Sustainability issues in New Zealand
Wednesday 17 November
Entries for the Air New Zealand Awards were down from 1665 in 2009 to 1586 this year. Why the fall in entries? Is it the economy? Or is it the new sustainability rule that came into force this year?
One disgruntled producer complained it was not able to enter its new release 2010 wines along with a number of other wineries as the organisers had introduced a stipulation that all 2010 wines must be ‘sustainable’.
“Post harvest they decided you had to sustainable if we wanted to enter our 2010 wines. So there’s a number of wineries that could not enter even if the vineyard was certified sustainable,” the producer said.
So, I gave Chris Yorke, global marketing manager at generic body New Zealand Winegrowers a call and asked him what had happened. “We set out the policy that we wanted to be sustainable by 2012 back in 2007. What is happening is that we are being quite strict - I think 93% of vineyards and 85% of production are already sustainable,” he said
“It’s a very ambitious goal and it’s amazing how the industry has responded. Some may not have made it this year,” he added.
Consumer research
While I’d got Yorke on the phone, it was a chance to ask him if sustainability is as fluffy as it sounds. Funny I should mention it, New Zealand Winegrowers has just commissioned research to find out what people think sustainability is in its main markets – Australia, the US and the UK.
Yorke said: “We want to understand how they rate what we are doing in terms of sustainability. It’s quite a complex thing and it’s difficult to communicate it and in different countries sustainability means different things.” The research won’t be ready until the next Exporters Forum – which is July 2011 – so I guess we’ll have to wait to find out if the consumer thinks it’s all fur coat no knickers.
Rebecca, it’s an interesting piece on sustainability and from a vineyard owners perspective the current system really does need some review.
There are now 4 components to be certified as fully sustainable - the vineyard needs to be certified, the winery, the bottling plant, and the brand. This last aspect doesn’t apply if you’re just entering Air NZ Winery awards but it does apply if you want to use a Sustainable logo on your bottle and if the winery you use is a contract facility. Then you need to get your brand certified and this certification is called a ‘no site winery’ certification—even the name itself is confusing. The latter has nothing to do with sustainability, it’s just a 4th step you need to go through in order to use the logo—and of course pay a fairly hefty cost to do so. Paying a fee and completing forms to have your brand certified sustainable just seems outrageous if your vineyard, winery and bottling plant have all been certified.
And given that there are issues around the lack of the general public’s awareness of sustainability, you’d think NZW would be doing everything possible to make people want to use the logo and promote it by putting it on their bottles, rather than levying an extra charge for the privilege of doing so.
Having talked to quite a few small vineyards in our region, it seems to be that most are finding the whole system onerous, expensive and hard to figure out.
- by Misha Wilkinson