Sustainable Wines of Great Britain

As a vineyard, we’ve always had a close connection with the land we work on, considering the impact our Vineyard and Winery have on both our local environment and on the environment on a broader scale. In December we were delighted to have been recognised as a Sustainable business by receiving accreditation to the Sustainable Wines of Great Britain (SWGB) Scheme.

In order to receive and maintain our membership we are committed to a cycle of review, adapt, improve. Every year we look at ways we can optimise and reduce the impact of our actions in the vineyard and winery.

Much of the work we do in our Vineyards is by hand, reducing diesel emissions and soil compaction from tractor use. When we do use our tractors, we plan our work to reduce the amount of times we pass over the ground and carry out multiple jobs simultaneously when possible.

In our winery we record all energy and water usage data, seek to reduce these as much as possible and initiate working practices to help us achieve these goals.

Our commitment to sustainability means that every year we will be looking to improve our efficiency, reduce our emissions and review the improvements.

As a result of this work you will see the SWGB logo on all our new release bottles from the 2021 harvest onwards.

Below, we popped to visit Greg in the vineyard who has been taking samples of our pruning weights.

As we edge closer to the bottling week (middle March), there’s been a lot of cleaning, filtering and tasting trials going on. The majority of the wines now ready, just the Bacchus left to go!. One of the main logistical challenges in the lead up to Bottling this year is one of limited space.

Throughout the year a seemingly constant rearranging goes on with the sparkling wines. They get moved through the various areas, from long term storage to the disgorging area, then the labelling room and finally out of bond for selling. However, over the next week a lot of rearranging will be going on in long term storage facility that has to be cleared and prepped to ensure there is enough room for the next influx of still wines.

All the empty bottles have now arrived, as have the boxes. Due to the high level of cardboard recycling from the shop and tours we are going to trial a new method of storage for two of our wines. This is a 100% recycled plastic moulded sheeting which holds 48 bottles per sheet, so instead of going straight into boxes they will be stored on the reusable sheets. Hopefully this new method work well so next year we can use it for more of the wines reducing the amount of cardboard we use in the future.