In this episode of the Spilled Salt podcast, Paul Brock shares his incredible journey from a patent examiner to the co-owner of Silver Thread Winery. Alongside his wife Shannon, Paul has not only embraced the world of winemaking but has also become a champion for sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices.
From Patent Examiner to Winemaker
Paul Brock’s career didn’t start in the vineyards. He and his wife Shannon were living in Washington, DC, where Paul worked as a patent examiner and Shannon taught sixth grade. But in 2001, they hatched a five-year plan to break into the wine industry. They saved up while keeping their day jobs and prepared academically—Paul even took community college courses to fill gaps in his knowledge. Their plan included gaining real-world winemaking experience, which led them to a harvest stint at Whitehaven Winery in New Zealand.
After their New Zealand adventure, Paul pursued a Master’s degree in Enology and Viticulture at Cornell University, driven by their desire to return to their roots in upstate New York. By 2011, their dream came true—they acquired Silver Thread Vineyard in the Finger Lakes, right before the harvest season began.
Combining a Rich History with Innovation for Sustainability
Silver Thread Vineyard has a rich history, with vines dating back to the mid-1800s. Paul and Shannon were drawn to its established vineyards and the potential they saw in the property. Their goal was to continue and expand upon this legacy while introducing innovative farming practices.
As the Associate Professor of Viticulture and Wine Technology at Finger Lakes Community College, Paul has been uniquely positioned to blend academic knowledge with practical application. This dual role has allowed him to influence not just his own vineyard but also educate the next generation of grape growers and winemakers.
Embracing Regenerative Agriculture in the Vineyard
One of the standout features of Silver Thread Vineyard is its commitment to sustainability. Paul and Shannon have implemented a holistic approach known as biointensive viticulture, a form of regenerative agriculture that focuses on soil health, biodiversity, and sustainable farming practices.
Silver Thread generates 120% of its electrical needs from a 28-kilowatt solar array, making their winery building completely fossil-fuel-free. However, they still use diesel tractors, though the goal is to eventually transition to electric as technology improves.
Biointensive viticulture is about more than just avoiding chemicals. It’s a continuous process of learning and adapting to improve soil health and crop quality. Paul’s approach includes stopping the use of herbicides, allowing natural vegetation to grow, and focusing on biological disease control. This method has led to healthier, more resilient plants that can better withstand disease pressures.
Proving the Benefits of Biointensive Practices for Viticulture
Paul shared an eye-opening experience from 2018 that highlighted the benefits of their biointensive practices. During a challenging growing season marked by heavy rains and humidity, their organically farmed vineyard block thrived while conventionally farmed blocks struggled with disease. This success reinforced their commitment to sustainable practices and demonstrated the tangible benefits of their approach.
Transitioning to sustainable practices isn’t without its challenges. Paul emphasizes the importance of managing risk and taking calculated steps towards change. By keeping some conventional practices while experimenting with sustainable methods, Silver Thread has been able to maintain productivity and gradually move towards their goals.
For those looking to follow in their footsteps, Paul advises starting small and learning as you go. He founded a biointensive viticulture group to share knowledge and experiences, helping other growers navigate the complexities of sustainable farming.
Partnering with Like-Minded Growers to Lead the Way
While Silver Thread is focused on growing as many of their own grapes as possible, they also source from other growers who align with their values. Building long-term relationships and encouraging sustainable practices among their partners is key to maintaining quality and integrity in their winemaking process.
Paul and Shannon’s commitment to sustainability is also reflected in their participation in the New York Sustainable Winegrowing program. Silver Thread was one of the first wineries to include the New York Sustainable Winegrowing Trustmark on their label, signaling their dedication to improving sustainability practices over time.
Embracing Low Alcohol Trends to Meet Consumer Demand
In light of the growing no and low-alcohol movement, Paul believes the Finger Lakes region is uniquely positioned to benefit. The cool climate naturally produces lower alcohol wines, which align with current consumer preferences for lighter, food-friendly wines. Paul sees this as an opportunity rather than a challenge, emphasizing that embracing these trends can set the region apart.
Paul Brock’s journey from patent examiner to winemaker is a testament to the power of passion, planning, and perseverance. Through their dedication to sustainability and innovative farming practices, Paul and Shannon have transformed Silver Thread Vineyard into a leader in the Finger Lakes wine industry. For those inspired by their story, Paul’s advice is clear: embrace the journey, take calculated risks, and let your passion guide you.
