Four years ago, 2.2 million people and 2000 businesses in Sydney, Australia, turned their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Who would have imagined that this local initiative would quickly go global to become the biggest environmental event the world has known?
2011 Earth Hour takes place on 26 March from 8:30pm to 9:30pm local time. Businesses, communities and families are asked to turn the lights and the power off as a symbolic acknowledgment of the global sustainability crisis. This year, the Earth Hour movement also challenges all of us to go beyond the hour. Let us go further by making day to day behavior changes so that our homes, workplaces, schools and community centers actually become more sustainable.
At Avondale, we enjoy Earth Hour in our candlelit homes, listening to the night sounds of the beautiful Nature around us. However, we do believe it is important to go beyond the hour, and conserve energy wherever possible. Water systems on the farm are designed to optimise gravity so that we have no need to use electricity to pump water. Our underground, state-of-the-art cellar also enables gravity flow for our production processes and naturally cooling, greatly reducing our need to use electricity. We make use of solar panels on the farm gates, as well as for heating of our farm workers’ homes. We are constantly exploring new solutions to help further reduce our carbon footprint.
We wish you and your family a very enjoyable Earth Hour 2011.
Our recommendation for making the most of Earth Hour?
Here on the farm, we will no doubt, be opening up a bottle or two of Avondale’s La Luna in celebration!
La Luna is a soft and graceful Red Blend made from organically certified Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot grapes. It is a velvety and elegant classic blend offering scents of cedar, truffles and dark fruit with subtle forest and herb undertones. Full plum and mulberry flavours and soft tannins combine for a lovely, vibrant suppleness. We named this wine La Luna for the ways that it reflects the ways that Avondale is attuned to cosmic influences and rhythms.