Wente Vineyards typically picks its grapes in the late summer and fall, but it harvests its complaints months earlier. Like most vintners, Wente sprays its grapes with fungicide in the spring. But its vines crawl around a dense patchwork of neighborhoods in Livermore, Calif., about 30 miles east of San Francisco Bay. If Wente crews dust the plants after 6 a.m. on a weekday, they run afoul of laws regulating air quality around schools and daycares. Dust before 6 a.m. and the phone starts ringing with calls from people who prefer a traditional alarm clock to the rumble of a diesel tractor. “If harvest is the Super Bowl, fungicide season is the playoffs,” says Niki Wente, viticulture manager at the five-generation wine producer. Next season, however, Wente hopes to be more simpatico with its neighbors thanks to two new electric machines from Monarch Tractor . The 12-foot long vehicles […]