Rethinking your drinking

‘Having a proper sustainability strategy is a bit like the new internet: it will make or break businesses of the future’
-PierreMansour, TheWineSociety

This month, world leaders are gathering in Glasgow for COP26 – a conference described by Sir David Attenborough as possibly ‘our last opportunity’ to make the necessary step-change towards protecting the planet from a ‘crippling’ climate crisis.

Wine will not top the list of global concerns at COP26. Its carbon footprint is modest compared to domestic heating or aviation. But the glass of wine in our hands still contributes significantly to environmental damage and global warming, by degrading soils, reducing biodiversity, contaminating groundwater, releasing CO2 during fermentation, and in its packaging and transport.

Efforts are being made to respond. The Porto Summit in 2019 called for action. Many wine producers, notably Torres in Spain and Jackson Family Wines in California, are adopting less carbon-intensive approaches. However, as Santiago Navarro of Garçon Wines puts it: ‘The talk is nowhere near the action required.’ And wine consumers are changing their habits too slowly.

CLEAR MESSAGE

Ed Robinson, wine buyer for UK supermarket Co-op, says ‘people’s attention is shifting to what’s in the