Sustainability

It’s easy being green

Little Wold Vineyard, or Market Place Farm as it was once known, has worn many hats over the years. From cereal farming to livestock, biofuels to vineyards, you could say we’ve done it all. We’re a small farm as things go, with the average size of most holdings residing within the region of 87 hectares (although in the Yorkshire and Humber area this increases to 92 hectares) according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; by contrast Little Wold Vineyard is made up of 75 hectares (187 acres). That’s a lot of land to look after, and with a lot of land comes a lot of responsibility – that’s how the saying goes, right?

In 2020 the agriculture industry produced around 11% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions; for the purpose of making it easier for us to discuss today we’re going to focus on carbon dioxide (CO2), in which farming is responsible for 1.7% of total CO2 emissions in the UK. In 2019, the National Farming Union (NFU) set their target of achieving net zero by 2040,

So, what are LWV doing to work towards a net zero world?

How is the land currently used?

While LWV is known mostly for its wine, did you know that over half of our land is used for a different purpose? In 2000 Henry planted willow across several fields around South Cave and Ellerker, which make up around eighty acres in total. Willow is a relatively hardy English plant, and this low maintenance requirement means Tom and Henry very rarely intervene with the crop. Tom will usually spray it once across the three to four years it is left to grow, as the varieties fare well against disease and pests naturally. The other great part about willow? They often thrive on land that is unsuitable for other crops; in LWV’s case, the land that holds the willow is often water-logged, which would make it (as it certainly did in the past) difficult to yield good quality cereals or vegetables. Once the willow is ready, it is cut and harvested by a biomass company – LWV worked with local business Drax in the past but now work with a company who sell it to other businesses with biomass boilers – who leave the stump and roots in the ground to allow the willow to grow back, rather than replanting each time.

Based on the averages, in the twenty-four years that LWV have been growing willow, the land has only had machines and sprays on it twice per yield. That’s ten instances of activity on the land. Compared to the usual level of activity farmland undergoes with other crops.

The next main use of our land is, of course, the vines, which take up seventeen acres of LWV. Establishing the vineyard is when most of the activity occurs – the ground is ploughed to plant the vines; the posts are knocked into the ground using machines; and the land is maintained with herbicides and fungicides until the vines are strong enough to grow above any naturally-occurring shrubs that could suffocate or infect the plant with disease. However, once this is done, the vineyard is maintained by hand (aside from spraying, which is done using machines every month or so during the summer season). Working manually limits how much the soil is compressed (oxygen moves around the spaces in loose soil, which is important for plant growth, in condensing the soil the oxygen levels are limited and essentially constrict the roots of the plants above) and allowing the grass to grow in the interrow means the space is still viable for insects and other animals to live off.

Finally, we have around four acres which have a higher level of activity in comparison to the aforementioned land. This land is worked as pheasant cover, and so it experiences routine activity that you would expect to see on farms elsewhere (ploughing, drilling, spraying, etc.). While these acres are worked on quite heavily, the purpose of this is to provide food and shelter for wildlife in the area throughout the year. This equates to around 2.1% of all the land we own being worked like the land on arable farms in the UK, which is an incredibly small percentage.

The remaining eighty-six acres? LWV have left that as grassland.

What happens on the remaining grassland?

The largest area of grassland is Fifty Acre, the field LWV owns on the opposite side of the valley to where our oldest vines and the Tasting Room are situated. This land is split roughly in two by a hedgerow; one half holds the Blue Shed, winery and the small yard around them, although it is mostly wild grass which is home to various animals and insects (we recently spotted a barn owl in the area, which is quite exciting to see, and this land will provide ample hunting ground for him and other birds of prey that live in woods surrounding us). The remaining twenty-five acres is home to some horses, who graze on the grass and shrubs that grow there. Aside from them, this field experiences no activity from us and is left to encourage biodiversity in the area.

While Thirty Acre is home to the Tasting Room and the vines, there’s a lot of land surrounding these parts which is left for wild grass. Alice and Henry decided a couple of years ago to start planting wildflowers along the track that runs through this field. Their initial intentions were to help improve the visuals as people ascended to the top for events, but they have since decided to maintain these areas as an endeavour to improve the biodiversity in this field.

As a business, what are you doing to be more sustainable?

Keeping it all in-house. . .

Before building the winery, Tom & Henry had the arduous task of transporting the grapes during harvest to Half Penny Green in Staffordshire. Not only did this take out six hours of precious time that could be spent harvesting, but it also used a lot of fuel. The two-hundred-and-seventy-mile roundtrip could be made ten times each season. Using a carbon footprint calculator, this equates to around one metric tonne of CO2 every year. To put that into perspective, that’s around five-hundred CO2 fire extinguishers, or charging 121,643 smartphones. And this doesn’t even include how much CO2 is created through getting the wine back to us via lorry. It’s quite a lot, isn’t it? Add into this the trips down to help blend and then transport the wine to us, taking the leap to build our own winery made perfect sence.

Instead of taking the long trip to Stafford our grapes now take the short step into our onsite winery. This is lead by Alice and Tom, with help and assistance of Ellie and Cam (and in peak times other local helpers). Being energy efficient in the winery is really importune to us. Making use of sky lights, fresh air and minimal pull off the grid where possible. We use fresh water from our own water source and make careful judgements on the products we are using within the winery. Where possible we recycle all our waste, including the composting of the grape must which we spread back on the organic pasture land.

It’s not just the way we make the wine, we have also been careful about the way we package it. In 2019 we were one of the first in the UK to remove foils from our sparkling wine and as packing is one of the most wasteful aspects of the wine industry, we also try to recycle as much cardboard as possible by re-using branded boxes when sending wine out to customers and packaging our own for onsite use.

Being a small business, we pride ourselves on selling directly to you, our customers. Not only does it allow us to get the wine to you at a good price by cutting out the middleman, but it also limits the amount of travelling our wine does. Selling through events or the cellar door requires the minute-long trip from the winery to the Tasting Room – which is far better than two-hundred-and-seventy miles, I’m sure you’ll agree. Equally, selling through other local businesses, such as Sewell’s South Cave and Brough, Drewtons and The Bear Inn limits the amount of time our wine spends sat in transport, and therefore reduces our carbon emissions as well. While this may change as we continue to grow and look to other avenues to sell our wine, Alice, Tom, and Henry are all committed to ensuring that we are climate conscious in all we do.