It rained hard last night here north of Healdsburg, Sonoma County CA west of Napa. In the hour from 11:00pm Sunday until midnight we got a half inch. The seasonal pond on my property is full (and probably full of nasty chemicals; vineyards on both sides sprayed weed killer under their vines last week). (Buy organic wines). (Big ag is so far from green it's pathetic).We expect to see ducks soon and then, hopefully, hear the sound of frogs.

This is really going help. You got hammered.

Well, there are some grape growers around here mindful of green practices. Not enough though, and certainly very few we call Big Ag.

I beg to differ about Big Ag in the wine biz. More and more acreage is controlled by outfits like Foley and Williams feeding their grocery store brands (Ferrari Carano, Clos du Bois, etc.) using mechanical thinning, and harvesting and very large uses of Roundup and other chems for weeds and pests. And they treat their field people only as well as they absolutely have to.

The good thing about living in wine country is you can visit the wineries and scope out their practices before even tasting. Call me a snob but I only buy from winemakers who grow and vinify their own grapes using organic or biodynamic practices.

I’ve been an ag guy myself for a long time and know it’s best to be careful what you consume. I came to ag from tech and if I’d known how much money there is in ag—at a certain scale—I wouldn’t have wasted my time on tech.

I've worked with them in Napa. I'm not referring to big, big ag guys, but smaller though still formidable family-owned ventures.