Sustainable Practices

It is all well and good outlining an environmental policy, but what do we actually do?

Sustainable winemaking has been embedded in Grove Mill’s ethos since our inception. We believe most sustainability in action is generally common sense, and a part of that is initiating practices that are attainable, sensible and at the end of the day make sense financially.

Let’s start in the vineyard:

• 12ha under BioGro organic management – eliminates use of artificial herbicides, fungicides, pesticides and fertilisers.
• Under-vine mowing – further eliminates use of herbicide.
• Biological pest control - via planting buckwheat in every 8th row.
• Using frost machines for frost protection rather than helicopters.
• Strict regulatory compliance.
• Common sense day-to-day operations, for example, minimising amount of tractor passes through vineyards by combining operations.
• Gifting back of important land to Rangitane at our 17 Valley vineyard.

In the winery:

• The winery consists of a cool cellar and warm cellar, whereby waste heat from the refrigeration plant in the cool cellar is used for warm operations (eg warming of wine for bottling) in both areas. The cool cellar is also cooled passively at night whereby cool night time air is pulled in to displace warmer air inside the cellar.
• We have several water conservation measures in place, the two most recent are water recycling to our bottling line bottle rinser and water recycling to our lees filter.
• Our waste water stream is used to irrigate a plantation of trees. The water and nutrients in the waste water are taken up by the trees and turned into wood.
• During harvest grape marc is composted on site and so too is much of the winery’s filter media.

Warehousing and dispatch:

• In the last three years we have dramatically reduced our solid waste by putting in place recycling for most of our major waste streams like glass, cardboard and plastic.
• On site bottling eliminates unnecessary transport of wine for bottling.
• Electric forklifts (as opposed to diesel).
• Use of slip sheets (that replace need for pallets) reduce weight and save space of load in container.
• Lightweight and proximate bottle procurement.
• Redesign of wine cases to minimise size and unnecessary material wastage.
• Minimise, where possible, airfreight of wine samples.
• Replacement vehicle procurement policy, which dictates that vehicles must be diesel fuelled and of better fuel efficiency.
• Constant sourcing of sustainability ideas and projects in order to further minimise the carbon footprint associated with our organisation and products.