The effects of good working practices in the bodega are actually quite difficult to quantify, and whilst we have no official accreditation, we are extremely pro-active on many different environmental fronts.
Angela is probably the most obsessive person of all when it comes to re-cycling, and so it goes without saying that we have re-cycling bins throughout the bodega, and for every type of material – wood, glass, metal, paper, plastic and organics. Bottles that we open in the cellar for tastings (or even drinking at home) are carefully washed and re-filled at bottling (although these are not re-used for customer orders). Even our cardboard cartons are re-cycled if they are not too dirty or damaged.
The bottling line is probably the greatest generator of waste materials. The packing materials from bottles, corks, capsules etc are carefully separated (mostly cardboard and plastics) and then taken to the local re-cycling centre the following day.
In order to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible, we now use different ordering patterns for our ‘dry goods’, which in turn reduces the number of deliveries that we require. For example, bottles are taken in full truck loads, and corks in full pallets (giving us enough materials to bottle three of our 9,000 litre tanks). As you can easily calculate, this reduces the number of deliveries to us by 66%. Cartons, capsules and labels are ordered in a similar way, yielding savings of between 50% & 66%.
After a long search to find a suitably good replacement, our new, lighter weight bottle was introduced in 2010. Despite a very similar appearance and feel to the previous model, it is, in fact, almost exactly 100g lighter. This might not sound like a great deal, but it actually equates to a saving of between 60/70kg per pallet (dependent upon the configuration). Naturally this reduction in weight not only saves fuel as our pallets are transported by road and sea, but they also require less energy to produce.
Lighting in all production areas of the bodega is controlled by sensors - if no movement is detected in a particular area after a given time, the lighting in that area will be automatically switched off.
In this humble way, we like to think that Castro Martin is making its own small contribution to help preserve the environment.
(See the Vineyard section for our Environmental Policy)
Footnote:
Please note that our Albariño is suitable for vegetarians as we do not use any meat derived products during handling or vinification.