Vineyards prosecuted for grape marc discharge

One of the leading proponents of sustainable winemaking is being prosecuted for the discharge of grape marc.

New Zealand's Yealands Family Wines, along with Babich Wines, Growco Limited, John Sowman and Michael Gifford, are being charged by Marlborough District Council for alleged offences under the NZ Resource Management Act.

The charges all relate to the discharge of grape marc and grape marc leachate, made up of the skins, stems and pulp left over after grapes are crushed to make wine, onto land or water.

Just last month, the owner of Yealands, Peter Yealand, was recognised with a Lifetime Achievement Award at The Drinks Business Green Awards 2016 for his continued innovation and commitment to sustainable practices. His company also received a Renewable Energy Implementation runner-up award for the installation of the largest solar array in New Zealand on its winery roof.

Yealands was handed an abatement notice in September by the Marlborough District Council to remove grape marc after thousands of tonnes were dumped on leased farmland on the eastern Wither Hills, south of Blenheim, during this year's harvest.

The company was previously issued an abatement notice by the council in 2014 for grape marc sites on six properties in Seddon.

At the time, Yealands said the grape marc was dumped on the Wither Hills site as a "stop gap" measure during the busiest part of the harvest season.

"It was always intended as a temporary measure," he said. "Unfortunately the leachate from the grape marc leaked from the pit into a nearby waterway."

Yealands told The Marlborough Express that arrangements were later made under the abatement notice to cover the material and dry it out, and remove it to council-owned oxidation ponds.

"However council stopped this and we instead shifted it to holding ponds on Yealands Estate in Seddon where we use it as fertiliser on our own vineyards," he said. "Council stopped us doing that as well, I don't know why but they later retracted the decision to let us continue ... I'm a keen environmentalist and we were trying to fix an environmental problem but we came unstuck."

It's the first time the council has prosecuted anyone for the discharge of grape marc, with Marlborough District Council chief executive Mark Wheeler telling The Marlborough Express: "It's not our preferred way of dealing with things, but we felt they were sufficiently serious that we needed to take the strongest action. There's a wide range of factors we consider before we take a prosecution, a prosecution is a last resort, it's not something we take lightly."

The council has tried to work with winemakers on solutions to the disposal or recycling of grape marc. Two years ago the council tried to facilitate a deal between a group of wine companies, the Marlborough Grape Marc Group, and Australian company Tarac Technologies. They explored the idea of developing a facility in Marlborough to extract value from the byproduct, but the deal fell over.

The grape marc discharge cases were all supposed to be heard on December 13, but were adjourned until next year without any pleas being entered.