A Whole Lot of Hart

By Doug Haugen

“Here it is. God, please don’t screw it up.”

This is how vineyard manager Ken Hart feels every time he hands over the grapes from his vineyards to winemakers. After the planting, the pruning, the watering, the weeding, the spraying, the testing, and scads of intermediate tasks not so easily categorized—essentially after a year of intensive labor and TLC—the vineyard manager has to let his baby go, and just hopes that it’s found a good home. “You spend eleven and a half moths [growing the fruit], and some winemaker comes out and destroys the whole thing to pick the fruit when it wasn’t ready. They’re paying for it, what can you say?” You can imagine him, perhaps, waving a solemn goodbye to the fruit as the truck heads up the road.

Hart’s story in viticulture is not unlike that of many a rock star. Humble beginnings, change of genre, growing talent and fame. “I try to stay under the radar. It’s getting harder and harder to do that. I just want to do my own thing, but we’re on the cutting edge,” he said.

At seventeen years old, Ken Hart began working in apple orchards, which used to be Washington’s most notable cash crop. He farmed on his own for sixteen years, but like so many orchardists during the crash of the Washington apple industry, Farm Credit decided they wanted the orchard back, and he gave it to them. He moved to Seven Hills, and planted fifteen to twenty vineyards in the Walla Walla Valley. The rest, as they say, is history.

Today, Ken Hart is the general manager of Appellation Management Group, a subsidiary of Dunham. The company was started in 2000 as a way for Dunham to manage its own vineyards and ensure quality fruit for its wines, but it expanded to include other vineyards to help share the cost of all the equipment and tools on a per-acre charge. AMG manages sixteen different properties for ten clients. “We provide a turnkey service from start to finish, and then manage those vineyards after we develop them,” Hart said. And how.

“We’re not organic—don’t claim to be,” Hart said, but his efforts in sustainability are remarkable. He farms everything from six inches of rainfall to twenty, and over the last couple of years, he’s focusd on non-irrigated land. That’s right, no irrigation. A property in Mill Creek, closer to the mountains in Walla Walla, is a sustainability playground. They carefully built the soil to retain water. “Moisture has to come from somewhere,” hart explained, “You want to utilize every drop of it that comes from the sky. The problem that comes from well-irrigation is the toxins deep in the earth that were never meant to be on the surface. There is hardly any bad soil. The problem is bad water.”

Another standard practice that falls quite a bit outside the norm, is the use of a holistic practitioner. Dr. Arden Anderson, a human medical doctor, consults with AMG on their growing practices. He grew up on a dairy, and got a masters degree in agricultural science before going on to medical school. According to Hart, “He brings the whole picture together.”

The holistic philosophy is used as much as possible throughout the vineyards. They build and maintain microbiology in the soil, using compost tailor-made for each vineyard site that has no garbage and no solid waste in it. Hart explained, “It’s a product made from a recipe specifically for the vineyard. We use a lot of seaweed and kelp. Vitamins are important for the plant just like they are to you, and you need minerals to make the vitamins effective.”

They also go so far as to cut weeds in the vineyards by hand with clippers, since they don’t use herbicides. “It’s a complete ecosystem. That’s the way we farm. Those weeds help cool that soil under the plant. You’ve got root biomass which is breaking down and supplying bio matter to the plants. Some people overdo it. We’re more into the health of the soil and the vineyard,” Hart explained.

What about bugs? Hart uses a method called Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which is spreading in its use. IPM focuses on the health of the soil. “We monitor the plant sap brix and try our best to get brix of at least 12 on that sap. When you achieve that, your plant is only producing whole enzymes. Insects are Mother Nature’s garbage collectors, and they can only digest partial enzymes. When you achieve whole enzymes, the pests can be in the vineyards, but they’re not going to harm the plant.” Basically, instead of getting rid of the pests, they’re just making the plants undesirable to them.

Five years ago, Ken Hart decided to start making wine in order to be a better grower, in spite of “all those other shits out there,” and Tulpen Cellars was born. He discovered that with the nutritional program in his vineyards, when you have good fruit, winemaking goes smoother. “I’ve never seen a winemaker make good wine out of shit fruit,” he said, and making wine opened his eyes and made him pay even more attention in the vineyards. “Our goal was not to get rich. Our goal was to make a good valued product,” he said, and he sure has. [See the June issue of WINO Magazine for a review of Tulpen’s Merlot, which, after time of writing, received 91 points from Advocate, and at just $30 a bottle.]

“If I had to give one up today,” Ken said, “I’d take the vineyard. “but [making wine] completed the picture for me.”

Growing fruit in Walla Walla presents its own set of challenges. “The thing about Walla Walla is there’s like five microclimates within this valley. Everything from arid on the west end to wet on the east end to windy on the west side and in the middle is a hodgepodge. And, all those wines are different. Seven Hills is almost done picking by the time the others get started,” Hart explained. To make sure the fruit is picked at just the right time, he flags certain rows that are ready. Sometimes, there are as many as three picks because of varying growth patterns. “It’s not easy to grow grapes in Walla Walla because of the weather,” he went on, “but the stuff that comes out of here is really, really good.”

“We’re pretty solid biological farmers,” Hart said, “and the rest of Washington State is trying to catch up with that.”

[To read about more vineyard managers, be sure to pick up the next issue of WINO Magazine, hitting the streets on June 1.]