Sustainable wines, what is it? | part 7

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Making wine environmentally friendly is seen by many today as a matter of course. However, the extent to which producers are involved in the environment varies, not least depending on their financial situation. Sustainable viticulture can be seen both as an alternative and a complement to organic viticulture. Is it better, worse or just as good? The opinion is divided. Here we take a closer look at what sustainable viticulture means.

What does it mean to be sustainable?

One way of defining sustainability is to manage the natural resources, but in a way that does not jeopardize profitability. You can use whatever pesticides you want, including synthetic products (forbidden for the organic growers). But you should minimize the negative impact on the environment and people and use the least dangerous products and in small doses. If needed to save the harvest, you can use them in larger quantities (of course within the general rules for pesticides). You should have the environment in mind during the whole process, from production to delivery to the customer.

This is an article in our eight-part series. Here’s the full series of articles on organic, biodynamic, natural and sustainable:

Sustainability is another way of being environmentally friendly than being organic. You make an effort for the environment, but it is not as strict as being organic. You have something to tell your customers who require environmental commitment. In French, people usually talk about “culture raisonnée” or “durable”.

Vineyards and mountains in the dramatic Vallee de l'Agly, Roussillon
Vineyards and mountains in the dramatic Vallee de l'Agly, Roussillon, copyright BKWine Photography

For organic farming, we have a common definition for all countries within the EU. But for sustainability, there is no generally accepted definition. It is a concept that is more blurred.

There is a lot to tackle if you want to be sustainable throughout the whole production. You can reduce the environmental impact during all steps from the vineyard to the end customer’s wine cellar. The producers themselves choose how far they want to and can go in the environmental work.

Sustainable certifications

Today, there are certifications for sustainable agriculture in many countries. Official authorities control some; others are private. In France, HVE, Haute Valeur Environnementale, has quickly become a popular certification among wine producers. It is a label that is handled by the Ministry of Agriculture. It is divided into three levels.

If you reach the third and highest level, you will be sustainably certified and can put the HVE logo on your labels. The number of HVE wine growers in France has grown enormously. In 2019, 1,500 wine estates were certified. At the end of 2020, it was 6,700. HVE applies to all farmers, but 80% of all certified are actually wine producers. Perhaps they feel a greater need to emphasize their environmental commitment.

Label on a wine bottle with sign HVE, Haute Valeur Environnementale
Label on a wine bottle with sign HVE, Haute Valeur Environnementale, copyright BKWine Photography

However, HVE is not the only sustainable label in France. There are others, Terra Vitis is the most famous, and it was the first in France to certify sustainability.

Of course, many winegrowers work sustainably without being certified, not least because the whole concept is a bit fuzzy.

Advice and recommendations

All sustainable certifications work similarly. You must follow a number of advice and recommendations “as far as possible”. If you work sustainably to a sufficient extent according to the requirements set by the rules, you get your label. Different certifications have slightly different rules and parameters that weigh in.

Label on a wine bottle with South African Certified Integrity & Sustainability, the "bus ticket"
Label on a wine bottle with South African Certified Integrity & Sustainability, the "bus ticket", copyright BKWine Photography

To become HVE certified, you get a certain number of points for how you work with each aspect described in the guidelines. You must achieve a certain number of points to become certified. Many other sustainability certifications are structured similarly. Below are some examples of how this is done in practice. The description below applies schematically to everyone but takes examples mainly from the French HVE.

HVE aims to take care of and improve the environment in a “financially defensible way”. It is mainly about preserving biodiversity – insects, trees, hedges, flowers and more – and managing spraying, fertilizing and water use in a way that is as environmentally friendly as possible. One should also generally try to reduce energy consumption. Certified properties are inspected at least once every 18 months.

Sustainable in the vineyard

Biodiversity

According to the guidelines, a vineyard should preferably not only consist of vines. Monoculture is the root of much evil; they argue, and the reason why you need to spray so much. Species richness and biodiversity are good. Therefore, you get points if you have or plant hedges, trees and other vegetation on the estate. Cover crop between the vines gives points as well as nitrogen-fixing plants such as peas and leguminous. These convert nitrogen from the air into nitrogen nutrients that plants can absorb, which reduces the need to fertilize.

You also get points for beehives.

An insect hotel at a winery to encourage biodiversity
An insect hotel at a winery to encourage biodiversity, copyright BKWine Photography

Spraying

Synthetic spraying is not prohibited for sustainable growers. The critical thing is instead the number of times they spray during the season. The fewer times, the better. You are compared with an average for your region. For example, in a humid area, you may spray more times than in a dry one.

