Damon, Rebecca and baby Sophia among their Pinot Noir vines

Organic, sustainable practices in a new local vineyard

In this week of thunder and rain, it’s pleasant to think back to a golden haze of a day on November 1, when I drove to the heights of the Dilworth Loop to visit the Alli Lanphear Farm and Vineyard.

Here, on fives acres that were farmed for decades by the Hoshi family, you can see a new beginning. Slopes that had gone over to scotch broom has been cleared, then planted in cover crop or left to grass. A new house now crowns the hill, fronted by flowers, warmed by sun, overlooking row after golden row of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and other trellised wine grapes. 

It’s easy to see this as another of Ron Irvine’s “sunny slopes” endowed with the perfect exposure for growing wine.

Damon Lanphear and Rebecca Alli Lanphear come out of the house to greet me. Little Sophia rides on Mom’s hip. Young couple, new kid, new house, big dreams. But as soon as we walk over to the new half-acre where new vines will go next year, I gather from the talk that farming, to them, is NOT new.

Learning by Doing

Damon is pointing out the cover crop. “We always start with cover crop: This is a, a—”

“Leg/oat,” Rebecca throws in.

“Yes, a legume/oat annual mix.” Damon picks up. “You lose a growing season, but you gain reduced weed pressure from perennial weeds, you break up the sod, you add structure to the soil.”

“We like to learn by doing,” Rebecca told me, “I began as an intern at Hogsback Farm ten years ago and worked there for a year and a half. Damon and I had a personal plot on a portion of their farm, and as we have always been interested in experimenting, we planted spelt, quinoa, amaranth, and a “three sisters” garden.” [That's the Navajo practice of growing beans, corn, and squash together for mutual support: the corn supports the climbing beans, the beans provide nitrogen, the squash shades the ground.]

This is not their only claim to experience: they’ve already made wine, beer, and mead, they’ve joined the Puget Sound Wine Growers Association, and they have gone to workshops through the Washington State Ag Extension office in Mt. Vernon, which serves as a research and education station for Puget Sound viticulture. 

They also toured France’s Burgundy wine country by bike in May 2008, seeing, learning, sitting down with wine growers, tasting their wine and being inspired. And they’ve tasted their way through wines recommended for our region—in some ways, deciding to buck the recommendations and plant for the wines they prefer, such as Chardonnay.

Developing the vines

We walk over to the Chardonnay vines—perhaps the only on Vashon and at eleven rows, definitely the largest planting. As we walk up and down the rows, we talk about spacing, watering, and vine development. 

The vines, “in their third leaf” are on three-foot centers, trellised along twin parallel rows six feet apart. New cover crop bristles in 4-6″ growth underfoot. I’m surprised to see drip-lines tied up to the 2-foot height trellis wire, but Damon explains “that’s both to give more trellis support and to get underneath to weed.”

He talks about “devigoirating the vines. Stressed vines make better wines. When the plant is stressed, it doesn’t grow such a full leaf canopy. When the canopy is open, more sun reaches the fruit, and that sunlight and airflow also protects against powdery mildew and fruit rot.”

I mention sulfur-dusting as a protection against mildew, which prompts Damon to expand upon the difference between organic wines “which among other practices, means no sulfites are used to produce the wine, and organic growing, where you can use sulfur to guard against diseases like powdery mildew.”

Rebecca cut in. “That IS part of our goal: we want to do organic, sustainable practices in the vineyard. 

Developing the soil

Deep in the rows of Pinor Noir, I reach down and scoop up a handful of soil the color of milk chocolate, ask about it. Damon says, “It’s an ‘alderwood-gravelly’ soil, basically a gravelly, sandy loam.” 

“We had a trench for our water-lines cut across the property, running in front of the house, so we could see down six feet, all that way,” says Rebecca. “It was amazing how much it changes, but basically, six feet down, it’s beach sand.”

“You feel how spongy and soft the soil is—like applesauce?” she continues. “That’s the tilling: it leaves the soil without any structure. You have to ‘clean cultivate’ the vineyard its first couple years to prevent any root competition from other plants.”

They started with a cover crop that covered the ground for a full year. In the second year, after turning under that first cover crop, they cleared the ground of all growth and planted the vines. For two growing seasons after that, they kept the soil “clean cultivated” so the roots of the young vines had no competition for nutrients.

At the end of the vine’s third year, the Lanphears planted two kinds of cover crops in alternating rows. In the odd rows is a perennial cover crop, New Zealand White Clover, which doesn’t run like other clovers and can be mown for tractor access to the rows.

In the even rows, the Lanphears have planted an annual cover crop of peas and vetch. These annual rows will be plowed under before the vines break into bud, hopefully with a chisel plow whose parallel tines will pull green matter under without pulverizing the soil’s structure. 

Both cover crops help reestablish a living soil structure that promotes drainage, holds nutrients, and brings oxygen to microbial soil life. 

For the rest of each summer, Damon plans to follow a European practice he saw in Burgundy: after plowing, these rows will be replanted in annual flowers like sunflower, lupine, and poppies to encourage beneficial insects. This is known as Integrated Pest Management, an organic practice standard. “In Europe, the red poppy is now a symbol of organic practices,” he says. “The vineyard should be alive.”

Developing the Farm & Winery

Their ultimate dream, I learn as we sit down around the kitchen table, is to produce 100-200 cases of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and other wines at affordable prices. They also want to develop other value-added products like pickles, vinegar’ed products,  miso and to collaborate with other Vashon food producers to create an alternative, integrated experience  in the same spirit as Sea Breeze Boucherie.”

Right now, they’re in the process of facility design, with plans for a barn, barrel storage, a full winery, a place for people to come try their wines and other local products.

I ask about the presence of Chardonnay, along with the much-adopted Pinot Noir. “We asked ourselves first, do we like it, can we be excited about it. Chardonnay has this troubled history: it’s associated with Napa practices of pushing toward fat, buttery, cloying tastes. This wine has more acids, minerality, a broadness on the palette that has been lost in the ‘message of chardonnay’. We want to become part of that movement to resurrect Chardonnay, of making an interesting white.”

Rebecca says, “We intend to follow organic and sustainable growing practices, but we may not opt to get organically certified. We probably won’t make certified-organic wine due to our use of sulfites and commercial yeast; however, as we progress, we intend to try winemaking without those additions.”

Many projects are ahead of the Lanphears. They’ve learned a lot already, but there’s much still to do, to experiment with and test, to see how well they can produce wine and how the public takes to it. But they seem like good caretakers of a land that once yielded much. Good luck to them.