Musings From The Vines
Sustainability in the Wine Industry Mark Holford, owner, winemaker Rocky Creek Winery Cowichan’s most award winning winery.
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s many know while my passion and interests have always been around making and enjoying wine, my education and career have been focussed on the environment. I’ve worked in the environmental field for almost 30 years and took my master’s degree in “Engineering for the environment” back in 1998. One of my master’s level courses was on sustainability and it really sunk in. When we started the winery seven years later, every decision we made on how to proceed was always anchored with the concept of sustainability and making sure we used the smallest environmental footprint possible in pursuing our dreams. So, sustainability is a wonderfully nebulous word, but what does it mean in real life and what concrete actions can you take in the wine industry to be sustainable? Well one of the best tools for evaluating sustainability is a life cycle assessment (LCA) which looks at all the environmental factors
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from cradle to grave so you incorporate all aspects involved in the product you are making. It accounts for a wide range of environmental impacts including global warming, ozone depletion, smog creation, eutrophication, acidification, toxicological stress on humans and ecosystems, depletion of natural resources, energy consumption, land and water use. So what did we do to minimize the environmental burden of our products? In the vineyard, we started with steel posts, rather than pressure treated wood. ‘Keep those nasty toxic chemicals away from my grapes please.’ Also, wood posts rot and require replacement after 10-15 years. We purchased experimental grapes that were known to be highly resistant to powdery mildew. This allows us to forego the usual sprays of fungicides to prevent disease. Because spraying wasn’t necessary, we grew the vines in a novel trellising design called Geneva double curtain, which has the trunk high in the air, and shoots drape down into the rows. This reduces the need for any work in the vineyard during summer, eliminating the use
