Vinexpo sees wine leaders urge global industry to do more on climate change
Individual wineries taking steps to improve their sustainability is to be applauded, but to make a real difference producers should look to collaborate on a bigger regional and national scale.
That was one of the key conclusions given by John Holdren, professor of environmental science at Harvard University, who was talking as part of a major debate on how the wine industry is handling climate show during the opening day of Vinexpo.
Miguel Torres, president of Bodegas Torres, lamented the fact climate change is no longer on both the main political and wine agenda. He said none of the candidates in the recent Spanish elections had any policies to tackle the issue.
Within the wine industry the issue, although critical and highly relevant to individual wineries, was not being driven by the world’s leading wine producers or influencers, he argued.
But changes to the way wine was being sourced and shipped around the world was playing more of an impact on climate change, said the panel. Torres agreed that the role of bulk wine was now far more important that it has been and an area that it was using more for its entry level wines in a bid to reduce its and the industry’s contribution to C02 and energy.
Torres is widely recognised for all the individual work he has done investing in research and studies to analyse climate change and the impact it is having on his wineries in Spain and Chile.
He said he remained passionate about the issue and would continue his work for the rest of his life and only hoped he would be able to see real changes being made.
The Torres group invests 11% of its profits into its sustainability programme. This works out at around €12m a year and has seen Torres implement a whole series of programmes to cut its CO2 production and allowed it cut energy costs by up to 25%. It is on course, he added, to hit its own internal target to cut C02 levels by 30% by 2020. It had already achieved a 16% drop.
He urged every winery in the world to carry out its own C02 footprint analysis and take steps to reduce it.
National focus
But such initiatives need to have a bigger, national if not global focus if there is not going to be real change, argued Holdren, who served in the White House from 2009 to 2016 under President Obama, and advised him on the US’s climate change policy.
He was also quick to reassure the global wine audience that despite President Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate change agreement many American businesses would continue to follow sustainable and green strategies because it was not only the right thing to do, but it makes business and commercial sense to do so.
He said there were now “several 100s of ceos” now lobbying President Trump to go back to the Paris Agreement.
Set the agenda
Holdren said the wine industry really could take an agenda setting lead on the issue. He pointed to a study by Mozell and Thach (2014, Wine Economics & Policy) that showed how wine grapes are particularly susceptible to minor changes in climate, especially premium wine grapes. It was up to the industry, he argued to make the case for what he called a ‘low harm future’ which would allow wine producers to adapt to an affordable green future.
Kathryn Hall of Hall Wines in Napa said the issue of climate change was very much alive in California. Its producers, particularly in Napa, were fully committed to taking steps to tackle environmental issues. She pointed to various initiatives in California, like the Napa Green project, which had now seen 45% of Napa’s wineries sign up to follow green strategies. It hoped to have all wineries signed up by 2020.
It too had taken steps in its own winery and seen the use of solar energy and other initiatives cut its energy levels by 50%.
She said it was often family owned wineries that were willing to make the “front end costs” needed to become more sustainable as they could see the long term benefits far more than a corporate, shareholder driven business.
Gaia Gaja, co-owner of the acclaimed and influential Gaja Winery in Italy, said modern viticultural techniques were all about understanding how the climate is impacting grapes and the steps needed to take to protect vines.
Winemaking changes
The modern approach to making more refreshing wine with higher acidity was also conducive to helping tackle climate change, she explained.
Be it shifting to later ripening grape types and root stocks, moving to cooler growing areas, lowering or stopping the use of pesticides and weed killers in vineyards, and planting vegetation, grass and flowers in vineyards to attract insects and prevent disease.
That increased plant diversity could have a major impact on how wineries can influence climate change, she said.
But she agreed with Torres that it was hard to galvanise all wineries to take action and there was certainly not a concerted effort to do so in Italy.
Coping with climate change
Holdren said the industry is going to have to find ways of handling and working with higher than average temperatures and the impact then has in terms of longer, drier growing periods, more extreme and more frequent droughts, as well as the rise in serious hail showers and big, sudden downpours of rain. Which, in turn, could see an increase in the number of pests and pathogens in vineyards.
All of these factors could, he said, have a direct impact on grape quality and increase vineyard costs.
He again pointed to research that predicts the areas suitable for viticulture are expected to decrease by 25% to 73% in major wine producing regions in what are known as higher Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) used to plot change in climate change, by 2050. In lower RCPs the decrease is expected to be between 19% to 62%, said Holdren.
* The Vinexpo climate change session was moderated by Dana Nigro, senior editor at Wine Spectator.