Two ways Oregon wine is becoming more sustainable

May is Oregon Wine Month, and two wineries have announced new environmental initiatives. One helps to reduce the carbon footprint of glass bottles, and the other provides an outlet for wine drinkers to turn their corks into new products.

Brigadoon Wine Co. introduces reusable bottles 

Chris Shown, his wife, Sheree Shown, and their son Matt Shown own and operate Brigadoon Vineyards and Brigadoon Wine Co. Chris and Sheree bought the property in Junction City in early 1991 and started planting about an acre a year. 

Today, Brigadoon’s 15-acre vineyard produces about 1,500 cases a year. It’s a family affair, with Sheree handling administration and the tasting room, Chris managing the vineyard and business, and Matt working in the vineyard and making the wines. The vineyard is farmed organically, and Brigadoon tries to limit its environmental impact, so it wasn’t a stretch for the Shown family to implement a more sustainable bottle program. 

Brigadoon is now using bottles which can be returned by consumers directly to the winery and at participating retailers. As the program grows, the hope is that consumers will be able to return the bottles to restaurants and distributors. 

The Showns have partnered with a company called Revino, which developed the program. Distributors, such as Casa Bruno Wines, which Brigadoon uses, will collect bottles during its regular delivery routes. When enough bottles are collected, they’re sent to Revino. Revino will remove the labels (Brigadoon is using easy-to-remove label adhesive), clean them, and put them back into the bottling system for any participating winery to use again. 

Revino has created a bottle mold with a distinctive ridge line that looks similar to a leaf, meant to make it easy for consumers to identify the bottle as being one that is returnable and refillable. Revino bottles can come from any participating winery and end up at any participating winery for refilling. The Revino website lists dozens of bottle return spots in Oregon.

“If it’s Revino glass, we can take anyone’s (bottle) at our drop-off spot,” Matt Shown said. “Hopefully, with enough brand recognition, the consumer will know that’s a refillable glass.”

Manufacturing the glass packaging is the largest part of the carbon footprint for wine. Each time a glass bottle is reused, it cuts down on the carbon impact of creating it, and reduces the need to use more materials to create a new bottle. After the third time a Revino glass bottle is refilled, it becomes carbon-neutral, the company’s website says. The bottles can be refilled up to 50 times. Of course, the bottle can also be recycled in normal glass recycling if it is not returned. 

“Very few things give you a lot of reward for very little extra effort,” Shown said. “We can make the biggest contributor to carbon emission in wine packaging carbon neutral after three refills, and it will only take a little bit of extra effort, and it won’t cause us to have to spend more money, and we’ll just be doing the same thing we were doing before, and it won’t affect quality at all. How could you not do it?”

Brigadoon Vineyards & Brigadoon Wine Co.
brigadoonwineco.com
25167 Ferguson Road, Junction City 
541-998-2600 

Appassionata Estate partners with Cork Collective

Newberg-based winery Appassionata Estate is the first Oregon winery to partner with Cork Collective, an organization dedicated to transforming cork waste into valuable resources. Cork is harvested from the bark of cork oak trees.

Appassionata will collect corks at its tasting room, cellar, at events, and during blending sessions. Customers can bring their corks to the estate and put them in cork collective bins, saving them from being tossed into landfills.

Collected corks are recycled into eco-friendly projects such as playground surfaces. Appassionata and the Cork Collective hope that this is the beginning of much more cork recycling in Oregon. 

According to the Cork Collective website, cork trees absorb significant amounts of carbon dioxide, and recycling cork prevents this carbon from being released into the atmosphere. After the cork is collected, it is delivered to a recycling facility where it is cleaned and ground up. Then the reclaimed cork can be shaped into blocks and cylinders.

“We’re excited to be at the forefront of this partnership and driving Cork Collective’s impact in the Willamette Valley,” said Tim Malone, Appassionata Estate’s head of winemaking and viticulture, in a press release. “Sustainability is at the core of what we do, and by joining forces with like-minded producers, we can make a real difference and create a lasting impact for the future of our industry and our region.”

Appassionata, which is named after a Beethoven piano sonata, was founded by German winemaker Ernst “Erni” Loosen in the mid-2000s after he produced his first vintage in 2005. 

Appassionata Estate
https://appassionataestate.com
17150 NE Hillside Drive, Newberg
503-554-9572