Grape Thinking » Vineyard http://www.grapethinking.com Lifestyle, Wine, Culture, and Technology Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:14:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 A Bottle of GrapeThinking http://www.grapethinking.com/bottle-of-grapethinking http://www.grapethinking.com/bottle-of-grapethinking#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:53:18 +0000 Greg http://www.grapethinking.com/?p=2384 Thinking back on our 3 years of blogging, from Ruarri’s First Post and all his amazing storytelling on wine as the elixir of life and a unifier of the world, to Jake’s wizard tech guides, to Brad’s millennial generation expose, to Meg’s wine-your-diet, to my rants on sustainability and spirituality, to all the other amazing content from our various contributors, we’ve created a dynamic vortex of ideas. What’s been greatest of all is having people find these ideas, some from 2 or 3 years ago and still give us feedback. With our first harvest experience this past fall in Italia, we brought all these ideas to life by finally connecting to the source and creating some amazing elixirs. And it’s not just the liquid that represents our ideas, but the sustainable environments from which it is produced. Thus, we find it natural to take our ideas, and our environments, and put them in a bottle…  a bottle of GrapeThinking.

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]]> http://www.grapethinking.com/bottle-of-grapethinking/feed 0 RayLen Solar Vineyard http://www.grapethinking.com/raylen-solar-vineyard http://www.grapethinking.com/raylen-solar-vineyard#comments Wed, 13 Jan 2010 06:44:58 +0000 Greg http://www.grapethinking.com/?p=2355 North Carolina is slowly building a very respectable wine country, located predominantly in the Yadkin valley north of Charlotte. We recently had the chance to pay an educational visit to RayLen vineyards based out of Mocksville. GT has always seen vineyards as much more than wine, energy environments if you will and RayLen is another winery backing that up, with an awesome solar install. Check out the video below for a quick look. Note: the muscadine (seeds) at the beginning is an indigenous grape to NC, which reportedly has up to 5 times as much resveratrol as other red grapes.

My facts aren’t quite right in the video. Click below to get the full spec on their setup.

It turns out they’re currently generating about 30% of their energy needs from the solar install. However, they plan to keep installing until they are at 100% and beyond. Interestingly enough, Steve Shepard, the RayLen vitner, told us the cost of the installation was approximately $70,000, but they received a $40,000 tax credit from the government. Furthermore, the energy that they sell back to the local utility company pays approximately $0.28/kWh, whereas they only pay $0.09/kWh for what they use. That seems like a promising deal, and if they continue, they could potentially have a ‘rivaling revenue source’ to the incredible juice that they produce and sell. I highly recommend tasting the Eagle’s Select and the Carolinius (both red blends) if you get a chance to visit.

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]]> http://www.grapethinking.com/raylen-solar-vineyard/feed 0 Vigneto delle Sangiovese http://www.grapethinking.com/vigneto-delle-sangiovese http://www.grapethinking.com/vigneto-delle-sangiovese#comments Sun, 27 Sep 2009 20:20:06 +0000 Greg http://www.grapethinking.com/?p=2231

The sangiovese grape is the foundation fo the famous chianti wine from Toscana, Italia. There are said to be many alchemists in the hills of Tuscany brewing up life enhancinig elixirs with sangiovese as their base.

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]]> http://www.grapethinking.com/vigneto-delle-sangiovese/feed 0 Wine and Shine http://www.grapethinking.com/wine-and-shine http://www.grapethinking.com/wine-and-shine#comments Tue, 05 May 2009 05:40:45 +0000 Greg http://www.grapethinking.com/?p=2118 I saw an awesome headline today:

Going Green Reaches Economic Tipping Point at Wine and Shine 2009

Serious implications for vineyards! A few wineries in Cali are supposedly powering their operation from the sun, courtesy of solar installation and financing company, Conergy.

Being a sustainabilty company that started with wine, we’re loving the vibe. Wine and vineyards represent the essence of sustainability. Talk to any great winemaker and they’ll tell you they consider themselves part of the process, equal to the sun, the rain, the soil. And that cooperation rather than control is what leads to the magic of wine… we feel it when we taste it. That’s how this going green thing really tips… when people start feeling their connection to the world and to each other. Awareness that we evolved from the earth and we’re here to be part of nature. There’s a deep zen like quality to all of this, seeing a mountain and feeling one with it, equal to it. Part of the same field. Some say “ok, lets be hippies and live in cabins in the woods.” No, that’s not it. To the contrary its this awakening that will inspire us to create the incredible technologies and systems we need to power and renew the world. It’s already happening though. It’s simply our awareness of it that will create a coalescence.

Connectivity, health, and now renewable energy? Vineyards are going to be the power stations and spiritual centers of both human energy and electricity. You feel it?

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