Willamette Valley Vineyards

Founded in: 1983
Website: willamettevalleyvineyards.com
What unusual item would we find in your compost pile? You won’t find natural cork. We developed a “cradle to cradle” approach with our Cork ReHarvest program which permanently sequesters the carbon withdrawn from the atmosphere by the oak trees through using the cork in other manufactured products, including construction materials.
What was the biggest revelation about sustainable practices? To change the world seems to be an overwhelming task…the revelation is that it’s not. We are rapidly approaching a global tipping point, and consumers hold the power to change the world. Because companies are so thinly profitable, you don’t need to change many people’s minds to motivate companies to change. Even if a reasonably modest minority of consumers demand a sustainable product it will force a company to change. It doesn’t take much.

For Green Pioneer Willamette Valley Vineyards, Sustainability Goes Well Above and Beyond the Vineyard

“I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life, and I’m still doing them,” says Jim Bernau, founder and president of Willamette Valley Vineyards in Turner, Oregon. Bernau created a business in an unconventional manner, seeking buy in from friends and local Oregonians and encouraging them to buy stock in his company.
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Inspired by his father’s interest and participation in the Oregon wine industry, and his experience as a young child raising cows in the 4H program, Bernau was driven into the business, fueled by a passion for wine and stewardship of the land.

From the start, Bernau was conscious on managing the vineyard to control runoff and erosion, but there were few resources available to young farmers who wanted to farm sustainably.

“I’ve literally seen our industry grow up and develop an awareness of more sophisticated forms of sustainable practices, including the formation of the LIVE organization,” Bernau said.

Today, the organizations’ 310 acres are LIVE/Salmon Safe Certified, in addition to the Estate Vineyard Pinot Noir plantings being Certified Organic.

For Bernau, sustainability is not just a practice implemented in the vineyard but a philosophy that extended well beyond. Early on, Bernau started a program that offered a 10 cent refund for bottles returned for the winery, with a goal of keeping bottles of wines out of the landfills.

“We collected thousands and thousands of wine bottles back when it wasn’t fashionable to do that, before curbside recycling was implemented in our metropolitan areas,” he says.

Willamette Valley Vineyards was also an early advocate of biofuel, converting vineyard equipment to biodiesel and offering employees a gallonage stipend to use biofuel in their commuter cars. The winery also was an early believer in the sustainable properties of corks, and became the first winery in the world to use cork certified through the Rainforest Alliance to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards. And most recently, Willamette Valley Vineyards partnered with Amorim Cork America, SOLV and Yemm & Hart to begin a nationwide cork recycling campaign.

Looking toward the future, Bernau says he is motivated by finding ways to reinvent his organization to emulate William McDonough’s cradle to cradle philosophy.

“Going cradle to cradle means reinventing the way we deliver wine to the consumer,” he says. “We need to find the least impactful way to do that, which requires new ideas and a redesigned way of thinking. Glass is heavy, expensive to produce, costly to transport. This is not an easy answer.”

But Bernau believes that when a sufficient number of consumers choose their products or services based upon how the providers behave, consumers can change the world.

Order Oregon Certified Sustainable Wines

2007 Willamette Valley Vineyard’s Estate Pinot Noir