DE BORTOLI ENVIRONMENT INITIATIVES – BIOLOGICAL/ORGANIC FARMING PRACTICES

The past six years at De Bortoli Wines have seen a radical change in our philosophy towards making wine. Great wine does not come from winemaking wizardry but rather from understanding the piece of dirt where it is grown.  We believe that in looking after the health of the soil, will contribute to vine health, which in return will produce better fruit. By taking a hands-off approach once the fruit enters the winery and letting the wine make itself we have ended up with wine of beauty and detail.

We have discovered that the best quality fruit (from the healthiest soil) comes from our small ‘trial’ vineyards that are under organic practice. This has also coincided with De Bortoli Wines’ commitment to making our business more environmentally sustainable. Though it is a slow and often tricky process to convert to organic farming practices it is our long-term goal to achieve this. In the meantime we prefer to use the term Biological Farming for what we do. This presents a viable method for moving away from traditional farming practices towards one that enhances healthy soils producing high quality grapes without the use of inorganic chemicals.

At present this style of farming is centred on the Yarra Valley. Practices like composting and mulching are increasingly being used across our other vineyards (at Bilbul and in the Hunter and King Valleys) but it is in the Yarra Valley where we are creating the farming model that we hope to implement across all our properties.

Though not officially certified as such, 10 hectares (25 acres) of our total 220 hectares (600 acres) in the Yarra Valley have been farmed according to organic principals for five years. The results have been outstanding and validate our desire to move the whole vineyard over to these practices.

We have been minimising spray use and are looking at preventing disease and pest problems rather than dealing with them after infestation has occurred. We are using organic fungicides such as copper to prevent the onset of Downy Mildew and are trialling others like trichoderma, a competing harmless fungus that establishes itself on the flowers and berries and stops botrytis from developing. We are also trialling organic herbicides like pine oil to control weeds.

Compost and mulching is vital to organic farming and so we are in the process of setting up a grape skin composting system that involves mixing 750 tonnes of pressed grape skins with organic cow manure from local farms, an irrigation system and a composting machine that will turn and aerate the composting rows every ten days. We anticipate that within two years we should be able to generate enough compost for the farm to be self-sustaining. Compost also has the important environmental effect of reducing the amount of fertiliser inputs. In 2008 De Bortoli offset 1766 tonnes of CO2 with the spreading of mulch/compost in the Yarra Valley alone.

At our Brooklands property, about 5km from the main Yarra Valley farm, we have started an anti-soil compaction program to improve soil structure, water absorption and water holding capacity and are trialling new formations of soil microbes that will unlock nutrients in the soil and further reduce fertiliser use.

We are trialling different methods to look at eliminating the need for insecticides. Isomate pheremone ties which prevent a major insect pest, the Light Brown Apple Moth, from producing larvae, are effective as one measure. We are introducing inter-row crops such as broad leafed legumes, barley and buckwheat that have a variety of benefits from fixing nitrogen in the soil to suppressing weed growth and attracting beneficial insects.

Other organic practices, such as minimum till/minimum spray regimes are in place across all our vineyards and our increasing use of mulch and compost has seen the soil improve with more microbes and organisms, improved nutrient availability and uptake, reduced weed competition and increased water holding.

Best of all, we are seeing results in terms of the quality of our fruit (hence our wines) and in the quality of the soil and surrounding environment. It is a classic win-win situation and one that fits perfectly with the family’s wish to produce sustainable wines for many generations to come.