Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/918844
24 WINES&VINES January 2018 WINE INDUSTRY NEWS QST offers its clients……. Professionally fabricated stainless tanks 35 years of tank fabrication experience Performance & reliability guarantees Custom designs & modern features Quick & competitive tank project pricing On site tank repairs & modifications Special application tanks of all sizes "In stock tanks" from 500 to 10,000 gallons 510 Caletti Ave. Windsor, Ca. 95492 Phone 707-837-2721 or Toll-Free 877-598-0672 www.qualitystainless.com Company Website winetanks@aol.com email contact/sales info Custom Fabricated Tanks for the perfect size & fit… or Ready to Ship "Stock Tanks" Either way QST is ready to assist our clients! Call QST today for information or pricing! QUALITY STAINLESS TANKS S an Luis Obispo, Calif.—As the labor shortage contin- ues and demand for high- quality wines rises, the need for mechanization in the vineyard is critical and inevitable, Bart Hay- craft, vineyard manager for Jack- son Family Wines, said recently at the Sustainable Ag Expo in San Luis Obispo. The event is hosted by the Vineyard Team. "I think there's a way to mecha- nize without compromising qual- ity," he said. "What you have to do is analyze your situation and see where you can improve and what makes sense. The other part of that is going out and finding the technol- ogy that will match the job that you need done." Sometimes, he added, "You're going to have to build it or find someone to build it for you." Haycraft, who has been with JFW for 15 years, manages 1,900 acres of vineyards between Los Alamos and the Sta. Rita Hills AVA. Throughout his career across Napa, Sonoma, Lodi, the California Delta and the Central Coast—and particularly since joining Jackson Family Wines (JFW)—he has wit- nessed changes in technological innovation, vineyard management and human resources that warrant a closer look at mechanizing pro- cesses in the field. Referring to one of his first jobs after graduating from Cal State-Fresno in 1995, Haycraft said, "Back then, we were har- vesting with the old upright har- vesters, which were very slow at three-quarters of a mile per hour." Soon thereafter, Gregoire pull-behind technology emerged, which worked well but the dis- charge machines were only us- able once per year, at harvest, and still required two tractors as they were not self-propelled or self-contained. Later, working on the Delta one morning, Haycraft saw something he'd never seen before: a large machine spraying eight to 10 vine- yard rows at a time. "I thought, 'That's the wave of the future!" he remembered thinking. "When you look at the way (the Jackson Family Wines) vine- yards were set up way back in the mid-90s, with the idea of doing a lot of over-the-row, over-the- vine, high-density, highly efficient spraying, it's pretty amazing," he said. "You either have to design the machine around the vine- yard, or the vineyard around the machine, or together." Haycraft's comments echoed those of fellow Sustainable Ag Expo speaker Dr. Kaan Kurtural, assistant cooperative extension specialist at the University of Cali- fornia Cooperative Extension, Davis, who claimed the primary challenge to adopting mechaniza- tion in the vineyard is trellising. "The simplest trellises work best," Kurtural said. Haycraft concurred, saying: "There are forces pushing us toward mechanization that aren't just fi- nancially driven. We need to start taking advantage of improvements in technology, to maximize our evo- lutions through the vineyard—also, the ability to use our personnel at their highest possible skill level. "The fact is we're losing people and we need to mechanize to com- pensate for that," he said. —Jaime Lewis Jackson Family Vineyard Manager Says Mechanization Imminent Bart Haycraft of Jackson Family Wines speaks at the Sustainable Ag Expo.