Another new vintage year for wine is here and most California wineries have positive thoughts for a good season. And again this year, vineyard managers and wineries have started waving the red flag in front of America’s wine drinkers about labor shortages. To some, this is a harbinger of the message that wine prices are going to rise; At least for California wines. I guess anything related to labor shortages or immigration is code for impending price increases.

It is reported that many workers south of the border are opting for other opportunities not related to agriculture and the wine business in California. On the surface, most wine drinkers assume that the supply and demand for labor drives the cost to some degree, which is about 30% of the cost of wine. But, on closer examination, there are other components related to the hourly cost of labor: it’s called legislation. Finding people willing to work in California agricultural businesses is only part of the problem.

In Spreckels, CA, a city with a permanent population of approximately 750, county supervisors approved the construction of housing to house 800 temporary workers. The plan was proposed by Tanimura and Antle, a large agricultural company that needs temporary workers for its agricultural business. But, housing costs became prohibitive for his temporary employees. The company built 100 two-bedroom dorm-style apartments on its property for temporary workers. The city would then have to handle secondary costs for these residents: transportation, recreation, infrastructure, health care, security, etc.

The point is that farm labor shortages have a different cost beyond hourly wages. Obviously, the consumer must pay all related labor costs whether in taxes, wages or private industry; anything that adds to the cost is ultimately passed on to the consumer. So perhaps the cost of labor in the wine business is encouraging creative uses of technology/mechanization in the vineyard. Additionally, two years ago, the wine industry on California’s central coast claimed that it cost approximately $22,000 per acre to plant and maintain new vines in the first year alone. Simply put, an 11-acre vineyard will cost roughly $250,000 per year just to make it through the first year of production, hopefully year three. That’s expensive.

Simply put, vines are a lot of work, especially if you want to maximize the quality and quantity of fruit production. Each vine must be constantly attended to. Depending on the type of grape and the preferences of the vineyard manager, the width between rows, and how closely the vines are planted within each row, the number of vines per acre can vary. Vines per acre can range from 1,376 to 2,756. And it’s not just the vines that require attention. Trellises also require maintenance; how to raise and lower the cables. All activities dictate some type of work. So is there an emerging solution for labor availability and at a higher cost?

Many wineries and vineyard owners are turning to mechanization to reduce the cost of maintaining the vines and harvesting the grapes. French vineyards have probably led this evolution in agriculture by a company called Pellenc, which makes equipment that can do almost everything in the vineyard that is labor intensive; all phases of work in the vineyard. “We have tested the cost of mechanized vineyard management in relation to cost savings compared to identical tasks being done manually, the results are positive for us, the vineyard owner and hopefully the consumer” says John Felice of Pellenc USA. “What is even more impressive to our customers is that there is no decrease in wine quality in relation to mechanized pruning and harvesting compared to pre-pruning and manual harvesting of Fruit”. Depending on the legacy practices of the winery/vineyard, mechanized vineyard management could even improve quality.

Technically, winemaking is an agricultural endeavor; as soon as one task is completed, another starts, it’s an endless cycle. Then there are some processes that continue throughout the year, such as fumigation and maintenance of the vineyard soil; said weed control. Until the year 2000, these were tasks that had to be done manually. Now automation can replace manual labor in the vineyard. Mechanization can perform some impressive precision tasks in the vineyard, such as:

· The process of keeping the vineyard healthy and productive begins after the leaves fall off the vines. It is then that the pre-pruning passes through the vineyard, which leaves about 12″ of cane in the cordon.

o Pre-pruning helps prevent the spread of disease.

o Keeping debris free between vines and rows will also aid in pest control.

o There are some schools of thought that pre-pruning will also make the final pruning process faster.

“If a vineyard owner really wants to save on labor costs, they could use one of our high-end, self-contained multi-purpose machines that will pre-prune, cut the cordon to the prescribed number of buds, pull the old canes off the wires, shred the canes and clean the vineyard floors and even adjust the cables to new heights,” says Felice. Some people want two or three buds left and that task can be done automatically. With automated precision pruning equipment, an infrared sensor will track the cordon and cut the canes at a predetermined cordon height, leaving the prescribed/desired number of buds remaining. This process also includes crushing last year’s cane, then the debris falls to the ground and is incorporated back into the soil.

“If a vineyard manager really wants the aesthetics of precision, he’ll use two-person teams to walk behind the mower to thoroughly clean the vines,” says Felice. “Actually, next year’s crop can be analyzed from the buds we develop during the growing season to determine the potential load of next year’s crop. Mother Nature will still have a say in what happens during the winter and spring that impacts next year’s harvest.”

· Throughout the growing season there are some requirements for spray application in a vineyard, even an organic vineyard.

· Vineyard floor management is a never-ending and labor-intensive process and can be done with automation even during a spraying operation, which is also labor-saving.

In a mechanized demonstration over a period of 3 days, in a real vineyard, the test pitted a team of 20 pruners against a precision mechanical pruner. The tasks were to prune and remove cane from the trellis wire. Manual operation could perform the tasks at the rate of 32 vines/hour/day. The mechanized operation performed the same tasks and pruned 90 vines/hour/day. The quality of work was reported to be comparable to manual work.

It would be an exaggeration to simply say that mechanized vineyard operations are about three times faster than manual vineyard operations. However, we know that manual labor is one of the elements of production that cannot be accelerated by paying more per hour. We know that traditionally, automation is constantly being improved in relation to quality and performance, that is, autonomous cars. There are just a few things that machines and automation can and will do better. Robots have shown that this is a good example.

If a vineyard owner does not have to pay health care, housing, recruiting, and ancillary labor costs totaling approximately $4,000 per month per employee in a 20-person crew (which works out to $80,000 per month) It doesn’t take long to realize the magnitude of the savings with automation.

Automated harvesting has been the most recognized application for several years. Harvesting is another area where labor cost is critical and available labor has been a challenge for vineyards. The harvest is the most critical issue in the winery; they are interested in how smoothly the fruit is picked and the amount of debris when the fruit reaches the crush. Once again, the automated harvesting process is proving to deliver quality fruit to the winery quickly.

Perhaps vineyard automation will keep the labor cost component of winemaking in check for a while longer and not affect quality.