Transcript
This transcript has been edited from its original form to support readability.
Maureen Ballatori: I’m Maureen Ballatori and this is Spilled Salt, a podcast on the thrills and spills from the food, beverage, and agriculture industries.
Today’s guest is Paul Brock. He’s the owner and winemaker of Silver Thread Winery, and he’s also an Assistant Professor of Viticulture and Wine Technology at Finger Lakes Community College.
The reason why I wanted to bring Paul on the podcast today is because he is very vocal about his sustainable and regenerative practices in grape growing and winemaking.
And so we talk about that today as well as his story, how he came to be owner of Silver Thread Vineyard with his wife Shannon.
One of my favorite questions to ask anybody who comes on the podcast these days from the wine or beer industry is to ask them about the movement that’s been happening to become more low alcohol. And so we talk about that very interesting perspective from Paul on that front.
He also shares a bit more about what it means to be bio-intensive in his viticulture practices at Silver Thread. Enjoy the conversation.
Maureen: Hey, Paul, how are you? Good, wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m excited to chat with you. Yeah, wonderful. Okay, so the name of the game is I always like to start with a little background. I’m a big believer in everything that you did before the work that you’re doing now contributed to your experience. So start us off, talk through where you got your start and lead up to today.
Paul Brock: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Shannon, my wife, who is my partner in crime at Silver Thread, and all other things in life, we transitioned into the wine industry in the early 2000s. We were working down in DC and I got a part-time gig at University of Maryland. We left those jobs in 2005 and did a harvest in New Zealand.
So in DC, I was a patent examiner. Shannon was a teacher. She was a sixth grade teacher. We did a harvest in New Zealand at Whitehaven Winery. And at the time I had applied to grad schools, had been accepted at Davis and Brock and Cornell and all the folks at Davis thought I should go to Cornell. So that’s what I did.
The end goal was to be in the Finger Lakes because we wanted to be closer to home. Both Shannon and I are from upstate New York, from Saratoga Springs, and we wanted to come back to New York to be part of this industry. We thought it was really exciting. So I ended up at Cornell after New Zealand and did that for a couple of years. Got my Master’s of Science studying Enology, but also I had projects heavily based in viticulture.
And after that, did a harvest with Ravines, worked at a couple other local Finger Lakes wineries for a couple of years, and then ended up at Finger Lakes Community College in 2010. And in 2011, Shannon and I finally closed the deal to buy Silver Thread. So we’ve had Silver Thread now since September 1st, 2011 so literally taking over a winery right before harvest. I did both FLCC and Silver Thread for 10 years and then I left FLCC for two years and now I’m doing both again.
Maureen: And what is your role at FLCC?
Paul: I am the Associate Professor of Viticulture and Wine Technology. So I’m teaching people how to grow grapes and make wine.
Maureen: Very cool. You mentioned that you did the New Zealand harvest and you were a patent examiner. So to me, that feels like a pretty big jump. Did you always have an interest in wine? Like what led you to do that New Zealand harvest?
Paul: We knew we needed some commercial winery experience. When we decided to get into the winery industry, it was probably 2001. We had come up with a five-year plan. Like this is how we’re going to get to grad school. Because we knew we didn’t have the money at the time to eventually buy a winery.
We knew we needed to save some money while we still had good paying jobs. And so we just kind of mapped out a plan. Five years later, in 2005, we left.
So Shannon and I are both highly educated. Before that, Shannon was working on her master’s degree at the time and teaching. She thought she’d be a teacher for the rest of her life, which she is actually. She’s just teaching people about wine now. So she finished her master’s degree and I started.
I took some community college classes because I had a degree in Chemical Engineering. I didn’t have any biology, so I needed to backfill some of my academic knowledge before going to grad school.
And at the same time, we really got into studying wine, the world of wine and wine vaults. And we ended up with the American Wine Society. And I got lucky and I met Joe Fiello from the University of Maryland there and ended up working with him from 2002 to 2005 as an unpaid volunteer to start and then he had to start paying me because he felt guilty about me going there.
As a government employee, I could do 40 hours in four days and then take one day of the week and go up and play at University of Maryland in the vineyard and the wine and stuff. So that was actually my start. So the plan always was to go to grad school, but in between get all this experience and get a commercial harvest too. We made wine at home, but that was just for fun.
