The second episode of the Frey Vines Podcast,  continues to tell the story of “Organic Grapes.” You can listen to our episode on Spotify or your favorite podcast streaming platform. See below for a full transcript of the podcast, or check out our YouTube channel to see and hear the podcast episode.

Episode 2, “Organic Grapes”

MOLLY FREY: Welcome to the second episode of Frey Vines, the podcast dedicated to telling the story of organic wine. In this episode, we'll look at why the Frey family chose to go organic and what it means to be the first organic winery in the country. 

There wasn't always an organic certification. In fact, when the Frey's first established Frey Vineyards, there wasn't a federal way to ensure that a product was organic. Today, thanks in large part to the education and activism of the Frey family, there is not only a federal organic certification for wine but also a growing number of wineries that are going organic.

To tell us more about what it means to be officially organic, here's Eliza Frey. 

ELIZA FREY: As it stands under the National Organic Program, organic wine, you know, the basis of it is organic grape growing. So, if you don't have organic grapes to start, you could never make an organic wine. Organic agriculture and production is overseen by the USDA, which has the National Organic Program.

When organic farming first started in the States, it was on a state by state basis. And California was the first state that had a law that like codified what organic agriculture was. 

MOLLY FREY: Originally, when Frey Vineyards bonded as the first organic winery in 1980, they looked to CCOF, or California Certified Organic Farmers, to help them establish their organic credentials. 

ELIZA FREY: You know, Jonathan and Katrina, my folks, they were involved in some of that, and that really was born out of organic producers in California, wanting to be able to market at a higher level and to really get clarity on what was going to be allowed and what wasn't. So then, in 2002, I think the national organic program started. So that brought the whole certification up to a federal level. 

MOLLY FREY: And ever since, the wines that you love can be certified organic by the USDA.  Many families and businesses have come to rely on this certification to be the standard by which they purchase and consume products that they can trust to be organic. To describe more of our pioneering in the field of organics,  here's Eliza's husband and our vineyard manager Derek Dahlen. 

DEREK DAHLEN: Frey Vineyards, since its inception, has been entirely organic. Before the winery started, the Frey family was growing grapes for many years. They never used any chemicals in their vineyards. When they started their winery in 1980, they opted to continue that mindset, that philosophy, in the winemaking where we're not using any synthetic chemicals or additives/preservatives in the wines. Since 1980 Frey Vineyards has been making organic wine.

So we were the first organic winery in the United States, certified organic winery, United States. I started working at Frey Vineyards in 1999 and took over the role of vineyard manager in 2004. So, going on 20 years of expanding this operation. Where we started, when I first started working here, we were farming roughly a hundred acres of organic wine grapes on three different sites. 

And now we're farming a little over 300 acres of organic and biodynamic wine grapes on 9 different sites between Redwood Valley and Potter Valley, in Mendocino County. There’s a lot of other organic wine-grape growers in Mendocino County. And I think a lot of that has been influenced by the Frey family because we've purchased organic fruit from other growers most years and have encouraged growers to gain their organic certificate. 

One, because it's the better way to farm for the longevity of their operation, but also because if they had certified organic fruit, we could buy it from them. Mendocino County is known as the greenest wine region in the United States. I think roughly 30 percent of the Vineyard Acreage in Mendocino County is certified organic and or Biodynamic.

MOLLY FREY: The cornerstone of all organic wine is indeed organic grapes. The Freys set out to grow organically because of deep concerns about the impact of nonorganic agriculture on the environment.  Conventional grapes are considered one of the “dirty dozen,” which is a list of the 12 most heavily sprayed foods. 

The Freys knew that they wanted to do things differently when they started growing grapes. Grapes are thin-skinned fruits with over three dozen different pesticides sprayed on them. To be clear, Frey Vineyards are all maintained organically because we believe in the integrity of the fruit and the integrity of the earth. 

