Oregon wine growers green the landscape in more ways than one
Oregon vintners taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint through energy efficient green building and renewable energy.
Photo by Jacob Munk-Stander on Flicker Creative Commons
More and more California wineries are focused on going green these days. From newer, smaller labels like River Vine to major players like Kendall-Jackson, these are vintners taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint through energy efficient green building and renewable energy.
Just over the border in Oregon, an increasing number of wineries are
doing the same, and their impact is going beyond greening the winemaking
process — they’re helping preserve open space, much the way the wine
industry saved Napa Valley from being paved over by suburbanization in the 1960s and ’70s.
In a way, wineries are greening the Oregon landscape,” said Ernest Munch, of Ernest R. Munch Architecture (ERMA) in
Portland, in an interview with EarthTechling. “If you look at a place
like Dundee, it has a very nice south-facing slope. But when the area
was being developed back in 1988, the trend [toward winemaking in
Oregon] hadn’t hit, and now it’s full of houses. This beautiful Oregon
landscape we have has been known since the 1830s as the Garden of Eden.
Winemaking adds value to our agricultural lands, and saves them as
agricultural lands. These are marginal farmlands — orchards and
vineyards do best on second-rate agricultural lands.” He goes on to note
that these lands often can’t compete growing standard crops.
