Green innovation brings home gold for Taylors Wines

Taylors Wines, has again been recognised for its innovative environmental practices, winning the NAB Agribusiness National Award for Environmental and Energy Management.

The third-generation, family-owned winery from South Australia’s Clare Valley picked up the award over industry heavyweight Treasury Wine Estates and fellow category finalists Longwarry Food Park, Mackay Sugar and Warrnambool Cheese and Butter.

Taylors’ benchmark environmental initiatives which contributed to the award win include launching the 100% carbon neutral Eighty Acres range of wines, introducing OI's light-weight Lean+Green glass across their Eighty Acres, Promised Land and Estate ranges as well as their work in water management and implementing sustainable vineyard practices.

Mitchell Taylor, Managing Director of Taylors Wines, said the award win was recognition of an environmental philosophy which has been at the core of the family business for many years.

“While winemaking techniques and processes may have changed over the three generations of winemaking in our family, our commitment to the environment has always been solid. For us, 'going green' isn't something new - we've been hard at work finding innovative ways to change things for the better for years,” he said.

Taylors Wines Environmental Ambassador Clinton Taylor emphasised how nature had provided inspiration for some of the winery’s most innovative solutions.

“It doesn't take modern technology or nasty chemicals to help reduce troublesome weeds in our vineyards. Instead, during winter we’ve introduced sheep to selected vineyard blocks. This has resulted in an immediate reduction in herbicides and use of diesel-based machinery. We also use the manure as fertiliser!” said Taylor.

Recent international recognition of the Eighty Acres range of wines has included its selection by Australia’s Ambassador for Climate Change for an official function in Copenhagen, and being named the world’s best new ‘green’ drink by Drinks Business at the 2010 Green Awards in London. This is also the second significant environmental award win by Taylors in as many weeks, following their 2010 Banksia Environmental Award win, for the Leading in Sustainability Award in the small to medium enterprise category.

The Agribusiness Awards for Excellence, run by Monash University and National Australia Bank Agribusiness, are the most highly regarded awards program within the food, beverage and agribusiness sector of Australia. The awards which recognise excellence, innovation and leadership commended Taylors’ progress in building a holistic green business model.

Taylors’ award-winning environmental initiatives include: the world's first 100% carbon neutral wine range in accordance with the international standard for life-cycle assessment ISO14044, Taylors Eighty Acres; a refrigeration system project, working to overhaul refrigeration systems and implement energy-efficient ammonia refrigeration that is expected to have an immediate impact of a 35% energy saving for the same refrigeration capacity; championing the formation of the community-based River Wakefield Group in the Clare Valley, which has worked to regenerate the local river, control weed species and plant local indigenous vegetation to enhance biodiversity. To date, approximately 3000 flora species have been planted.

Minimising water usage is a key environmental objective for Taylors, efforts such as laying 550 hectares of straw spreading to reduce evaporation, stormwater harvesting, installation of precise computer-controlled drip-fed irrigation lines, deepening the two dams (110 and 160 ML) to reduce surface area evaporation and introducing dam linings to limit seepage have all played their part in reducing water consumption.

The water-recycling plant also allows the winery to recycle 100% of the wastewater produced in the winemaking process for re-use on the company vineyards.