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Wine production in Ontario has come a very long way in the past 30 years. No longer the home of sweet fizzy "pop" wines, Ontario now has very fine award-winning wines to drink. Now with many new green initiatives from Ontario wineries, it is easier than ever to support our local producers. The Ontario Wine Council released a charter in 2007 calling for wineries to produce wine in a sustainable way, and it turns out that that the wineries were way ahead of them.
Here are some of the green initiatives underway:
1. Tawse Winery doesn't use chemical herbicides, insecticides or fertilizer. However, they can't use the designation "organic" because their fertilizer comes from non-organic local farms. They have made the decision to use fertilizer from a farm up the road, rather than having organic fertilizer shipped from Montreal.
2. Henry of Pelham has significantly decreased the amount of pesticide spraying. They now use scouts to check for bugs and have decided to allow a certain amount of damage. Instead of spraying six times a year, they now spray once. 3. Stratus Vineyards opened a new LEED Silver-certified building in 2005 constructed of recycled materials, and using galvanized steel to reduce the need for paint. They use motion-detector light switches, waterless urinals, and have showers and bike racks to encourage their employees to ride to work.
4, Stratus also uses their grape stems and skins as fertilizer. They press the grape seeds to extract grapeseed oil and sell it in the winery's store. Of course, if our liquor laws in Ontario were not so arcane, they could make grappa, but that is apparently not allowed in our fair province.
5. Flat Rock, Tawse, Stratus, and the upcoming Dan Aykroyd (yes, that Dan Aykroyd) wineries all use geothermal heat pumps to heat and cool their buildings.
6. A number of wineries now use biofilters for the waste water produced from the wine making, the restaurants and washrooms. Once filtered, the water is reused for irrigation.
7. Henry of Pelham now uses a solar-powered weather station to monitor rainfall, temperature, and leaf wetness which is uploaded to the Internet every few minutes. This allows them to check constantly for mildew and spray only when necessary.
The other great benefit is that a wonderful glass of wine can be on my table from a winery about an hour from my home. Now if we could just get the Liquor Control Board of Ontario to actually promote Ontario wines within our own province, we might get somewhere.
Difficulty Level: Easy
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