"This is a tangible achievement that matters to our community and consumers. Napa Green members are showing what is possible. We hope it will resonate with growers worldwide," says Anna Brittain, Executive Director of Napa Green.
Napa Green has completed one of the most ambitious pesticide phase-outs in the wine industry. The certification organization announced that all 56 of its member growers have eliminated Roundup and all glyphosate-based herbicides across 101 certified vineyard properties totaling 6,000 acres, with no variances granted. The milestone, announced December 2, 2025, makes Napa Green the first industry organization to remove the world's most widely used herbicide across its entire certified vineyard footprint.
"This is a tangible achievement that matters to our community and consumers," says Anna Brittain, Executive Director of Napa Green. "We work with our growers to implement systemic beneficial practices from soil to water to people, and Roundup poses a risk to all three. Napa Green members are showing what is possible. We hope it will resonate with growers worldwide."
A deadline set in 2023
The requirement was announced at the end of 2023, giving member growers a two-year runway: Roundup and glyphosate-based products had to go by January 1, 2026, with other synthetic herbicides, including Lifeline (glufosinate ammonium), to follow by January 1, 2028. Growers met the first deadline with no variances, a compliance rate that surprised even some within the industry.
The phase-out sits inside a broader certification standard built around soil health, water stewardship, climate action and farmworker wellbeing. Napa Green describes its program as a comprehensive, outcomes-based certification, and the glyphosate ban is one component of a system that also tracks biodiversity, carbon and irrigation efficiency.
What replaced the spray rig
Growers who gave up glyphosate turned to a mix of mechanical and biological tools. The announcement highlighted the Fischer Twister, an undervine mower in use at St. Supery's Mee Lane Vineyard, as emblematic of the shift: precision mechanical cultivation that manages weeds without chemistry. Others leaned on sheep grazing, cover cropping and hand crews.
The trade press took notice, with JancisRobinson.com praising the growers for choosing soil health over chemical convenience and calling the achievement one the wine world should reckon with.
How compliance was verified
The ban was not a pledge. Napa Green's certification includes third-party audits, and the glyphosate requirement carried no variance process: members either eliminated the herbicide by January 1, 2026 or lost certification. The organization says every one of its 56 growers met the deadline, a compliance record that gives the claim audit-grade weight in a market full of unverified sustainability marketing.
The two-year runway, set at the end of 2023, mattered. Growers used it to trial mechanical alternatives, rework undervine management budgets and retrain crews. The 2028 deadline for remaining synthetic herbicides will be harder: glufosinate and other chemistry fill niches that mechanical tools handle less cleanly, and the cost curve steepens from here.
The commercial question
The milestone lands as certification standards become commercial assets. Retail buyers and distributors increasingly screen for third-party credentials, and a documented, audited phase-out of the industry's most controversial herbicide gives Napa Green members a claim competitors cannot easily match. The second deadline, January 1, 2028 for all remaining synthetic herbicides, will test whether the compliance record repeats when the chemistry gets harder to replace.
For now, 6,000 acres of Napa Valley vineyard are farming without glyphosate. That is a data point the rest of the wine world will have to reckon with.