VINEYARDS
Farming Philosophy
Our estate vineyard KIATRA was planted in 2012 and has been farmed organically since the outset. Over the last decade we have pursued a keenly intentional focus on soil health and regenerative farming practices to ensure that the vines remain healthy and continue to offer the promise of great vintages for decades ahead.
KIATRA vineyard is now under the stewardship of Phil Coturri and his highly skilled team at Enterprise Vineyards. Phil and his team have pioneered and utilized organic and bio dynamic farming methods since the 1970’s to achieve the highest level of land stewardship and resource use.
We believe strongly that farming intuition, traditional organic and biodynamic practices coupled with precision farming techniques will improve the quality of our wine, vintage to vintage.
KIATRA VINEYARDS
Technical Details
The Kiatra vineyard lies at the southern end of the renowned Napa Valley just minutes south of the Stags Leap AVA and Yountville AVA and east of the Oak Knoll AVA. Viticulture at this site goes back to 1850’s with active vineyards over the last 40 years.
At this site the grape growing season is longer—cooler in summer than the warmer Upper Valley and drier in winter allowing soils to warm earlier in the spring. The marine influence is strong here with foggy mornings and cool summer nights. Summer daytime temperatures can average 10°F cooler than St. Helena. This creates the longest growing season in the valley, providing early bud break and a long, leisurely growing season for optimal, balanced ripeness. The cooler nights and slowly rising daytime temperatures create a naturally long hang time for fruit to achieve bright acidity, great texture, fruit-forward aromas and elegant flavors.
Block 1a: East (67°) to West (274.5°)
Block 1b: East (67°) to West (274.5°)
Block 2a: Northeast (25°) to Southwest (240.5°)
Block 2b: Northeast (25°) to Southwest (240.5°)
Block 3a: East (67°) to West (274.5°)
Block 3b: East (67°) to West (274.5°)
Block 1a:Haire loam with some outcrop complex
Block 1b: Haire loam with some clay
Block 2a: Outcrop complex
Block 2b: Outcrop complex
Block 3a: Haire loam
Block 3b: Haire loam
Block 1a: Cabernet Sauvignon: Clone 412 on Rootstock: 1616c
Block 1b: Cabernet Sauvignon: Clone 412 on Rootstock: 1616c
Block 2a: Cabernet Sauvignon: Clone 338 on Rootstock: Schwartsman
Block 2b: Cabernet Sauvignon: Clone 338 on Rootstock: Schwartsman
Block 3a: Cabernet Sauvignon: Clone 338 on Rootstock: Schwartsman
Block 3b: Cabernet Sauvignon: Clone 685 on Rootstock: Schwartsman
S.M.A.R.T. FARMING FOR OUR VINEYARDS
Today growers are facing an unprecedented challenge of having to farm crops while being hampered by a shortage of labor, increasing costs and climate uncertainty. We believe that the best vineyards are farmed in a sustainable manner, farmed by experienced vineyard management teams leveraging both their farming experience and farmer’s intuition, plus data and automated actions from precision farming technologies.
We are developing a systems approach to enhance modern sustainable farming for use in vineyards and we call it S.M.A.R.T.
S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for Sustainable, Monitored, Automated, Resilient, and Tech Enabled. Phil calls it SMARTi and always adds intuition which we fully agree with and is often what makes farming so rewarding.
We strongly believe in the future of sustainable farming powered by emerging precision farming technologies to improve the quality of fruit while lowering emissions, cost of farming and making us more resilient to extreme climate events. Data driven decision making allows for faster reaction to weather changes and proactive and predictive measures. We are creating a climate resilient playbook to be able to respond to the change in climate. We have moved to a zero emissions farming by being a design partner and early adopter of an all electric tractor which is used for our farming operations. This ultimately will also improve the fruit quality for there will be no emission residue on the grapes.
Our approach is to collaborate with farmers, entrepreneurs, and members of the academic community to build a set of capabilities that helps shape and evolve this vision. We believe this will be a journey which will bring transformative change to how we farm in the future and our success relies on everyone collaborating closely to pave the path forward.
We share our framework and use cases openly with other growers at smart-farm.ai
