CLIMATE ACTION & REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE
Registration opens
Tackling Critical Challenges Forum: Can Forest & Creek Restoration Create Localized Climate Cooling?
Breakfast hour with Sponsor Scavenger Hunt
Official Welcome: Charles Krug’s Riana Mondavi, Napa Green’s Anna Brittain, and Napa Green Board Members,
Tod Mostero & Andrew Alexander
RISE Leadership Award TEDTalk
Marquee Keynote: Marquee Keynote Speaker(s) Coming Soon
Break
Asking the Critical Questions Forum: “Can Wine Really Impact Climate Action?”
Official Closeout
Catered lunch & Wine
At RISE 2023, agroecologist and winemaker Mimi Casteel gave a standing ovation keynote on combating heat domes through landscape restoration and rehydration. Dominus Estate’s Tod Mostero was so inspired he launched a watershed collective that aims to turn this vision to reality in Napa County. The collective has brought together dozens of stakeholders and landowners and identified several hundred acres along sub-watersheds for potential restoration pilots. The aim is to adapt and apply innovative nature-based models already being proven by USGS and the Dry Creek Rancheria Band of Pomo Indians, among others.
Napa Green’s Anna Brittain will facilitate a conversation between Casteel, Mostero, and two leaders in ecological restoration – Brock Dolman and Obi Kaufmann – sharing progress, discoveries, and the opportunities and challenges of designing and funding nature-based restoration. The wins could be huge: capturing and storing water, enhancing biodiversity, reducing fire risk and increasing resilience, and generating meaningful localized cooling. Our community has the opportunity to create a tangible model for climate-resilient agricultural landscapes.
Action Opportunities:
Anna Brittain is the Executive Director of Napa Green. Anna has worked locally, nationally and internationally on environmental management and policy with organizations ranging from the environmental economics think tank Resources for the Future in Washington, DC to the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Hanoi, Vietnam. She has spent a decade facilitating and growing sustainability in the wine industry, with an expertise in communications and certification standards. Anna has served as a lead sustainability consultant with Ontario Craft Wineries, Sustainable Winegrowing British Columbia, Crimson Wine Group, the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, and individual wineries including Benziger Family Winery and Seghesio Family Vineyards. She has helped lead the growth of the Napa Green program for over six years, and stepped into the position of Executive Director of the now independent non-profit in fall 2019. Anna has a Master’s of Environmental Science & Management from the Bren School at UC Santa Barbara and a BA in Political Science and Environmental Studies from Williams College.
Vineyard manager and winemaker for Hope Well Wine, Mimi Casteel is an incredibly passionate voice and example for this new era of regenerative carbon farming. Mimi is world-renowned for her vision of transformative viticulture, her approachable communication of that vision, and her on the ground examples of how to produce expressive wines from vibrant, healthy, carbon-rich soils in vineyards actively cultivating plant and animal diversity.
Director of Viticulture and Winemaking, the French connection runs strong through Mostero, who studied in Bordeaux and trained at Château Haut-Brion, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Établissements Jean-Pierre Moueix. He worked with Baron Philippe de Rothschild in the Languedoc and at Almaviva in Chile before returning to his native California to join Dominus Estate in 2007.
“Christian Moueix has been my guide throughout my career and has been my greatest example of a perfect winemaker. He is clear, precise and is profoundly attached to the vineyard. He has guided me from the beginning.”
Obi Kaufmann is an award-winning author of many best-selling books on California’s ecology, biodiversity, and geography. Most famously, his 2017 book The California Field Atlas recontextualized popular ideas about California’s more-than-human world. His following books, THE STATE OF WATER and THE CALIFORNIA LANDS TRILOGY, present a comprehensive survey of California’s evolutionary past and its unfolding future. 2024’s THE STATE OF FIRE; WHY CALIFORNIA BURNS is among his most popular and timely books to date. When he isn’t backpacking, Obi Kaufmann makes his home in Oakland, where he is working on more Field Atlases to come.
