Environmental Friendly Wine

It is always good to see different people come up with different ideas of how to live green. Now here is a new idea for you - drink wisely, drink environmental friendly wine.

I just discovered this concept a few weeks ago, but apparently some vineyards with providence have been doing this for ages. These vineyards focus on how to produce quality wine with minimum environmental impact.

The Shafer vineyard in Napa Valley, USA

Image from Shafer

For example, Shafer, a vineyard in Napa Valley USA has been doing this for more than 20 years now. They have been using solar power as energy supply for a while and they bring the idea one step forward by turning into 100% solar power. Shafer recycles the water and produces their own compost. Apart from energy, pest is another problem that a vineyard have to face. Majority use chemical and pesticide. Alternatively, Shafer controls the pest biologically by building habitat for the predators of these pests, which as spiders and ladybirds. The destructive insects also eliminated by larger animal such as bat. On the other hand, the rodents are taken care by the birds of prey such as Red-shouldered Hawks, Red-tailed hawks and American Kestrels. They attract these predator by building nesting box. The introduction of the birds of prey completely eliminates the use of rodent poison in the soil.

Unlike organic wine, they is no legal definition of what is a sustainable wine. So far it is more of a philosophy more than a regulated thing, according to Ray Isle of Food and Wine magazine.

Shafer Merlot

Image from gopherwine.com

For me, my bottom line is that the wine should still taste good even if it is produced by sustainable winemaking. I believe that is not gonna be a big problem because the Shafer Merlot is selected by the Food and Wine magazine as "Merlot of the Year" and "To 10 Merlot of the year" by Wine News. Nice