—story by Kate Prengaman
—photos by TJ Mullinax
The Figgins family, wine pioneers in Washington’s Walla Walla Valley, first planted vines slightly west, in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, following a severe freeze. They sought the protection offered by elevation and cold air drainage.
Twenty-five years later, as they prepared to open a new winery on one of those vineyards, a polar vortex struck again, leaving them with little crop on the cordons. Luckily, the estate vineyard has long invested in the insurance practice of cane burial, and they shared the pros and cons of the practice with the industry during a field day in August.
“Usually this is a bombproof site for freeze damage,” owner Chris Figgins said to attendees at the Figgins Winery estate vineyard, which sits at an elevation of 1,750 feet. Bombproof it was not in last January’s freeze, but considering the extent of the damage, he said, “we’re really pleased with how this looks.”
Viticulturist Jason Magnaghi showed visitors how their cane burial practices fared in an own-rooted Merlot block planted in 2005. The previously buried canes — now trained to the drip wires — carried about 1 to 1.5 tons of fruit per acre. The cordons, meanwhile, sustained 80 percent bud damage and carried a very small crop.
“This is the second time using them in 24 years,” he said. The cane burial program costs $700 an acre, but that pencils out for an estate winery selling wines at $100 a bottle. “We can’t afford to miss a vintage.”
How it works: Each season, for each vine, they train two shoots to the drip wire. At the end of the season, they lay them down and cover the vines with shovelfuls of dirt before running a hilling pass to bury them further. They usually get additional insulation from a blanket of snow. In the spring, they dehill with a weed badger (too slow, in Magnaghi’s opinion) and prune off the shoots if they don’t need them.
In 2024, they needed them and found that, surprisingly, the fruit on the buried canes had quality metrics very similar to the fruit on the cordons, Figgins said.
“Our yields were down some, but the quality was really high. Jason pulled a rabbit out of a hat, viticulturally,” he said.
Harvesting from the drip wire was slow, difficult work, however, and crews were paid hourly wages to do it. For the estate vineyard business model, which can cover the farming costs through its winery, those extra expenses in harvest and cane burial pay off.
“We put money towards a cultural practice instead of insurance,” Figgins said. “Federal crop insurance makes no sense when you are growing high-end wine grapes; it just pays you a percentage of the commodity price.”
Of course, not every grape grower has that business model, and how different growers approach risk management for cold damage reflects that, said Michelle Moyer, Washington State University Extension viticulturist.
“When it comes to practices for avoiding cold damage or compensating after a damaging event, individual farms will have to determine what works within their economic and labor constraints,” she said. “If there was a universally effective approach, everyone would be practicing it. But, unfortunately, there is nothing universal about site- and variety-specific winter management of vines.”
Site selection and replanting
Cold management aside, plenty of factors set the Mill Creek region — where the eastern Walla Walla foothills lie along the eponymous creek — apart from the valley’s vineyards. Figgins has two vineyards here, Mill Creek Upland and Figgins, and he and his neighbors have applied for an American Viticultural Area designation, citing factors such as the area’s deep soils and higher rainfall. Figgins said the site gets 22 inches of rain a year, whereas Leonetti Vineyards, another of his family’s vineyards in the valley, receives 12 inches.
“With bigger soils and higher rainfall, that gives us the opportunity to (mostly) dryland farm,” he said. “To me, that speaks to sustainability.”
Thanks to the elevation, it’s also an area with later ripening, often picking nearly a month after the valley.
“When we first planted Mill Creek in 1997, we didn’t know if we could get Cab ripe here,” Figgins said. “Over the last 30 years, our harvest dates are getting earlier and earlier in general, so to be in the Mill Creek area and have that later ripening is actually going to be beneficial.”
While Figgins planted the sites over 20 years ago, he now has an opportunity to apply what he’s learned over those years to today’s replanting decisions spurred by phylloxera damage.
“Some of these vineyards are in their prime of age and quality. We never dreamed that we would be yanking them out,” he said. “But it does provide some opportunity. The state is really only in its first generation of vineyards. Are there better-suited varietals or opportunities to improve things with rootstocks?”
Figgins planted his first rootstock trial blocks in 2002 to learn how to use them — so he has no qualms about potential quality impacts. Instead, it’s a matter of matching them to each site.
Moyer said the grape society was grateful to Figgins and Magnaghi for hosting the field day and giving the industry an opportunity to talk frankly about best practices for phylloxera management and farming grafted vines. When Magnaghi talked with attendees about those older rootstock trials, located in a different vineyard, he called it a lesson in what not to do because rootstocks of differing vigor needs had been interplanted.
“They do grow differently and need to be irrigated differently,” he said.
Now, he selects one rootstock per block, so he can manage accordingly. The list of rootstock options can be overwhelming, so Magnaghi focuses on vigor. In Mill Creek’s deep soils, he avoids any high-vigor selections.
“We’re doing more Riparia up here, since it is devigorating, that helps us,” he said. “But I think you can irrigate around any of the rootstock differences.”
He also suggested ordering more grafted vines than you need, as they can be more fragile, and to keep extra in an on-farm nursery to supply your own replants. Watch for scion rooting in the first couple of years; after five or so years, he found they quit trying to root.
Plans for replanting the 32-acre vineyard are aggressive, Magnaghi and Figgins agreed, but the timing is right.
“Typically, we sell some fruit as well, and the market is so terrible right now that if we don’t need something, let’s pull and get them on rootstocks,” Figgins said. “If we spread the pain over time, it’s manageable. We won’t have as much luxury in our blending decisions, but we can make do with less.” •
Built to last
The new Figgins Winery that opened last year is a dream 20 years in the making for owner Chris Figgins, and it aligns with the growing emphasis on sustainability in the wine industry.
The long timeline is evident in the tall shade trees he planted years ago and that now surround the new solar-panel-topped tasting room. It looks relatively small from the outside, but that perspective is deceiving, as the winery and cellar below are carved out of the hillside.
“The Walla Walla Valley is very windy, and the old homesteads are always tucked into the hillsides to get out of the wind. I wanted to be cohesive with that,” Figgins said. Plus, this way, he didn’t have to tear out very much of the vineyard to build the facility.
“Eighty percent of the structure is underground, so I don’t have to heat it or cool it,” he said. The aboveground portion features energy-efficient, thick concrete walls, too, so Figgins hopes the rooftop solar panels will be able to supply most if not all of the winery’s electricity needs.
“The longevity of the structure is part of the sustainability,” he said. “Or as my dad says, DIRTFooT. Do it right the first time.”
—K. Prengaman
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