Balvonie

I'm not gonna lie, before I presented the Soil Organic Carbon results to the team at Balvonie Wines I was pretty nervous. This was the first time we were getting face to face feedback on both the technology and our service. In my experience farmers and growers have a very sensitive radar for sensing when they are being sold a cod or when someone doesn't really know what they are talking about

Balvonie are engaged and innovative winegrowers being the first producers of Prosecco in Aotearoa. So I knew the bar was set pretty high! Thankfully I need not have worried. Both Nature Point and the soil carbon technology delivered on expectations and more. We discussed:

- The value of being able to visualise changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) over time and knowing if what you were doing was having a positive impact at scale.

- Comparing the impact of management practices on soil carbon across different vineyard blocks.

- How the technology could support wine and grape sales in a challenging market or incorporated into the Marlborough regions provenance story

- Could SOC measurements be used to prove the link between improved environmental outcomes and wine quality?

- How SOC measurements could be accounted for in a vineyards overall carbon balance, and the value of an affiliation with a registry like Ox Carbon in such an accounting exercise.

- How measuring and accounting for soil organic carbon could support New Zealand Wine’s Pathway to Net Zero ambitions.

Thank you Ben McLauchlan and the rest of the team at Balvonie for supporting the pilot.