Maureen: The dream was always the winery and these steps, even though this is why I always say that the things leading up to the work that you’re doing now all contributed, even though they seem disjointed in many cases, right? But that winding path led you here. And the undertone was always that education and goal for opening the winery.
Paul: 100 % and you know things happen along the way that aren’t foreseen and things change.
When we bought Silver Thread, there’d been vines here since the mid-1800s. The previous owner cleared an old Catawba vineyard that was still in production and then he cleared some land that had been abandoned in the 1930s, which was a vineyard back then. And so Silver Thread has a rich history of growing here that Richard Fiegel, who we bought Silver Thread from, bought it in 1977 originally, started.
He planted the first vinifera vines here in 1982. So we’re still farming some of those vines he planted in 1982. So we were super lucky that we had the opportunity to get Silver Thread. It had all the types of grapes that we were really interested in growing already as an established vineyard. It was kind of like, we were prepared for this opportunity and we got the opportunity.
And there’s a lot of luck involved in that, but really, what is luck? It’s preparation meeting the opportunity. So we’re at the right place at the right time and Richard wanted to retire and went rolling with it.
Maureen: Love it. So your regenerative practices are one of the main reasons why I wanted to have you on the show today. And so I understand that as it stands today, Silver Thread winery generates 100% of its energy needs from a 28 kilowatt solar array located on site. And you practice holistic regenerative farming called biointensive viticulture. Can you talk about that a bit?
Paul: Yes. So I just want to go back a little bit. We produce 120% of our electrical needs. So our winery building itself has no fossil fuels associated with it. So everything is electrical and that’s all coming from solar.
And the farm, we still have a diesel tractor. We still have some small engines that do some things like weed whacking and the plan is to phase those out over time. You know, right now electric tractors, they exist but they don’t really exist for everybody. So until they really exist in John Deere and Kubota are making in New Holland are making electric tractors, we’re probably going to stick with the diesel, unfortunately, but the goal is to transition out of that.
But with bio-intensive, that’s really a ground -up approach to farming. And it’s an outlook, it’s always changing. Even today, we’re making changes in how to get to 100% biological, organic method of growing.
It’s really, one of the things we did when we first got into it said no more herbicides. Like we’re going to treat the soil non -chemically and really question everything that has gotten our industry to the point that it is.
Now, historically, you’ve got to look at the Finger Lakes. We’re in a difficult climate to grow grapes. It’s challenging to grow grapes. They didn’t know how to do it when they started planting vinifera here, my neighbor, Rob Thomas, he said we had short day in the ground and we every year would rot and fall apart and then one year we finally did the right things and we got a crop and we didn’t know what to do with it.
And you know, that history is something we’re all part of. We actually figured it out. Cornell helped us figure it out. We have a very conventional way of growing grapes. And the bio-intensive approach is really challenging all of that and getting away from what we know how to be successful and looking for another way of being successful.
Maureen: Before you continue in that, Paul, can you define it for me and for everyone? What does bio-intensive viticulture mean?
Paul: It’s a form of regenerative agriculture. So if people are familiar with regenerative ag, I think it best fits into that box.
However, we started with that term biointensive before I’d ever heard the term regenerative ag. And I think regenerative ag has started to be thrown around, but I really didn’t start hearing that until about 2019, 2020. And at that point, we were already three years deep into saying biointensive.
I think that it works really well to have this word biointensive viticulture. Because regenerative ag can encompass any type of agriculture. But I think a lot of the meat of regenerative ag is really being sorted out well with field crops. And you know, because that’s where the money is. That’s where most of the farmland is in the world.
So to do this bio-intensive, so looking at the soil, right? So number one, no herbicides, getting life back in the soil.
I remember after we were a year or two into this, I needed to put a drainage tile. I had a wet spot in my vineyard, so I needed to drain that out. And I started digging in my headlands. Now the headlands were right next to a stream. It had never been farmed before, right?
The soil is black and dark and really full of life. And then as I dug across my headlands into the vineyard, by the time I got in the vineyard, the soil was light brown and dead. And I’m like, I don’t want my soil to look like this. This used to look like what was next to the stream. I want it to look like that again. And so, I mean, we’re already into it, but it takes a long time.
You can’t just flip a switch and go, we’re spraying herbicides in 2015 and by 2019, everything looks like it did 150 years ago. You just can’t do it that way. It’s an ongoing process. It’s always questioning, how are we doing this?
