MOVERS
From Tim Pawsey
Tidings Magazine, October 2012
Even in an industry with more than its share of characters, you won't meet too many people of Peter Yealand's ilk. He's the man who built a winery in a place where many said it couldn't be done. Not only that, he turned it into one of the world's most sustainable wineries. Yealands comes from a background in mussels and deer farming, as well as in running a successful heavy-equipment business, landscaping for others in the wine industry.
Harnessing his "can-do" Kiwi attitude, the creative entrepreneur set about transforming the steep slopes overlooking Clifford Bay, at the mouth of the Awatere River - an area that many in the industry had previously dismissed as being unsuitable for vineyard development.
Once he had shaped the land to include 22 wetland areas, and planted flax to attract swans and towhees to balance the monoculture of vines, he turned his attention to building the country's first LEED-certified winery.
"Right from the start, our philosophy was to be as sustainable as possible," says Yealands. The winery saved almost a million kilowatt hours in its first year of operation, thanks to every conceivable bell and whistler of energy efficiency and conservation, from waste-water treatment, rainwater catchment, solar panels and vertical-access wind turbines (which Yealands builds himself) and more. Even a portion of vine prunings are now baled and burned to heat glycol, saving around 100 tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually. Yealands has also been a leader in pioneering the use of PET bottles, which the owner says are 89 per cent lighter, generate 54 per cent less emissions and use 19 per cent less energy to produce than traditional 750-millilitre glass bottles.
Yealand's most celebrated claim to fame could well be introducing miniature sheep to the vineyard. When the initial full-sized animals didn't pan out ("They developed a taste for grapes"), Yealands imported some "Babydoll" miniatures, short enough to keep them focused on their work, not the grapes. In time he'll crossbreed enough to do away with tractor mowing - currently about 3,500 square kilometres a year.
Yealands is by no means alone in his messianic push for ultimate sustainability. But he very much personifies an approach that has placed New Zealand at the fore of sustainable wine growing around the world, in a relatively short time.
Even though Kiwis are a pretty environmentally responsible lot, the country's ascent to sustainable prominence didn't happen purely by chance.