Brock Dolman (he/him) co-directs the WATER Institute, Permaculture Design Program, and Wildlands Program. He has taught permaculture and consulted on regenerative project design and implementation internationally in Costa Rica, Ecuador, the US Virgin Islands, Spain, Brazil, China, Canada, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, and widely in the United States. He has been the keynote presenter at numerous conferences and was featured in the award-winning films The 11th Hour by Leonardo DiCaprio, The Call of Life by Species Alliance, and Permaculture: A Quiet Revolution by Vanessa Shultz. In October of 2012, he gave a City 2.0 TEDx talk. Brock completed his BA in the Biology and Environmental Studies departments at the University of California Santa Cruz in 1992, graduating with honors. For over a decade, he has served as an appointed commissioner on the Sonoma County Fish & Wildlife Commission.
As a high-value crop with deep cultural roots, wine is both uniquely vulnerable to climate change and has extraordinary power to influence global climate solutions. Napa Green’s Anna Brittain, an expert in whole systems climate solutions, will moderate a conversation with three visionary leaders bridging wine and climate action. Diana Snowden-Seysses shares a cross-continent perspective – making wine for Burgundy’s Domaine Dujac, Napa Valley’s Snowden Vineyards, and Ashes & Diamonds. She works closely with Porto Protocol and champions glass reuse and climate smart packaging. Dr. Olga Barbosa, founder of the Wine Climate Change and Biodiversity Program, shares research and results leveraging biodiversity to create more self-regulating vineyard ecosystems, better able to weather climate pressures. Elaine Chukan Brown, renowned writer, speaker and global wine educator, brings the lens of diversity and indigenous knowledge to wine’s climate challenges and solutions. Together, these leaders explore how wine’s perennial nature, cultural resonance, and powerful platform make it an ideal proving ground for climate actions that can be adopted by other ag and beverage sectors.
From the beginning, RISE has asked, If not here, where? If not now, when?
Action Opportunities:
Anna Brittain is the Executive Director of Napa Green. Anna has worked locally, nationally and internationally on environmental management and policy with organizations ranging from the environmental economics think tank Resources for the Future in Washington, DC to the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Hanoi, Vietnam. She has spent a decade facilitating and growing sustainability in the wine industry, with an expertise in communications and certification standards. Anna has served as a lead sustainability consultant with Ontario Craft Wineries, Sustainable Winegrowing British Columbia, Crimson Wine Group, the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, and individual wineries including Benziger Family Winery and Seghesio Family Vineyards. She has helped lead the growth of the Napa Green program for over six years, and stepped into the position of Executive Director of the now independent non-profit in fall 2019. Anna has a Master’s of Environmental Science & Management from the Bren School at UC Santa Barbara and a BA in Political Science and Environmental Studies from Williams College.
Diana Snowden Seysses was born in Napa, California, graduated from the University of California at Davis with a BS in Viticulture and Enology in 2001 and then moved to France. Today she divides her time between the Napa Valley where she makes wine for her family estate, Snowden Vineyards and for Ashes & Diamonds and France where she is oenologist at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy and consults for Domaine de Triennes in Provence. After twenty-four years in wine, she finds ever more meaning in the craft of making vins de terroir. “The most memorable wines are living and changing. They are the result of vineyard work without chemicals, native yeast fermentation with minimal handling, and élevage in a cellar that breaths. Beyond these simple, traditional techniques, those of us who are fortunate enough to run wineries must deepen our thoughts on terroir to allow that term encompasses both ecosystem and community. We must think about balance between prosperity in our beautiful grape-growing regions and protecting the natural charm that made them famous in the first place. Climate change and all our farming choices have genetic impact on the vine. The emotional state of our employees leaves it signature on our wines. All these complex issues are in part our responsibility. I seek to protect a healthy environment in the largest sense of the term and transmit this just savoir faire to the next generation.” Diana is a member of the Académie du Vin, a board member of the Porto Protocol thinking committee and a mentor for Batonnage Forum and the Roots Fund.
Olga Barbosa is interested in the relationship between humans and the environment from an ecological perspective. Her research has been continuously centered around the effects of habitat fragmentation on both species (beetles and birds) and ecosystem functions (water and nitrogen cycling). She has conducted this work across Chile, specifically in Fray Jorge National Park, a fragmented cloud forest immersed in a semi desert area, and more recently in semi-pristine areas that transition into highly dynamic and human dominated ecosystems such as cities and agricultural ecosystems. She is active in engaging the wine industry on the conservation of Chilean Mediterranean Ecosystems. The conservation of this habitat is important not only for wineries that depend on the provision of ecosystem services that sustain production and wine quality, but also for successful climate change adaptation of local communities.
