Top 10 Eco-friendly Wine Practices
Southern Oregon Magazine Summer 2010
Toasting the planet with Southern Oregon’s “green” wine
By Janet Eastman
1 – Tasty Grapes
Southern Oregon grape growers are leaders in nurturing naturally healthy vineyards to create wine with a luscious taste of place.
Avoiding chemical-laden insecticides, weed killers and fertilizers, farmers here put Mother Nature to work. Raptors and owls ward off rodents. Bats and swallows pluck off pesky insects. Goats and sheep mow down grasses. And Abacela’s vineyards get piles of organic, composting “zoo do” from Roseburg neighbor, the Wildlife Safari Animal Park.
Abacela
www.abacela.com
2 – Winning Wines
Proof of a winemaker’s earth-friendly practices show up on bottles. There is an alphabet soup of hard-to-earn eco-labels and certification seals – LIVE (Low Input Viticulture & Enology), OCSW (Oregon Certified Sustainable Wine) and organic certifiers CCOF and Oregon Tilth.
Taking the idea of organic to the holistic max is Cowhorn Vineyard & Garden, which was granted Biodynamic status.
Cowhorn Vineyard & Garden
CCOF organic certification
LIVE (Low Input Viticulture & Enology)
OCSW (Oregon Certified Sustainable Wine)
Oregon Tilth Certified Organic
3 – Green Packaging
Labels can be made from recycled paper and printed with soy ink. Natural corks harvested from monitored forests are popped in bottles instead of plastic stoppers made of petroleum products or aluminum screw tops with non-recyclable plastic sealers and adhesives.
Lighter-weight bottles shave transportation costs. Better yet, are no bottles, labels, corks, capsules or cartons at all. Wooldridge Creek, Troon’s Trifecta and Rosella’s Vineyard deliver gallons of quality wine to restaurants in stainless-steel kegs.
Rosella’s Vineyard
Troon Vineyard
Wooldridge Creek Winery and Vineyard
4 – Recycling and Upcycling
Used wine bottles are recycled, some inventively. They are crushed to become countertops and floors. Or cut in half to become a drinking cup with a punt bottom and goblet with a bottleneck stem. Or heated and flattened by Ardie Andrew of Corvallis into Bridgeview Winery-blue trays, spoon rests and dip dishes.
Corks are collected and made into bulletin boards, wreaths and flooring. Western Pulp Products in Corvallis turns them into wine-shipping containers.
Old oak barrels are reincarnated into doghouses, beehives, flower planters and rain collectors.
Ardie Andrew
Bridgeview Vineyards and Winery
Cork ReHarvest
5 – Clean Buildings
Tasting rooms aim to be free of smells that distract from wines’ tantalizing aromas. Building and decorating green means no noxious VOC paints, off-gassing furnishings or synthetic odor eliminators.
Many wineries build with sustainable or reclaimed materials. Foris Vineyards converted a century-old barn into modern housing for farm workers. And it reemployed old telephone wire as vineyard trellises.
Foris Vineyards
6 – Cutting Costly Energy
Pulling the plug on energy eaters, wineries replaced them with solar power and on-demand water heaters. Valley View and Wooldridge Creek enrolled early in Pacific Power’s Blue Star renewable energy program. And Abacela and King Estate reduced greenhouse gases with more efficient refrigeration and other practices to meet the Carbon Neutral Challenge.
Workers drive electric-powered vehicles, bio-diesel tractors and the harvest tradition of horse- and donkey-powered carts still exists. Gus Janeway rides his bike to visit the vineyards where he buys grapes to make his Velocity Cellars wine.
King Estate Winery
Valley View Winery
Velocity Cellars
7 – Reining Water
Overflowing water is costly and can erode precious soils and cause runoff problems. RoxyAnn and other Salmon-Safe certified grape growers limit water use to protect the aquifers shared with neighbors and wildlife.
Wineries that don’t dry farm, recycle wastewater, capture rain and use gravity-powered drip irrigation and frost protection to put every drop to good use.
RoxyAnn Winery
8 – Eco-Conscious Wine Guides
Members of the Green Vine Wine Club receive shipments of the very best organic, biodynamic or sustainable wines selected by the discerning owners of the Pacific Wine Club, a warehouse and online retailer near the Medford airport.
Another passionate seller is Jeff Weissler of Conscious Wines in Ashland. He offers classes based on three decades in the business and scrutiny of green producers. He selects wines based on 12 strict earth-protecting requirements. Oh, and the wine has to “rock.”
Pacific Wine Club
Conscious Wines
9 – Drink Green Events
Being smart about the future doesn’t mean living in dullsville today. There are wine festivals, tastings and green drink parties where guests bring glasses from home and are handed biodegradable plates.
Spangler Vineyards’ club members get a wine credit if they return shipping boxes to be re-used or recycled. Del Rio turns its empty bottles over to novice winemakers for a second life and packs full bottles in reusable bags. A new “Drink Green” T-shirt is on its shelves and its online store.
Del Rio Vineyards
Spangler Vineyards & Winery
10 – Paperless messages
Websites, digital newsletters, blogs, social media postings and emails get the message out about wine releases, awards and events without cutting down trees or firing up a paper factory. It’s another way, says dedicated digital communicator Ruth Garvin of Cliff Creek Cellars, to remind customers and tourists that Southern Oregon wineries are green to stay. And that buying local wines is the first step to being eco-friendly.
Cliff Creek Cellars
Janet Eastman reports on Southern Oregon wine and other lifestyle topics. An archive of her work is at www.janeteastman.com