An eco-activist friend looked at me askance a couple of years ago when I bought a wine chiller.
The small refrigerator keeps 44 bottles of wine at around 60ish degrees. I considered the purchase a survival strategy while living a year in a toasty, not air-conditioned apartment in Honolulu.
While living in Hawaii, I rode my bike to work at the university. I generated very little trash. I didn’t have a microwave or, for months, a toaster.
But, still, a wine refrigerator? Am I a bad citizen of the planet? Environmental guilt is at least as bad as religious guilt. So many rules.
Thou shalt not wear gold jewelry (cuz gold mining’s satanic).
Thou shalt have no other gods beside thine hybrid car.
Thou shalt eat organic; buy local; shop at thrift stores; drink shade-grown, fair-trade coffee; and purchase chocolate bars that promise donations to rain-forest preservation.
Thou shalt water thine garden with recycled gray water from thine bathtub.
I’m all for it.
I’m all for ecological balance, and righting the climate-change wrongs. I care about future generations. My grandkids should enjoy this great, green planet as much as I do. I care for selfish reasons. I want to protect the world’s best grape-growing climates. All I need is the air that I breathe and a glass of tasty cabernet sauvignon—preferably served at about 62 degrees.
But it’s getting hot out there. Climate change is my fault and not my fault. I can do my part. Recycle! Bike! Small changes add up, right? However, it seems to me that real reform will have to come from the Big Polluters (power pushers, industrial manufacturing, gas and oil companies, auto manufacturers). I’m not going to pretend that I can make the world a better place by consuming less wine.
I recently quoted, to a despairing friend, applicable advice from The West Wing’s Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff): “Listen, when you get home tonight you’re going to be confronted by the instinct to drink alone. Trust that instinct. Manage the pain. Don’t try to be a hero.”
Like every maker of stuff we love from shoes to road trips to Fritos, the wine industry contributes to the toxing-up of the planet. Wine goes into bottles, the manufacture of which wastes water. Some grape-growers use pesticides. Wine is a monoculture. Corks are bad. Screw tops end up in landfills. Wine gets shipped from Australia to California. Or Chile to California. Or France and Italy to California.
That’s silly.
Most of the wine I drink is purchased from the folks who make it—right here in California. That makes me feel OK. But the best way I’ve found to avoid feeling guilty is, well, by deciding not to feel guilty. It’s tricky. I refuse to call my wine-drinking a guilty pleasure. It’s a pleasure pleasure.
Manage the pain. Don’t be a hero.
It helps my psyche to know that many wineries shifting are shifting to eco-friendly practices. Dozens of wineries are experimenting with eco-friendly packaging. Organic wines are popping up everywhere. The next happy green trend? Biodynamics.
If that sounds eco-groovy, it should. The folks at Chateau Davell in Camino, Calif., allow small animals to roam the vineyards, keeping the land weed-free while not harming the grapes. Cute. Chateau Davell’s a newish, family-owned winery that makes use of solar power when possible.
In Santa Cruz, Bonny Doon Vineyard began using biodynamic farming practices in 2004. The winery promotes its wines as “soulful” and evincing “a deeper sense of place, complexity and varietal expression.” I like it. I don’t often buy white wine, but Bonny Doon crafts an albarino, an obscure Spanish grape that pairs perfectly with summer heat. Last I checked, the 2009 Ca’ Del Solo Albarino ($18) can be purchased online.
At Bonterra, grape-growers engage in the freakishly fascinating biodynamic practice of filling of a cow horn with manure and quartz. The horn is buried in the ground, left to mature, and then finally mixed with water and used as a natural fertilizing spray on roots and leaves. Poop is good food. You’ve probably seen Bonterra in a wine or grocery store, as it’s one of the more widely distributed organic wines.
Bonterra is in Mendocino County, where the red wines couldn’t be greener. It’s a neighbor to Jeriko Estates, where Daniel Fetzer (of the Fetzer wine dynasty) commits to growing grapes without using synthetic fertilizers, pesticides or fungicides. Instead, cover crops are planted, and chickens and goats roam the vineyards, taking care of the weeds.
The results? Some elegant pinot noirs. The Jeriko Estate 2011 Pinot Noir Pommard Clone offers complex deliciousness—pepper, sour berries, vanilla and brown spices. It’s $64, so it’s not a house wine. But occasional case sales happen at Jeriko. At a visit before Christmas last year, I walked out with a case of chardonnay and a case of grenache noir at prices that made the bottles less than $15.
After all, biodynamic wines make great gifts.
At Parducci Wine Cellars in Ukiah, the winemakers boast of going beyond mere organic and biodynamic growing methods. They also recycle and reuse water. Take steps to reduce their electricity consumption. Treat their employees well. I read this all on their website.
If you visit Parducci, pick up a bottle of Coro Mendocino ($38), a lovely red blend of local Mendo grapes. Somewhere melded into the layers of robust dark fruits, you can taste Parducci’s teensy-weensy ecological footprint. The tasty terroir of sustainability and fair labor practices.
The Coro is good enough to rate a spot in my wine chiller.