My Latest in Somm TV Magazine:
What Is Carbon Sequestration and Why Is It Important for the Wine Industry?
by L.M. Archer
As global warming continues to wreak havoc worldwide, some vineyards consider carbon sequestration an antidote.
Simply put, carbon sequestration sinks carbon into the soil rather than into the atmosphere, reducing harmful greenhouse gases. Find out how these three wineries use carbon sequestration to help Mother Earth beat the heat.
Montes Winery – Chile
“If all the agricultural soils in the world increase their organic material by 1.6% through cover crops and regenerative agriculture techniques, the CO2 level would return to pre-industrial times,” contends Rodrigo Barría, agricultural manager at Montes Winery.
A soft-spoken man with a broad smile, Barría oversees the winery’s approximately 1,729 acres of vines located throughout Chile. Founded in 1987, Montes Winery proved early adopters of sustainability and conducts annual sustainability audits to measure business, environmental, and social improvements.
Barría introduced carbon sequestration as a tool to reduce the winery’s carbon emissions. For example, he inoculates cover crop seeds like legumes and clover with bacteria at the estate winery in Apalta, located in the Colchagua Valley of central Chile.
Sowing the cover crops as seeds enhances atmospheric nitrogen capture through the rhizome in the roots. It also reduces the need for fertilizer. “Normally, during fertilization, carbon is freed; this is the carbon we are not ‘throwing’ to the atmosphere,” says Barría. “By using this bacteria, not only do we not need to fertilize, but we do not produce carbon normally produced during the fertilizing process.”
Moreover, cover crops dig down into the soil with their roots, creating capillaries for vines to grow through. Montes sows cover crops in every other row and native crops in the other rows. Different cover crops build their own symbiotic relationships with microorganisms, allowing them to exchange materials. READ MORE HERE.