Sonoma Vineyard Innovation Through Science

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

The Sonoma County Winegrowers recently announced the nation’s first innovation accelerator for the wine industry to encourage, collaborate, and assist in the development and creation of vineyard resiliency solutions. President Karissa Kruse describe s this initiative they call Sonoma VITS.

Kruse… “It's called Sonoma VITS, and it's vineyard innovation through science. And, it's like an innovation accelerator. And so I think of it as like the TV show Shark Tank, where you had a bunch of entrepreneurs and, you know, new businesses come in and they try to make a match. Well we're trying to do that with companies out there that maybe have technology, science, research, something, but they haven't been able to quite match with a grower to pilot something to really get it off the ground, kind of that lift that they need. And so what we do well at Sonoma County Winegrowers is obviously bringing sort of partners and bridging those partners with growers.”

Kruse says this will be an open invitation to anyone with a solution that could benefit local winegrape growers.

Kruse… “Help us understand water use, innovation, technology apps that we can put on our iPad. I mean, whatever it is, and then there's going to be that box that's like, what don't we even know enough to ask you to do here? And then we're going to do a big pitch day. So we'll go through the proposals, and then this summer we're actually going to invite, depending on kind of how many proposals we get in and the interest, a number of companies to come pitch our advisory group and try to find a grower to match them with, to get a pilot off the ground. And then be able to sort of stand on that.”

Learn more on the Sonoma County Winegrape Growers website.