You are asked to find alternatives to synthetic spraying. Whenever possible, you should use preventive methods such as thinning the canopy and keeping track of the rain through weather stations so that you spray at the right time. You should preferably prioritize sustainable plant protection, i.e. protecting your crop with natural mechanisms. You get points if you use sexual confusion instead of insecticides.

To further reduce the use of synthetic insecticides, one can, for example, create environments where insect-loving bats thrive and introduce typhlodromes in the vineyard, a predatory mite that eats a harmful little red spider.

Cleaning with water spray a big tractor equipped for spraying
Cleaning with water spray a big tractor equipped for spraying, copyright BKWine Photography

You should take care to adjust your spraying machine so that there is no spillage. You get points if you are even more accurate than stated by the general rules.

If the vegetation that does not belong to your main crop is not sprayed at all, you also get points.

One of the advantages of HVE and other sustainable certifications is that it forces the growers to think about how they work. There are so many different parameters so you cannot just follow a simple formula. Working sustainably is a mindset. You think about what you do every step of the way. You think long-term because you may not be able to change everything at once.

But we do see tangible results. A good example is an ongoing project among the HVE chateaux in Bordeaux, which aims to reduce the use of products that are classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or reprotoxic (CMR). Since 2014, the use of these products has been more than halved. CMR can be dangerous for the persons who spray and handle them if they do not carefully follow the safety instructions.

Spraying a vineyard with sulphur
Spraying a vineyard with sulphur, copyright BKWine Photography

The problem with dangerous pesticides is the risk they pose to those working in the vineyard rather than to the wine drinkers. There is a lot of talk about “pesticides in wine”, but in reality, it is a mostly non-existent health problem.

The association Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ), which has almost all of the country’s wine producers as members, has worked actively for a long time to reduce spraying with synthetic insecticides and fungicides. And they have succeeded in achieving a substantial reduction.

Carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption

Sustainable viticulture is not only about spraying and biodiversity but also about all the other processes that can affect the environment, such as energy consumption, waste management, water use, transport, etc.

If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, you can start with measuring the direct and indirect carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the work in the vineyard, in the cellar, transportation to the customer etc. Bordeaux has made several such carbon projects as well as Champagne and other regions. Most of them probably get similar results.

Label on a wine bottle with details of environmental impact, CO2, nitrogen, water use
Label on a wine bottle with details of environmental impact, CO2, nitrogen pollution, water use, copyright BKWine Photography

The largest item, just over 35% of carbon dioxide emissions according to a 2018 project, is “incoming material”. Here, bottles and pesticides are included. The manufacturing of both glass bottles and synthetic pesticides are energy-intensive processes that contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.

Around 20% of carbon dioxide emissions come from transporting the wine to the customer, by road and by sea. Trains are better than trucks but not always possible. But perhaps you can reduce fuel consumption, avoid refrigerated transports as much as possible, etc.

Just under 15% of carbon dioxide emissions come from energy consumption in the vineyard (tractors, etc.) and during vinification and storage.

Road over the Andes between Chile and Argentina much used for road transport with lorry
Road over the Andes between Chile and Argentina much used for road transport with lorry, copyright BKWine Photography

When the wine ferments, carbon dioxide is released, but it does not make an immense contribution to the greenhouse effect. But still, some producers use techniques to bind the gas released during fermentation. Today, the technology exists to capture the carbon dioxide formed during fermentation and turn it into bicarbonate. As early as 2012, i.a. Château Guiraud in Sauternes experimented with this technique. Still, after that, we didn’t hear much about it until very recently, in the autumn of 2020, when Château Montrose in Saint Estèphe announced that for the first time they had managed to capture and convert 100% of the fermentation’s carbon dioxide. Now they will need to find buyers for 40 tons of bicarbonate.

Glass bottle, bulk or box

The glass bottle is undeniably a suitable container for the wine. But apart from the fact that it requires a lot of energy to manufacture, it is heavy to transport. Many producers are switching to lightweight bottles. But we still see many heavy bottles. This is not because producers are enthusiastic about glass, but because consumers believe that a heavier bottle is a quality sign. Consumers need to get used to the fact that bottles do not have to be heavy, even if it is an expensive wine.

A typical wine bottle weighs around 550-650 grams, and a heavy one can weigh a kilo or more. A 400-gram bottle would work just as well. The Swedish monopoly considers that a bottle is lightweight if it weighs 420 gram or less. (We recently opened an old bottle of one of California’s most exclusive wines, Beaulieu Vineyard’s George de Latour Private Reserve in 1981, which was then at the level of a lightweight bottle. But heavyweights from California, and elsewhere, are all too common today.)

