Sula Vineyards Newsletter August 2007 In the newsletter this month: - Water - Our Most Precious Resource - The Power Factor - Greener Glass - 100% Vegetarian - Worms And Other Friendly Creatures Water - Our Most Precious Resource At our Dindori vineyard, we’ve put in place a water harvesting system that recycles irrigation water straight back to the vineyards! When our hillside vineyards are irrigated, the excess water hits hard rock underground and gets channeled to our reservoir, from where it’s pumped back into the drip system. This cuts down our irrigation requirement by 20%. All our vineyards, as well as those of our contract growers, are drip-irrigated. Drip irrigation systems cut down irrigation requirements by an estimated 50% compared to the traditional flood irrigation. Our wineries have state-of-the-art wastewater treatment plants where the runoff water from cleaning and other winery operations gets treated and pumped back to irrigate our surrounding vineyards. The Power Factor Over the past year, we’ve cut down our power usage per bottle produced by 20%! Our production engineers mapped our usage and put in place a system that drastically cuts consumption during expensive peak hours and takes maximum advantage of rebated off-peak hours. We also did this by insulating all our fermentation and storage tanks, replacing all incandescent bulbs with Compact Fluorescent Lamps, and using solar panels for all our hot water needs (a winery uses LOTS of hot water). A heat-exchange system takes the warm outlet water from the chilling system to the boiler feed. Greener Glass What happens to that empty Sula bottle you toss out? It’s picked up by one of our recycling centers in Bangalore, Bombay, Delhi or Goa where it’s sent back to our winery. There it undergoes a thorough cleaning and sterilization before beginning a second life as a Madera wine bottle. That’s how we do our bit to keep the sand dunes of Goa glass-free! 100% Vegetarian Our wines are 100% vegetarian, in fact vegan. Maybe that seems obvious, but it needs to be said. Many wineries use animal parts like fish bladders during the winemaking process. Sula doesn’t use a single animal product so all you vegetarians out there can raise your glass with us! Worms And Other Friendly Creatures After the grapes are crushed, the resulting “pomace” is mixed with manure and turned into rich compost by thousands of wriggly worms in our Vermicompost pits. Vermiculture is key to reducing the use of chemical fertilizer, by producing compost so rich that the vineyards don’t need any other nutrition. We’ve managed to cut chemical usage in the vineyards to the point where our vineyards have become havens for a multitude of birdlife and frogs, angels of a thriving eco-system. In fact, last year we even had a visit from a friendly neighbourhood leopard!! And since most of our operations are done by hand, vehicle use in the vineyard is minimum, thus reducing emissions and avoiding soil compaction. If you're having trouble viewing this newsletter via email, please read it online. For information on visiting our winery and tasting Room, contact us, or find us on the web at sulawines.com. Click here to become a fan of Sula Vineyards on Facebook. You can update your preferences or unsubscribe here.