What is Sustainable Viticulture?

Sustainable agriculture attempts to minimize environmental impacts and ensure economic viability and a safe, healthy workplace through the use of environmentally and economically sound production practices. Growers make a multitude of choices regarding the practices they use to manage vine growth, weeds, diseases, insects, and soil fertility. The level of sustainability is the sum of these decisions that growers make in the course of producing their crop.

We choose to define our program as a process by which growers can evaluate their whole range of production practices and decide how and when to adopt specific practices that increase the sustainability of their vineyards. Growing conditions vary each year, and all growers work under a set of managerial and financial constraints unique to their vineyards.

VineBalance is not an organic viticulture program with a defined set of allowable and unallowable inputs. Rather, the program addresses how all of the potential production practices impact the environmental, economic and social outcomes on the farm and how best to maximize the benefits associated with these outcomes through sound growing practices.

New York Guide to Sustainable Viticulture Practices
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