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In the Vines is a five-part series exploring wine in Paso Robles. Through sound-rich feature reporting, KCBX's Benjamin Purper examines the positives and negatives of the city's transformation into a wine town, and what the future might hold for this emerging wine country.

In the Vines: How regenerative farming could help the Paso Robles wine industry reach sustainability

Jason Haas walks up "Scruffy Hill" with his dog Sadie at Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles.
Benjamin Purper
Jason Haas walks up "Scruffy Hill" with his dog Sadie at Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles.

Paso Robles has successfully transformed itself into a major wine hub over the last few decades, but the future of that status is uncertain. Housing, laborand environmental issuesare threatening the foundations of the industry both now and in the future.

One winemaker is helping the Paso Robles wine industry move towards sustainability — not just for the vines, but for the community as a whole.

12 miles west of downtown Paso Robles is a hilly vineyard and winery called Tablas Creek, owned by proprietor Jason Haas.

A hill on the property offers a panoramic view of the entire Adelaida District, one of the 11 distinct wine grape-growing areas in Paso Robles. It’s a mountainous area covered in green grapevines, close enough to the coast for visitors to feel a cool Pacific breeze.

The Haas family moved to this idyllic part of Paso Robles in 1989. Jason’s father, Robert, was renowned in the wine industry not just locally but internationally, having formed industry connections throughout France.

Jason Haas says his father, who died in 2018, worked with the Perrin winemaking family in France to find land in California suitable for the kinds of grapes grown in the famous Rhone region.

“We didn't come into this with land in Paso Robles or history in Paso Robles," Haas said. "We came into it with an idea that we wanted to translate the ideas [and] the inspiration of the Southern Rhone Valley from France into California somewhere.”

Sadie is Tablas Creek's vineyard dog. Jason Haas says while she is an Australian Shepherd, she's more of a pet than a herder.
Benjamin Purper
Sadie is Tablas Creek's vineyard dog. Jason Haas says while she is an Australian Shepherd, she's more of a pet than a herder.

Translating French winemaking traditions to a California vineyard meant forgoing many of the irrigation practices they saw in most of the state’s vineyards. Instead of drip irrigation continuously providing water to the vines, Tablas Creek practices dry farming, where vines are carefully planted and maintained to need irrigation only once — or never — and instead make do with small amounts of rainwater.

The Haas family spent years searching for the right climate and soil conditions to be able to do this in California, and settled on the Adelaida District of Paso Robles.

“I think it was to my dad's surprise as much as anyone else's that Paso was the place that ended up being that best fit, because in 1989 when we started, I don't think Paso was on anybody's list of the next great California wine region," Haas said.

While his family initially began dry farming to get the best quality wine grapes reminiscent of the Rhone Valley, Haas says it’s now taken on another meaning.

“Our initial concern was farming in the right way to maximize the quality and character of the grapes that we grow. And that's still true, but I think we've all become so much more conscious of the likely future impacts of climate change — meaning we're convinced that the future is likely to be drier than the past here.”

Climate change is very much on the minds of winemakers in Paso Robles, an area facing a critically over-pumped groundwater basin, mainly by vineyards forced to rely more heavily on groundwater in the face of persistent drought.

Wells are running dry left and right, and the area now has to overhaul its water use practices to meet the state’s legal definition of sustainability.

“With the growth in the number of wineries and the growth of the region, there's more pressure on shared resources like groundwater than there's ever been," Haas said.

Drought and climate change have changed the calculations winemakers in Paso Robles have to make in order to protect their livelihoods.

"When you plant a grapevine, you hope it lives a hundred years. Now, you're trying to project forwards to ensure that the choices that you make give yourself a chance to maximize the viability of this very long-lived and high-investment kind of crop."

With this in mind, Haas decided to double down on the water-conserving practices his father first implemented here. Over the years, Tablas Creek secured the certifications of “sustainable,” “organic” and “biodynamic,” which all refer to farming methods that are better for the environment and society than industrial farming.

Haas says they were appreciative and proud of all those certifications, but that each one was incomplete or vaguely-defined in some way. Then, in 2017, he was offered the chance to be the first winery in the nation for a new certification — regenerative organic farming.

Haas said yes.

