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May 2017 WINES&VINES 73 GRAPEGROWING making the return on investment pretty quick, he said. The multi-function machines offer other efficiencies such as three-row spraying, mowing and canopy management. At a vineyard in the Howell Mountain AVA of Napa Valley, Graves said the Pellenc ma- chines can dump directly into bins that are already loaded on a flatbed truck. "We take the forklift out of the equation," he said. "It saves us about $75 per box." Graves was joined on the panel by Bart Haycraft, vineyard manager for Jackson Family Wines in Santa Barbara County. Haycraft said the company developed much of its Central Coast vineyard acreage in the early 1990s with 6-foot spacing and no cross arms to be harvested and tended by machines. These originally were large and complex multi-row machines but have since moved to using Pellenc and Braud machines for harvesting, leaf-pulling, spraying, mowing and some pruning. For optimal use with its machines, Pellenc recommends 5-foot by 7-foot row spacing with rows oriented northeast by southwest for vertical position trained vines. According to the supplier, such a setup provides cluster shading from the canopy in the neighboring row. Drip lines should be at 12 inches to 18 inches with the cordon wire a minimum of 2 feet and end posts no higher than 6.5 feet. Cross arms can be replaced with "J" clips, which can interfere with the mechanization of other tasks but should not affect harvest- ing if mounted 4 inches to 6 inches above the fruiting zone. During the WiVi session, Haycraft said using machines such as the Pellenc is no prob- lem with cane and spur pruning. Setting up a vineyard for more mechanized work helps the machines pay for themselves, especially when one considers hedging and mowing can occur at the same time. "If you have a line item budget, one of those passes is free," he said. Haycraft said Jackson Family Wines has found savings and efficiencies not just in tending vines or picking grapes. He said three large field presses eliminated the need to haul tons of grapes, and he's currently looking into an automated mixing and load- ing station for vineyard sprays. Automation also doesn't just replace the need for un- skilled labor but helps your existing employ- ees learn new skills in maintaining and operating the machines. "We're not looking to automate just to save money," he said. "We're also doing it so down the road the people we have will be far more skilled." It may take several years before machines are doing all vineyard work, and by then they may not even need human operators. That future may also include fully automated wineries, in which field destemmed grapes are dumped onto conveyors that distribute the berries into tanks equipped with auto- mated pump-over devices. Once ready, the finished wine could be pumped to barrels laid down by robotic forklifts and later pumped back to tanks that feed automated bottling lines that would load cases into self- driving delivery trucks. Perhaps it seems implausible, but 10 years ago, many winemakers were convinced that quality wine could never be made with ma- chine-harvested grapes. One of those skeptics was Jonathan Nagy, winemaker at Byron Vine- yard & Winery in Los Olivos, Calif. Nagy mod- erated the mechanization panel at WiVi and described the bins of machine-harvested grapes he saw early in his career as being full of juice and macerated grapes, leaves and other MOG. Several years later, he couldn't believe the improvement in quality. "It was beautiful," he said. "Whole berries and nothing else in there, and we went straight to tank. No need for destemming." Several years from now, it may seem ri- diculous that growers ever relied on some- thing as slow and laborious as picking grapes by hand.