National Geographic Society

By Seth Bauer

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more genial vineyard owner than Jeff Kunde. Four generations of winemaking in the Sonoma Valley have apparently mellowed the Kundes like a rich red. It may be thanks to the landscape, spectacular even on a foggy December morning. It may be the sweet taste of a second-harvest Zinfandel grape from a hundred-year-old vine, the recognition from his fellow winemakers and from the state of California for his winery’s sustainability efforts, or the financial security of owning 1800 acres. Or it may just be Jeff Kunde.

As we tour the vine-laden hills, Kunde leaves most of the big steps the company has taken to the press kit, delighting instead in the small things that might go unnoticed. The owl boxes, for example. Local schoolchildren are encouraged to get to know the estate and the important role owls play in protecting the fruit by visiting and painting the owl houses that are mounted on poles in the fields. Other kids are invited with their teachers to help plant native trees and shrubs in raised gardens. As they grow, the trees will be replanted along the estate’s creeksides to improve water management, replacing the rows of grape vines that used to be planted right up to the banks. Kunde also likes to reconnect adult wine lovers to the land. He personally leads morning-long hikes through the property, culminating in lunch and a wine tasting atop one of the hills, all of which, he points out, still have their native trees at the peaks.

At the Green Wine Summit, which Jeff and I both attended, winemakers discussed the big issues confronting them and the planet:

• The growing population of California, which pits farmers against developers in a fight for land and water


• The degradation of the soil from years of “modern” farming techniques


• International competition from South America, where production costs are lower


• Air quality, climate change, and carbon footprints

The needed changes will be brought about by activists of all kinds: politicians, consumers, citizen-leaders—and understated business owners like Jeff Kunde, who seems genuinely interested in simply doing the right thing.

by Emily Main

Ahh, moving. It's about as pleasant as dental work, traffic jams or taking charge of a country that's facing two wars and a tanking economy.

Yes, Mr. Obama, it's time to pack. And now that you've established who's in charge of environmental and energy policy for the entire country, we thought we'd give you a few tips on improving the environmental and energy policies of your new house--including how you're getting there.

In our first installment of 44 Tips for the 44th President, we're tackling the green move. To a certain extent, the Obamas have a head start: Keeping with tradition, Obama will be traveling to the inauguration partly by train, which is one of the greenest ways to travel and to ship freight. Unfortunately, there aren't any moving companies that use rail freight, so he'll have to rely on much dirtier diesel trucks instead.

The average 18-wheeler gets an abysmal 5 to 6 mpg, which, for a 701-mile Chicago-to-Washington trip, spews about 1.5 tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Although quite a few local and in-state moving companies have switched to hyper-efficient trucks or ones that use renewable fuels (like Moishe's in New York City, Go Green Moving in Southern California and even Big Green Moving in the D.C. area), national companies haven't been as quick to follow suit.

Obama's best bet is to hire a moving company that belongs to the EPA's voluntary SmartWay Transport Partnership, a program that helps companies like ABF Freight Systems and its U-Pack residential moving division and Penske Truck Rental, which rents trucks to DIY movers, audit the environmental performance of their operations and then set greenhouse-gas and fuel-reduction goals they believe can be reached within three years.

But first, the Obamas have to actually pack. One would hope that the future leader of the free world could be environmentally conscious about his packing materials without having to go dumpster diving behind liquor stores, bookshops and the other usual suspects to find reusable boxes. UsedCardboardBoxes.com sells, well, used cardboard boxes (at a lower price than most moving companies charge for new ones) and then picks them up to reuse again or recycle after you've moved.

Sadly, the coolest green packing company we found doesn't serve the Chicago area yet--but maybe they'd be willing to make an exception for a relatively important client. Earth Friendly Moving, based in California, has perfected the art of turning trash into moving materials. They mine landfills for plastic, which they use in sturdy plastic containers that are rented for $1 per box per week (and are closed not with tape but with zip ties made from recycled bottle caps). Rather than bubble wrap, the company has created its own packaging wrap from cardboard recycling sludge, packing peanuts come from newspaper recycling sludge, and box labels are made from the starches left over from ethanol production. Even the plastic pallets used for delivery and pickup are made from recycled (and sanitized) disposable diapers.

