Spinning the bottle

Wednesday, 9 March, 2011
Claire Hu
Just how confused are consumers about wine and the environment, asks Claire Hu.
There’s organic, biodynamic, integrated production, sustainable, slow, carbon neutral and natural wine, to name but a few eco-friendly terms. Then there’s the countless individual schemes run by regions and countries, such as South Africa’s sustainability seal. Confused? Then try being a wine consumer!

Drinkers trying to be responsible by choosing a wine that is less harmful to the environment could be forgiven for feeling a little lost, as everyone from the Paardeberg to the Pfalz jumps aboard the green bandwagon. Is the worldwide wine trade in danger of becoming mired in a bog of conflicting messages when it comes to green wine production?

It’s an urgent issue. Climate change for example has been described by Richard Smart, one of the world’s most respected viticulturalists, as the biggest factor to ever affect the wine industry – “far bigger even than phylloxera”. Producers big and small in South Africa and abroad are making the environment a key focus, impacting everything from the types of energy they use in the winery to alien vegetation management. The third World Congress on Climate Change and Wine in Marbella, Spain, from April 13 - 14, will feature former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as star speaker and urge the trade to adopt a more proactive attitude to the problem.

But what is the point in the trade effectively talking to itself if such efforts are not impacting on consumers’ buying choices? Everywhere you look, producers are launching very valuable and worthy environmental schemes and policies – but are these being effectively communicated to the public? And does the average consumer even have a basic understanding of what organic versus biodynamic versus sustainable means in a practical sense?

There are so many different philosophies on green winemaking that it’s debatable whether the industry could ever agree on a coherent, international framework of definitions that could be communicated to the consumer. But the trade needs to at least try, or risk the environment becoming irrelevant when it comes to buying choices. A crucial part of creating an eco-friendly wine brand needs to be communicating its qualities in a clear, bite-sized, relevant way, accompanied by sexy packaging (making green cool and stylish). Let’s be honest – how much of the vocabulary describing green stuff is simply DULL?

Making the environment relevant to the modern wine consumer is a tricky issue, and there is no one easy solution. In a bid to widen the debate, I carried out an online debate with winemakers around the world through the Linkedin group, Holistic Wine Connection. Here are just a few suggestions – do feel free to add your voice to the debate using the comment box below.

Jonathan Hesford, owner of Domaine Treloar in Perpignan, France

“There is massive consumer confusion. Partly stemming from false advertising (primarily by the trade rather than the producer), partly because of different regulations in each country, partly because of wine being a two-phase product of vineyard and winery and partly because a lot of good environmental and organic producers prefer not to go through certification because they feel their wine should stand on its own merits.

“The solution? I don't know whether there is one. People are always trying to make their products appear more attractive to the consumer. The whole AOC concept is about that, then we had New World versus Old World, Chardonnay versus Pinot Grigio and today the match is being played over who is the most green. In a few years time it will be something else. I think the most important thing is for producers and their merchants to be more honest about the wines they sell and for the wine journalists to try to educate the consumer about how wine can be made.”

Louis Horta, Horta Vineyards International Advisors, San Francisco

“My two cents...that winemaking from sustainable grown grapes, and made within the sustainable guidelines be recognised holistic. Holistic may also serve as a form of rating for how wholesome a wine is for organic and biodynamic like hotels in the 1 to 5 star rating, but for that, we would have to create a third party holistic society to rate the wholesomeness of a wine. We don't seem to have a problem rating wines for taste, so rating for wholesomeness should be much simpler than rating for taste.”

Antonio Graca, research and development, Sogrape Vinhos, Portugal

“The solution may reside in having an international standard of practices that ensures a coherent set of practices that will help grape-growers start on a trend that will reduce their activity's impact on environment while keeping commercial competitiveness. In Portugal and in many other countries of Europe a large number of grape-growers have adopted a strategy for sustainable viticulture named Integrated Production (in French Production Raisonnée). This strategy is very dynamic as it is changed every year in accordance with all new data that is scientifically produced that can enhance the sustainability of production.”