Sustainability in wine
Have you already seen “Bio” label on the wine bottle? Have you ever heard about biodynamic wine?
To the big amateurs of wine, professionals, begginers and just curious ones I propose to found out about how sustainability and wine are getting along with each other.
P.S. in French it is called “marriage” when speaking about wine and food matching, but here we speak about sustainability right?
Domaine Tariquet
Domaine Tariquet, with its 1,200 hectares of vineyards, is the largest private farm in the south-west of France. Resource saving is taken particularly seriously here. The company collects rainwater and reuses the energy used to cool the wine tanks to heat the premises. The solar power plant under construction will provide 40% of the winery’s energy needs. Prior to treating the vineyard, the water used to dilute the active ingredients is demineralized, lowering its pH. This almost halves the consumption of phytosanitary products. Tariquet does not forget about the environmental friendliness of its packaging. The glass bottles, aluminum capsules, label paper and cardboard are 100 percent recyclable materials. In 2020, the company spent 750,000 euros to install a Bag-in-Box bottling line, which until recently was a sort of taboo in France.
Domaine Tariquet invests in agricultural equipment as well. For example: panel sprayers which collect and reuse excess sprayed substances. This technology has made it possible to reduce the consumption of funds by 40%.
Salcheto
In 2011 italian winery Salcheto became the first company in the world to certify the carbon footprint of a bottle of wine according to ISO 14064. On the company’s website, any user can use a special CO2 calculator to calculate the emissions associated with the consumption of each bottle depending on your location.
Salcheto calls its winery off-grid, energy-autonomous, which means it can be completely disconnected from electricity. Plus to that Salcheto:
- Conducts and certifies vineyards and wines according to the European Organic Protocol
- Self-produces fertilizers (from composting)
- Uses wood materials derived exclusively from controlled sources and responsibly managed forests (FSC and PEFC certifications)
- Purifies and recycles 100% of wastewater
- Differentiates 98% of the waste materials in the internal ecological island in order to adopt direct recycling measures
The winery looks “green” from the first glance: the outer wall of the building is covered with dense vegetation, which guarantees thermal insulation and also perfectly integrates the building into the surrounding landscape. The cellar is cleverly integrated into the Tuscan hillside: the reception and primary processing of the grapes takes place on a platform on top of the building, which then allows gravity to move must and wine, without pumps. On the same platform are solar collectors, tubes with spherical mirrors, through which natural light enters the structure. The carbon dioxide produced during fermentation does not escape into the pipes, but is used as an energy source for the pumps that pump the wine from the tanks into the barrels for aging.
All of these technologies combine to save about 54% of energy. The rest of the demand is covered by biomass produced at the plant, geothermal and solar energy. In particular, the boiler, which generates 29% of the energy, is powered by grape cake and vine scraps. About 15% of the energy needed primarily for cooling the cellar in the summer comes from geothermal sources. Solar panels with a capacity of 20 kW generate the remaining 2% of the electricity. Theoretically the winery is able to operate autonomously, but since it was already connected to the grid for the project, today it works according to the following principle: during the daylight hours the batteries collect solar energy, supply the needs of the cellar, and the excess is fed into the central grid. In the evening and at night, on the contrary, energy is taken from the grid.
The winery was named Sustainable Winery of the Year by Gambero Rosso (in 2014) and was also named to the Robert Parker Green Emblem.
What can be improved?
Packaging
Glass bottles for win packaging are almost imposible to get rid of and there are not strong confidence that we should. Nevertheless, experts say that it is inexpedient to pour wines into glass bottles for quick consumption (up to 1 year after bottling). For such wines, and they are in majority worldwide, Bag-in-Box or innovative paper bottles will do. The latter weigh only 80 g, which is seven times lighter than a classic glass bottle and, accordingly, has a much smaller carbon footprint. Such containers are made by the French company Frugalpac from recycled cardboard, and they themselves are also fully recyclable. A plastic wine bag is inserted inside the cardboard frame. The only downside at the moment is the price. It ranges from 0.6 to 1 euro per bottle. Over time, with the growth of production and the introduction of taxes on recycling, such packaging could become more affordable and therefore popular.
Corks
No one doubts that natural cork is the most environmentally friendly material today, but transporting it to countries far away from the place of production results in serious emissions. In addition, the incidence of cork disease has decreased, but we have not yet managed to eradicate it. Aluminum is not the most environmentally friendly material, either. In response to these challenges, the development companies offer innovative solutions. For example Vinventions launched on the market fully recyclable PlantCorc™ Select Green, made on the basis of polymers from sugar cane. The cap is carbon-neutral and allows to keep wines corked with it for up to 25 years.
Conscious manufacturers also use environmentally friendly labels. They are made from FSC-certified recycled paper. Fasson, for example, offers a material made from 95 percent sugar cane fibers and 5 percent hemp. The Crimean Uppa Winery recently began using labels made of paper designed by Americans Avery Dennison, with partial use of grape cake.
The cardboard boxes in which the bottles are stacked are also made from recycled and recyclable material. Their design should allow the box to be folded without glue or tape. Do not forget about the film, which is wrapped around the pallets before loading. It can also be biodegradable. Such offers, for example, the company Soluplast.
Manufacturers say that the search for all these environmentally friendly solutions takes a lot of time. Not all attempts are successful. In addition, eco-design increases the cost of packaging by 10–15%.
Anyway it is a good trend towards more sustainable winery and by supporting those initiatives we can make them more affordable for everyone.
In vino veritas