So, Mr. President-elect, as you're driving down the highway in your fuel-efficient truck with your belongings securely stored in recycled boxes, think about what else you'll need to improve your new digs--low-flow toilets? Water-saving showerheads? Arianna Huffington is already envisioning organic cotton curtains and nontoxic cleaning supplies, but we'll have a few more ideas for you in the weeks ahead...

By Frances Lefkowitz

Once upon a time the American pork industry created the slogan, "the other white meat," to capitalize on the popularity of health food and to attract eaters who were shunning red meat. Now the wineries in Northern California's Mendocino county are promoting their area as "America's greenest wine region." But what exactly does "green" mean and just how green is this area?

Traveling this week through the county's dramatic slopes and valleys, I first have to say that it is literally very green here. California is in the middle of a dangerous two-year drought, and this year's winter rains are continuing to hold themselves back. But the natives--oaks, evergreens, manzanitas--know how to deal with drought. Their brittle, dark-green foliage is draped with lacy, pale-green Spanish moss, and their trunks are covered in olive-green mosses. And there was just enough rain in November to cause bright new grasses to shoot up between the trees and shrubs.

In the vineyards and wineries, I'm also discovering a broad range of greens. On my second day here, I encountered:

McDowell Valley Vineyards--run by a small grower who's gotten his family farm certified Fish Friendly and recently started converting part of his crop to organic methods.

Bonterra--a large, corporate producer, which grows 1,150 acres of grapes organically and 224 acres biodynamically. Biodynamic is a farming method developed by Rudolf Steiner, who also started the Waldorf schools--it is kind of like organic plus. It has a spiritual as well as environmental dimension, and promotes a self-sustaining system which, for instance, composts its own farm waste rather than trucking in fertilizer from elsewhere (for more on biodynamic wines, see our Wine Buying Guide).

Albertina Wine Cellars--a very small producer whose steep, picturesque vineyards are certified sustainable, but are decidedly not organic. Owner Fred Zmarzly, a retired developer, served me a lush, soft cabernet at a cliff-side table while telling me that the synthetic weed killer Roundup is harmless, necessary, and reduces his carbon footprint (because he only has to spray it once, rather than making four or five tractor-driven applications of organic sprays).

Yorkville Cellars--a devoutly organic vineyard over the hill in western Yorkville Highlands, a lovely spot with its own appellation. Growers Deborah and Edward Wallo have had organic certification for 22 years, and recently became Fish Friendly as well, because, as Deborah put it to me, "We're at the top of a watershed, and I have always felt that it was important for the environment as well as for the quality of the fruit." Clearly she's right about the quality, because as we were tasting her Bordeaux-style reds and whites, a food-and-wine writer, who'd just returned from a tasting tour of Argentina, stopped in to buy a case.

LeVin--Another small, ridge-top vineyard in this appellation growing organic grapes and olives, whose hippie-ish owner, Eric Levin, believes that Roundup "takes the life out of the soil by killing microbes and earthworms." While the Mendocino wine industry is using "green" as a marketing term, he wants it be known that he got into organics for the right reasons--the health of the environment and of the people who drink the wine and eat his olive oil. "This is about health, not money," he told me as we sipped syrahs in his makeshift cellar tasting room. Above that cellar is a guest house, for rent by the night, with a view that looks down on the many shades of green in the magnificent Mendocino landscape.

Frances Lefkowitz is a writer, editor and book reviewer who publishes in Good Housekeeping, Body+Soul, Natural Health and other magazines. Her personal essays have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and her memoir of poverty, How to Have Not, comes out next year from MacAdam/Cage.

By Frances Lefkowitz

In Mendocino--a Northern California county known for its dramatic hills, logging and a certain illegal recreational crop--vineyards are now so prevalent that even the hippies and the cowboys have become wine snobs. Mendocino also has more organic wineries than any county in the nation, and I'm spending a week driving around these incredible peaks and valleys to visit as many as I can. It's a tough job, as the saying goes, but somebody's got to do it.

