What is sustainable wine? and what does it mean to the Ontario wine industry? Where does sustainable farming stack up compared to conventional, regenerative, organic, and biodynamic farming? This is a topic I have been exploring since I began studying winemaking in 2009.
First off, what is sustainability? What are we trying to sustain? The soil? The vines? The environment? The winery? Business profits? You get the point. Sustainability is all encompassing. Its not only environmentally related when discussing sustainability. Its managing a profitable business that is economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable. A business that pays fair wages and has a safe and pleasant work environment is sustainable. a business that returns a portion of profits to social or environmental causes is sustainable. Sustainability isn’t just what a business is doing to help the environment, sustainability supports the brand and its in every decision the company makes. If it doesn’t check off as sustainable, then why do it?
Sustainable wine is working with all these parameters of sustainability. Its evaluating the vineyard, winery, supply chain, packaging, waste, and business success to see where improvements can be made. A sustainability framework requires constant review to keep up with evolving and improving standards. It almost always should be evaluated by an outside source as well, that should be honest with the progress made and the targets achieved.
During the industrial revolution, crops became more of a commodity than a food source. Big business chose conventional farming not because it was the easiest but because it was the most profitable for shareholders. Priority for yields and return on investment eclipsed soil and plant health. Land cost and input costs also grew exponentially over the last 50 years driving up costs for small family farms and creating large consolidated farms owned by corporations.
As yields grew beyond investors wildest dreams, soil health and vitality were plummeting. Too much was being removed from the soil and not enough put back into the land. Quick fixes were created; such as herbicides, destructive tillage of competitive plant life and reliance on chemical fertilizer usage.
Sustainable, restorative, organic and biodynamic farming all aim to move away from conventional farming that had become common place around the world. These farming methods also tackle sustainability in different ways and have different guidelines. There are positive and negatives to them all and everything must be considered when farmers decide which farming choice checks the most boxes while remaining economically feasible. Even better, these farming practices compliment each other rather than compete against each other which can only be good for the planet.
Crucially, there probably is not a one size fits all farming scheme that works for viticulture. As climate change and globalization change and evolve dramatically from year to year, it is hard to find one designation that can adequately address these issues while remaining flexible enough to change quickly with evolving conditions. For instance, new invasive insects may travel on shipping containers from other regions in the world. With no competitive predators in their new environment, insects can spread rapidly devastating crops much faster than researchers can create products to defend against them. If you’re an organically certified grower, are you expected to lose multiple years of crop waiting for a product to be developed? This may not fit into the economic component of sustainability.
Certification is important because it is a guarantee to the consumer that proper practices and standards are being followed so buyers can be sure of the product they are about to purchase. It is also important that the certification not be too easy to achieve and be carried out with integrity from an outside source separate from the organization. This ensures that the company applying for certification is actually doing what they pledge to do.
But herein lies the challenge for the grower. Choosing a certification consumers know and trust that is affordable and realistic for the grower to achieve. Farming profits are already razor thin and growers must be sure that certification is truly improving environmental stewardship, social sustainability and economic sustainability and not just another added farming cost. Thankfully there is a decent list of reputable certifications to choose from in Ontario for wine and viticulture that address these challenges
Getting certified sustainable for wine in Ontario requires a yearly third party audit focusing on vineyard and winery practices. The audit does not solely focus only on grape growing and winemaking practices. Its focus is also on packaging, water usage, waste water, farm run off, pesticide use, and energy usage to name a few. Being certified sustainable in the winery and vineyard is something all companies should strive to achieve in Ontario considering the natural beauty surrounding our wine regions.
The Niagara Peninsula is located between two of the worlds five Great Lakes, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Connecting Lake Erie to Lake Ontario is the famed Niagara River that travels along the eastern border of Niagara on the Lake, one of Canada’s most important winemaking regions. Protecting the watersheds and environment in the Niagara region is paramount to the future of the culinary and tourism industries that the wine industry relies on.
The Ontario wine industry is primed to be a leader for sustainability initiatives with regards to the Niagara Region and Ontario in general. Very few other industries are provided the platform and voice that the wine industry has available. The amount of events and world renowned appeal of Ontario wine allows companies to detail and display the efforts involved making wineries and vineyards more sustainable. This can be a framework for other industries to follow to become more sustainable in their own right.
Sustainability is a path to a greener more innovative future. The world has become so globalized that business decisions companies make can have an impact on environments in a completely different region or continent. The raw materials or packaging materials we use can impact the livelihood of someone who lives 5000km away. This is important to understand when it comes to sustainability. Its not just what is sprayed in the vineyard or what goes down the drain in the winery. Sustainability addresses issues everywhere no matter how far away.