Technical Tour

VitiNord 2022 is excited to host a Vineyard & Winery Innovation Tour for participants to attend on Wednesday, December 7th. 

The focus of the tour is terroir-driven wine. A small and new wine region, Vermont is home to a high concentration of innovators focusing on regenerative farming practices, incorporating sheep and biodynamic agriculture as well as low intervention and natural winemaking techniques. We will explore how these practices lay the framework for producing terroir-driven wines to showcase our unique geology. The tour will specifically supplement the conference program content, bringing participants into the field and winery, with experts leading the way.

We will visit two very different vineyard sites along Lake Champlain, starting in the Lake Champlain Islands at Ellison Estate Vineyard.  Andy Farmer, owner of Northeast Vine Supply, who has been growing premium cold hardy vines with custom propagation for over 20 years, will be speaking! Andy will discuss novel approaches to vineyard floor management, and Kendra Knapik, owner of Ellison Estate Vineyard, will supplement this discussion with use of sheep in the vineyard. Pruning, trunk disease, and planting are on many of our minds, and Andy is excited to share his expertise with the group.

We will move on to Shelburne Vineyards where Middlebury College geology professor Dr. Jeff Munroe will dive into Vermont’s rich geological history. Yes, we sit on some of the oldest limestone in the world!

We plan to close out the tour with an optional informal dinner to celebrate the amazing international community that has come together for this event.  We hope to send participants home with a few new progressive ideas to integrate into their own vineyard and/or winery!

 If you haven’t already done, register for this tour and the hole conference here.