The atmosphere of wine making might turn to a new page. After a long period of adjustments, the CO2 recycling prototype machine of Smith Haut Lafitte Stealth Cellar has released its first kilos of sodium bicarbonate.
2013 is another year of eco-friendly initiatives at Château Smith Haut Lafitte and the new Stealth Cellar is a major achievement. It features innovations that have never been put together before in a professional building of the wine world. Among them a unique system that captures the CO2 released during the fermentation to turn it into sodium bicarbonate. In other words this first-of-its-kind machine makes from this byproduct of wine making a raw material that generates value.
To make it short and to picture the benefits of this technic, if the entire Bordeaux region (that produces around 5.5 millions of hectoliters of wine per year) would decide to recycle the 55,000 tons of CO2 released during the fermentations of its wine, it would save the equivalent of 150 people traveling by plane from Paris to New York and back per day during a year! This is a great development and shows the real potential of this sustainable initiative by SHL.
If you want to know more, feel free to read the online Stealth Cellar brochure.