Somewhere between a certification syllabus and a 120-year-old vine, there’s a kind of education you cannot download.
I’ve been part of the Lone Wolf project since 2023. Long enough that it’s no longer a visit. It’s a responsibility. A return.
Lone Wolf sits on the Pechanga Reservation near Temecula, Southern California. Before it is a vineyard, it is tribal land. The Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians have stewarded this place long before vines were planted here in the late 1800s. Every time we step among those old trunks, we are guests. That awareness changes how you move. How you cut. How you speak.
The vineyard itself was planted in the late nineteenth century and largely abandoned in the 1960s. Many vines went unpruned for decades. They grew wild. Feral. Collapsing inward. Competing with themselves.
When Abe Schoener and Raj Parr began rehabilitating the site, it wasn’t revival for spectacle. It was stewardship. Careful pruning. Gradually guiding goblet vines back toward an open core. Reducing stress instead of forcing control.
The first serious pruning quintupled fruit compared to the unpruned state. Not because more was demanded. Because balance was restored.
I’ve taught that principle in structured wine education.
But I learned it with shears in my hand.
Brutal cold. Brutal heat.
Pruning doesn’t happen in comfort.
One year we pruned in 38°F, windswept rain. Fingers numb. Secateurs slipping. Trying to make precise cuts while the weather works against you. And yet the food and wine tasting that followed — the circle of tired, wet humans learning together — made every cut worth it.
Other years it’s the opposite.
Harsh California heat. Wasps everywhere. Or that strange harvest tension when rain is threatening and fruit has to come off now. Your shoulders tighten. Decisions feel heavier.
This is not academic learning.
This is embodied learning.
What the vines actually taught us
In classrooms we read about vine structure, sap flow, wound management.
At Lone Wolf we practice it.
We learn to nurture the core vine structure and shut down the “wildlings” — identifying the true trunk among several, respecting the vine’s natural architecture instead of imposing symmetry.
We think about sap flow — protecting the vascular continuity of the plant instead of interrupting it carelessly.
We learn to avoid big cuts near the crown to prevent internal corking and disease entry.
We leave protective wood, understanding that every cut creates dry-back.
And most importantly, we are told again and again: trust your observations. Trust your common sense.
Clean out satellites. Remove weak canes even if they’re perfectly positioned. Avoid downward-facing spurs.
Wine education gives you language.
Vineyard work gives you judgement.
The two are not interchangeable.
Coyote watch
One year, coyotes took a serious portion of the crop. Drought makes fruit irresistible.
I live closest to the Pechanga site.
So close to harvest, I go up at night with a torch and a stick.
Coyote watch.
You stand among vines planted in 1896, listening. Sometimes you see eyes flash in the beam. Sometimes just movement in the brush.
My husband is on the phone with me while I patrol. Sometimes we barely speak. He just listens through the line. Sometimes he’s ready to come if needed. It’s simple. Practical. Quiet. Thankfully, we haven’t lost fruit to coyotes since.
During the day, I test Brix. Walk rows. Sample clusters from different sections. Track sugar accumulation, yes — but also flavour, seed texture, skin resistance. Check if numbers align with what the berries are saying. Letting Abe know so he can schedule picking.
In one part of my life, I teach ripeness parameters for certification exams.
In another, I decide whether we harvest at dawn.
The difference is weight.
The Wolf Pack
This is what I struggle to describe without sounding sentimental.
Every year we gather again.
Some seasoned. Some new. Forty people sometimes. Many who had never held pruning shears before their first winter.
We sweat together. We make mistakes together. We learn together.
And when the sun goes down, something shifts.
We chop vegetables. Grill lamb. Open bottles. Sit at community style tables. Abe talks through why a cut was wrong last year — sometimes laughing, “probably done by me.” Raj discusses harvest timing. Kaeley walks us through fermentation choices. We taste the vintage and understand what our labor shaped.
This is not performance.
This is shared agricultural literacy.
There is a kind of family that forms when people return to the same place year after year to work. Not a sentimental family. A functional one. Built on repetition, trust, and shared responsibility.
We call ourselves the Wolf Pack half jokingly.
But we come back.
The balance
I believe deeply in wine education. In certifications. In academic structure. In understanding systems clearly.
But Lone Wolf keeps that knowledge honest.
Education without land can become abstract.
Land without reflection can become romantic.
The balance is the point.
Pruning in freezing rain. Harvesting in heat and wasps. Guarding fruit at night. Testing Brix. Listening to winemakers explain why philosophy shifts when the cellar demands it.
Then returning to my students and my own studies with sharper judgement. With soil under my fingernails.
Lone Wolf is not separate from my wine education.
It is what makes it real.
We show up. We cut carefully. We guard what we grow. We taste what we made. And we return the next year.
That’s the community.
That’s the learning.
That’s why I stay.