“Eco-friendly wine” overhyped, or the right thing to do?
I managed to attend the 3rd annual Wine Symposium that kicked off Trade Days at the 2009 Vancouver Playhouse Wine Festival. The topic was about the merits of organic wine-making and greener, earth-friendly practices for making and distributing wine.
I've never been to the glorious Wosk Centre for Dialogue before, and the YouTube video above hardly does the room justice, but it was a stately setting for today's talk.
As someone who thinks and discusses frequently the crisis we face around sustainability, I wondered while I listened whether we were missing the point. Organic farming is a noble pursuit, but is the goal not to reduce our carbon footprint, which occurs mainly from shipping and the production of packaging.
The representative of New Zealand's winemaking business says that the whole country is adopting sustainable growing standards by 2012. Here in BC we're still just getting started, and any "debate" on organic or sustainable winemaking has yet to grow into a movement.
It was an interesting topic, and I'm sure it will kick of a greater debate among local winemakers and buyers.
April 2, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
Organic farming and reducing our carbon footprint are both noble pursuits. But does one size fit all?
When someone can not drink wine with chemicals, organic wine removes some risk for the consumer. I wonder if the carbon footprint takes into consideration how far the chemical fertilizers, synthetic fungicides, herbicides and insecticides had to travel.