Local wineries’ environmentally conscious efforts are making a positive difference in many ways.
Last February, in the closing speech at the World Meeting on Climate Change & Wine in Barcelona, former Vice President Al Gore praised the world’s winegrowers for leading the way in greening this third planet from the sun. He pointed to the industry’s move toward greener packaging and attention to climate change, saying also that, “Things we measure get more attention than things we don’t measure, so carbon dioxide has, historically, been treated as irrelevant.”
At the same conference, Spanish winemaker Miguel Torres (brother of our own local winery owner, Marimar Torres) cautioned his audience, “You, as industrialists and distributors, will begin to see more and more consumers asking for products from businesses that are conscious of a climate problem.”
Many grape growers have, of course, pursued organic farming practices for years, not only as a means of being more earth-friendly, but also as a means of producing better quality fruit. And the “green” tent is expanding as more folks focus on treading a tad more lightly on the ecosystem.
Biodynamic Benziger
Mike Benziger, head of his family’s Glen Ellen enterprise, Benziger Family Winery, takes the notion of “green” quite seriously, so much so that he suggests a knowledge of quantum physics can be applied to improve his family’s biodynamic farming practices. The Benzigers began converting their home vineyard to biodynamic farming in 1997, and it was certified four years later.
“What identifies great wines is, they have clear varietal character and a sense of the place, people and passion that created them,” says Benziger. “Wine is the beverage of love, while beer just makes you piss and fart, and tequila makes you want to kill someone. Biodynamic farming creates uniqueness in a property. Seventy percent of Sonoma County wines are sold by corporations, so we need to be unique. It’s a question of function [standardization] versus being [uniqueness]. Being gives vitality and sustenance to our aims, and it speaks of the quality of people and the liveliness of the whole. Function is mere mastery, expansion and quantity.
“Being is the only way for us to remain competitive while running under the feet of the elephants. We buy from more than 40 growers around Sonoma County, and we aim at long-term contracts to control the quality of the fruit we receive by having a say in the planting, the farming and the yields.
“With biodynamic farming, if you make good decisions up front, the winemaking is relatively easy. We visit our growers six to eight times a year, keep their [300] lots separate, then taste their wines with them to create an effective feedback loop so we can learn together. We use spading more than disking [done by hand, spading is far more specific than disking, which cuts a broad swath through the soil], we compost to invigorate the soil, not to boost fertility, we use cover crops as a gas pedal to control vigor, and burn winter weeds—we get 100 inches of rain in some winters. Our ‘insectory’ is our bug farm, which eliminates pesticide use.
“We’re banking on a healthy ecosystem to prevent Pierce’s disease from getting established here. We put up 40 bird boxes, and more than 30 already have nests [mostly bluebirds]. Owls mitigate moles and gophers, which cuts our erosion problems. As I mentioned, we turn all our vineyard and winery waste to the compost pile, which saves us the $3,000 a month we used to pay for waste removal. It’s all connected. Biodynamic farming has involved everybody in our company. We recycle all the water on our property, which saves over 1 million gallons of water on our home ranch and 1.5 million gallons at our other winery [Imagery Estate Winery, also in Glen Ellen]. Our reason to be is to obsess over our wines.”
Recently appointed to a full-time slot as director of sustainability at Benziger is Mimi Gatens (formerly with Pat Kuleto and Pine Ridge wineries). “We’ve also added a flock of 30 Dorper sheep to our work force,” she says, stifling a laugh. “They roam our vineyards during the winter, eating weeds and tilling the soil naturally—this eliminates soil compaction from tractors—and their droppings provide nature’s own fertilizer.”
Naturally Grgich
Miljenko “Mike” Grgich is the reigning veteran of the California wine industry, having won the famed 1976 “Judgment of Paris” with the supple and long-lived 1973 Chardonnay he made as winemaster at Chateau Montelena, then creating a whole new meaning for that variety (not to mention exceptional Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignons) at his own Grgich Hills Estate, which opened in 1977 on Highway 29 in mid-Napa Valley. Grgich knows and respects nature’s “old ways.”
Under his direction, the winery has created a diverse and balanced ecosystem. “We farm organically and biodynamically,” he explains. “We do that to preserve and improve Mother Earth—not only for now but for future generations. Sustainable farming doesn’t deplete the soil or its fertility. The essence of organic farming is, it feeds the plants without the use of insecticides, fungicides or commercial fertilizers.
Biodynamic farming feeds the soil, keeping it alive and healthy using organic materials; it’s even further advanced in that it uses the earth’s natural cycles and organic preparations to produce balance in the soil and in its plants.”
Grgich’s nephew, Ivo Jeramaz, the winery’s vice president of vineyards and production, further explains: “At Grgich Hills, we’ve been organic since 2000, and we began biodynamic farming practices in early 2003 at our Yountville vineyard. The vineyard looks great, and we farm all 366 acres biodynamically. We believe that makes us the largest biodynamic grape grower in the country. The difference between biodynamic and organic farming is that biodynamic recognizes cosmic forces and uses them to enhance and balance the vine growth, while organic farming is a more passive approach. Biodynamic and organic farming both use many similar approaches—no use of pesticides, herbicides, synthetic fertilizers—they rely on compost for nurturing the plants.”
In keeping with that trend, Grgich Hills has also made the move to solar power. “We installed some test panels in December 2005 that generated 30 kilowatts,” continues Jeramaz, “and even though it was winter, we were so pleased with the results and the potential savings that we started planning to create all of our energy that way. It was actually easy to sell my uncle. As soon as I told Mike there was a way to generate our own electricity and not depend on PG&E, he was all for it! Not only does it virtually eliminate our electricity bill, but this conversion to a renewable and pollutant-free energy source follows our philosophy of environmental sustainability.”