Elaine Chukan Brown serves as a writer, speaker, and global wine educator working at the intersection of sustainability, climate action, and reducing gatekeeping in wine. Brown has served as the Executive Editor US for JancisRobinson.com, a columnist for Decanter Magazine, a contributing writer to Wine & Spirits Magazine, as well as the 4th and 5th editions of The Oxford Companion to Wine, the 8th edition of The World Atlas of Wine, and the compilations On California and On Burgundy from Academie du Vin Library. Brown currently reviews wines of Napa Valley for Wine Enthusiast Magazine, serves as a judge for the Texsom Awards, and a board member of the Wine Writer Symposium. Brown co-founded the Diversity in Wine Leadership Forum, and have advised diversity initiatives in multiple countries.
Agrology is a leading climate tech start-up and Public Benefit Corporation with a mission to help farmers adapt to and beat climate change with real-time analysis and predictive insights. The Agrology platform consists of climate and carbon monitoring systems, both based on ground-truth data and machine learning. The Agrology Climate Monitoring System delivers predictive insights and warnings, up to three days in advance, for wildfire smoke taint, extreme weather, soil conditions, pest and disease emergence, and irrigation. Agrology’s Carbon Monitoring System tracks soil carbon sequestration in real time, quickly detecting carbon loss via carbon dioxide emission events. Agrology customers include Braga Fresh, The Duckhorn Portfolio, Boisset Collection, Dana Estates, Emeritus Vineyards, Jordan Vineyards and Winery, Joseph Phelps Vineyards, Langtry Farms, Lawrence Vineyards, Mission Hill Family Estate Winery, Renteria Vineyard Management, Signorello Estate, Silver Oak Vineyards, and numerous specialty farms. Agrology is the winner of two highly selective National Science Foundation SBIR Awards, a 2023 WINnovation Award, and is a recipient of a USDA Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities grant. Agrology has offices in Alexandria, Virginia, and Sonoma, California, and can be found online at Agrology.ag.
Diam Bouchage has always been an innovative company; every year, it allocates a substantial budget to research and development.
In 2003, the company began investing in a revolutionary, patented process, called the DIAMANT® process that uses the properties of supercritical CO2 to extract the volatile compounds of cork and eradicate the molecules responsible for giving a taste to the wine, especially those causing “cork taint”.
Twelve years later, the company made yet another breakthrough in major technological progress with the launch of Origine by Diam®, a closure that reconciles science and nature, integrating a beeswax emulsion and binding agent composed of 100% plant-derived polyols.
Founded in eastern Napa county, Napachar converts woody waste from vineyard management and local forest fuel-reduction efforts into Biochar, one of the richest soil amendments and most stable forms of carbon capture available today. By making our biochar with portable kilns on site in the vineyard and forest, we reduce transportation costs and emissions, and offer a drop-in replacement for burn-piling and wood-chipping. Additionally, our kilns are substantially lower polluting than these alternatives, producing almost no smoke and releasing a tenth of the CO2. Our resulting product is ready for incorporation into vineyard soil, where it serves as an organic tool for holding onto water and nutrients in the soil and encourages increased growth and crop production, with no detriment to the quality of the fruits.
At Scout, our mission is to assist growers, wineries and vineyard management companies achieve their financial objectives, grow better quality fruit, and increase their yields using data harvested during the growing season. We believe in the blending of traditional farming intuition with state of the art data collection and AI assisted insights will enable sustainable, profitable, and high quality farming for generations. We are dedicated to helping our customers make the best decisions to maximize their efforts across all their planted sites while improving their bottom line.
Full service Wildfire Fuel Reduction and Forest Debris Management.
With their mobile burn process, The Clean Burn Company is able to perform most burning services where the piles are; eliminating the need to dismantle and manage each part of the tree separately. They manage all parts of a tree in one process.
No hauling, no chippers, no piles of flammable material left behind.
Napa Green is a global leader in sustainable winegrowing, setting the highest bar for sustainability and climate action in the wine industry. Napa Green facilitates systematic soil to bottle certification for wineries and vineyards, and provides the resources, tools and connections to continuously level up leadership. In 2021, Napa Green was the first sustainable winegrowing program in the world to redevelop Vineyard certification standards to focus on climate action, regenerative carbon farming, and social equity. In 2022, Napa Green and community partners launched a first of its kind, six-event Climate & Wine Symposium (Napa THRIVES now RISE) with over 65 speakers and 600 total guests.