As grapes are perennial crops, they weather all the seasons while growing each year.  Most people are familiar with the famed fall harvest season, where the grapes are brought in to make wine. But each winter, we are tasked with another very important part of the grape life cycle: pruning.  

ELIZA FREY: In the vineyard, Derek, he Manages, we have about 10 full-time employees year round for those 325 acres. By far the biggest job of the year is pruning by hand and pruning is really, really important because how grapes are pruned determines how their fruit will set the following season. And so that happens, we try to wait until after the winter solstice because until the winter solstice, plants are pulling energy down into their roots as the days are growing shorter and the nights are growing longer. And that can be dangerous for pruning because of sap flow.

Whenever you have a wound on a plant, if the plant is pulling its sap in, there's a chance for disease to enter the tissues of the plants where it's been pruned. So we wait until after winter solstice and when the sap starts to flow out of the plant, tuned in with the solar rhythms and pruned throughout the spring. 

There's some old Roman saying that goes, “You want to be the first to harvest, the first to make wine, the first to do everything in your vineyard, but the last to prune.” So there's some idea that, you know, giving the plants their dormancy, you want the sap to be flowing as much as possible.  

MOLLY FREY: I asked Derek what a day is like as the vineyard manager for Frey, and this is what he shared about his winter work.

DEREK DAHLEN: Yeah. So day in the life, for example, here today is January 21st (2025). We’re pruning right now and pruning is by far the most labor consuming task each year, we have to hire on extra people. It takes a total of four months of time from the time we start until when we finish. And it's one of the most important tasks aside from harvesting, because obviously if we didn't harvest the fruit, there’d be no point in going through all the other steps. But, pruning kind of sets the stage for the next year's crop load, and for younger vines. You’re doing training to establish their structure. So yeah, so right now we're actively pruning with a crew of 15 people. 

A day in the life. There's kind of cycles in the grape growing season, say starting with pruning  and more or less than finishing with harvest and the vines going dormant in the fall. There are certain tasks that you only do, maybe like once a year. But you have to do them every year at one time. And there's a lot of seasonal routines, as opposed to a daily routine that would be repeated weekly or monthly or throughout the entire year.

MOLLY FREY: So what does it mean to be the first organic winery?  We grow organic grapes in organic vineyards. To break down the ways that we are set apart from conventional vineyards and why we got started in organics, here's Eliza Frey. 

ELIZA FREY: Basically what it is is no synthetic chemicals or fungicides are allowed and so in grape growing, in the vineyard, one of the biggest things that we're dealing with, grapes are a perennial crop. They don't need a lot of fertilizer depending on the climate, and our climate, we're pretty blessed. They don't have a whole lot of pest pressure, but one of the main things that get used in our region is strip spraying because grapes stay in the same place, grass grows up underneath them. And so there's a lot of Roundup use and herbicide use under the vines, which is pretty intense because that stuff is very, very toxic and, you know, a lot is coming to light about the health effects and effects on water and environmental quality and soil, soil, food, web life. 

DEREK: I don't, I don't see how anybody could rightfully spray poison chemicals on their farms and then feel good about their children running around in these fields after the poisons have been applied. So I feel really good that my kids have the opportunity to have space to roam and can play in and around the vineyards and fields, and I don't have to worry whatsoever about them being exposed to any toxic poisons. And, you know, one thing that comes up periodically is how, you know, if there is reincarnation… probably one of the best things to be reincarnated as would be a dog on the Frey Ranch. Because the dogs have really the best life just being able to like play with all the other dogs and run around and the children have a similar lifestyle, but, you know, at a certain point, they're not children anymore and they have responsibilities, which dogs don't ever. 

MOLLY FREY: For questions or comments about the content shared here, Frey Vineyards or Frey wines, you can email info@freywine.com or call 1 800 760 3739. Our retail staff is happy to help you Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm Pacific Standard Time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Frey Vines Podcast, telling the story of organic grapes. We hope you'll turn in for our next episodes when we'll pluck more storied fruits off the Frey Vines.