A rainbow frames Silver Oak Cellars winery in Napa Valley's Oakville winegrowing region on Jan. 5, 2017. (SILVER OAK CELLARS / FACEBOOK)
Workers fill American oak barrels at Silver Oak Cellars winery in Napa Valley's Oakville winegrowing region. (SILVER OAK CELLARS / FACEBOOK)
How much it will cost a grower or vintner to obtain Napa Green certification of sustainability practices depends on the program and certifier.
“The direct costs are minimal,” said Nate Weis, director of winemaking for Silver Oak and Twomey, which have production facilities and vineyards in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties. “But the indirect costs, depending on what is already implemented, can be significant.”
The Duncan family is behind the iconic Silver Oak and Twomey wine brands. The organization has pursued third-party sustainability certification of its holdings through several groups, both known in the wine and construction businesses as well as not yet front of mind for many.
More than a dozen and a half Duncan family sites in those three counties were certified by the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance over a number of months. And its Napa Valley facilities also were certified last year under U.S. Green Building Council and Napa Green Winery programs.
After a two-year process, the Silver Oak Cellars main winery in the Oakville area of central Napa Valley last summer was certified at the highest level — platinum — under the council’s Existing Buildings: Operation and Maintenance designation that’s part of the Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) rating system. That certification helped with the Napa Green Winery certification, Weis said.
“We had already done quite a bit to get ourselves up to snuff there,” he said.
Silver Oak’s winery in the Jimtown community of Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley is being outfitted to meet platinum-level LEED standards as the facility is readied for occupancy this summer. Elements of the Living Building Challenge certification by the Seattle-based International Living Building Institute also are being implemented.
For the Napa Green Land program for vineyards, the two avenues to certification are the Fish Friendly Farming program (fishfriendlyfarming.org) offered by the Napa-based California Land Stewardship Institute and level 2 of the LandSmart program (landsmart.org/vineyard) via the Napa Resource Conservation District. The LandSmart option was added last June.
Fish Friendly Farming started in Sonoma County in 1999 as a way for vineyard operators in the Russian River watershed to have verified that they were using best practices to protect listed fish. It expanded to Napa County in 2002 and now is used in Mendocino, Sonoma, Napa, Solano and El Dorado counties.
The fee for the Fish Friendly Farming program is $11 an acre, but grants cover all but $4 per acre of that, according to Napa Valley Vintners.
LandSmart was developed by resource conservation districts (RCDs) in Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties. Grants cover the cost to participate in the LandSmart program.
For vintners pursuing Napa Green Winery certification, the cost of a an integrated resource assessment by Sustainable Napa County project engineer Bill Bennett is roughly $1,000-plus, depending on winery size. Napa Valley Vintners offers some financial help with this, bringing the average out-of-pocket cost to $200–$400 per winery, depending on size, according to the trade association.
Bennett was a plant engineer for the Budweiser-focused brewery in Fairfield for three decades before joining Sustainable Napa County in 2010. The Napa-based Gasser Foundation started the organization in 2007 to promote energy and water conservation in Napa Valley.
ViewCraft of the Sonoma County community of Graton has been involved with Bay Area and wine industry sustainability programs since the early 1990s, even being involved with the crafting of the Code of Sustainable Winegrowing that became the heart of the CSWA program. Today, the company is helping wine businesses navigate the Napa Green programs. Part of that is help coordinating site visits required by the assessments.
“We calculate water intensity for gallons of water used per gallon wine, energy intensity in kilowatt-hours per case of wine produced and waste diversion, getting recycling and composting numbers from waste-management companies,” said Anna Brittain, MESM, head of ViewCraft communications.
Getting to the zero-waste goal a number of wineries shoot for can be quite a challenge, said John Garn, ViewCraft founder.
“If you count all the pomace in the solid-waste stream, it would be 70 to 80 percent diversion,” Garn said, referring to the grape skins, seeds, stems and other organic leftovers from crush. “But it takes a lot to get to 90 percent or above.”
Beyond goals of being good neighbors and good stewards of the environment, vintners are starting to hear from the marketplace that sustainability matters, and verifiably quantifying “sustainability” matters even more, according to Brittain.
“We’re hearing about some increased distributor interest in this information, especially in Scandinavia” she said. “From what we heard, they want some evidence if it is third-party certified and what that means in resource tracking and greenhouse-gas emission tracking.”
And some ViewCraft client vintners that have done case studies on sustainability in marketing have noted that properly communicating and displaying sustainability certifications and achievements can boost sales, sometimes as high as 20 percent.
But Weis of Silver Oak and Twomey has found sustainability in marketing, even putting certification marks on the label, to be a mixed bag.
“We have chosen not to put those symbols on our label,” Weis said. “In traveling the country, I’ve found some are interested in it in some places, and in some places they’re not. It’s certainly not going to hurt you.”
Roughly half the vineyard acreage in Sonoma and Napa counties has been certified as sustainable as part of ambitious goals by trade groups to have an independent label of authenticity stamped on its claims in the next few years.
In January 2014, Sonoma County Winegrowers announced a goal of 100 percent certified vineyards by 2019, and the county passed the 60 percent mark early this year. That’s 35,000 of the county’s 58,235 vine acres.
In 2015, the Napa Valley Vintners trade association set the goal for all its 435 members with eligible wineries in the Napa Valley involved in the Napa Green program in five years. About 45 percent of Napa County’s vineyards, or about 20,000 acres, are certified under the Napa Green Land.
The Sonoma County vineyard program uses four programs with third-party auditors: CSWA, Fish Friendly Farming, Lodi Rules and Sustainable in Practice (SIP).
