Environment

Since 2017 Passing Clouds have moved towards regenerative agriculture to manage our property at Musk, including of course our estate vineyard. It is a way of farming using a set of principles that enriches soils and increases their carbon storage capacity dramatically, increases biodiversity, improves the water cycle and enhances the overall ecosystem of the farm. There are numerous benefits, including looking after our soils for future generations, producing a healthier product and creating a safer and healthier work environment. Also there is the fact that if all agricultural ventures farmed this way, climate change would be reversed. There have been other encouraging benefits along the way also, such as yield and quality increasing, amazingly this has been coupled with our production costs decreasing.

We are in the age of the Anthropocene and if things don’t shift dramatically the lives of our children are going to be significantly impacted by changes in our climate. We decided to do everything we could now, rather than wait for others.

We also feel that we have a responsibility to produce a healthy and safe product for those who consume it. We simply do not feel convinced that a lot of ‘conventional’ farming practices and products are safe. Even though they may be approved by our governing bodies.

While this list is by no means comprehensive, some key things we have implemented are outlined below.

We are progressively moving towards this way of farming as our research has shown that these methods produce food and wine that is of a higher quality and is better for us. In particularly we have ceased the use of Glyphosate entirely, will have phased out the use of all but organic fungicides by 2021 and have begun applying biodynamic preparations.