“It does things that none of these existing certifications do, and so I think it has the ability to be a game-changer," he said.

Regenerative organic farming is a process meant to actually restore and contribute to the health of the soil and wider ecosystem. There are three pillars of this kind of farming: soil health, animal welfare and social fairness.

The certification’s guidelines say soil health can be improved through a number of practices like composting, no-till farming, creating habitats for pollinators, and— of course — forgoing drip irrigation. Animal welfare means livestock are raised on organic land and feed, and that they are treated humanely in herding, handling, and slaughtering.

“Social fairness” is a requirement to pay all workers, including sub-contracted and migrant farmworkers, living wages and ensure that their health, safety and rights are protected. Haas said the certification has precise rules on paying workers a living wage, factoring in costs like transportation, healthcare and housing.

At his vineyard, Haas uses the regenerative organic certification’s formulafor calculating his workers’ pay. His minimum wage for employees is just over twenty dollars, about five dollars more than the state’s minimum wage — which he said is a step towards social fairness, because vineyard workers have to struggle with high housing costs just like everyone else on the Central Coast.

“It's a proxy for what we hope will become the gold standard for great farming, where you can trust that a product that has this seal on its label is farmed in a way that has positive impacts on its land, on its neighborhood, on its workers and on its community," Haas said.

Getting certified takes a long time, but it’s catching on. Currently, there are 13 certified farms in California.

But farming like this is easier said than done. Dry farming alone isn’t possible for every grower, even if they have the knowledge to do it.

A Cal Poly San Luis Obispo study last year analyzing irrigation practices in Paso Robles vineyards found that water-saving practices like dry farming are not prevalent in the area. It found that the initial costs to these techniques were the biggest barrier, especially among smaller farmers with fewer resources.

Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles has a long history of dry farming.
Benjamin Purper
Tablas Creek Vineyard in Paso Robles has a long history of dry farming.

Farmers also need to know how to use these techniques effectively, which is why the study found farmer-to-farmer communication to be the most important factor in their adoption.

“So that's a lot of what we try to do, is spend a lot of time hosting other vineyard and winery folks, either viticulturists or owners, and trying to share the story of why this is a good thing to try to pursue both in terms of wine quality and grapevine health," Haas said.

The Cal Poly study includes completed surveys from 91 Paso Robles vineyards, out of more than 200 total, meaning there isn't a full picture of how widespread these practices are. But Haas says anecdotally, he thinks interest is growing.

"I know of a couple who have actually applied for the regenerative organic certification," he said.

Of course, Tablas Creek is a for-profit business like any other winery in Paso Robles, though a relatively small one. It was recently named one of the nine Central Coast wineries to make Wine & Spirits Magazine’s list of 100 best wineries in the world.

For Haas, there's no reason the social and environmental benefits of regenerative organic farming can't also be a good business decision.

“The same choices that we feel like are maximizing the quality of fruit, and the character of the fruit that we're growing, are having positive impacts on the long-term viability of not just what we're doing, but the viability of the wine community out here," he said.

The wine “community” may be a better term than the wine “industry” to describe the wide spectrum of people making wine in Paso Robles. It's not just vineyard owners, but also farmworkers, sommeliers, students, home winemakers and even musicians who play at tasting rooms.

The shadows cast by rising housing costs, farm labor scarcity, drought and climate change are, in some areas of Paso Robles, being challenged by the thinking and practices of concerned businesses like Tablas Creek.

As Jason Haas says, when you plant a grapevine, you hope it lives a hundred years.

A map of all the current regenerative organic certified farms in the world. Tablas Creek was the first vineyard in the world to receive that certification.
Screenshot/regenorganic.org
A map of all the current regenerative organic certified farms in the world. Tablas Creek was the first vineyard in the world to receive that certification.

This piece was produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corpsfunded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.

Benjamin Purper was News Director of KCBX from May of 2021 to September of 2023. He came from California’s Inland Empire, where he spent three years as a reporter and Morning Edition host at KVCR in San Bernardino. Dozens of his stories have aired on KQED’s California Report, and his work has broadcast on NPR's news magazines, as well. In addition to radio, Ben has worked as a newspaper reporter and freelance writer.
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