Unless you’ve unplugged your television set and radio… and turned off your cell phone, iPad and other electronic devices… and still have your calendar turned to March… you know that today is Earth Day.
It’s the one day out of the year when more than a billion people worldwide—governments, organizations, communities and individuals—focus on Mother Earth and take actions to help protect her.
In recent years, more and more grape growers and winery owners have come to take stewardship of the land seriously, and in dozens of ways.
So, beginning today and continuing all this week, we’re devoting these blogs to some of those efforts. The wineries we’ll be spotlighting are just a few of the hundreds now taking concrete steps to protect the land they farm—so that land will be available to farm for generations to come.
Let’s begin with the efforts of one of Oregon’s top Pinot Noir producers:Lemelson Vineyards…
“Eric Lemelson entered the wine business with a set of core values from his environmental background and long-standing commitment to Oregon,” the Lemelson Vineyards website tells us. “These values help guide his decision making at all stages of viticulture and winemaking.”
“Lemelson Vineyards has farmed its vineyards organically from the beginning, in part because of Eric’s belief in organic farming. Knowing that great wines ultimately come from healthy vineyards, he sensed that winegrapes would develop their full flavor potential from vineyards managed without synthetic chemical inputs and with the use of techniques and practices that support living, healthy soils.”
“In this view, synthetic chemicals are solutions that may make farming less expensive and labor intensive in the short term, while often damaging the complex biological relationships that support healthy vines over the long run.”
“In addition, synthetic chemicals can obscure the unique attributes of each vineyard site (called terroir by the French). Ultimately, we hope you agree that the extra effort of organic farming and gentle, handcrafted winemaking techniques pays off ‘where it counts,’ in the bottle.”
You can read more about Lemelson’s organic approach to winegrowing here.
