Sustainable Agriculture in the Vineyard

Enjoy this post by Mercedes of New Pi’s Wine, Beer, & Cheese department:

Today, we’re proud to report, many winemakers and grape growers are farming and making wine sustainably. Using principles of ecological relationships between organisms and their environment (including our own organism), these farmers are taking additional steps to apply sustainable practices to their farming such as the use of composting and the cultivation of plants that attract insects that are beneficial to the health of the vines. The common belief among conventional wineries is that without pesticides, herbicides and stabilizers, wine production is not possible. Here are three sustainably farmed vineyards and wineries that clearly prove it is possible, as they produce exceptional wines.

Catena’s Vineyards in Sunshine

Domaine Tempier – Bandol – Provence, France

Lulu Tempier and Lucien Peyraud (now deceased), their sons Francois and Jean-Marie (now retired), and their descendants have never veered from the love and respect for their vineyards which today produce one of Bandol’s finest wines. They believe that what you put in the soil goes into the wine. Domaine Tempier abstains from using herbicides and pesticides. Along with these chemicals, sulfur dioxide (SO2 – gas employed for its antiseptic qualities by practically all wineries) is never allowed contact with the wine either at the harvest or at bottling.

Ilahe Winery – Willamette Valley – Oregon, USA

Much like Domaine Tempier, Ilahe Winery’s goals are to make wine as naturally as possible from the soil to the bottle. The work in the vineyard and the cellar is done mostly by hand using age-old techniques and materials. From their website, “We enjoy working together to make sustainable, handcrafted wines from our Estate vineyard. We are farmers at heart, and we enjoy being close to nature through our grapes, watching every season change the landscape around us, and every vintage change the wines in the bottle.”

Another beautiful shot from Catena

 

Tikal Vineyard – Vista Flores, Uco Valley, Argentina

The charismatic 4th generation winemaker Ernesto Catena planted a “vine labyrinth” in his Tikal vineyard hoping that people would get lost and “get to know their inner soul” through hours spent finding the exit under the intense Mendozan sun. From this effort springs Tikal Natural, a wine made with organic own-root Malbec and Syrah grapes.

Tikal’s Labyrinth Vineyard

The wine production industry standard is to force the vineyard and the vinification process, with aid from numerous chemicals and stabilizers, to produce the same wine year after year (generally resembling the wine that was hot last year!).

In contrast, by using sustainable farming methods, these wineries produce very different, complex, distinctive wines that express the qualities of the soil and uniqueness of where they came from.

Article sources:

Adventures in the Wine Route by Kermit Lynch
Vinos Argentinos by Laura Catena

 

Cedar Rapids Project Update from our new CR Team Lead, Brad!

Enjoy this project update from Brad Lynch, New Pi Cedar Rapids Store Team Lead:

In the Eye of the Beholder

Our Operations Lead, Craig, moonlights as an artist. When not poring over blueprints, reviewing the Cedar Rapids Store’s equipment schedule, or confirming that our Muffaletta sandwiches continue to remain astoundingly good, he draws!

This is his visualization of the north-west corner of the store: our proposed salad/soup Bar is in the lower right.

Will it look exactly like this when we open? Not exactly, but it’s fun to sketch out the possibilities to give us some ideas.

Drawing versus current reality:

All Trades Project Huddle

I’m really glad we have some real professionals working for us!

Our general contractor, Ryan Companies, facilitated an ‘all trades huddle’ this week on the CR store-to-be mezzanine and it went very well.

Representatives from all areas from our sheet rockers, plumbers, HVAC-ers, electricians, flooring contractor, architects, to New Pi representatives – it was a packed meeting.

Everyone is very professional and communicative with each other and it’s nice to laugh once in a while. You can tell this is a strong team.

New Pi Cedar Rapids Update – July 2

New Pi General Manager Matt Hartz updates us on our Cedar Rapids store project progress:

A big crew’s hard at work on our future Cedar Rapids home!

Allison carries in the first food delivery to our future Cedar Rapids New Pi store – we brought lunch for the construction crew!

The space is truly being transformed, thanks to our general contractor, Ryan Companies, our mechanical contractor, Modern Piping, and our electrical contractor, Nelson Electric.

Kent from Ryan Companies and Jon from Nelson Electric getting ready to dig in.

The floor is now criss-crossed with trenches to accommodate the mechanical infrastructure necessary to make a modern supermarket function. All our refrigeration equipment and retail coolers are ordered and expected by the end of summer. We’ve been working with Alliant Energy to be a model of energy efficient design choices.

The combination of modern retail coolers (many with doors) and LED and high-efficiency fluorescent lighting will yield a store that takes at least 1/3 less energy to operate than our Coralville store! (The two stores are about the same size.)

Right now it’s all about plumbing infrastructure!

We are still on schedule to open in late autumn, though we won’t be able to announce an exact opening date for a few months yet. After our Cedar Rapids store is open, we will be turning our focus to making upgrades at our Coralville store! We will be installing the same high-efficiency lighting package and some of the same new refrigeration fixtures that’ll be in the Cedar Rapids store, as well as a nice downstairs seating area for the deli.

– Matt Hartz, New Pi General Manager