Keep It Real
Painting by Andrew Power used on our Pacific Redwood wine line labels
At Frey Vineyards, we like to keep it real. Real simple ingredients, real quality products, and real marketing campaigns that tell you the truth about what we’re doing. We created a line of wines under our Pacific Redwood label that are all organic, affordable, and delicious. Our tagline for Pacific Redwood is “Keep It Real” because that’s how we’re running our business.
Pacific Redwood Wine made by Frey Vineyards
Real Soil
The soil health underscores all that we do at Frey Vineyards. It all starts with healthy soil because healthy soil can grow the highest quality grapes that produce the finest Organic and Biodynamic wines. Organic and Biodynamic farming practices are a healthy alternative to conventional blanket chemical applications and large-scale mono-cropping.
By creating a biodiverse farm landscape that encourages natural predators, we eliminate the need for synthetic pesticides and insecticides. Cover crops are planted in the fall and tilled under in the spring using a fertilization technique known as “green manuring.” These cover crops include a variety of grasses, legumes, and mustards that protect the soil from erosion, fix nitrogen into the soils, and offer a habitat for many beneficial insects.
Another essential organic practice involves the use of compost in the vineyard. At Frey Vineyards, we recycle all of our grape pumice back into the vineyard after it is composted with other organic ingredients, including manure, old hay, and garden waste. By returning this valuable resource back to the vineyard, we close our fertility loop and achieve sustainable soil management.
Real Compost
On the winemaking end of things, we like to keep it real with our massive worm composter! In 2020, we installed a BioFiltro composting system, built inside two 40x80 foot beds, that catalyzes the digestive power of earthworms to naturally filter the water after the wine-making process. The system processes up to 10,000 gallons of grey water daily, the equivalent of 600 showers. That water then gets sent to irrigation ponds, where it is used as needed throughout the year to provide nutritious wastewater compost back to the grapes themselves.
How do these hard-working worms do the heavy lifting? The BioFiltro system starts with an open-top concrete basin that is layered up with strata of wood shavings, river cobble, and drainage basins. Water is pumped across the system with sprinklers, and gravity-feeds down through the layers. In the top layer, earthworms munch on larger solids, producing castings rich in microbes and bacteria. By working beneficially and symbiotically, the organisms form a biofilm (a layer of billions of microbial colonies) that captures, retains, and digests food in the processed water. From top to bottom, the process takes four hours.
Bio Filtro turns wine wastewater into fertile compost!
“Frey Vineyards’ sustainability policy is to try as much as possible to mimic the ecosystem, where nothing is wasted. In nature, waste materials decompose and turn into fertilizer. The BioFiltro system requires very little energy, and in the end, we have clean water and valuable worm castings to add to our vineyard fertility program.”
Real Green
Sustainable packaging is our jam. We keep it real by using materials that are the greenest options we have available. We’re dedicated to making environmentally friendly packaging choices in all sectors of our winery. Our current innovations include:
Ganau Agglomerated Corks Molded corks are a resourceful use of cork scraps and help maintain the cork industry as zero waste. And they have excellent staying power for our delicate, no-sulfites-added wine!
Envi 100 Wine Labels from Monadnock Paper Mill 100% PCW recycled, Forest Stewardship Council Certified, and processed chlorine-free.
Low-weight Ardaugh Evolution glass bottles We use low-weight 14 oz eco-bottles to lower our carbon footprint and comply with the Sustainable Wine Round Table recommendations for glass weight under 420 grams. Ours are 396.893 grams
Kraft case boxes and recycled pulp liners Ton for ton, compared to virgin cardboard, recycled cardboard saves 24 trees, use 33% less energy, produces 49% less wastewater, and releases 37% fewer greenhouse gases in the process.
Keep it real good with these award-winning Pacific Redwood wines
Real Good
Frey loves bringing you award-winning Organic and Biodynamic wines for you to enjoy. In the “keep it real” spirit, we’d like to mention that our line of Pacific Redwood wines are bringing in the accolades! Our 2022 Pacific Redwood Organic Syrah was awarded 92 points and a “Best Buy” distinction from Wine Enthusiast. Our 2021 Pacific Redwood Organic Merlot was awarded 90 points and also a “Best Buy” distinction from Wine Enthusiast. Keep it real, choose Frey Vineyards for your organic wines!