Sustainability

Our Family’s Commitment

Sustainability is a Sonoma County-wide commitment. Our community is doing it together for 100% of our vineyards to be sustainable by 2020.

Sustainability is about NOT overusing resources, at any level, from our community, because resources belong to us all. It has us be more aware of the resources we use and how we use them. For example: water, waste, electricity, impact of people, implements, carbon footprint, etc.

Being sustainable allows us to grow wine grapes and sell those grapes now and for years to come. Many wineries are willing to support our community with this initiative by asking for sustainably grown grapes.

For us at Martinelli, we have been farmers for 135+ years, we have sustained this lifestyle because the way we have taken care of our vineyards and land. We have been fortunate enough to be on the 6th generation with these same lands…and our commitment is about being able to continue farming these same lands for at least another 6 generations. This initiative is actually formalizing what we’ve already been doing for 135+ years and we are very proud to be a part of it.

• Reuse and recycle all equipment.
• Buying tractors that are emission friendly, more expensive but worth it. We can trade in our old tractors to buy new tractors that are built to run on cleaner emissions.
• We have water meters to monitor our input/output.
• Our workers live on our vineyard ranches, therefore there’s less transportation, and more efficiency.
• We chop our prunings vs burning, therefore the prunings go back into the ground and release their nutrients back in the soil, from which it came.
• We compost and use grape pumice as ground cover in the vineyards. This helps return nutrients, supports the micro-organisms and holds in moisture to the soil.
• We use the H2A program for our workers from Mexico, therefore we have the same crew year after year and they stay for the duration of the growing season through harvest. Therefore we don’t have fluctuations in our crews. By retaining crews that are trained on how we specifically want to farm our vineyards, it allows us to be more efficient in our efforts.

• Pumice – spent skins & stems go back into the vineyard to return nutrients to the soil and micro biomes.
• Our glass is not heavy – if it weighed more, then it costs more to produce, and transport.
• We recycle everything we can.
• We do not overbuy – glass, barrels, corks, etc.
• Use our barrels for 3 years for reds. We maintain them, then sell them.
• Water conscious – we use ozone gas to maintain barrels, along with steam. These techniques help us save water.
• Barrel maintenance – every 6 weeks ozone gassed, and steam before use therefore don’t have to put 60 gallons of water in each barrel for prep. That’s wasteful when you have 250 barrels.
• Corks are reconditioned – they go back to manufacturer & they rehydrate For reuse. 6-8% hydration for pliability. Almost 100% comes back.
• Always researching solar to see when the technology & our rooftop space make sense to use.

• Recycle glass, foil, paper, plastic, etc.
• Reusable bags made from plastic water bottles.
• Focus on Sonoma County products in our TR.
• Sugar Cane fiber paper – 100% tree-free called Treefrog – we are testing this out.
• Reuse, repurpose and reclaim many implements, equipment, tools from the past to use in our tasting room as décor, etc.