The folks at SPG Solar covered 13,000 square feet of the winery’s red tile roof with 860 photovoltaic panels. At peak production, figures Jeramaz, “the panels will generate 142 kilowatts and provide close to all of our electrical needs. That translates into a savings of $70,000 a year!” The winery is now on a “net” meter, which keeps track of how much the solar panels contribute to the power grid; it also receives a statement each month reflecting the balance. On sunny days, the winery exports power to the grid, spinning the meter back; on cloudy or high-use days, it uses that credit to import electricity. “The panels have a 30-year life expectancy,” says Jeramaz. “But we believe they’ll pay for themselves in five years.” The overall cost of the project was a shade over $1 million, offset by a rebate of nearly $400,000 and depreciation.
Kunde’s roots
The Kunde family has been entrenched in the midst of the Sonoma Valley for more than a century (and five generations), and they know a few things about living with the land and listening to what Mother Nature has to say. (Remember the old margarine commercial, with the tag line, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”? “It isn’t nice to fiddle with that mean old lady,” was the late Joe Heitz’s deathless line). Jeff Kunde has instituted a native tree planting program at his family’s Kunde Estate Winery & Vineyards’ new “native plants nursery.” The idea is to repopulate threatened creekside habitats on the nearly 2,000-acre estate and to repopulate the native oaks in Sonoma Valley. “We brought a group of local, elementary school kids—a third grade class—out one day to help us plant more than 500 acorns from seven varieties of native species. Our nursery is set up to propagate native tree varieties, then give them away as a means of teaching people about—and promoting the idea of—sustainability. If we don’t work to sustain the planet, we’re all in trouble.”
In addition to having earned the Second Level Green Business Certification from the San Francisco Bay Area Green Business Program three years ago (it’s the highest level of certification), the Kunde family recently launched its “Eco-Green” tour program. If the title is a little clunky, the program is eye opening. “Our docent, Bill Myers, and I lead hikes through our 750 acres of vineyard,” says Kunde, “showing how we’re farming to sustainable standards, both to preserve the land and improve our wine quality. It’s interesting, but our move to a more conscientious means of farming has generated an interest in our wines from a whole new segment of the population—and it’s of interest to people of all ages, from youngsters to the older generation who see this as a return to the more sensible practices they and their parents grew up with.”
Adds marketing director Marcia Kunde Mickelson (Jeff’s sister), “We see our ‘360 degree sustainable practices’ as being the only way to maintain the long-term viability of agricultural lands. Our program looks to monitor waste and energy management, water conservation [creek restoration is a part of that], supply management, human resources management, air quality, to institute educational programs and community involvement so we can get better at taking care of the land. It doesn’t hurt that these programs generate wines that speak to their source and are of better quality than any that were ever made by conventional farming practices.”
Greening the Rutherford dust
The Peju Province clan (in Rutherford) is particularly pleased to note it’s earned “organic” certification from the CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) and that the Peju family is actively “harvesting the sun” with more than 700 solar rooftop panels at the winery. “The panels will generate power throughout the winery,” says Ariana Peju with the sunniest of smiles. “The 10,000 square feet of solar panels—installed by Akeena Solar—are going to cut our electricity bills by more than a third, and the installation will pay for itself in just seven or eight years!” The daughter of founders Tony and Herta Peju, Ariana adds that, through the 30-year lifetime of the system—it takes up nearly all of the roof of the crush pad, barrel room, tank area and some of the offices—“greenhouse gases and air pollutants will be greatly reduced.”
Just down the road, also in Rutherford, the Honig family is big on sustainable farming, and it’s even given more than one-third of an acre of prime vineland to solar panels sufficient to power the entire winery. “The solar panels provide enough electricity to meet all of the winery’s energy needs,” says Honig Vineyard & Winery President Michael Honig with obvious pride. “We don’t use herbicides to control weeds. We employ cover crops and apply compost to build organic matter, soil nutrients and help with erosion control. We plant hedgerows along the vineyard borders to provide habitat for predatory insects—the good bugs that eat the bad bugs—we conserve water and recycle and/or reuse solid waste and packaging materials in both the vineyard and winery, and we’ve erected bat boxes, bluebird houses, owl houses and hawk perches to help control rodent and insect populations.”
As if that weren’t enough, Honig is actively involved with the Bergin University of Canine Studies (previously known as the Assistance Dog Institute), training retriever “sniffer dogs” to identify the pheromones that indicate the presence of vine mealybugs, which threaten vine health [see “The Nose Knows,” Feb. 2007].
Global change
All in all, vineyard and winery owners all over the world are nearing the “tipping point” when it comes to recognizing the need to pay close and continued attention to “green” factors. From Australia to Austria, from South Africa to North America, we recognize that reducing carbon emissions and conservation are mindsets whose time has come. A French Champagne producer (Pommery) is using wind turbines to generate electricity and working to streamline the number of transport trucks it uses. One producer has planted sunflower fields to generate biofuel for his tractors, many are paying attention to more efficient water conservation techniques, and some are even lobbying to use lighter-weight wine bottles. It’s a big tent, it’s all grist for the mill, and if the world’s wine mill is going to continue to crush good grapes for better wines well into the future, well, we’re all going to have to be in that tent and pay attention.
Hinkle’s ninth wine book, Clos Pegase: The Architecture of Wine, is due out this summer. You can reach him at rphinkle@sonic.net.
