While the colossal changes still required to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions must come from a governmental level, as individuals we’re not powerless to make a difference ourselves. Which wine we choose to drink may seem somewhat trivial in terms of the global challenges we face, but all of the industry’s stakeholders – including wine producers and consumers – have a role to play in tackling the climate crisis.
With this in mind, in next month’s issue of Decanter we’ll be introducing a new column, ‘The ethical drinker’ – a guide to making informed, sustainability-led decisions when buying and drinking wine, and why this matters. Each month, I’ll be talking to leading figures in wine sustainability and offering hints and tips on which wines have genuine green credentials, along with handy explainers of confusing terms around the topic, myth-busters, updates and details of new projects.
We’re starting off with this introductory overview feature, which attempts to unpick the intricacies of sustainability.
More than a buzzword
Although it’s now often used as a catch-all term for doing good for the planet, sustainability was defined in 1987 by the United Nations Brundtland Commission as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ – the preservation of resources, be they environmental, social or economic, for the future.
Conversations around sustainability in wine have started relatively recently in comparison to many other sectors, but as climate change has brought increasing challenges to wine-growers – including high temperatures, wildfires, severe drought, more frequent and extreme frost and hail, biodiversity loss and soil degradation – research and innovation into how the wine industry can adapt is charging forward. No one is doing everything perfectly, but many are doing at least some things right. Plenty of producers are taking steps to minimise their negative impact on the environment, create safe and valid employment, and adapt to climatic changes in order to ensure economic viability and their livelihoods for the future.
We’ve broken down sustainability in wine into the key issues and highlighted some positive nuggets of progress and change. There are still many questions to be answered and solutions to be found, and often there’s not one right way of doing things. There’s still a lot of grey among the green. Our ‘Sustainability hero’ boxes show people and companies at the forefront of developments.
The environmental footprint of wine production
Viticulture is heavily reliant on natural resources, making it susceptible to both climate change and environmental degradation. Winemakers know this all too well. I’ve lost count of the number of producers who’ve told me that climate change is their biggest and most concerning challenge.
In February 2024, Spain’s Catalonia region was put under a drought emergency, which ended in June with devastating hailstorms that destroyed hundreds of hectares of vines. Wildfire season in California has reached catastrophic levels of destruction; over the last six years, tens of thousands of hectares have burned, and this year the fires have started much earlier than usual.
Biodiversity
Diverse plant and animal populations are key for the overall health of vineyards and many producers, large and small, are actively working to increase biodiversity. Hedges, wildlife corridors, areas of uncultivated land, plant cover and polyculture crops all provide habitats for populations of insects, spiders, birds and small mammals. The greater the diversity, the more difficult it is for one pest to dominate, making biodiverse vineyards more resilient. In Burgundy, in 2022, the Climats du Vignoble de Bourgogne announced the creation of a biodiversity fund to finance and support collective projects aimed at maintaining and developing vineyard biodiversity across the region.
Soil health
Soils hold carbon, in the form of humus and the organic matter derived from plants, animals and other organisms in the soil, and maintaining healthy soils is vital for the long-term productivity of vineyards. Healthy soils remove carbon from the atmosphere, help with water management, reduce the need for fertilisers and pesticides, and assist vines in adapting to extreme weather. According to the Soil Association, the Earth’s soils contain more than three times the amount of carbon dioxide as is in the atmosphere, and degraded soils actually emit carbon dioxide, as well as methane in some instances.
One third of the world’s arable soils are said to be degraded and the equivalent of 30 football pitches of soil every minute are lost to degradation. Cover cropping, composting and reduced ploughing help maintain soil structure, leading to better resilience to floods and drought, and better carbon sequestration (capture and storage of carbon compounds from the environment). In the UK, an ongoing DEFRA-funded project is currently investigating the impact of cover cropping and mechanical weeding strategies on soil health.
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