Miocene Winery has been granted the first approval ever issued by the California Department of Public Health to use recycled winery wastewater for rough washing of the food contact surfaces of tanks, barrels, and equipment.

The approval marks the end of a frustrating period where we first hauled to EBMUD, and more recently irrigated with the laboratory grade water our treatment system produces.

A previous post discusses the technical aspects of the treatment system. There were dark days when we wondered if the wastewater recycling necessary to allow the winery to grow to profitable size would EVER be approved. CDPH had been very difficult when the Jackson family wanted to do a similar recycling program several years ago, and the system was never built.

Perhaps beginners luck was with us, but we got a building permit and built the system on the strength of an engineering feasibility study before we realized that approval to actually use it was by no means given. Maybe it was even necessary to build it first, because we were able to present hard data validating the system.

We have a state of the art system in place and approved that opens the floodgates to recycling the vast reservoir of water the wine industry pours down the drain every year.