The Napa Green program was developed in the early 2000s by more than 20 stakeholders from the wine industry, environmental groups, government and regulatory agencies. Napa County’s vineyard and winery programs are certified by the National Marine Fisheries Service, county of Napa, San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board and the California Green Business Program.
The first Napa Green Winery certification was in 2008. There are now more than 55 certified vintners. Recertification is required every three years, based on tracking water and energy use and waste diversion and demonstrating continuous improvement in resource conservation.
Jeff Quackenbush (jquackenbush@busjrnl.com, (707-521-4256) covers construction, commercial real estate and wine.
Making the commitment to third party certification takes time and effort, but it is worth it to demonstrate our commitment to the community and to protect our watershed, our land and the air we breathe.
- Susan Boswell, Chateau Boswell Winery
🌿 Did you know that less than 3% of philanthropic donations go to environmental work?
Please consider donating to Napa Green this giving season with one of several ways at any level!
Head to the link in our bio for details!
With gratitude and joy, we wish you a beautiful day & start to the holiday season from all of us at Team Green!
- Ben, Meghan, Anna, Marissa, Sierra & Megan
‘If not here, where? If not now, when?’
“The onus is on us as a world class wine growing region to be leaders in sustainability & climate action.”
- Executive Director of Napa Green, Anna Brittain
It’s been a big week at Napa Green and we want to take a moment to raise a glass to salute you all.
We are overjoyed to see so much support and invigorated interest in our mission towards sustainable practices and regenerative agriculture in the wine industry.
We have many more details, paired with educational & financial resources that are already up and rolling on our website. We will continue to share them all, one by one and in great detail here on socials as well.
For now please plan on joining us at our upcoming Town Hall meeting on Dec 7th at @stsupery. You can find more details at napagreen.org.
Cheers and Happy Friday Napa Valley. We are so proud to be a part of this amazing community!
⚠️ Important Announcement
Napa Green becomes the first sustainable wine growing certification to require the phaseout of Round Up.
Please find the link in our bio for the full press release and full suite of info & grower resources.
Join us on December 7th for our Napa Green Town Hall at @stsupery.
You’re invited to join us for a very special day at @dominusestatewinery on November 30th.
We’ll be briefly interviewing our speaker @nikki_silvestri right here on Instagram today at 2:00pm PST to hear more about what to expect at this event. See you then.
Curious to learn more? Join us at @dominusestatewinery on November 30th for a rare event and luncheon. Link in bio for details.
GREEN is the new black this season!!
Head to the link in our bio now and get your shirts, help a good cause and be an honorary part of Team Green this season! 💚
Let’s hear it for our Executive Director of Napa Green, the incomparable Anna Brittain for being named a 2023 Wine Industry Leader by @winebusinessmonthly!!
In their Sustainability Stewards section (which we love to see) we find Anna named in good company with inspired fellow leaders!
Head to our stories or the link in our bio for free access to the full November issue.
Cheers to the great work of our visionary Director Anna Brittain!!
Join us for the Soil & Shadow Implicit Bias Training on Thursday, November 30th at Dominus Estate with @nikki_silvestri.
‘Exploring what Regenerative Farming Systems can teach us about Regenerative Social Systems.’
This is a rarely-available, full-day leadership opportunity. For anyone who joined us for our 2022 & 2023 THRIVES/RISE Climate & Wine Symposiums and heard Nikki Silvestri speak our guess is that for you, like us, 60-minutes wasn’t enough.
Soil and Shadow works with C-Suite executives, leaders and teams to build the relational and professional development skills for high performance, diversity, equity and inclusion.
One of the elements that makes the Soil and Shadow expertise so relevant and valuable for Napa Green leaders is that their frameworks use living systems to model healthy social systems.
Napa Green will be covering half the cost of the tickets to this event. Register asap at the link in our bio.
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📸: Laine Kuehn
Congratulations to Napa Green Certified @boeschenvineyards on being featured in @pressdemo as a first to offer hazard pay and disaster insurance to seasonal agricultural workers! Read on for more and find the link in our bio to the full story..
“To Boeschen, committing to this small safety net in times of emergency isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s the way labor relations are headed in the wine business.
When vineyard crews showed up for this year’s harvest at Boeschen Vineyards, a small winery that operates largely out of a cave dug into a pretty hillside off Silverado Trail just north of St. Helena, they were asked to listen to a three-minute presentation.
Doug Boeschen, the business’ owner, informed these seasonal agricultural workers, among the most economically vulnerable in the North Bay, that the winery was now offering them a combination of hazard pay and disaster insurance.
Boeschen will provide an option to its workers — including the seasonal labor that pours into the region’s renowned vineyards for just a few days or weeks at a time. If the Air Quality Index climbs above 150, Boeschen’s workers will be able to choose between receiving time-and-a-half to remain on the job, or to take paid time off.
Boeschen will also pay its laborers if they are forced to leave a worksite under an evacuation order.”
This article also features other notable efforts on behalf of larger companies and regions working towards the same end. We highly recommend you read the full article!
Sierra is our Soil & Climate Specialist at Napa Green and her ask this year is that everyone consider donating to our small but mighty Team Green for Giving Season!
Here is more from @regenwithsierra:
“🎃 Happy Halloween Eve everyone! Today is my birthday, and I would be beyond thrilled if you would consider a donation to @napagreen to support a nonprofit focused on climate action in the wine industry 🍷🍾
@napagreen has the leading set of standards for sustainable practices, from soil to bottle. I am most proud of the work we do with winegrape growers to adopt regenerative agricultural practices in their vineyards.
Please consider supporting us in our mission! Click the link in bio for more! “
Thank you for having us @visitnapavalley! We had a great time talking to visitors about the many sustainability practices our Napa Green wineries and vineyards employ!
Stop into the Visit Napa Valley Visitor Center in Napa to learn more!