28th August
A Flower Day
“The Scimitar”
As you drive down Felton Road and look up over Block 2 of The Elms vineyard, there is a new sight on the golden grass slopes: a curved swathe of black solar panels curls, like a scimitar along the front of the hillock just East of the winery. We’ve become used to big angled banks of solar as we travel around, but this forms a sculptural arc, mimicking the natural curve of the hill. It was a work of considerable skill and patience to create that curve. The structural support was also made from old recycled vineyard posts.
It’s not alone; it has an earlier sibling of 120 panels that are hidden to all but the hawks that runs along the rooftops of the winery, which is itself hidden by the cottage like facade of the building. The new arc is bigger; both the panels themselves and their power, an addition that will increase our generative power to about 80kW and a bank of batteries will give us 57 kWh of storage. That is more than we’ll need for most of the year. The rest will go to grid.
Solar, when in the landscape, like wind generation, can be divisive. Some see it as an ugly scar on a natural landscape. I’ve never seen it that way. Our presence on the the landscape is matter of fact and has been for millennia. People have become used to houses and will often marvel at the beauty of a cottage, a magnificent stately home or church, when they see them in the midst of a pastoral scene. Traditional windmills have been particularly valued in this respect… but they are intrusions, just as the pastoral scene itself is: untouched wilderness is the real beautiful state of our planet and very rare it is these days. I have always seen modern windmills as glorious sculptures, impossibly thin and strong; a statement that we’ve found better ways to do things than pollute the land with coal and oil. For me they have always been the flagpoles of a brighter future.
But we were braced for some hostile comment when we decided to site the panels overlooking Block 3. Yesterday we had our first communication on them. It wasn’t a complaint, but a compliment on the aesthetic curve that had been so painstakingly constructed. It came from a man who makes beautiful musical instruments, he is a master of the curve and he loves a good one when he sees it!
As I write this, 300,000 people are being evacuated from another wine area: Bordeaux, as climate change wreaks havoc with an uncontrollable wildfire. The same has been happening in Gredos in Spain, with the fires there threatening Spain’s capital as well as some irreplaceable ancient vineyards of Garnacha. We can’t stop this, but I cannot accept that we shouldn’t do everything we can to minimise it.
It is well over a decade since we began counting our carbon. We do it to the most rigorous standard: ISO14064 scopes 1, 2 and 3. As I write this, we can grow the grapes, make the wine, bottle, ship to over 40 countries, employ over 25 people, and count every carbon cost of those activities, people and bottles through to consumption. The bill this year will be about 250 tonnes of carbon. It would be significantly less if we were allowed to claim the carbon we save with the organic, biodynamic and regenerative practices we follow. But that 250 tonnes is half what it was just a few years ago. We will drive it down to real zero: no carbon offsetting, actually get to zero by our own work. And that black scimitar will help us get there.
Nga Mihi Nui
Nigel
28th August
A Flower Day
“The Scimitar”
As you drive down Felton Road and look up over Block 2 of The Elms vineyard, there is a new sight on the golden grass slopes: a curved swathe of black solar panels curls, like a scimitar along the front of the hillock just East of the winery. We’ve become used to big angled banks of solar as we travel around, but this forms a sculptural arc, mimicking the natural curve of the hill. It was a work of considerable skill and patience to create that curve. The structural support was also made from old recycled vineyard posts.
It’s not alone; it has an earlier sibling of 120 panels that are hidden to all but the hawks that runs along the rooftops of the winery, which is itself hidden by the cottage like facade of the building. The new arc is bigger; both the panels themselves and their power, an addition that will increase our generative power to about 80kW and a bank of batteries will give us 57 kWh of storage. That is more than we’ll need for most of the year. The rest will go to grid.
Solar, when in the landscape, like wind generation, can be divisive. Some see it as an ugly scar on a natural landscape. I’ve never seen it that way. Our presence on the the landscape is matter of fact and has been for millennia. People have become used to houses and will often marvel at the beauty of a cottage, a magnificent stately home or church, when they see them in the midst of a pastoral scene. Traditional windmills have been particularly valued in this respect… but they are intrusions, just as the pastoral scene itself is: untouched wilderness is the real beautiful state of our planet and very rare it is these days. I have always seen modern windmills as glorious sculptures, impossibly thin and strong; a statement that we’ve found better ways to do things than pollute the land with coal and oil. For me they have always been the flagpoles of a brighter future.
But we were braced for some hostile comment when we decided to site the panels overlooking Block 3. Yesterday we had our first communication on them. It wasn’t a complaint, but a compliment on the aesthetic curve that had been so painstakingly constructed. It came from a man who makes beautiful musical instruments, he is a master of the curve and he loves a good one when he sees it!
As I write this, 300,000 people are being evacuated from another wine area: Bordeaux, as climate change wreaks havoc with an uncontrollable wildfire. The same has been happening in Gredos in Spain, with the fires there threatening Spain’s capital as well as some irreplaceable ancient vineyards of Garnacha. We can’t stop this, but I cannot accept that we shouldn’t do everything we can to minimise it.
It is well over a decade since we began counting our carbon. We do it to the most rigorous standard: ISO14064 scopes 1, 2 and 3. As I write this, we can grow the grapes, make the wine, bottle, ship to over 40 countries, employ over 25 people, and count every carbon cost of those activities, people and bottles through to consumption. The bill this year will be about 250 tonnes of carbon. It would be significantly less if we were allowed to claim the carbon we save with the organic, biodynamic and regenerative practices we follow. But that 250 tonnes is half what it was just a few years ago. We will drive it down to real zero: no carbon offsetting, actually get to zero by our own work. And that black scimitar will help us get there.
Nga Mihi Nui
Nigel
