Episode 170: Reviving Degraded Soils Through Biological Farming with Jake Neustadt and Morgan Twain-Peterson

Regenerative Agriculture Podcast

AEA Marketing

Science, Natural Sciences, Earth Sciences

4.7 • 548 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Morgan Twain-Peterson founded Bedrock Wine Company in 2007, growing from humble beginnings in a small outbuilding into a respected winery. Jake Neustadt joined Morgan in 2015, bringing his expertise in transitioning old vineyards to regenerative practices. Together they are focused on enhancing soil health, producing uniquely Californian wines, and preserving California's historic vineyards, some of which date to the 19th Century.

Morgan and Jake's work at Bedrock Wine Company shows how regenerative agriculture can restore degraded vineyard soils, significantly increasing soil organic matter and water retention and improving climate resilience. Their practices—including no-till, cover crops, and holistic grazing—not only improve vine health and wine quality but also set a model for sustainable viticulture, addressing the wine industry's need for differentiation amid declining consumption.

In this episode, John, Morgan, and Jake discuss:

Preserving historic vineyards with diverse varieties unique to California
Transitioning from conventional tillage to no-till organic systems for soil health
Using foliar applications to enhance vine resilience in dry-farmed vineyards
Integrating holistic grazing with sheep to improve soil biology
Planting mixed-variety vineyards to increase resilience and wine complexity
Leveraging genetic diversity for heat tolerance

Additional Resources
To learn more about Bedrock Wine company, please visit: https://bedrockwineco.com/

To listen to the Bedrock Wine Conversations Podcast, please visit: https://open.spotify.com/show/6jAHhAOI9Xy8uKDJmyl5Xx

About John Kempf
John Kempf is the founder of Advancing Eco Agriculture (AEA). A top expert in biological and regenerative farming, John founded AEA in 2006 to help fellow farmers by providing the education, tools, and strategies that will have a global effect on the food supply and those who grow it.

Through intense study and the knowledge gleaned from many industry leaders, John is building a comprehensive systems-based approach to plant nutrition – a system solidly based on the sciences of plant physiology, mineral nutrition, and soil microbiology.

Support For This Show & Helping You Grow
Since 2006, AEA has been on a mission to help growers become more resilient, efficient, and profitable with regenerative agriculture.

AEA works directly with growers to apply its unique line of liquid mineral crop nutrition products and biological inoculants. Informed by cutting-edge plant and soil data-gathering techniques, AEA's science-based programs empower farm operations to meet the crop quality markers that matter the most.

AEA has created real and lasting change on millions of acres with its products and data-driven services by working hand-in-hand with growers to produce healthier soil, stronger crops, and higher profits.

Beyond working on the ground with growers, AEA leads in regenerative agriculture media and education, producing and distributing the popular and highly-regarded Regenerative Agriculture Podcast, inspiring webinars, and other educational content that serve as go-to resources for growers worldwide.

Learn more about AEA's regenerative programs and products: https://www.advancingecoag.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, friends. This is John. Welcome back to the Region of Agaric Culture podcast. We either fortunately or unfortunately, we are living in the times of the ancient Chinese proverb. May you live in interesting times. These are certainly interesting times, I think, for many of us. They're very challenging times. And, you know, it's in those interesting and challenging times that you have both the greatest risk, the greatest resistance to change and the greatest opportunities.
0:28.4	It's kind of this interesting contrast where you have the greatest opportunities that are emerging in these challenging times and also the greatest risk for many of people who are already well
0:39.5	established. And so it's, and this is true across the entire agricultural sector. And perhaps in
0:46.2	almost no space, is this more true than in wine production where we have dramatic decreases
0:53.7	in wine consumption and particularly in lower grade wines, as I
0:59.3	understand. And it's really the top, the premium wines that are the best performing. And so
1:03.2	that's where the opportunity is and also where the challenge exists. How do you get there? So I'm
1:09.2	delighted to have this conversation today with
1:11.0	Morgan and Jake. Thank you both for being here. I'm not going to try to communicate your story.
1:16.9	You've got lots of different things going on. Tell us a bit about the scope of your work,
1:21.6	what all you're involved with, and how you got here. Yeah. So Jake and I are with Bedrock Wine Company, a winery that I founded back in 2007.
1:31.5	When I started, it was just me working out of a 550 square foot chicken coop,
1:37.1	fermentations outside, everything done by hand. And gradually we've grown up a little bit.
1:43.2	And, you know, the overall goal of the winery since day one, though, has been to work with really old vineyards in California. I think what people don't realize is that we have some of the greatest sort of viticultural or agricultural treasures in the world and that we have vines that are in the ground that date to the
2:02.2	1880s. So some of the very first vines that were planted on resistant rootstocks to a root louse
2:09.7	called phloxera. And then we even have vines that are own rooted in very sandy soils that date to the
2:15.3	1890s. And within these vineyards, we have incredible genetic diversity.
2:21.0	So at our home bedrock vineyard, for instance,
2:24.7	we have over 29 different interplanted varieties.
2:27.4	And among all of the vineyards we oversee in farm,
2:31.3	we have over 50, including bridles that have no matching
2:34.0	genetic fingerprint
	...

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