So the first thing we did is we’re going to let things grow under the vine. You know, nothing is weed except for poison ivy. And let things grow. And when we first started, we planted fescue and we had this gorgeous fescue under our vines and we didn’t even cultivate under the vines for years.
And then we realized that fescue was a little bit too competitive. So we had to change course. And that’s part of biointensive growing too, is just constantly evaluating what you’re doing and changing course so that you’re doing the best thing.
Obviously you’re doing the best thing for the soil, but you’ve also got to make money. You can’t do this and lose 50 % of your crop. I’m a big advocate of getting a clean, clean fruit at the end of the day. And in the end in the beginning, when I went into this industry is to go in as a winemaker, knowing that I had to grow grapes too.
I thought that the growing grapes part was the easy part. Turns out that the growing grapes part is really the only part.
And from a winemaking standpoint, I have a really hard time wrapping my head around winemaking when you don’t have full control over grapes. We still buy some grapes and we’ve really been an influence on some of the people that we buy grapes from for them to change their product processes. Have they changed as much as us? No, we’re trying to lead the way to show other people what to do.
It starts at the soil, no herbicides, getting things growing in the soil, adding compost back to the soil, and natural farming. We try to generate as much of the compost that we spread on site. So that includes everything that comes off of our crush pad is well -composted over 18 months before it’s spread on the vineyard. It’s mixed with wood chips, hopefully from our site or from the neighborhood around here.
We have animals on the farm, we have chickens and ducks, and it’s important we had them in the vineyard before and then they were all getting eaten, so we’ve had to take them out of the vineyard.It turns out hawks and foxes really love to eat them. And like when a fox decides to eat chickens, they like to eat five or six in a day. And when a hawk decides to eat chickens, they eat one or two in a day.
Maureen: The animals were getting eaten?
Paul: It’s constant once it starts. So we’ve secluded our birds. We still use all the bedding and everything in our compost. And the goal over the next few weeks is to get them back in the vineyard where they’re still protected.
What’s more important is to make sure the vines are growing the right way. Every year between February and July, it’s really intense in the vineyard, just trying to get everything the way it’s supposed to be so that we have the end goal of getting clean fruit at the end of the season.
The other part is biointensive. So we have the soil part, we have the animal part. And then we have the disease control part, which is the dirty word that nobody wants to talk about in viticulture.
We live in a humid climate where it rains during the growing season. So we do have to manage grapevine fungal diseases and do that in an organic and biological way. And really I stress the biological part because we can say conventional, like it’s a dirty word almost.
I don’t look at my colleagues, conventional farmers, and I don’t fault them for being that way because they’re trying to make a living. That’s the way they know. But, if you can be better to the environment and still get a good crop at the end of the day and have healthier plants. And that’s the direction that we’re going, is having healthier plants.
With the biological aspect of it, it’s newer materials. Because conventional organic farming relies on the chemistry of sulfur and copper, I still have some problems with that.
Moving in a new direction with organic biological farming is really using organisms, extracts of plants, extracts of fermentations. And I say microorganisms, I mean microorganisms used in bacteria to do the disease fighting and the insect control that otherwise is done by the agro-industrial complex, where there’s so many chemicals out there that are being produced in mass. And that’s what most agriculture is using to fight disease.
We’re trying to use different things. And being more, what does Shannon always say? It’s like a probiotic. So a lot of the things we’re using is asking the plant to respond to what we’re putting on the vine and do some of the defense themselves versus the chemistry from the agro and dust the conventional chemicals are doing the work for the plant.
So if you ask the plant to do some of the work itself, it’s a stronger plant. You get better, stronger cells and you get thicker skins and thicker skins, fungus can’t go through and you get more flavor and all these other things. Like everything changes. And it was like a big thing when we first really dove into this, we did a little bit in 2017. 2018, we really got into it.
And we had one vineyard that was all biological and organic, one block, and then two blocks that weren’t, or farming them the way we’d always farmed. And with the biological and organic one, now in 2018 we had this flood here. We had 11 inches and five hours on August 14th. That’s a heck of a lot of water and a short amount of time. And after that flood, it never dried out. It was cloudy. It was the most humid. It was the cloudiest and most humid ripening period between mid -August and the end of October. So it was very challenging with disease.
