“Eco-friendly” isn’t just a buzzword for Virginia wineries—it’s their livelihood. They know there’s no top-tier wine without a healthy ecosystem, so their commitment to keeping it green shows up everywhere, from the weed-eating sheep in vineyards to solar panel roofs on barns.
Eco-friendliness is also good business; as consumer awareness and concerns grow over climate change, customers are changing their wine-buying habits. Hunter Smith of Champion Hospitality Group—the proprietors of several restaurants including Charlottesville’s Brasserie Saison—says customers are becoming more interested in “natural” wines, which are made without pesticides or herbicides and with few or no additives. Doug Hotz, of nearby Rio Hill Wine & Beer, agrees.
“It is definitely part of the wine conversation,” Hotz said.
Here are just a few of the ways Virginia wineries are keeping it green.
Eco-Stars of Virginia Wine Country

Loving Cup Vineyard & Winery
Photo Credit: Karl Hambsch @lovingcupwinery
When it comes to wineries with sustainable practices, these vineyards go above and beyond, utilizing organic and eco-friendly methods whenever possible.
Loving Cup Vineyard & Winery—North Garden
In a state filled with conservation-focused winemakers, Loving Cup Vineyard & Winery stands out as the only certified-organic vineyard in the state. Winemaker and vineyard manager Karl Hambsch advocates farming with nature, instead of against it.
“This means surrendering absolute control to the mind-numbingly complex systems of life above and below the ground, and then respectfully elbowing out a little space for our grapevines,” Hambsch said.
Any grower will tell you it’s all about the water, so respect for preserving it and keeping it healthy runs high. At Loving Cup, the water used for spraying and irrigation is "rescued"— aka collected from an underground natural spring via French drains into a ten-thousand-gallon tank buried in the ground.
Loving Cup grows only disease-resistant hybrid grapes—think Corot Noir instead of Pinot Noir—to eliminate the need for chemical sprays, and the vineyard relies on insects to do their part.
“Ladybugs, lacewings, assassin bugs, spined soldier bugs, parasitic wasps, hoverflies, and others help to achieve the balance, but the real rock stars are the spiders,” Hambsch said. “They are the sentinels always on watch. They are the reason our vineyard works.”

DuCard Vineyards
DuCard Vineyards—Etlan
DuCard Vineyards has been green from day one, with wood for the floors and tasting bar recycled from a 100-year-old barn on the property. And they have the accolades to show for it, being named Greenest Winery in Virginia twice.
The winery’s environmental checklist ticks all the boxes. They’re solar-powered, their cutlery is made from vegetable starch, they compost grape waste to use in their fields and gardens, and they plant wildflowers to feed beneficial insects. DuCard is also a longtime champion of lightweight wine bottles, disregarding the tradition many wineries follow of putting their best wine into heavier, more wasteful receptacles.
In the lee of Old Rag Mountain, DuCard uses an artificial wetland system to process water, and partners with Re-Cork C’ville in a cork recycling program. You’ll no longer find plastic water bottles in the tasting room; they’ve switched to refillable glass. And your electric car can get all charged up while you relax over some award-winning Petit Verdot.

Afton Mountain Vineyards
Photo Credit: Bill Crabtree Jr.
Afton Mountain Vineyards, Afton
Afton Mountain Vineyards coined the phrase, “Grapes Don’t Grow in Ugly Places,” and as you feast your eyes on the views from the winery’s windows, you’ll be inclined to agree. Owners Elizabeth and Tony Smith intend to preserve the pristine vista for generations; they bought the adjacent land to keep it development-free.
Like all wineries, Afton Mountain faced the conundrum of what to do with the countless empty bottles left after a weekend of wine tastings, so they purchased a glass-crusher. After crushing, they’re left with sand, which is then earmarked for landscaping projects around the winery.
Fun Fact: Brent Manor Vineyards in Faber does the same; owner Jorge Raposo estimates he crushes a couple dozen bottles every weekend.
Winemaker Damien Blanchon grows grapes the way his family does back in France. He uses no insecticides and sprays his twenty-five acres of vines with herbal teas, which he says bolsters their immune systems. After the grapes are crushed, Blanchon delivers the pomace—leftover skins—to a neighbor to use as livestock feed.
He also added goats to Afton’s eco-mix. The furry friends act as nature’s lawn mowers on the non-vineyard acres (goats love a good grape), and they provide some added value with a bit of natural fertilization.
Ingenuity In The Vineyard