Join winemaker @evyncam at RISE Climate & Wine Symposium beginning April 29th - May 8th in Napa Valley!
Evyn is a winemaker for @unefemmewines, board member for @napagreen, mentor for @batonnage_forum & very involved in social & environmental sustainability. Join us at RISE 2025!
Is water the solution to heat stress?
As extreme heat events become more frequent and intense, the wine industry faces a critical dilemma in water management. At RISE Climate & Wine Symposium, we will explore the rising use of water to buffer heat stress and prevent crop loss.
Join the conversation April 29, 2025.
Ticket link in bio.
#wineindustry #climateandwine #climateandwinesymposium #vineyardmanagement #winesymposium
Why not? Join co founder @reyeswine.mw at RISE Climate & Wine Symposium beginning April 29th and running through May 8th!
#winebusiness #wineindustry #wine #masterofwine #sustainability #rise
Join us May 6th for a keynote address from Jermaine Stone, CEO of Cru Luv Wines and Author of "Wine Barz Vol. 1"
Twenty years ago, Jermaine Stone went from rapping to packing boxes in the shipping department at Zachy’s to becoming the first black commercial wine auctioneer. He has since been heralded as one of Wine Enthusiast’s 40 under 40. The Bronx native’s rise in the wine industry has been driven by one key mission: to challenge the narrative about and for black men in America. In founding Cru Luv Selections, an innovative creative agency based in NYC, Stone has found a space that can use marketing, brand partnerships, and content creation to connect wine and hip-hop cultures and bring wine to an audience that has traditionally been ignored. In 2023, Stone was featured in the New York Times, on Sway in the Morning, and in Us Weekly. He also became the star of the Tastemade original streaming series Street Somm, which has been nominated for both a James Beard Award and an Emmy Award.
Follow the link in our bio to purchase tickets and be a part of this amazing day!
Why RISE? Check in with @mkshepp of @spottswoodewinery to hear more 🔝
#rise #sustainability #winery #symposium #napa #napavalley #winebusiness #wineindustry
Today is the last day for early bird pricing! Get your tickets now!
You don’t want to miss the RISE Climate & Wine Sympoisum hosted by Napa Green at the Charles Krug Carriage House on April 29, April 30, May 1, May 6, May 7 and May 8.
Ticket link in bio.
The RISE Climate & Wine Symposium is a six-event series focused on accelerating sustainability and climate action in the wine industry, with a focus on regenerative practices and building resilient vineyards and ecosystems.
You don’t want to miss these leading speakers, cutting edge solutions to industry problems, impactful conversations and real results from growers and vintners.
Join us April 29, April 30, May 1, May 6, May 7 and May 8 at the historic Charles Krug Carriage House.
Get single day or six-day tickets at the link in our bio.
Slide for speakers ➡️
Can Wine Really Impact Climate Action? Can Forest & Creek Restoration Create Localized Climate Cooling? Join us on the final day of the RISE Climate & Wine Symposium to hear experts address these critical questions and learn why energy efficiency, water efficiency, supply chain management, biodiversity, and social equity are all critical components of climate action in the wine industry.
Don’t miss this exciting event on May 8, 2025 at the Charles Krug Carriage House.
🌱CLIMATE ACTION & REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE DAY on May 8th! Our final day of RISE 2025 which encompasses all of our pillars of sustainability. Link in bio for tickets or head to www.risegreen.org!
Slide for Speakers ➡️
Unfortunately, wine cannot flow directly from the barrel to your glass. It takes a lot of materials and packaging to get that elegant wine bottle to your table. Wineries have significant purchasing power and can green their supply chain and shift to environmentally preferable products.
Join Cathy Corison & Grace Corison Martin in Conversation: Heritage & Horizon: A Mother-Daughter Vision for Wine’s Climate Future with Cathy Corison and Grace Corison Martin. Learn about reuse and upcycling opportunities, dive into how wineries can leverage their purchasing power to drive sustainability innovation, and hear experts weigh in on the critical question, Do Consumers Care about Sustainability & Climate Action?
Join the conversation May 7, 2025. Ticket link in bio.
Join us at RISE on May 7th for Supply Chain & Waste Prevention Day featuring @cathycorison & @gracecorisonmartin!
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