15 Mar Environmental Practices at Brian Carter Cellars

Like for many of you, thoughts on how to minimize my impact on the environment are a daily occurrence for me. Therefore, I thought it would be timely to remind everyone what we are doing at Brian Carter Cellars both in the vineyard, the winery and even in the sales of the wine to help the planet.

Starting in the vineyard, more and more of the vineyards I work with are signed onto the Sustainable Washington program. This program takes all aspects of vineyard sustainability into consideration from the health of the air, the water, and the vines, as well as the health of the workers and even the health of the business into consideration. I take pride in having been on the board that helped develop this program which continues to be a force in our state as more vineyards apply and are inducted into the program. Every year I encourage those vineyards that are not in the program to join as well as working with those that not yet members to help minimize their impact on the environment through practices such as Integrated Pest Management. This is a program that seeks to minimize the amount of pesticides that are applied on the vines and maximizes the use of ‘planet friendly’ practices such as mating disruption and beneficial predators.

Inside the winery we are conscious of the amount of fossil fuels we use to heat and cool the winery. We also try to minimize the amount of machinery we utilize in the winemaking process. All our handpicked grapes are hand sorted at the winery and the reds are manually punched down while using native yeast fermentations. Probably our most ambitious attempts at minimizing our carbon footprint are focused on wine packaging. The production of glass bottles continues to be a major source of energy use both in its production and transport. We formerly purchased heavier bottles and sourced them from China which required long ocean voyages to transport to Washington. We now use lighter weight bottles and buy them from manufacturers here on the west coast. We have also eliminated the use of capsules which take energy to make, have no impact on the quality of the wine, and are simply decorations requiring an extra step to remove before opening the bottle and adding to the waste stream.

In the sale of our wine, we have changed our business plan to sell about 75% of our wines direct to consumer, decreasing the amount going through the ‘three tier system” of distributors and retailers which requires more flying and driving of salespersons as well as more trucking of the product. Our customers buy most of our wines right at the tasting rooms conveniently located in Woodinville, Seattle and Vancouver. Statistics show that 95% of our customers who visit our Woodinville location are visiting within 50-mile radius. For those customers to whom we ship, we have further reduced our impact by using 100% recyclable shipping boxes made from paper pulp.

So, enjoy your next glass of Brian Carter Cellars knowing we are doing our part to make our planet as safe as possible long into the future.

– Cheers! Brian Carter