UNDER THE SURFACE | Are wineries doing enough to combat climate change?
The issue of climate change has garnered a good deal of attention in terms of its impact on the style of wines we're likely to see in the future. But should wineries be doing more to ensure they don't exacerbate the issue themselves, asks Guy Woodward
Last October, at a glittering gala dinner in Madrid, Nigel Greening, owner of New Zealand producer Felton Road, took to the stage at the Golden Vines Awards. Greening had been awarded the charitable event’s Sustainability Award for his ongoing efforts in combatting climate change – and with the Ornellaia 2006 and Yquem 1983 flowing, he addressed the packed room.
‘Winemaking takes farming to the highest pinnacle that mankind has yet created, with a level of care, fear and determination that is the equal of any human activity.’ Nods of agreement and murmurs of assent. Then came the kicker. ‘And we are going to lose it all. Not to some cataclysmic event. But to a billion trips to the supermarket in the Range Rover. To a million winter breaks in the Maldives. Only we can stop it. Not by waiting for somebody to do something – but by doing it ourselves.’
'I'm horrified that wineries say nothing about limiting their own impact on the environment'
Nigel Greening
It was a bold move to address a room of wine lovers, each of whom had paid thousands of pounds to be there, in such a direct manner. But Greening is nothing if not bold. Visitors to his acclaimed Central Otago winery are asked for details of their travel prior to arrival at the cellar door, in order that the producer can log the carbon impact and mitigate it in their own activity (not offset it, note, but mitigate it). ‘We get some people asking where they can land their helicopter,’ says Greening. ‘We tell them that they can’t.’
In Madrid, Greening’s audience were, as he put it, ‘innovators, leaders, people who are used to making things happen’. Addressing them directly, he said he was ‘asking you to use your talent to make it happen.’ But Greening’s more regular targets are his fellow wineries around the world, which he believes are ignoring the threat.
‘I've been horrified over the years how, when wineries are asked what they’re doing about climate change, they answer by talking about the changes they're making to mitigate the impact on their wine. Different grape varieties, different harvest dates, that sort of thing. Not one of them says a word about what they're doing to limit their own impact on the environment, to help halt climate change. It doesn't even enter their brain. I find it disgraceful.’
Greening’s approach is best seen in his membership of the International Wineries for Climate Action, a voluntary organisation that shares best practices to mitigate climate change in vineyard and winery with the goal of de-carbonizing the wine industry. By applying direct solutions to their operations, members go a step further than simply purchasing carbon offset credits, instead reducing their impact through the practices they follow.
The organisation was founded in 2019 by Familia Torres and Jackson Family Wines (‘It needs families, because corporations don’t give a shit’, says Greening, in typically forthright fashion), with an end goal of ‘galvanizing the global wine community to tackle the climate crisis’. Among its members today are such reputed names as Ridge, CVNE, Perrin, Symington, Heidsieck, Henschke and Concha y Toro.
The IWCA sees members log all elements of their activity on minutely detailed spreadsheets, covering every aspect of their activity, from energy used in the winery to flights taken to promote their wines, thereby collating their annual greenhouse gas emissions. These must then be professionally audited and meet IWCA membership requirements via ongoing emissions reductions, with the ultimate goal of reaching a zero carbon imprint. Offsetting emissions is not sufficient – members need to ensure that their day-to-day winery practices counteract the impact.
The first signatory from France was Château Troplong Mondot in Bordeaux, whose CEO, Aymeric de Gironde, told us why he chose to commit to the initiative. ‘The IWCA covers your entire activity, and forces you to have a broad perspective, looking at every aspect of your operation. So what's happening before you make your wine, which suppliers you work with, the weight of your bottle, how you ship your wine, everything.’
Troplong Mondot has dropped the weight of its bottles by 20%, says De Gironde, while 40% of its energy is now renewable. De Gironde believes that too many wineries pay lip service to the issue of sustainability, which he argues has become a meaningless term. ‘Sustainability doesn’t just mean growing your grapes organically, or having a horse plough the vineyard. There’s too much green-washing in the wine business – it’s a catastrophe.’
He gives the example of the winery that takes a picture of a horse in its vineyard and then claims they're sustainable. 'Journalists should be more challenging when they’re being fed this sort of generic information,’ he says. 100% of the Troplong Mondot vineyard is manned by horses, rather than tractors, as has been the case for a decade. ‘That’s a true commitment,’ he says. The property has also invented a system to enable it to turn the waste vine shoots from pruning into wood pellets for use in a burner for heating. The estate has no organic waste anymore. ‘The rest all goes to the pigs and chickens that we keep, which are then used in our kitchens [the château has a fine dining restaurant, also supplied by its own vegetable garden].’
Troplong Mondot’s recycled vine shoots are just one example of the potential for change. ‘If you took the entire amount of wood that is being burned and sent into smoke every year by vine workers around the world, and turned that into renewable energy, it would have a huge effect,’ says De Gironde.
For Greening, the biggest issue is bottle weight. ‘The glass required to manufacture bottles can be responsible for up to 50% of a winery’s carbon footprint,’ he says. Felton Road has reduced its proportion to around 20%, by using ultra lightweight glass. Its bottles currently weigh 417g, a figure that will go down to 390g this year; most wine bottles are 500g or more, sometimes closer to 700g for premium wines, and in some cases up to 1kg. ‘Making glass in China, then shipping it halfway around the world to a winery and then halfway around the world again to the customer is not a good thing to do,’ says Greening.
It’s an issue that has penetrated the public consciousness thanks to critics such as Jancis Robinson MW naming and shaming the worst offenders, and retailers such as The Wine Society and Marks & Spencer committing to only stocking wines below a certain bottle weight. De Gironde says he’s working with his glass manufacturer to have the ovens where they make the glass be electricity-fed, rather than gas-fed. ‘In France, electricity being nuclear, it’s decarbonated, so just by doing that, I would lower dramatically my carbon impact.’
Other, apparently smaller elements of the winemaking chain are also part of the mix. Felton Road has been trialling remotely-operated, electrically-powered drone equipment to spray treatments on the vineyard, rather than using tractors or other machinery (in the case of some top-end Burgundian and California domaines, helicopters) that not only rely on diesel fuel but also compacts the soil, limiting biodiversity. ‘They're great fun,’ says Greening. ‘The only trouble is that they’re big – a couple of metres across – and while they fly autonomously, all the vineyard staff that control them have to hold commercial pilot licenses, which is quite a commitment.’
Even so, Greening hopes more wineries will see the benefit of such commitment. ‘If you look at the membership [of the IWCA], there's some really good people on there, but it's still only a fraction of 1% of the world’s most notable producers. As a whole, the wine industry is not engaged with the issue,’ he says.
He knows he can’t do it all himself, and that even a concerted effort will be a drop in the ocean in the context of the global picture. ‘But we're doing it so that we can look ourselves in the mirror in the morning and know we’re playing our part.’
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