US: UC Davis Pushes Green Winery Envelope
US: UC Davis Pushes Green Winery Envelope
Nov 6, 2011 6
(EarthTechling) - The University of California, Davis, wasn’t done when it opened “the most technologically advanced and environmentally sophisticated winery in the world” last year. Now the university, the nation’s leading center for wine-related study, has broken ground on an adjacent 8,000-square-foot building that it said will allow the complex to become the first “self-sustainable, zero-carbon teaching and research facility in the world.”
Two of winemaking’s biggest ecological pressure points are water use for sanitation, and carbon dioxide production from fermentation. On both counts, the new UC Davis building will work to obviate impacts. Rainwater will undergo high-purity filtration and be used for cleaning fermenters and barrels in the winery, and 90 percent of the water and chemicals from each winery cleaning cycle will be captured and processed for future use in the complex, eventually being used as many as 10 times, the university said.
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