The Spanish word “salud” (meaning “to your health”) is often used by wine lovers when raising a glass. But when it comes to growing grapes and making wine, not all is in the best of health, especially where ecology is concerned. Grape growing can be just as tough on the land as any other crop – and turning those grapes into environmentally friendly wines can be even more challenging.

Consider the bottling, the waste byproducts, the use of petrol-powered farm equipment, the winery’s carbon footprint, in general. Those things add up – even if a vintner is by nature a steward of the land.

But a renewed awareness of the earth – or call it a “remembering” – has fostered a retro-trend among wineries worldwide to green up, go organic, or at least introduce some eco aspects to their enterprise.

According to the Wine Institute in San Francisco, more than 30 percent of California growers (the state produces 90 percent of America’s wines) now practice green viticulture, whether it’s the adoption of biodynamics – the use of wildlife, insects and other natural helpers to prep soil and eliminate the need for pesticides and synthetic fertilizers; or shifting to growing grapes organically, also eschewing pesticides.

Less common is the vineyard whose entire philosophy hinges on nurturing earth, vines and environment from the ground up – like Sonoma County’s Medlock Ames Winery, a leader in organic, sustainable winemaking, using organically grown grapes, natural yeasts in the fermenting and gravity-flow techniques to “move” the will-be-wine through its various stages. Another ardently sustainable winery: the slightly smaller, Napa-based Shafer Vineyards, whose collective 200 acres have adopted biodynamics and sustainability practices over the past 20 years.

As with a few other uber-sustainable vineyards around the U.S., everything old is new again at these two wineries, where the owners and workers are re-instating tried and true methods. Those include:

• Employing sheep as natural “weeders” and fertilizers (Medlock has used the region’s Rocky Mountain Wooly Weeders in Napa, which rents out herds to wineries)

• Planting cover crops, like clover and vetch, between rows of vines to coax predatory insects (ladybugs, spiders, lacewings), which in turn gobble up “bad” bugs that would prey on the crops

• Using these cover crops to fight erosion and weeds, and when they die off, allowing their compost to re-enrich the soil with nitrogen, bacteria and other nutrients

• Devoting large chunks of an estate to wildflowers and hardwoods, which do the same as the above and attract wildlife – which in turn completes the ecosystem

• Attracting birds of prey to keep traditional garden pests like gophers, moles and other rodents at bay

• Cultivating songbirds like bluebirds and swallows to also control bad bugs and help aerate soil

• Composting grape skins and discarded grape clusters to create natural fertilizer

• Creating fence-lined wildlife corridors, so deer and other foragers can easily bypass vineyards

• Using solar arrays to power wineries and equipment and capturing waste water for irrigation

• Using low-gravity flow techniques (Medlock) to move the wine at a steady downward slope as it moves through the winemaking process

• Recycling materials used in the process; erecting sustainable buildings; using biofuel or alternatively powered farming equipment; using horse power instead of tractors when workable

Kenneth Rochford, general manager at Medlock Ames outside Healdsburg, says that over the past few years, he’s seen sustained enthusiasm in the wine industry for sustainability. Founded in 1998 by two high school friends, Christopher Medlock James and Ames Morison, the 335-acre winery is fully solar-powered and uses no chemicals for fertilizing or pest-killing.

Medlock Ames also has cultivated a close relationship with its feathered and furred friends, wooing hawks and barn owls to combat gnawing pests and rodents. It hosts cattle and other grazers to help with weeding, supplemented by the occasional trucked-in sheep herd, the aforementioned  “Wooly Weeders”. The winery also has dedicated almost 300 of its acres to a blend of wildflower, oaks and madrone woods to flesh out an ecosystem where, as Rochford says, “nature has a way of balancing things out.”

The winery’s among good company in Sonoma. And in California in general, where the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance (CSWA) estimates that more than 50 percent of the state’s winemakers use sustainable techniques, when you count using eco-friendly ingredients or green buildings and energy.