From water to wine
Home » Good Guide » CarboNZero organisations & products » carboNZero organisations & products » Wairau River WinesWairau River Wines: Family winemakers
Good wine flows from a connection and commitment to the land. At Wairau River Wines each bottle is a refinement of the patience and time put in to that relationship.
“Respect for the environment is paramount in all the decisions we make. It’s vital to our family company to lessen our impact on the surroundings and ensure that we are here for the future generations to continue to create world class wines”
— Phil Rose of Wairau River Wines
Phil and Chris Rose of Wairau River Wines know all about that. Pioneers in the now prestigious Rapaura district, they planted their first vines next to the beautiful braided streams of the Wairau River at the foot of the Richmond Ranges back in 1978. This has grown into a quintessentially family firm, with Phil and Chris’ five children and their partners all putting their various talents into the mix, and their eight grandchildren growing up fast with the vines that surround them.
“Respect for the environment is paramount in all the decisions we make,” says Phil. This respect is expressed in everything that goes into the winemaking process, and everything that comes out.
Wairau is Maori for ‘many waters’. The Roses have always felt extremely fortunate that their vineyards are sited above a series of aquifers and acknowledge these waters as the firm’s lifeblood. The company is naturally protective of its most precious resource: all the water used in the winery is carefully treated and pumped to irrigate an avenue of plane trees that grace the driveway.
The winery was built in a neutral colour so it blends into the surroundings, and designed to conserve water and energy by keeping all production processes under a single fully-insulated roof. The ‘marc’—left over grape skins, pips and stalks—becomes compost for the vineyards.
The winery can use more than 25 pallets of bottles a day, and each pallet requires a plastic wrap to protect the bottles. This used to mean paying for disposal into landfill. Now the company has a compressed air baler, and produces 80-kilogram bales of plastic that are reused for making the plastic slip sheets for container shipments.
This year the company is being audited by New Zealand Winegrowers to become part of the Sustainable Winegrowing programme. This showcases model environmental practices in vineyards and wineries, guarantees better quality assurance from the vineyard through to the bottle, and addresses consumer concerns on the environment and winegrape production.
For the Roses, joining the carboNZeroCert TM programme is another way to make public their personal commitment to environmental sustainability. Wairau River Wines Limited was issued with carboNZero certification in June 2008, making it one of the first three New Zealand wineries to be accredited, and one of only a handful of carbon neutral wineries in the world.
The firm pledged to reduce electricity use in the winery, eliminated the use of low-flying helicopters for frost protection, and is investigating the potential for using solar hot water and reducing the weight of bottles and other packaging. It is also offsetting its CO2 emissions using Landcare-approved carbon credits.
The 2008 and 2009 vintages of the entire range of Wairau River Wines all carry the carboNZero logo. It’s a label worth looking out for.
