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Ca’ Momi Wines Sustainability Program

Ca’ Momi Wines is committed to minimizing (and where possible eliminating altogether) negative impacts on our Ecosystem from our production of wine. To this end, Ca’ Momi has developed and implemented a Sustainability Strategy. This strategy focuses on three core aspects of the impact that typical wine production has on the Ecosystem: the Water Cycle involved in production; the use and flow of Energy in production and administration facilities; and the implementation of Green practices in the Company’s Offices.

Some key features of our Sustainability Strategy are:

• Reducing the Carbon Footprint by minimizing Ground Transportation through the Napa Valley. Our Winery is located in the Napa Valley Corporate Center, making it one of the southern-most Wineries within the Napa Valley. This southern location is far closer to main highway systems – minimizing the distance for transport of dry goods, raw materials, and wine by truck transport.

• Reducing the Energy Flow required for maintaining optimum winery temperatures. Our Winery cooling system features a night-air-cooling system. This system takes advantage of the cool evenings that are typical in Northern California and especially Napa. Due to the relationship between California’s Central Valley and the California Coastal Mountain range, the warmest days of summer draw cooling fog into and across the San Francisco Bay and up the Napa River into Southern Napa County. As a result, during the summer our location experiences evening temperatures that are often 20 – 40*F cooler than daytime temperatures. We have selected and implemented technologies that use the natural cool night air and warm daytime air to maintain our Winery at the proper wine storage and aging temperature. These technologies ensure optimal temperature with dramatically lower energy consumption than typical HVAC systems.

• Reuse and Recycling of winery equipment. Having been raised in Italy, the head of our Mechanical Engineering department grew up in a winery culture in which aging equipment systems were rebuilt and restored, rather than simply discarded and replaced – as they are in many new-world wineries. This provides our Winery with a unique expertise in rebuilding and renewing winery equipment that most other wineries would – and do – consider obsolete and dispose of. This commitment to reuse over consumption dramatically reduces our industrial waste and landfill production.

• Using recycled and refurbished barrels as an alternative to new barrels. An Oak tree is typically 80 to 120 years old when it is harvested for barrel production. The process of barrel production is also highly fuel intensive. By using recycled and refurbished barrels, our Winery contributes to the preservation of the world’s old growth Oak populations, and further reduces our carbon footprint.

• Minimizing water consumption. The typical winery consumes ten gallons of water for every gallon of wine produced. Through years of systems analysis and improvement, Ca’ Momi Wines have reduced this consumption to just over one gallon of water for every gallon of wine produced. This nearly 1 to 1 ratio of water usage is the lowest that we know of in the Industry.

• Use of on-demand tankless water heaters exclusively. Tankless heaters burn propane to heat running water. With a traditional boiler-type water heater, a winery can store hundreds to thousands of gallons of hot 140*F water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, even though it may use hot water only a few times a day. The tank type heaters constantly lose heat through the flue and tank walls. The heater in these tank systems must therefore continuously cycle on and off to maintain this 140*F temperature. In addition to wasting gas, this cycling causes cracking of the exterior walls of the tank and sediment build up which will eventually cause the storage tank to fail. These storage tanks are specifically designed to wear, fail, and be replaced in time. In contrast, on-demand tankless heaters heat water only when there is a demand for hot water. By eliminating the tank, we are able to save gas, reduce water consumption, and reduce waste and landfill.

• Use of Proprietary eco-sensitive filtration. Ca’ Momi Wines uses Crossflow filtration technology developed by and proprietary to our sister company – a method with significant ecological advantages. Typical filtration systems involve multiple filtration and processing steps. Water is consumed and solid waste is produced during each of these several steps. Our cutting-edge Crossflow filtration technique – utilizing proprietary information of our sister company - obtains better results in a single step filtration. In this way Ca’ Momi reduces water consumption and solid waste production, even as it preserves more of the wines pre-filtration profile and character.

• In-house waste water treatment and recycling. Our Winery utilizes a state of the art biological digestive system for the treatment of wastewater. This system eliminates the need for trucking “raw” waste to an offsite municipal water treatment facility for treatment. Because of water’s density, it is a particularly costly product to ship over roadways. By eliminating this transport, our in-house system significantly reduces our carbon footprint. Moreover, we are actively working on an addition to our system that we hope will soon allow Ca’ Momi to recover methane from the biological treatment process. Methane is similar to natural gas, and as a result there is great potential for its use as a fuel source for winery operations.

• Administrative policies and procedures. Our Corporate Office is located at the same site as the Winery, reducing the need for personnel, equipment, and material travel. Unlike many office complexes which rely on artificial air conditioning systems, our offices were specially designed and built to use natural air cooling and heating. Our procurement policies require that all office and janitorial products are non toxic and biodegradable, and that all paper products are made from recycled paper. In addition, we are currently developing and implementing paper free work and data flow systems, aimed at reducing waste. We also maintain glass, paper, aluminum, and plastic recycling facilities and services.

Ca’ Momi Wines’ commitment to sustainability and green practices in our business reflects the owners’ personal beliefs and values. Many of these systems have taken years to develop and have incurred significant start-up costs. Such efforts demonstrate that our commitment to the environment and our Sustainability Program are not simply a marketing strategy aimed at riding a “green trend,” but rather are reflections of our collective commitment to ensure a sustainable environment.
 

 

Happy New Year!

Enjoy Ca' Secco
Bubbly for 2012! 
 

 
 

 

 

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