View from the Vineyard: A Practical Guide to Sustainable Winegrape Growing Hardcover – Illustrated, November 1, 2011

Provides an overview of Sustainability but little in the way of practical details apart from join my certification program. Embarrassing number of typos and errors.

A must read for winegrowers. Mr Ohmart is practical and is a very good writer. quick service.

The only problem remaining is, securing the funds for the land for a vineyard! Excellent advice, once you have the land.

This book is long on abstractions and short on practical advice.When I read "sustainable," I thought the author might give practical advice on holistic management specific to grape growing. Instead he gives lip service to "holistic" methods and suggests that it is good enough to be on a holistic trajectory. While one might agree with that, he only provides abstractions on how to get there.The book seems mainly aimed at corporate owners of large vineyards who need some persuasion towards "sustainable" thinking. Those with smaller vineyards would probably be happier with more specific advice.When I saw that the author was an entomologist I thought it was reasonable to expect some specific advice regarding "sustainable" pest management specific to grape growing. Instead, I see such "helpful" notes as ""Vineyard spraying is something that almost every grape grower will do multiple times during the year no matter whether they farm organically, biodynamically, or “conventionally.” That is because most varieties of grapes are very susceptible to one or more diseases, no matter where they are grown in the US." And the author also helpfully notes that good operators will see that the job is done properly, or something to that effect. There is *no* practical advice that one might expect from an entomologist.For anyone interested in sustainable grape growing on a smaller scale, much more useful information can be found in  The Holistic Orchard: Tree Fruits and Berries the Biological Way . Granted, MIchael Phillips is much more into apples than into grapes, but the casual mention of grapes is more helpful from a sustainable/holistic perspective than this book. Ohmart does cover row orientation and a bit about vine spacing, but that information is easily available on the internet. (Phillips' book costs 4x as much but is more than 10x as valuable. I'm returning the Ohmart book.)I should also mention that the author's point of reference is Lodi, California, and there's little practical reference to anywhere else on the planet.