Making Sense of Sustainability

A new conference and exhibition in London seeks to bring together a wide range of experts in the field of wine sustainability.

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Vineyard with turbines and solar panels (Midjourney AI)
Vineyard with turbines and solar panels (Midjourney AI)

The definition of ‘sustainability’ can be deceptively simple. Going back to 1987, the UN Brundtland Commission defined it as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’. 

How does this relate to the wine industry? Is producing wine a ‘need’? What does ‘development’ mean in this context? Agriculture is responsible for nearly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and the wine industry is inextricably linked with food production, especially in terms of policy: wine is literally rooted in the soil. 

While wine is no more a necessity than chocolate, it shares common responsibility to the land and the people that produce it. Producers have to be also acutely aware of the negative impacts of climate change on their ability to produce wine and ‘develop’ the industry in the models with which they are familiar, such as relying on high acid base wines in Champagne for traditional method sparkling, or countering droughts and forest fires in California. There’s also a responsibility to acknowledge and mitigate the impacts on the environment created by other activities, not least through glass production and distribution. 

The good news for wine is that its production has the potential to create positive impacts - on biodiversity, soil ecosystems and with sequestration through soil organic carbon. In order to achieve this, the industry will need to look both backwards and forward - to more traditional methods of cultivation but also to scientific innovation, whether that’s precision viticulture, robotics or reduction in the impact of packaging through the development of a carbon neutral glass bottle. 

The industry is W global and fragmented, and while there are principles that can be applied in different countries, they have to be applied locally and with relevance to specific climatic impacts. This has led to myriad sustainability models and certifications, for countries and specific regions, from Alentejo to New Zealand. 
 

Deciphering the complexity

It is often said that the wine industry is ‘consumer-led’. If that’s the case, how can customers make sense of all this complexity? This raises the question about whether the consumer really should be the driving force. As most retailers will say, the customer wants them to do the hard work of deciphering the complexity and setting the ground rules, so that the only choice the they have to make is where to shop and what to buy. Wherever they shop for wine, however, the unpalatable truth is that to the untrained eye, it pretty much all looks the same. 

Even so, wine is one of the few industries to turn raw materials directly into luxury goods, where the consumer is connected with its origin and ingredients through the final packaging. One doesn’t eat dinner with a packet of wheat on the table… So, producers have the ability to tell their story, and the responsibility to bring sustainability to life on behalf of consumers, growers and brand owners. Only then will consumers know what to ask for. 

Consumers are seeking simple ways to understand these issues, but the geographical spread of the industry means that there are a lot of different ‘right answers’ depending on context — and just as many ‘wrong’ ones. The climate changes vintage by vintage as producers learn and evolve their own actions: there is never one box that can be ticked to ‘be sustainable’. This is in contrast to other categories where it is much easier to understand a binary choice as to whether a chicken is free range or cheap and most likely raised in a cage. 

The good news is that the wine industry is showing signs of progress. It has never been more collaborative. There is a huge movement growing behind regenerative viticulture, with the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation supporting growers globally to restore balanced ecosystems in the vineyard.
 

Working together

The Sustainable Wine Roundtable is working on a global reference framework to articulate the Venn diagram between the various certifications, and the Nordic monopolies are also working to clarify these for their customers. This will enable retailers and communicators to clarify the messages for consumers with credibility and consistency. 

International Wineries for Climate Action and the Porto Protocol are also making impressive contributions. Led by strong, committed and collaborative women, these organisations talk regularly and are working tirelessly to maximise efficacy and reduce duplication in the knowledge that there is no time to waste. 

The complexity of the drinks industry reaches from the ground through to the glass and beyond. To pull all of these threads together, a new event called Sustainability in Drinks – SID - is being launched in London.

On Monday 14th October: a conference with the theme of  'Creating Value Through Sustainability’ will be chaired by Richard Siddle. It will include keynote presentations by Jancis Robinson MW OBE and Judith Batchelar OBE, followed by a debate led by Wines of Alentejo Sustainability Project (WASP), Mirabeau, Encirc and Triage.

On the following day, in a separate London venue, there will be an exhibition and further talks and discussions.

SID’s organisers want it to be a key annual event on the sustainability calendar and a valuable international resource for products, advice and support for all members of the drinks trade. The vision is to create positive change and to offer advice to the industry from those with experience in the sustainability field and to offer a sales platform to importers/producers with strong sustainability credentials.

For details of the event, visit Sustainability in Drinks

 

 

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