Our organic and biological vineyard was bulletproof. And the conventional vineyard, it was okay. Other conventional vineyards in the Finger Lakes just completely fell apart. There’s so much disease, especially in the Riesling. And we harvested this like spotless Riesling that year.
At that point, I was like, there’s something to this. I don’t know how this works, but we’re going to really double down on this and figure it out. And we have, I don’t know if we figured it out, but we’ve doubled down.
Maureen: You mentioned you kept one conventional and then you sort of leaned into the regenerative and sustainable methods on the other one. Did you do that on purpose as like a control?
Paul: As insurance, we knew we could do the conventional part and get a clean crop, which is the ultimate goal. But you know, the other thing with getting the super clean reasoning off of the bio and organic plot and not so much with the conventional stuff. The flavors are totally different. And we always talk about terroir terroir terroir.
Humans are part of that terroir. What we’re doing to control everything in the vineyard is going to influence the flavors and the aromas and everything. And I just had no idea that it was going to be that much different.
There’s this underlying aspect of even that says all of those grapes are still Silver Thread when we make them into wine. But now we’ve gone away from any conventional. We’re using all this biological approach.
And now we have a vineyard that’s brand new. We started planting in 2022. And that’s all there’s no, we don’t use any conventional materials. We’re still using a few conventional materials because while we had a really good success with Riesling when we took out all the conventional materials, we had some problems with our red varieties.
We had a new disease that nobody had ever seen or hadn’t really been well defined. And so we’re still using a few convention materials from that, but we’re trying to get away from that. And part of getting away from that is we planted some locally adapted varieties, which were 100% vinifera before.
The locally adapted varieties are 100% organic and biologic. And then we planted some Riesling Chardonnay right next to those, and they’re going to be 100% organic biologic.
Once we figure it out there, once I’m comfortable there, I’m already comfortable because I’m doing it, right? We’re going to try again with the red varieties. But we lost like 25% of our crop in 2019 on those red varieties. And that’s just not sustainable.
Maureen: Speaking of sustainable from the economic perspective, you have a very unique background and ability to understand this at a level that probably most grape growers and winemakers do not have. Like it’s just not common, right? And I think about my perspective too, coming from, we work with all clients across all sorts of agriculture and there’s a lot to be said for risk management, right?
So what are your thoughts about how, I don’t want to say uneducated because that’s not really a fair term. And I’m not saying that farmers are uneducated. I’m referring to a grape growing producer who is uneducated about sustainable practices and wants to move more in this direction, but also needs to manage risk. Where is a good place to start?
Paul: We have this bio-intensive viticulture group. Back in 2018, a gentleman by the name of Mike Diltonin and I founded this group. Mike Diltonin, his background is in apples and other orchard fruit. And he really wanted to get into the vineyard and he and I actually met, you’re going to laugh at this, he was actually the farm manager at Red Jacket Orchard at the time, but we met in the pool at the YMCA.
We both worked out at five o ‘clock in the morning and we realized that we had this commonality that we’re both fruit farmers. He had a really strong background in biodynamics and conventional and kind of everything in between. And, he really wanted to pursue, getting to know more about viticulture.
So six years after we met, he finally pinned me down and said do you want to try some of this? Absolutely, I absolutely want to try some of this. And so he was kind of like my coach.
Then after a year of trying a little bit, he and I started this bio-intensive viticulture group. So now it’s pretty much just me that manages it. Mike is still involved and he presents sometimes, but we meet once a month during the, between January and August and we just talk about these issues.
It is really difficult to wrap your head around it. So we’ve got people like me who really bought into this. We’ve got people who are just trying a few things and then we have a few people who are just kind of looking from the outside in.
And I get it. I mean, we get growers who are coming to these meetings that manage hundreds of acres. I manage 10 acres. And yes, 10 acres means as much to me as probably the 100 acres means to them. But I don’t know, I told you I’m from Saratoga Springs, what’s Saratoga known for horse racing, I’m kind of a risk taker at the same time.
I think it’s kind of not only my knowledge of being able to understand and integrate all of these systems and, and taking a leap of faith, based on scientific data at a very small scale and applying that to a larger scale, but also there’s got to be, it’s risk management. I like to say.
Maureen: I was just going to say the same thing. It really turns it from high risk to managed risk because you’re doing your research even the way that you’re talking about going into it, right?
We kept the conventional, some of the conventional while we took a chance on this other and then you do a little at a time, right? And each harvest you’re kind of changing maybe one more thing.
