So in the tasting area, it's always interesting to get a pulse on what people are thinking by listening to the questions you all ask. Of course the #1 question is always, "What is your favorite wine," asked by new-comers to the winery (as you all know I don't have a favorite). The #2 question, time-related, is "How is the harvest this year." This allows me a time to complain but also give small glimpses of hope for the vintage.
But the question I've been getting over the last several weeks is something I didn't think I would ever hear. And there's a nuance to the question that I'm getting now too. The question is not, "Do you like your electric tractor?" The question is instead, "Aren't you glad you have an electric tractor?"
Of course, it's not so much about the tractor as it is about the cost of diesel fuel now. And farms still live and die by the price of diesel. (And full transparency, we still have four tractors that run on diesel for our 70 acres of grapes.) We use "red dye" diesel, which does not have all the taxes associated with it for road use (as we don't use the roads). But it hurts nonetheless to fill our farm tanks each time.
I will admit that I am happy that we have an electric tractor. But it is a little of a love/hate relationship. Recently, we had tasters who work in the autonomous farming equipment business, and one, who knows our Monarch tractor, called is a "boat anchor". He wasn't wrong. The American company that was building it has since gone belly-up. They had tried to do too much with technology without, in my opinion, having a real farmer on the design team. So there are definitely limitations to the tractor.
But this "boat anchor" can pull our fertilizer spread, the small disk (for the fields), the rotary mower and rear forks for transporting things like grapes in and out of the field. And engaging the crew to use this more (as they know the cost of diesel too!) has impressed me as to their willingness to help out with the overall costs. It's now my job to figure out how to utilize the electric tractor for more jobs.
To be honest, we only use about 700 gallons of diesel for our tractors each year. The true impact of diesel costs hasn't quite made it to everyone, and that's trucking costs. So our bottle deliveries, or shipping wines to distributors, or receiving barrels or corks or shippers...anything transported by truck (which is everything), hasn't been totally felt or passed on. In other words, the Sauvignon Blanc has not hit the fan just yet.
But for now, I may start commuting with my electric tractor, or at least think to use it for every job that comes up in the vineyards. Embrace what you got, right? And do the best you can.