Biodiesel in South Africa—Tokara Winery

South Africa is not a country that gets too much green coverage, but that’s not to say there isn’t plenty of stuff going on. Previously we’ve mentioned the likes of organic Rooibos Tea, Malaria monitoring watches, rural and youth bike programs, prefab housing, new solar technology and the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs, beginning with the handing out of 500 million compact fluoros. Now we can add to that list a story about Tokara winery’s conversion to biodiesel. The vineyard (situated in three of the Cape’s regions best winegrowing areas – the Simonsberg ward in Stellenbosch, the Elgin district and the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley near Hermanus) thinks it may be the first in the country to have moved its complete fleet of tractors, diggers and bakkies (pick-ups) onto biodiesel. Biodiesel One South Africa opened it’s first plant in the Stellenbosch region, and produces fuel from domestic soybean oil and other fats/vegetable oils. We didn’t find any indication that Tokara do organic wine, but they do seem to practice some stewardship of the land: “Here we try to design our vineyards around what the land decides. We try to find the unique character of a site, so we cut our blocks into smaller units [down to 0.3 hectares from the usual 4-5ha] – which is a shift from the usual approach,” ::Tokara Winery, via South African Wine News.

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