Jefferson Vineyards
Photo Credit: Robert Radifera Photography @radifera
Using Helpful Vineyard Critters
High on a mountain in Amherst, Ankida Ridge Vineyards is known as a respite for the soul and a maker of elegant Pinot Noir, but it’s the honeybees, chickens, and sheep who keep everything in order. In the vineyard, the chickens scratch and peck, aerating the soil, while filling up on harmful bugs and larvae. Sheep keep the ground cover trimmed. And both contribute to the vineyard’s reduced use of insecticides and herbicides.
“Environmental awareness is a focus of our farming practices, keeping the soil rich with microbial life and trying to keep the beneficial insects healthy and plentiful," Ankida Ridge owner Christine Vrooman said. "Keeping the vineyard and our farm in balance helps to make balanced wines.”
Up the road in Charlottesville, Jefferson Vineyards has planted over seven acres of wildflower meadows, which support their 400,000 bees. The result? Increased biodiversity, and two vintages of estate-label honey. Guests can see a bit of the wildflower project in the gardens that surround the tasting room.
Loretta Briede of Briede Family Vineyards in Winchester says she wants her wines to be an expression of the grape, not a chemical experiment. To minimize vineyard intervention, her farm relies on an insectary house of ladybugs, green lacewings, assassin bugs, and praying mantis. The insects’ job begins with a “bug release" where they’re set free to quash the bad bugs, creating a natural balance.
Commitment to Water Conservation
Old House Vineyards in Culpeper has grown quite a bit since the first vines were planted in 1999. What started as a winery now includes a brewery, distillery, and pub kitchen—all of which go through plenty of water. To get more use from that water, the Kearney family started building a wastewater management system where everything gets run through underground tanks and into a rock quarry topped with plant life, then cycled into the wetlands and collected in tanks for farm irrigation.
Knight’s Gambit Vineyard and Jefferson Vineyards have also made a commitment to water. Their extensive fencing projects will keep livestock and their natural waste far away from waterways that run into the Chesapeake Bay.
Imagination At The Winery

Fifty-Third Winery & Vineyard
Photo Credit: Hannah Armstrong @hannahelizarmstrong
Harnessing Natural Energy
Summer sunlight is abundant in Virginia, and wineries like Hark Vineyards, Sunset Hills Vineyard, Glass House Winery, and Knight’s Gambit Vineyard are capturing the light to solar-power their business.
Fifty-Third Winery and Walsh Family Wines went further and became LEED certified through the U.S. Green Building Council. Pearmund Cellars and Barrel Oak Winery run their HVAC systems with geothermal, which uses 25-50% less energy.
At Northern Virginia’s Maggie Malick Wine Caves, winemaker Maggie Malick and her husband Mark pour their wines from inside a man-made wine cave. The cave helps them reduce their carbon footprint by maintaining a constant cool temperature year-round for their wines. Of course, there’s also the coolness factor of sipping albariño beneath four feet of earth and grass.
Sustainable Packaging Usage
Several Virginia wineries are making strides in sustainable ways to hold their wines. According to Washington Post wine writer Dave McIntyre, how wines are packaged is a big part of their environmental impact.
“Glass accounts for about sixty percent of wine’s carbon footprint, mostly through the production and transport of empty and full bottles,” McIntyre said.
He and others in wine media are leading the call for wineries to ditch their heavy bottles and do what Hark Vineyards and Barrel Oak Winery are doing—going light with eco-glass bottles, which are twenty-five percent lighter than the standard.
At Bluestone Vineyard in the Shenandoah Valley, customers can spend twelve dollars to refill a growler. If preferred, guests can buy an assortment of Lee Hartman’s wine in cans. Hartman says the easily-recyclable cans are popular for camping, hiking, and music festivals.
“They’re also less of a commitment than cracking into a bottle twice their size. And, no corkscrew,” Hartman said.
Farther up the Valley, Muse Vineyards has also jumped into canned wine. Their social media posts proudly declare “You CAN take it everywhere,” picturing the cans next to swimming pools and on mountaintops. Muse’s cans are 250-ml—a “nice, generous single pour,” according to owner Sally Muse.
Michael Shaps Wineworks in Charlottesville was the first to sell its wines in boxes and also pours from the tap for growlers, carafes, or by the glass at their Wineworks Extended location.
Glass House Winery in Free Union wins the prize for the most creative use of empties; when the county stopped recycling glass, then-owner Jeff Sanders used nearly twenty thousand bottles to build an entire tasting and events building. It’s now a must-see attraction for wine fans from all over.
At Chateau Merrillanne, they’ve switched from the “what-do-I-do-with-this-now” cardboard wine carriers to reusable bags customers can take to the grocery store.
The challenges around growing and crafting good wine won’t change anytime soon, but neither will the commitment of these and other wineries around the state to keep investing in solutions that help them make wine in a way that also helps the planet.

Glass House Winery
Photo Credit: Hannah Armstrong @hannahelizarmstrong
How You Can Pitch In
Here are some ways everyone can help make Virginia wine part of the solution.
Buy local: Buying local wine reduces the distance a bottle travels before the cork is popped—a big carbon footprint savings.
Bike on in: Virginia’s backroads are beautiful for biking. Fifty-Third Vineyard in Louisa offers bicycle storage, showers, and changing rooms so guests can swing by on their Cannondales.
Bring back the box: Lots of wineries are happy to get their increasingly expensive cardboard carrying and shipping boxes back.
“I will gladly take shipping containers in good condition,” owner/winemaker Maggie Malick of Maggie Malick Wine Caves said. A few more who welcome returns are Breaux Vineyards in Northern Virginia, Cardinal Point Winery and Hill Top Winery & Meadery in Central Virginia, Rappahannock Cellars in the Shenandoah Valley, and Rosemont Vineyards in southern Virginia. If you aren’t sure, just ask!
Charge it: More wineries are adding electric car chargers every year. You can fuel up at Knight’s Gambit Vineyard, DuCard Vineyards, Pearmund Cellars, 50 West Vineyards, Sunset Hills Vineyard, and Stone Tower Winery, among others.
Curious about Virginia Wine Country? Get a taste with our complete guide to Virginia wineries.