Transporting in bulk is the most environmentally friendly way to transport wine, but it is not an option for all wine. (Bulk means transport in large containers, sometimes whole containers, with bottling taking place closer to the consumer.) The larger the format of the packaging, the more environmentally friendly it is to transport and produce. It can be more environmentally friendly to send wine in bulk from South Africa than in a bottle from the Loire Valley. Bag-in-box packaging is therefore well placed from that point of view, as are PET bottles, but these are not suitable for all wines either.

Bag-in-box wines on shelves in a Systembolaget shop in Sweden
Bag-in-box wines on shelves in a Systembolaget shop in Sweden, copyright BKWine Photography

The important water

It takes a lot of water to make wine, especially for cleaning and, in some cases, for irrigation. Wineries should keep water consumption down and, if possible, clean and reuse their water. Many wine countries regularly suffer from drought, and not using more water than is necessary is an essential part of sustainability. If you irrigate, there are techniques for measuring the vines’ water needs and precisely deciding if, when and how much water to give them.

Sustainability work in South Africa includes efforts to restore the local, indigenous vegetation around the vineyards, which is less water-intensive than imported trees such as eucalyptus.

A vineyard where no herbicides are used, grass-weed grow plenty, in Champagne
A vineyard where no herbicides are used, grass-weed grow plenty, in Champagne, copyright BKWine Photography

Criticism of sustainability

No one can argue against sustainable agriculture today, even if some believe that sustainability does not go far enough.

Sustainable certifications, on the other hand, are criticized for not having clear rules for what you can and cannot do. The critics argue that it will be too easy for producers to show that they care about the environment without making a serious effort. Another criticism is that sustainable labels risk hampering the organic trend.

Some argue that sustainable certifications confuse consumers who do not understand the difference between organic and sustainable. That this is true is easy to see when you read in the popular press about it. But it may be a problem that disappears over time.

Sustainable or organic? Or both?

Are organic growers automatically sustainable? The EU’s organic label focuses on managing the vineyard and what to do in the cellar. The perspective is mainly which products and technologies you may use and not so much on other environmental aspects. With sustainable, it is the other way around, there is a focus on resource use and less on products and technologies.

For the organic producers, there are no specific requirements for biodiversity in and around the vineyard. But they are not allowed to use herbicides, so some vegetation will automatically be in the vineyard. Having good biodiversity and environment for insects is in their interest. It can reduce the need for spraying. Of course, serious organic growers should think about sustainability throughout the production chain, and they do too. But it is not included in the formal requirements.

Label on a wine bottle with sign Certified Sustainable Wine of Chile
Label on a wine bottle with sign Certified Sustainable Wine of Chile, copyright BKWine Photography

Is sustainability a step on the way to organic farming? For some, it may be so. But many have chosen to be “only” sustainable because they see disadvantages with the organic that they do not want to accept. The use of copper in organic farming is the most common argument. They prefer to use less copper (or none at all) and combine it with the often more effective synthetic products.

Many sustainable growers are inspired by the organic ones, and some work in much the same way. Having grass growing between the rows is soon more the rule than the exception in France. Organic pest control methods are used instead of synthetic insecticides. But the sustainable ones always have the opportunity to use synthetic products if they think it is needed. This is a big difference between sustainability and organic.

Organic and sustainability don’t have to be contradictory. Instead, you can see them as two different methods that complement each other. One is not necessarily better than the other; everything depends on the individual producer’s situation and perspective.

Sustainability certifications

HVE, Haute Valeur Environnementale is today the most important sustainability label in France with 6,700 members.

Terra Vitis, a private label, was the first in France to certify sustainability. In 1998, Terra Vitis certified the first Beaujolais wineries. The association now has around 500 members throughout France. In 2009, it decided to ban certain pesticides in the CMR category.

Several New World countries have sustainability programs. Some well-known are:

  • The Sustainable Winegrowing Program (SWP) in California
  • Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ)
  • Sustainable Wine South Africa (SWSA)
  • Sustainable Wine of Chile

Don’t miss the other articles in this series on organics, biodynamics, sustainable, and natural wines. See the list at the beginning of this article.

If you want to know more about this subject you can read our book “Biodynamic, Organic and Natural Winemaking”.

Label on a wine bottle with New Zealand Certified Sustainable Winegrowing
Label on a wine bottle with New Zealand Certified Sustainable Winegrowing, copyright BKWine Photography

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