We do a lot of work in agritourism and that’s a really common thing in the agritourism industry as well. Let’s change one big thing a year, right? Then they can go into it from a seasoned perspective and it’s not too much too fast, but it’s keeping things fresh.
And so the seasonality of harvest really allows you to do the same thing. Now we’ve got an opportunity for what we want to take out next year or in the vein of grapes and many years, right?
Paul: Every mistake takes about three years to grow out of and if you make a mistake in the cellar, it takes about three years to sell that line two years, but you get that one chance, right? So it’s got to be a calculated risk. Anytime you take a risk, because if it becomes a mistake, then then it’s going to be around for a little while. But to a 25-year-old, three years sounds like a long time. For a 48-year-old probably not as much.
Maureen: You’ve got lots of irons in the fire, right? You’re not putting everything on that three-year risk, right? You know, it’s you’re breaking off a piece and like, let’s try this over here so that if it does fail, it doesn’t cost everything.
So for a person who’s so passionate about sustainability, how do you source grapes from other grape growing partners in a way that allows you to make sure that you’re aligned from a values perspective?
Paul: It is sometimes challenging. It’s a lot of times having those conversations and getting to understand where they’re willing to do things. And it’s not going to be just like what we’re doing, but if they can do one aspect of that or try something, let go of something that they’re attached to, that helps. And we have really long -term relationships with our growers.
And it’s that that’s kind of what it is. We’re always getting fruit from the same place and asking those growers we’re committed to you and you know, please do this and see where they’re willing to go from that.
We’re working on growing as much of our own grapes as possible. That’s what we’re planting. But for the long term we’re going to be buying some grapes from at least one of our neighbors. And that’s important to us. I mean, we do want to, now we have a neighbor who just grows grapes, Matt Doyle, Doyle Vineyard Management, and we think he does a really good job.
We get grapes from him and those Riesling grapes were planted in 1972. They’re the oldest, it’s the oldest commercial Riesling vineyard on Seneca Lake. And that means a lot to have that attachment to that history. Charles Fourney planted those grapes when he was at Gold Seal.
Helping Matt kind of understand some of these pieces and having his crew being part of learning about this means a lot. Like, Matt’s farming almost a thousand acres of grapes in the Finger Lakes. He’s the largest grower of grapes in the Finger Lakes, and he has an ear and a willingness to learn some of these things, and that’s a big deal. Not just me, but to a lot of other people who are buying grapes from that.
Maureen: It has an opportunity to make a big impact. So speaking of that, you’re one of the first wineries to include the New York Sustainable Winegrowing Trustmark on your label, which is really exciting. New York Wine and Grape Foundation just recently rolled that out. I’d love just briefly for you to talk about your thoughts on that program as a whole.
Paul: I was really as soon as, well, let me backup. The first time we tried to get that sustainability program through, I was just getting started in the Finger Lakes.
It was over 10 years ago and it kind of fell on its face because we couldn’t get the native growers to talk to the hybrid growers and talk to the NIFA growers and talk to Erie and Long Island and nobody could agree on anything.
About five or six years ago now, John Ingle really wanted to get it going again, so he got a bunch of the growers together. And I was just like, me, me, me, I want to be part of this.
I was in a small focus group that really fleshed through the whole program and got it to a point where the Wine and Grape Foundation was able to take it and run with it to make the sustainability program.
I’m really proud of having that small part of riding on John Ingle’s coattails and the people who came before us. And I remember even the first time they tried it, Richard Fiegel, who was the previous owner of Silver Thread, was actually one of the people on the organizing committee. He was a hundred percent organic grower way before his time. He was like a very hands-off winemaker, but it meant a lot to him.
I remember when we were going through the process of buying Silver Thread, he’s like, I don’t know if I’m going to join it when it’s actually up and running or I don’t know if I would join it because he was so focused on being something that nobody else at the time was doing. And when it came time for us to decide, well, do we want to be part of this thing that we helped create? And the answer is yes, because if you’re not part of it, you can’t push it in the direction to get that.
We’re really proud that there is this program. It’s to me a place for the industry to start and move forward. And the whole one of the major pillars of that program is to get more sustainable over time.
Not just to say we’re sustainable and hold that flag and carry it. It’s to get better and improve sustainability. So that to me is the highest value of that program for our industry going forward. But being one of the first ones to put it on the label, that was really cool. I remember I posted it on Instagram back in January. First put the label on a bottle of wine and I hadn’t seen anybody else do that but I’ve seen people do it since.
