Wine Making and the Environment

Here’s an article, written in Spanish, that discusses wine-making and how it can be made more sustainable with the use of renewable energy.

With all the vineyards around here, it’s hard not to learn a little bit about the wineries and the processes they employ, but the central premise of the article is debatable. First, all the pruning and harvesting is done by hand.  There are electromechanical operations for de-stemming, crushing, and pressing that happen a few days each year, but everything’s done at room temperature, and this is really not an energy-intensive enterprise.

What is interesting is the release of gaseous ethanol during fermentation, which causes ozone in the air we breathe that can harm our health, especially on hot sunny days when it can reach unhealthy levels.   I represent an entrepreneur whose patented equipment concept captures and condenses that ethanol, improving air quality while creating feedstock available for higher-alcohol spirits like grappa, which I find heavenly.