Vineyard and Winery 5/26/09

Today we visited a family owned and operated vineyard and winery to learn about how they were keeping their operation sustainable. We were met by Heidi Seifried, the daughter of Hermann and Agnes Seifried who are the founders of the vineyard, who gave us a tour of their whole operation.

This particular vineyard in Nelson has a grafting system in place which helps them overcome some of the diseases known to affect grapes. The whole grafting system takes about 4 years, starting off with culturing the roots that are Phylloxera resistant (Phylloxera is a root based microbial disease that has devastating effects on grape plants), then grafting shoots of particular grapes onto those roots and incubating the seedlings before finally planting them. With this system, it is possible to graft a different type of grape onto an already established root system that has been growing a different type of grape. This is done by cutting the plant down to the original root stalk and then grafting the new plant onto that root stalk. The fresh wound is covered with resin to prevent botrytis from getting into the plants. Botrytis is a fungal disease that is usually found on the raceme which are the left over stems once the grapes are shaken off.

Pesticide use is kept to a minimum by keeping the canopy of their grapes well trimmed and training the grapes to grow at a certain level. When pesticides and herbicides are used, they use sulfur and tend to stay away from copper sulfates. The copper sulfates have a nasty tendency to get into water supplies and are toxic to fish and marine wildlife. The Seifrieds use all natural oils to coat their grapes which helps to prevent fungal infections.

During the wine making process, extracts from fish bladders (isinglass or collagen), milk (casein) and egg (albumin) are used to neutralize the negatively charged tannins that come from the grape seeds and skins. These extracts are taken out of the wine by various types of filtration.

It was interesting to see the steps being taken to make this an eco-friendly operation. The vats were all placed under the protection of buildings to reduce the cost and need for refrigeration, there were also steps being taken to reduce the amount of water needed for irrigation and cleaning. Earlier in the trip, we talked to Cath Wallace, who made a point that being “green” was just a smoke and mirrors act. I disagree with this to a point, I think that there are many ways in which the examples we were shown today at this vineyard were excellent starts to being a more sustainable operation. However, there were many parts that could be improved upon.

For example, the release of carbon dioxide during the fermentation process is not sufficiently dealt with. There is an expectation that some of the carbon dioxide will be taken up by the grapes through photosynthesis but overall this does not fully compensate for the large release so this vineyard does not have a zero carbon footprint. On the plus side, they ship their wines in boats overseas which has a significantly lower carbon emission then trucking or air shipping. The obvious downside is the time it takes for the wines to arrive at their final destination.

I really enjoyed seeing how this family business was run and how they made and kept their international connections. This visit really exemplified how numerous areas of study (business, politics, chemistry, biology, econ, agriculture, forestry, …) need to be rolled into one in order for the business to be successful.

Gaby and Katie J.