Rootstock doubles down on dual language classes, technology - Napa Valley Register

People from all corners of the wine grape industry swarmed the Napa Valley Expo on Tuesday for myriad product booths, displays of tractors and assorted farm equipment and vast tents for seminars and vineyard and wine trials.

This year’s event included expanded seminars in Spanish. “We have headphones in the seminars with translators,” explained Jennifer Putnam, executive director of Napa Valley Grapegrowers, the Rootstock sponsor.

“So if you’re a Spanish speaker you can go in the seminars, put the headphones on and there’s a real-time translation happening in your headphones so you can follow the slides and all the information.”

The new Spanish-inclusive approach also played a role at the wine sensory station positioned at the far end of Chardonnay Hall. The station presented two side-by-side tables, each with 10 small bottles containing cotton balls laden with aromas found in wine.

Managed by Opus One winery staff members Meredith McGough and Pablo Hernandez, the otherwise virtually identical tables maintained one distinction. McGough explained the spectrum of aromas in English, while Hernandez provided attendees with explanations in Spanish.

Elsewhere in the exhibition hall, booths presented a wealth of products and services catering to those in the industry.

Dan Conners, vineyard manager at Langtry Farms in Lake County, attended the event for the first time with several members of his staff. Upon entering the exhibition hall, he gave them a task.

“Their assignment,” Conners said later, “was to find one innovative tool or process that we could use to improve quality and cut costs in the vineyard.”

“These guys are ambitious and aggressive,” Conners said, “so I imagine we have five or six things that they found.”

Jose Avalos, a member of Conners’ staff, relayed his find after he had explored several of the exhibits. The Portland-based company Bird Control Group had caught his eye. The company offers both automated and handheld systems that repel birds by emitting lasers, he noted.

“You always have people watching for birds,” Avalos said. “You send them out there with a shotgun and they’re shooting blanks.” By using an automated system from Bird Control Group, he said, “you eliminate having a worker.”

Jamie Warwick, Bird Control Group’s director of operations in North America, explained the technology, while the system’s whirling head cast the point of a neon green laser onto the walls and ceiling of the exhibit hall, churning with patterned motions.

The goal of the systems, Warwick said, is changing the habits of birds using the “humane and non-lethal” laser technology.

His company has had success working with cherry and apple orchards in the Northwest, but has yet to see its systems applied in a Napa vineyard.

“Our biggest competition is just skepticism,” Warwick said, “because it’s a new technology.”

Bird Control Group’s automated system was among several products on display that represented the industry’s shift toward mechanized labor. Other exhibits included an unmanned drone at the Yamaha Motor Corporation booth resembling a miniaturized helicopter, and a pair of mechanical harvesters equipped with de-stemmers and sorting tables.

While the purpose of the technology is to reduce the need for manual labor, Avalos and Conners said they were not concerned by the industry’s shift.

“Right now, you can hardly find people that want to work [in the vineyards],” Avalos said, “so the more machines the better.”

“This is the strongest attendance we’ve ever seen,” Putnam said of this year’s Rootstock.

Rootstock continued into Wednesday with seminars and leadership training sessions that were also offered in Spanish.

While the normal attendance at Rootstock is about 1,500, Putnam estimated Tuesday’s draw at closer to 2,100.

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