Expanded image & captionAt a glance, the vineyard flourishing on the banks of Huichica Creek looks like many others adorning Napa hills and valleys in the heart of Northern California's world renown wine country. But Huichica Creek Vineyard is there for show - the first public demonstration vineyard of its kind in North America.
Huichica Creek Vineyard, developed on formerly over-grazed dairy pasture and hayfields, demonstrates long-term benefits of sustainable agriculture.
"We are fanning the vineyard with sustainable agriculture techniques that leave resources available for future use indefinitely," said Dennis Bowker of the Napa County Resource Conservation District (RCD), which owns and operates the vineyard. Bowker and others led the California Biodiversity Council on a tour of the vineyard and other watershed conservation projects during its two-day workshop and meeting in March.
Huichica Creek flows for 7.5 miles through the Carneros region of southern Napa County, where the climate is conducive to growing grapes that produce the region's best-known wines - pinot noir and chardonnay.
Local growers supplied materials and labor for the demonstration vineyard, which will be finished this year. The vineyard has a more natural appearance than the well-tilled soil and crisply manicured look of a vineyard treated with herbicides. Its rows are planted with "cover crops" of native grasses that increase biodiversity and reduce erosion. The RCD retained patches of natural habitat around the vineyard, and is planting native trees and wildflowers, and creating nesting areas for raptors, bats and swallows.
"If all that is growing in a vineyard is grapes, the only species that live there will be those that feed on grapes, such as pests," Bowker said.
Vineyards managed with sustainable methods are more productive, cheaper to operate, less reliant on pesticides, healthier for field workers, yield higher quality wine, and are better for the environment because they add fewer chemicals to the soil and water, and reduce erosion, Bowker said.
Two state agencies, the California Coastal Conservancy and the Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB), purchased 81 acres and divided it for separate uses. The Conservancy gave 21 acres to the RCD for the vineyard, and the WCB deeded 60 acres with Huichica Creek running through it, to the Department of Fish and Game (DFG) to enlarge the Napa-Sonoma Marshes Wildlife Area, the 10,000-acre wetland on San Pablo Bay that was bought by the state in 1994.
In 1988, the Napa County RCD formed the Huichica Creek Land Stewardship with 63 landowners and more than a dozen local, state, and federal agencies to address problems and needs of the watershed as a whole, rather than piece by piece. With the help of major landowner Lee Hudson, The Nature Conservancy, and several prominent wineries - Robert Mondavi, Sterling Vineyards, Domaine Chandon, and Buena Vista - they restored riparian habitat, planted new vegetation on overgrazed lands, and developed alternative farming systems for grapes and other perennial crops that protect and enhance water quality, which had been degraded by excessive soil erosion, sedimentation, pesticides, and fertilizers.
"It takes a cooperative effort to recover and protect Huichica Creek from its headwaters to San Pablo Bay because most of the land is privately owned," said James Swanson, a DFG wildlife biologist who manages the Napa-Sonoma Marshes Wildlife Area. "It cannot be done by one person or one agency."
Erosion that once plagued the creek has been nearly eliminated, and gravel beds once covered by mud have been exposed to serve as spawning grounds for steelhead and rainbow trout.
Many vineyards in the watershed now practice sustainable agriculture, but Huichica Creek Vineyard is the only public demonstration project, and makes its findings available to wineries that cannot conduct their own extensive testing programs.
Despite the advantages of sustainable agriculture, no single set of practices works for all vineyards, and the Napa RCD advocates adoption of sustainable methods suitable to the particular soil, irrigation, grapes, and other variables of a specific site.
Plans call for operating Huichica Creek Vineyard as a sustainable agriculture demonstration for 50 years. The first crop of wine grapes from the demonstration vineyard are expected in 1997, when the grapes will be marketed to local wineries. The plan is to eventually produce special wines from the demonstration vineyard.