Welcome to 3p Happy Hour! As we all eye the exit door on Friday afternoons, we’re raising our glasses to the sustainable wine, beer and spirits brands serving up stiff sips with less environmental impact while benefiting communities.
California’s Central Coast was once considered an underdog of the wine world compared to Napa and Sonoma, thought to be too dry and hot. Nonetheless, Jerry Lohr established his first vineyards in the Central Coast in the early 70s. Today, we recognize the brilliance of wines from this region, containing nearly a quarter of the state’s wineries. While Jerry Lohr’s initial vineyards matured into J. Lohr Vineyards and Wines in Monterey, Paso Robles, and Napa, the company broke new ground in other areas, too.
J. Lohr strives to minimize its environmental footprint, especially water and energy use. Since the wine industry normally uses copious amounts of water, these efforts are significant, particularly in a state facing more severe droughts under climate change. And cutting down wine’s carbon footprint is beneficial, too.
Luckily, J. Lohr has decanted these issues. The company’s wineries, vineyards and some wines are Certified California Sustainable, a program that requires wineries to adopt, track and verify practices aimed at improving soil health, wildlife habitat, pest management, and water and energy efficiency. By adopting a wide range of sustainable practices, it’s setting an example for the industry, all while making a stellar set of cabs, merlots and chardonnays.
Wine is used for rest and recharging, but crafting it still requires energy, so J. Lohr embraced renewable energy at its wineries. At the Paso Robles location, a 3-acre solar array follows the sun as it moves across the sky to generate electricity.
“We forecasted its savings over time and made a significant investment of about $5 million,” said Cynthia Lohr, co-owner and chief brand officer of J. Lohr. “That we knew over time would hope to offset anywhere between on average 85 to 95 percent of our Paso Robles energy needs.”
Installed in 2008, the solar array reduced the operation’s greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to driving 97 million miles by car. And its efforts on the energy front extend beyond that, including at its Greenfield winery. “We purchased an old onion processing plant and converted it into our winery there, nestled amid our vineyards, and it’s 100 percent powered by solar,” Lohr said. “So we’ve been able to really harness solar energy to our benefit in both key operational locations.”
In addition to solar energy, J. Lohr also reduces electricity use through motion-sensitive lighting and high-speed roll-up doors, which help prevent temperature fluctuations in facilities.
Besides energy use, addressing future water needs is crucial for the company, especially in a state known for its dry periods, like California. It keeps a close eye on its water with soil probes, water stress monitoring, and sensors that track the water released from plants and soil into the atmosphere, Lohr said. A California Irrigation Management Information System site is even hosted on a J. Lohr property.
This network of weather stations provides information on climate variables and evapotranspiration, or the combination of evaporation from soil and water loss from plants, to the company and a publicly available database.
“Smart water usage efforts and data-driven efforts are really key to our success,” Lohr said. “We’ve adopted practices over time that really uphold water efficiency best practices.”
For instance, one of the treatment facilities reuses wastewater from the Paso Robles winery. “We’re essentially using wastewater, blending it with our irrigation, turning it into water that we then use in our vineyards,” Lohr said. “Just that practice alone allowed us to reduce our vineyard water use per acre by 20 to 30 percent over the past decade.”
The company also uses deficit irrigation, meaning it uses lower levels of irrigation water than the vines require. Besides enhancing efficiency, this practice can improve the quality of the grapes and reduce diseases, making it a win-win. These water-to-wine reduction efforts have paid off.
“We were balancing, in 2014, with the industry norm that was anywhere between 5 gallons to 7 gallons of water for 1 gallon of wine produced,” Lohr said. “Our current metric is we’ve been able to reduce that ratio to 1.3 gallons of water used to make 1 gallon of wine. So we’re absolutely bucking the trends, for which we’re very, very proud.”
Despite the company’s abundant successes, it faces challenges felt across the winemaking world, like the funding freezes initiated by United States President Donald Trump’s administration.
“Shifts in support for agriculture research right now are not the way to go,” Lohr said. “I think we need to continue to invest in hands-on learning for young students in viticulture and technology, but that’s not just a J. Lohr challenge. That’s across the industry.”
Declining alcohol consumption, particularly among younger generations, also means fewer sales to go around for the wine, beer and spirits sector.
Still, California produces over 3 billion bottles of wine each year, and driven by both health and environmental concerns, the market for sustainable wine is booming. Now in the hands of the family’s second generation, J. Lohr is the blend of vintner tradition and environmental innovation consumers seem to be looking for.
