This photo taken Dec. 1, 2009 shows John Conover, general manager and partner, stands in a doorway near steel tanks at the Cade winery in Angwin, Calif. The LEED certified winery is one of the greenest in the state. The winery was made with recycled materials, is solar powered and is organically farmed.(AP Photo/Eric Risberg)ANGWIN, Calif. (AP) -- John Conover was looking for the best place to grow the Napa Valley's famous cabernet sauvignon grapes. Turns out the same southwest-facing, sunny hillside that gives him great grapes also raises a mean crop of solar panels.
"We wanted to be as green as we can be," says Conover, a partner in the Cade winery, which is on track for Gold certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design).
Green wine is catching on.
"We're seeing a trend toward more sustainable wineries," says Ashley Katz, spokeswoman for the Green Building Council.
The council doesn't track industries specifically, but Katz says at least four wineries already have received LEED certification and more than a dozen more are going through the process. Wineries with Gold-certified facilities include Stoller Vineyards in Dayton, Ore., and Hall St. Helena in the Napa Valley.
Meanwhile, solar panels have become a common site across wine country and some wineries are rethinking water usage. Jackson Family Wines, makers of the popular Kendall-Jackson chardonnay, recently announced it will recycle water used for rinsing wine barrels and tanks, resulting in significantly less water and energy use.
In dry California, which has seen three years of drought, water conversation is the new frontier of winery design, says Roger Boulton, who is helping create a planned Platinum LEED-certified winery at the University of California, Davis.
"The real question in the future will be how many times did you use the water. And 'one' will not be a good answer," he says.
The under-construction university's teaching winery, privately funded and part of the UC Davis Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, is packed with sustainable operating features, including onsite sourcing and efficient use of both water and energy.
The winery, which aims to be the first to get Platinum certification, the highest level, will be fully solar-powered, including during harvest, the peak period for a winery's energy consumption. Eventually, all of the water used for cleaning will be from large tanks that will collect rain from the adjacent academic building during the winter and use it throughout the year.
By Jeannine Aversa
updated 21 minutes ago
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