A short thread on how things change/don’t. This photo was from Eric’s last visit to Tablas Creek, in the depths of the 2012-2016 drought. I told him at the time that we made it through because of a series of extraordinary actions we took to reduce our demand for water. 1/ https://twitter.com/tablascreek/status/1249101346508136449

These included rethinking how we planted new vineyard (much more widely spaced) so that we could dry farm. It included new, deeper-rooting rootstocks. It included micro-emitters for frost protection. And it included investing in cover crops and a much larger animal flock. 2/

The flock and cover crop together increase our soil’s carbon content, which allows it to hold more moisture. In Paso Robles, we don’t have a water table at root-available depth, and it doesn’t rain for six months every year. The soil is our reservoir, if we allow it to be. 3/

Why mention this now? While the outside shock is different, we’re in the middle of another one right now. Coronavirus is a demand shock rather than a supply shock like a drought, but we’re having to reinvent ourselves as a business the way we did as a farm last decade. 4/

Without many of the ways we’ve always interacted with customers (tasting room, events, festivals) we’re investing in new technology, including live interactive sharing of what we’re doing on Facebook & Instagram, virtual Zoom tastings, and more storytelling via video and blog. 5/

As we found after the drought ended, the new things we’d learned to do in the vineyard led to healthier vines, better fruit, and wines with more character even when they weren’t existentially necessary. I don’t think it’s coincidence that 2017-2019 is maybe our best-ever run. 6/

Similarly, I feel like the new things we’re being forced to do to connect with customers will end up being valuable enough that we’ll keep finding ways to do them even once tasting rooms can reopen. After all, most of our customers weren’t making weekly trips to visit us. 7/

It seems relevant that we’d discussed doing, or even made starts on, many of these things before, but this crisis made us accelerate those efforts. And as we emerged from the drought better farmers, so too will we come out of this crisis a stronger business and industry. 8 & END/