CCOF Board Chair Phil LaRocca Reflects on 50 Years of CCOF

by Rachel Witte

“I got the farming bug in me,” Phil LaRocca says about going to his family’s ranch as a boy with his uncles to pick cherries. “I loved being out there, being with the trees.” All the while, his uncles talked to him about the importance of not having “a bunch of chemicals on your food.”

LaRocca’s first farm of his own was a leased apple orchard in Chico. He and his wife worked together to cultivate the first certified organic apple orchard in California, a few acres of organic Concord grapes, and some organic sheep. They’d heard about CCOF and got certified in the 1970s. “Back then, we inspected each other,” LaRocca explains.

Eventually, LaRocca transitioned to growing wine grapes. But making organic wine was complicated—and controversial. “I wanted to make an organic wine without sulfur dioxide, and you would have thought the end of the world was coming! I started to get the vibe that no one else was doing it,” LaRocca remembers. “The few people making organic wine stuck together, but the group was split in opinion on adding or removing sulfur dioxide. Meetings would start mellow and get heated quickly.”

In the 1990s, he was elected to the CCOF Board of Directors and eventually became the board chair. “I was there through the whole transition of the National Organic Program (NOP) coming in and running organic certification,” he recalls. “The one thing I was sure about was getting one standardized rule for organic. There were so many certifiers—all with different standards—and CCOF was the strictest one. If we turned down an applicant, they would just go to another certifier and get certified!”

LaRocca helped write the regulations for organic grape growing and organic winemaking. The sulfur dioxide issue was a heated one. “I came up with the concept of ‘wines made with organic grapes’ as a compromise,” he says. Now, wines can be labeled as “organic wine” if they are made with organic grapes and do not contain sulfites. “Wine made with organic grapes” must contain 100 percent organic grapes but are allowed to include sulfites.

LaRocca was also involved in adjusting CCOF’s structure to meet NOP requirements and starting the CCOF Foundation.

CCOF has truly grown in the time since LaRocca first became a certified member. Even though many of the changes were unexpected, they’ve allowed CCOF to evolve into the powerhouse it is today. “I’m really happy with the structure we have now—the three divisions. I’m proud to be a part of the history and feel that I helped develop where we are today,” says LaRocca.

As for where he sees CCOF going next? “We have such a strong reputation as being the best—being honest and fair. I see the CCOF Foundation growing and see us branching out and running other programs still under the umbrella of strong organic standards. I see us being a more powerful force on the state level,” he says. “We’re gonna see a brighter future.”