OUR ENVIRONMENT

Our home was built to be environmentally sustainable, with an on-site waste water treatment plant, solar hot water, the use of recycled and renewable materials and a design to minimize the use of power for heating, cooling and lighting.  

Our walls of glass maximise the use of natural light and the building is orientated to minimise direct summer sun, while maximising winter sunlight onto dark tiles to generate natural heat. Recycled and sustainable materials were used in the construction, such as recycled or sustainable timber, and in fittings inside the building such as materials made from recycled plastic bag & plastic drink bottles. We also collect rainwater from the roof for our dual flush toilets and there’s an on-site wastewater treatment plant to allow all water to be re-used for irrigation.

The Jacob's Creek Kitchen Garden produces beautiful, tasty and organic seasonal produce for our home’s Our Table Restaurant as well as providing a visually stunning landscape to visit. Our chefs grow their own produce, from bumper crops of carrots to unusual herbs they find difficult to source in the Barossa.  

The native food garden produces a large variety of vegetables and fruits, as well as edible flowers and perennial plants, showcasing the local food culture while increasing our ability to grow the food we serve and reduce waste.

We believe it is part of our environmental responsibility to be part of the solution to depleting energy sources, and we have committed to a goal of establishing 100% renewable energy at our Jacob’s Creek facilities in the Barossa Valley. 

Utilising solar power combined with load shedding, we are aiming to reduce our reliance on the local electricity network and soon will be home to combined winery solar installation in Australia and will supply 20% of the business’s annual electricity usage. Our aim is to reduce energy use at our Jacob’s Creek home by up to 60% and become self-sufficient and carbon neutral by 2020.

For more than a decade we've been working to return the land along our creek to its native vegetation, replacing non-native plants and trees (including European plants that have been bought to South Australia) with indigenous greenery. This large scale project encompasses both our land holdings as well as adjacent sensitive ecological areas. This includes 199 hectares of native vegetation planted to improve biodiversity, and scores of native species of frogs, fish and waterbirds have returned to our flourishing ecosystems.