“Agriculture can play a leading role in combating climate change and reversing ecological damage. Mimi Casteel is showing one way to get it done.” Read the full story by Eric Asimov in The New York Times, published October 17, 2019
Letters from the Edge
Mimi Casteel Is Betting the Farm
How one farmer, biologist and winemaker is trying to change an entire industry’s mind about the way it grows wine. Read the full story by Leslie Pariseau in PUNCH, published August 22, 2019.
An urgent conversation about the power of regenerative agriculture
Last month I had the honor of participating in this public seminar with three of my intellectual heroes, sponsored by my far-sighted and generous New York distributor, Polaner Selections. The entire seminar, including audience participation, was recorded and is here presented in its entirety. Please join us! – Mimi Casteel “Please join carbon farming ‘bioneers’ Mimi Casteel […]
An Earth Day Letter to my Friends, for my Friends
My Comrades and Kin, As we revel in the gifts of spring, watching the vineyards push first growth, I beg your attention for a moment of community around our shared love for this land, for this earth. Many of you pledged your name to an agreement we have named The Oak Accord. The nature of […]
Over the Moon: Contemporary Biodynamics & Beyond
Kelli White for GuildSomm March 15, 2019“Mimi’s personal flavor of biodynamics—now practiced at her own project, Hope Well Vineyard—is actually quite close to the original recipe, with certain key deviations. ‘There’s a whole new category of farmers who probably would have been categorized under organic, but now we call ourselves ‘regenerative agriculture.’ It is not […]
New Year’s – Letters from the Edge
Juxtaposed with the exuberance of spring, and the languidly long, warm, caramel colored summer nights that barely dip a toe in darkness before light brushes the mountains, and the frenetic energy and furious productivity of the harvest, winter can appear a hard stop. Amongst the seasons it is the metaphor for death, impenetrable, a mosaic […]
A Lively Conversation about Soil Health
August 24, 2018 Kelli White for GuildSomm interviews Mimi Casteel and a handful of other growers around the globe While I use several of the biodynamic preps, I diverge a little in philosophy particularly with respect to tillage, which I do not practice. I have a very strong philosophy about building soil that is not […]
Complexity is Stability
June, 2018. The vineyard is practically vibrating with the energy of spring. We are embarking on a very ambitious goal of adding 50 species to the existing cover on the vineyard floor. I hope to achieve a diversity of perennial and annual grass, flower and (even some vegetable) species to have close to 100 species […]