Sustainable Viticulture Practices Workbook – Update
By Tom Kelly
This week, Turtle Zwadlo and I attended the latest meeting of the Sustainable Viticulture Practices Workbook Steering Committee. This is a workgroup of industry people representing both independent growers and winery personnel from around the state and is responsible for the development of the Sustainable Viticulture Practices Workbook under the guidance of Tony Wolf and his staff at the AREC center in Winchester, VA. Turtle and I have served in the workgroup from the beginning and it has been an exciting process to watch the workbook come together.
Last year, we finally released the first working draft at the 2011 Summer Technical meeting. Tremain Hatch from Virginia Tech, coordinator of the program, has been instrumental in compiling and drafting the document. He presented the draft version to those in attendance and received a lot of valuable feedback from the audience. These suggestions were then incorporated into the second draft now posted on the VVA website.
This week’s meeting included consultants Chris Hill and Jeanette Smith who both brought an amazing wealth of knowledge and experience from their great service around the state. Their perspective helped fine tune the structure and content of the workbook for what will the third draft that will be presented at this year’s Winter Technical meeting. There we will have an opportunity to review the workbook, provide feedback and hear from folks like Al MacDonald from Oregon who are already participating in similar, long standing sustainable programs. There will also be a questionnaire in your meeting binder that will allow you further opportunity to provide feedback. It has been the goal of the workgroup from the beginning to have this be an industry driven program and that means we need your input.
Subsequent meetings will provide further development to the content of the workbook as well as focus on where we ought to take program from here. This could be something as simple as creating a web based self-assessment tool to a full blown certification program or anything in between. It’s up to you!