Sustainability Programme

Our Sustainability Policy

We aim to encourage life in the vineyard, with healthy soils, promoting greater biodiversity, capturing carbon and minimising waste. This is at the heart of everything we do in the vineyard, in the winery and when selling our wine. We constantly strive to do better.

We are proudly carbon neutral.

Sustainable Viticulture

  • We do not use insecticides.
  • We prefer  to keep wide grass, clover-rich alleys between the vines rows with narrow under-vine strips.
  • The margins of the vineyard are planted with wildflowers .
  • We have planted fruit trees around the vineyard to provide food and nesting sites for birds and bees.
  • We particularly encourage dandelions in the vineyard: providing early nectar for bees, and tackling soil compaction with their long roots.
  • Our gardens have been planted to promote insect biodiversity (particularly with bee friendly plants including thyme lawns, lavender, sages, salvias)
  • We have planted hedges and trees around the vineyard.
  • The middle of the vineyard has a wild, wooded area which is home to foxes, badgers and rabbits, and our pond has ducks, frogs, snails and many aquatic creatures.
  • We monitor birds  insects and everything living in our soils. 
  • We encourage Insects in the vineyard including ladybirds, lacewings, earwigs, and dragonflies. A healthy balanced insect population helps our vines stay healthy.
  • It also feeds the bats, birds and others.
  • We do not irrigate the vines.
  • The vineyard is grazed in the winter by sheep: the short grass minimizes the frost risk, the sheep condition the soil and these ‘lawnmowers’ don’t use fossil fuel.
  • We condition our vineyard soil by mulching vine prunings back into the ground.
  • Our sprayer recycles spray so that only the vines are treated and there is no wastage or contamination.
  • We counter-balance potential problems with biological controls (eg  encouraging lacewings as predators) or planting dead end hosts (eg bird cherry to distract the alien SWD (spotted wing drosophila)) or spraying a yeast onto the ripening grapes to outcompete fungal disease.
  • We keep the grape marc, subject it to vermiculture for a few years and then use it as a soil-conditioner or mulch in the vineyard. We aim for zero waste.
  • As we only use about two thirds of the grape for Sparkling wine. The rest is not  wasted: a third party uses it to make other wine products (eg vermouth, shrubs and wine vinegar).

Winery

  • Our winery buildings are so well insulated and therefore do not need heating or cooling.
  • We use green energy. The winery is powered by our solar panels on the roof.
  • Our concreted area is covered with a green roof to improve biodiversity, regulate water loss and prevent heat build up.
  • We clean the tanks and barrels with steam and UV light both to avoid using cleaning chemicals and to minimise water usage.
  • We only use our own grapes and do not make wine for anyone else. The winery is in the centre of the vineyard. We do each and every part of the wine-making process here. So no grapes or wines leave Ambriel HQ until they are sold. This minimises the environmental impact of repeated transportation. Once is enough.

Sales

  • Our packaging is reusable and recyclable.
  • We use eco-friendly, non-toxic vegetable inks on our foils.