Here’s a totally different approach by a friend of ours, Kevin Kelley, for natural wine packaged in stainless steel reusable canisters.  Kevin worked at Copain Custom Crush back when we first started our label.  Very cool idea but you’re out of luck if you live too far outside Sonoma County.

Then perhaps Three Thieves Bandits in Tetra Pak packaging instead?

Both food for thought for future projects.

While much is said about the environmental impact of improving farming practices, one of the main environmental culprits in the wine business is bottle glass. The heavier the bottle, the more energy consumed in production and more fossil fuels needed to transport the wine from here to there. And unfortunately, it has become standard to equate heavy bottle glass with high end product. We at Jus Soli have always chosen the lightest glass that we think will perform the simple task of keeping our wine safe inside (a rare occasion where being cheap does equal being greener) and are always interested in developments on this front. Fetzer is having a puntless bottle (the punt is the heavy indentation at the base of wine bottles) made for themselves that might be a great option for some of our bottlings as well. Don’t be fooled by heavy glass, it doesn’t make the wine taste any better, it just adds to greater consumption of energy in production and greater volume of CO2 emissions later. Who wants to pay more for that?

Here’s a Napa Valley Register article by Dan Berger on the subject.

1) Used to describe underripe, vegetal aromas or flavors in wine.

2) Our new category of postings detailing ways to “green” our wine business now and in the future.

As evidence that we are not holier-than-thou types, here’s what we put on the back label of our organically farmed Sauvignon Blanc, “Considering all those ominous global climate predictions, we’re guessing that a crisp white wine will increasingly hit the spot.  Enjoy Jus Soli wines in any season, in any climate.”

We’ve had some interesting reactions to that so far and hope to foster some lively discussion with these postings, which will reflect our belief that a responsible business takes into account considerably more than just the bottom line.  After all, we need to believe strongly in what we are doing if we expect anyone else to feel that way.

Look for many more future “Green Notes” from Jus Soli. Second definition, that is.