Vineyard Nutrition Impacts in the Cellar
What happens in the vineyard impacts what happens in the cellar. This is true not only in the weeks leading up to harvest, but year-round. Dr. Paul Anamosa, viticulturist and soil chemist, will lay out how soil nutrition and decisions made in the vineyard affect grape chemistry, with a focus on potassium, YANs and pH. Then the viticulture / winemaking duo Drew Herman and Tres Burns from Alexana will share their experience collaborating throughout the year, providing a comprehensive timeline of those critical touchpoints. Viticulturists and winemakers alike will find great value in these lessons, so bring along your partner in wine!
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Speaker Bios
Paul Anamosa, Owner, Vineyard Soil Technologies
Dr. Paul Anamosa is the owner of Vineyard Soil Technologies, a California based viticultural consulting company, specializing in soil analysis and land evaluation for winegrape production, vineyard design, grapevine performance, and mineral nutritional disorders.
Dr. Anamosa was raised in New Mexico and has Bachelor of Science degrees in Biology, Chemistry, Agricultural Biology, and Pest Management from New Mexico State University. Dr. Anamosa joined the U.S. Peace Corp in 1979, and served as an Agricultural Extension Agent in Jamaica focusing on soil erosion and soil fertility management. He returned to the United States and earned a MS in Soil Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and then a Ph.D. in Soil Fertility Management from the University of Florida-Gainesville with a focus on international agricultural development. From 1985 to 1996, he worked as a research strategy consultant on soil fertility management issues in 15 African countries, and accumulated over 6 years of long-term assignments in Cameroon, Zaire (Dem. Rep. of Congo) and Senegal.
Dr. Anamosa returned to the United States in 1996, enrolled at University of California-Davis and received a M.S. in Viticulture in the spring of 1997. Paul then served as Vice President and Senior Soil Scientist for a viticultural consulting company for seven years prior to starting his own company, Vineyard Soil Technologies, in 2004. Paul estimates that since 1996 he has evaluated over 30,000 soil pits in the California wine growing regions.
Tresider Burns, Winemaker, Alexana Estate Vineyard & Winery
A native Oregonian, Tresider Burns took a circuitous route to winemaking with stops at the University of Virginia and eleven years in the tech industry between New York and San Francisco along the way. After returning to Oregon in 2008, and after some serious culture shock reentering the bucolic world of the Willamette Valley, he turned his focus to winemaking during his studies in the Oregon State University Fermentation Sciences Program. His Master’s thesis explored the effects of malolactic fermentation and cellar practices on Pinot noir color stability.
His first harvest job landed him at Lemelson Vineyards under the tutelage of winemaker Anthony King—a place he would spend the next four years learning organic winegrowing. In 2015, he took the role of Associate Winemaker under industry veteran Robert Brittan which led to a four-year apprenticeship learning the finer arts of winemaking across almost thirty vineyards and five wine labels. Burns joined White Rose Estate in 2019 to continue the tradition of whole cluster winemaking developed by the late Jesus Guillen. For three years he managed winemaking and tasting room operations at the little winery atop the Dundee Hills.
Tresider joined the Alexana Winery team in 2022 to continue the journey of coaxing compelling wines from an incredibly diverse site on the north side of the Dundee Hills.
Drew Herman, Director of Viticulture, Alexana Estate Vineyard & Winery
Drew Herman has been farming in The Northwest for over a decade and brings a unique background to his approach in vineyard management. After growing up raising livestock in rural Oklahoma, he went on to study Evolutionary Zoology and Botany at the University of Oklahoma. His attention quickly turned to the complex interplay between species in any given ecosystem. His philosophy is guided by understanding natural systems first, then exploiting natural tendencies in the quest for optimum plant and animal health.
Personal work and plenty of hands-on labor has led him to re-examine how plants interact within their environment, how nutrition is procured and, most importantly, how to measure it. He is currently working on converting Revana Portfolio’s vineyards in Dundee, Napa, and Mendoza over to certified organic farming. The sites are employing several techniques to rapidly increase soil health and available nutrition, including plant sap analysis, soil monitoring, prescribed grazing, and targeted foliar sprays.
Madeline Rowan-Davis (moderator), Vice President of Polyculture, Antica Terra
Madeleine Rowan-Davis grew up in Eugene, Oregon, spending her summers in high school and through college volunteering with the US Forest Service on several studies of bat behavior and ecology. After graduating from Mt Holyoke College with a degree in Biological Sciences, she worked as a biologist and ornithologist for a California ecological consulting firm while pouring wine on the weekends at a local tasting room, Bonny Doon Vineyard. The creativity and explorative approach to wine drew her to join the marketing department, running their unique and varied wine clubs, where she was at last exposed to the vineyard. Randall Grahm’s conversion to biodynamic farming ultimately inspired her to return to graduate school and combine her newfound love of wine with her background in ecology as a viticulturist.
After attending graduate school at UC Davis, studying vine water relations on complex slopes in the Priorat wine region of Spain, she left Davis to work as a viticulturist in the North Coast of California. After over a decade working for mid to large-sized vineyard management companies, she is now the Vice President of Polyculture for Antica Terra’s agricultural properties, building integrated systems to best steward the land and combat climate change through permaculture, viticulture, animal husbandry, and forest ecology, with vineyards under both Biodynamic and Organic certification.
