I’ve been walking Napa vineyards asking winemakers one question: where does intuition end and data begin?

I'm a French guy living in the Bay Area, managing a 700-acre forest back home. That background got me curious about how people make decisions on land they know deeply but can never fully predict.

So I started walking Napa vineyards with winemakers — not to review wines, just to understand how they think. What I keep hearing surprises me.

They're not data-poor. Weather stations, soil probes, lab analyses, years of logs. What they're missing is the ability to see patterns across it all — year over year, block by block. Every season they're partially re-learning what they already know.

One winemaker said it best: "I want something that helps me compare this year to past years and tells me if what I'm seeing in the field is what I should be seeing."

Not prediction. Not automation. Just structured memory of a place.

I've been writing these conversations up at Behind the Vine on Substack — no tasting notes, just the operational thinking behind each estate. Would love to hear if this resonates with anyone who actually farms.