest and just dry enough to stave off infection while also not being too cold and too dry to be able to actually farm.
Only small pockets of these zipper zones exist around the USA and they do come with their own challenges, but Colorado's West Elks AVA is one of them.
Here we farm at knifes edge between the Rocky Mountains and the Utah Desert. At 6,000+ feet, the winters kill off most threats and the arid summers prevent mildew.
The tradeoff? Most vines can't survive here and even the ones that do get frozen back to the ground (destroying an entire vintage) every few years.
Despite being known as a finicky grape, Pinot Noir thrives here. Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer and Riesling do too.
Our Wine Region is small, but this climate allows us to punch above our weight.
https://blossom.primal.net/48b214e93a26e390b0ff16599834b3c4ea4827682c02513b67ff6f5ee6fb64a4.jpg