Last year we had an energy use audit done on our winery, including the energy used in the vineyard (tractor diesel etc). It makes a long and complicated (possibly dull to some) read but came up with the conclusion that we are energy neutral. The solar panels on the winery roof generate as much energy as we use to make our wines. Now with double the solar panels, we will be generating a big surplus which gets sent back to the electricity grid for use by others.
We are constantly looking for ways to minimise electricity consumption, further increasing our efficiency and reducing the carbon footprint of each bottle of our wine. The winery is now fitted with LED lighting, replacing our old lights and halving the running cost of lighting in the winter. Also the cooling system in the winery runs on a water based system (sometimes called a swamp chiller) which uses a small fraction of the energy used by air conditioning.
I could go on about lightweight glass bottles, recycled cardboard cartons, sustainable natural corks - all of these use energy to produce and ship to the UK and so we make great efforts to be as sustainable as possible at all stages of winemaking, from the vineyard / glass factory / cork forest right through to delivering the wine to your door.