Maureen: I think it’s wonderful that it sounds like it happened the right way, right? It had stakeholder buy-in. It was sort of packaged together as this is what the people want. And then it was brought to the New York Wine and Grape Foundation for them to be able to amplify it and syndicate it from there. I also just think they did a wonderful job branding it as well. Born Collective did that work and I’ve talked to them about that. I just think they did an excellent job.
Last question for you, I was going to ask you about the symbolism of your logo and your wine labels and everything like that. I think it’s really interesting in terms of the story. But I’m going to ask you something else instead. And so anybody who’s interested in that component, those things are on Silver Threads website about the story of the turtle and the feathers and everything.
Instead, I want to talk about just briefly, if we can, the bigger picture of the alcohol movement across the board. Historically over the last couple of years, but really accelerating in very recent years, there’s been a no and low alcohol movement kind of coming down the pike and the World Health Organization just recently said no amount of alcohol is safe. How do you think that that is going to affect your winery and wineries like yours?
Paul: I like to think of the low alcohol movement just looking on the bright side of things. We’re in an area that is a cool climate. We don’t have a lot of sugar accumulation when compared to warm climates like California and Australia. So naturally our wines are low alcohol.
As a winemaker, I’m very low intervention and one of those very easy low intervention things is don’t change the sugar, get the alcohol that you have out of the vineyard and don’t change the acid, take the acid that you have out of the vineyard. And those manipulations are things that some people still hold on to. And I think, for our industry, breaking away from the idea that we have to have 12.5% or 13% alcohol wines. No, we don’t.
If we have the potential to have 11% alcohol or 10.5% alcohol, that is fine. And traditionally in classic cool climate European wine growing regions, that was fine. And it should be fine.
It wasn’t until recently that 14, 13% alcohol was normal and normalized. And I’m all for the idea of 11.5%, 10.5% alcohol.
It works great with Riesling. And frankly, I’m a Riesling winemaker. I’m in a cool climate. We make white wines.
I love making red wines too. And I don’t mind making them lower alcohol too. But Riesling is our bread and butter.
And most of the wines, over half the wines I make are Riesling or have Riesling in it. And that goes really well with alcohol. You know, nine and a half percent, reasonably, not a big deal.
You have all the flavor and all the wonderful things and wine is meant to be enjoyed with good company and food, right? And who wants to get wasted? You can have a third as much when you have a lower alcohol wine than if you have a high alcohol wine. That’s nice.
Maureen: So you’re saying you think that the Finger Lakes is uniquely positioned, being in a cool climate, to already be able to kind of lean into this and it tends to pair well with food already, right? So you think that it won’t have as big of an impact on the Finger Lakes and New York State really, this region, as opposed to California or other regions.
Paul: 100%.
It won’t have as big of an impact on us if we embrace it and let the world know that this is what we have naturally. In California, they’re de-alcoholizing things, they’re watering their ground to get to that level where they can say it’s low alcohol.
We’re not manipulating, we don’t have to manipulate, we already have low alcohol. Isn’t that great? That’s what we are. A
And I think from a wine making perspective, we’re a little handicapped going into that because so much of winemaking has been looking at that and trying to get to a certain alcohol.
We have to convince our winemakers to get away from that, that it’s okay to be low alcohol and show them, look, this is what’s going on. Everybody’s got to be aware of it and we’ve got to embrace that. So as long as we embrace it, Maureen, and let the world know, we’re going to be fine.
Maureen: You mentioned we’ve just got to get the winemakers to embrace it. And it’s called consumer demand for a reason. If the consumers are demanding to get the lower alcohol content, then the winemakers will get on board or they won’t. And the demand will show them what the people want.
Paul: People are looking for low alcohol wine, Silver Thread, come here. We have that.
Maureen: Excellent plug. Love it. Well, this was wonderful. Thank you so much. Great to be able to have you speak more about the biodynamic and bio-intensive viticulture as it relates to regenerative and that across the board, as well as a little bit more about your story.
I always love to be able to have a perspective on the industry at large too. So thanks for taking the time to join me today.
Paul: Thank you, Maureen. And just one thing, we are on the east side of Seneca Lake. So if you’re visiting wineries over here, please feel free to stop in.