Sustainability

I'm no farmer. Most wine drinkers aren't. Most of us don't know much about the various agricultural practices employed by wineries. Increasingly, many of us are rightfully concerned about the actual impact of how what we consume is produced. We are increasingly concerned about the deleterious affects that corporate agricultural practices have had on the land in the past 50 years. I don't presume to know much about the "healthiest" agricultural practices that a winery can employ, but I'm learning. As we concerned wine consumers are all learning about the correct, intelligent, healthy ways that grapes can be grown and wine can be made. You'll be reading a great deal here, and elsewhere, about organic, sustainable and biodynamic growing practices that wineries chose to employ. To me, the over-arching concern must be sustainability, in a larger sense. It is important to consider both the environmental and the economic sustainability quotients. If the land is farmed using the smartest, healthiest methods, and good (or great) wine is produced as a result of this, and the wine is marketed effectively, then economic sustainability should follow. Sure, there's weather, labor issues and a million other " Murphy's Law" factors to consider. I'm no farmer, nor am I an economist. I'm just another wino with righteous concerns. The wineries that address these concerns have a better chance of surviving than those that don't. They're unsustainable.

Cheers, Buckley Wineholt