The Environment
Green & Blue does not only stock wines which are certified as Organic and Biodynamic, although there will always be at least a few which are, often many more. What is certainly true is that almost all of the producers we love and promote are those who use minimal quantities of artificial and chemical herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers in their vineyards and who avoid the addition of flavourings and technical manipulation in the winery to make their wines.
As with all agriculture these days (and wine is in its purest form an agricultural product, albeit one which is a few steps removed from the soil compared to say, a carrot), the market is dominated by mass produced pretenders, bearing only a fleeting resemblance to the real thing. Healthy (in that they are not full of traces of noxious pesticides), genuinely flavourful fruit, vegetables and wine grapes are sadly marginalized in favour of those produced in factory farms where the emphasis is on speed and efficiency (for the producer), profit and uniformity. The fact that these are the stuff of life and should be produced and consumed with respect is, in the mass market, largely forgotten.
Green & Blue is passionately committed to bringing the best of real wine to its customers and to helping to promote the culture of taking enjoyment from that which is produced with love and attention and consumed in the same spirit.
It is a real challenge trying to be an environmentally aware business and one that we constantly try to meet. We are aware that our industry is intrinsically fraught with problems –the transporting of heavy glass bottles for hundreds or thousands of miles being the most obvious. While we don’t yet know what the answer is, we never stop trying to find it and will continue to change and adapt as workable solutions arise. Meanwhile, we have taken small but we believe important steps, namely :-
We have now banned plastic carrier bags from our shops as we believe that this is a practical measure that we can take.
We serve only filtered water in our bars, cutting down on the need for transport and packaging.
During our refurbishment at Lordship Lane, we had the budget to install a state of the art, incredibly energy efficient boiler. Sadly we do not yet have the money to do this in Clapham but that is planned for the future.
We believe that our promotion of wines made by smaller producers with minimal (if any) recourse to chemicals is an important part of our overall desire to be more environmentally responsible. In the future, we hope to only stock wines made with absolutely no artificial chemical intervention. In the meantime, the wines we tend to promote the most enthusiastically are those made biodynamically.
If you are interested in trying any of our biodynamic wines, we have a search option in our
Buy Wine section which will help you to pin point exactly which wines have been produced in this way.
Green & Blue Scholarship
Green & Blue founder Kate Thal is South African born and so the wine industry in this country has a very special place in her heart. From before the founding of this company, she had wanted to do something to help to develop the amazing potential of some of its young people from previously disadvantage back grounds.
South Africa now boasts many black wine makers but a career as a sommelier or someone who works in other areas of the industry is still not widely recognized.
With the help of another South African living in London, Timothy Schultz, the inaugural scholarship was launched in late 2007 and the first candidate will be coming over to London in 2008. Thandisiziwe Meyi (and hopefully many more in years to come) will work alongside the team in Lordship Lane, attending trade tastings and wine maker master classes regularly. He will do the 13 week School of Wine course and will also accompany the team on one of their European wine trips in the year and on his return to South Africa in early 2009 will have exactly the right experience to launch a glittering career in the world of wine.
You can have a look at the
blog entry as well.
For more details of the Scholarship and how to apply, please email
kate.thal@greenandbluewines.com.