New vineyard tractor runs on cuttings

Rising petrol prices have fuelled the creation of a vineyard tractor powered by vineyard cuttings.

Marlborough producer, Grove Mill, has spent NZ$15,000 (£6,900) converting one of its tractors to run on its own vine prunings.

Initial trials have reduced diesel consumption by as much as 75%.

Craig Fowles, sustainability and compliance co-ordinator for Grove Mill’s parent company, the New Zealand Wine Company, told decanter.com, ‘we started the project when diesel prices were heading toward NZ$1.50 a litre and looked like they were going to carry on increasing.’

‘When you’ve got a tractor going for six hours a day, that’s a lot of fuel and money.’

The new tractor is thought to be cutting the producer’s carbon emissions by just over 0.35 tonnes per hectare each year.

‘We were approached with the idea and because of our sustainability ethos, it fitted quite nicely,’ Fowles added.

Grove Mill was the world’s first winery to be certified as ‘Carbon Zero’.

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Written by Rebecca Gibb

Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).