A growing number of B.C. winemakers are investing in sustainability — here’s why | 24CA News
It’s a sunny day in British Columbia’s Okanagan, and Tony Stewart is surveying the Quail’s Gate winery.
Stewart, the CEO of the family-run business, says the vines are nonetheless dormant presently of 12 months, however in a number of weeks, buds will start to type.
“We had a little bit of a tough winter, and so the vineyards got some very cold weather, and we’re worried about the outcome.
“But issues are beginning to transfer, and we’re hoping there’s much less injury on the market than perhaps we first thought.”
Sustainable practices
Colder winters and hotter summers are just some of the ways climate change has bedevilled B.C.’s wine-making industry over the past few years. The delicate vines can be easily damaged by wild weather, and increasingly, pervasive wildfire smoke can damage the grapes.
In response, winemakers like Quail’s Gate are punching back, decreasing their carbon footprint and establishing sustainable practices like using less water, lighter packaging and fewer pesticides.
In 2021, the tools for winemakers to help fight climate change were encapsulated in the Sustainable Winegrowing B.C. Certificate, an industry-led program tailor made for B.C.
Quail’s Gate’s winery joined last month. It is the sixth B.C. winery to do so. The company’s vineyard was certified last year.
“I believe B.C.’s very a lot forward of the curve on this,” Stewart said. “Most of my colleagues within the trade are … taking a a lot larger curiosity in growing sustainable practices.”
Ruth King, the Sustainable Winegrowing B.C. program manager, says the goal is to encourage more companies in the industry to do better.
“I believe it is a false impression that vineyards are these lovely inexperienced locations, and so they produce fruits, after which they make fruit into wine, and it is simply form of a romantic, lovely picturesque scene.”
King says the reality is that there’s a lot of room for improvement within the province’s wine industry, particularly regarding the impact on the environment.
The certificate, she says, has been years in the making.
The program takes a “holistic strategy” to sustainability and environmental stewardship, she says, and even includes social factors like the treatment of workers and the economic viability of the business.
For Quail’s Gate, that also meant only including Ocean Wise-certified seafood on the menu at its restaurant.
‘It’s a start’
Lenore Newman, the director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, says B.C.’s wine industry is particularly vulnerable to climate change, and it makes sense for wine growers and makers to lessen their impact on the environment.
“It’s very nice to see a few of these certification packages growing as a result of, in fact, rising wine generally is a pretty intensive trade,” Newman said.
Grapes are a particularly sensitive crop, Newman says, and they can require a lot of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
She says governments don’t usually push for individual industries to develop sustainability standards for themselves.
Industry-led programs like the Sustainable B.C. Winegrowing certificate can let consumers know which wineries are “going the additional mile to hit sustainability targets.”
“The trick is the complete world wants to maneuver in direction of sustainable practices, not only one trade,” she said. “But hey, it is a begin.”
Stewart says Quail’s Gate has taken on sustainable practices for about 15 years, so lots of the certification course of was about documenting the work already being undertaken there.
The third-party endorsement will help wine producers stand out in a really aggressive market, he says, with shoppers more and more demanding to know what producers are doing to reduce their carbon footprint.
King, who manages the certificates, says this system does present advertising and marketing assist, however it additionally helps companies analyze their operations to make them extra environment friendly, thereby saving cash.
Stewarts says certification for the winery took a few 12 months, and it was a further six months for the vineyard to be licensed.
Looking to the long run, Stewart says the corporate is on the lookout for extra methods it could actually proceed to enhance, comparable to utilizing electrical automobiles or farm gear.