Actually, it is tough tasting 16 glasses of wine in a day. At my third stop, a well-stocked Mendo-only wine shop in humble Hopland called Sip!, I had to ask the proprietress to teach me how to spit like a pro. (Hint: wine spitting is just like regular spitting, only you do it into a decorative container, preferably opaque.)

My first stop this morning was the McDowell Valley Vineyards, run by Billy and Vicki Crawford, who represent the cowboy faction of the county. In their free time, they participate in roping and riding competitions, and they took me around the grounds in a horse and buggy for a true no-carbon-footprint tour. Though Billy Crawford's "aw-shucks" drawl is real, it belies his grape-growing and winemaking talents: His wines are award-winning and sophisticated. A large portion of his grapes are certified organic, and his ranch has a Fish Friendly Farming certificate as well.

What do fish have to do with grapes? For an avid hunter and fisherman like Crawford, who watched the fish slowly disappear from the ranch pond, the connection is clear: Synthetic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides get into the water table and affect everything on the farm. "We were throwing the ecosystem off," he told me from the front of the buggy, whip in hand. "The wastewater was going into the pond, causing an algae bloom, which was killing off the fish." Crawford grew up fishing that pond, and he wanted his sons to be able to fish it, too.

The Crawfords, who both come from grape-growing families in Mendocino, are the first to admit that they were motivated as much by impending regulations as by their concerns for the fish (and, by extension, themselves). "We saw the writing on the wall," said Vicki, meaning that the county agricultural laws were getting greener, and it would make bad business sense to ignore the trend. They still complain about the bureaucracy and the cost of getting organic certification. "The state should pay the growers, as an incentive to go organic," she said, only half-joking. But in the end, they are rewarded with fish--and deer, turkey and ducks--that they feel safe eating.

The Crawfords support my theory that tree-hugging environmentalists and rifle-toting hunters have more in common than in dispute. Later this week, I'll be visiting some hard-core enthusiasts and some of those grape-growing hippies to get their take on the trendiness of the organic movement.

But first, one more sip of that mushroomy Syrah.

Frances Lefkowitz is a writer, editor and book reviewer who publishes in Good Housekeeping, Body+Soul, Natural Health and other magazines. Her personal essays have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and her memoir of poverty, How to Have Not, comes out next year from MacAdam/Cage.

By Seth Bauer

There's no better way to tour a California vineyard than on horseback. So when Karl Wente, the 30-ish head of the 3,000-acre Wente vineyards in Livermore Valley, suggested that we saddle up late yesterday afternoon, I happily lied and told him I'd ridden enough times to handle it.

Though he's from the fifth generation of Wentes to grow wines here, Karl represents the new kind of California winemaker: experimental and sustainable, not constrained either by the traditions of how wines are blended or by the farming practices that have been in place for 50 years. As we rode up the hills through the rows of vines then walked through the fermenting, barreling, and bottling buildings, he pointed out all of the concerns that he's trying to address. In the fields, it's the plants themselves--how to protect the grapes from mold and viruses with natural rather than man-made pesticides, to irrigate minimally and most effectively, to make as few passes with a diesel tractor as possible, and his biggest fear, how to save the soil from increasing in salinity. From atop the hills we could look across the valley at hundreds of acres of vineyards separated by pockets of houses--brand new enclaves for the Silicon Valley set who have made land use another critical issue here.

At the plant, water and energy use are Karl's focus. Water is a scarce resource in California, and wineries use a lot of it, not for making the wines but for cleaning the equipment, which must be free of any traces of the previous batch. And temperature control in the fermenting vats is critical to the wine's quality, making electricity a considerable factor.

It's a daunting list, but there's a lot of progress here. This is not an organic operation, but it is more sustainable by the day. Water use, Karl says, is down from 10 gallons per gallon of wine to just one. Plant oils are proving to be reasonably effective mold-fighters. All organic waste--including thousands of pounds of grape skins and seeds--throughout the operation is composted and added to the soil to help preserve its quality. And Karl has his eye on the algae industry as a potential source of clean power.

This week, Karl Wente and I will both be on panels at the first Green Wine Summit in Sonoma Valley. I'll have more posts on how wine is going green over the next few days. And by the way, despite his interest in starting to gallop up hills, Badger the horse and I got along fine.