Rooted in Change: The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine with Andy Neather and Jane Masters

Natalie MacLean 00:00:00 How can the wine world help tackle climate change? And why? Is choosing sustainable and biodynamic wines not enough? What happens when vineyards embrace biodiversity with cover crops, insects and wildlife? And how are wine producers in South Africa rebuilding natural ecosystems around their vineyards? In today’s episode, you’ll hear the stories and tips that answer those questions. In our chat with Andy Neither and Jane Masters, by the end of our conversation, you’ll also discover what the link is between science, sustainability, and the future of wine. The challenge of communicating the urgency of climate change without sounding alarmist. How consumers can reduce their environmental impact when choosing wines. The change is happening in the wine industry to improve packaging standards and reduce carbon emissions. What we can learn from the innovations of biodiversity focused viticulture in other regions And whether regenerative viticulture can be scaled up for both major producers and boutique wineries.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:12 Do you have a thirst to learn about wine? Do you love stories about wonderfully obsessive people, hauntingly beautiful places, and amusingly awkward social situations? Well, that’s the blend here on the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:29 I’m your host, Natalie MacLean, and each week I share with you unfiltered conversations with celebrities in the wine world, as well as confessions from my own tipsy journey as I write my third book on this subject. I’m so glad you’re here. Now pass me that bottle, please, and let’s get started.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:54 Welcome to episode.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:55 360. So what’s.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:58 New in the wine world.

Natalie MacLean 00:01:59 This week?

Natalie MacLean 00:02:00 Well, the patriotic wine wave that started with the US trade war earlier this year.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:05 Is still.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:06 Cresting strong across Canada, and the numbers from this week tell quite a story. According to data released on October 11th, American spirit exports to Canada absolutely cratered by 85% in the second quarter of 2025, and wine hasn’t fared much better. But here’s a fascinating twist. While overall wine sales continue to slump as Canadians moderate their drinking or pivot to ready to drink cocktails, domestic wines are having an honest to goodness moment. The Lcbo reported on October 1st that Ontario VQA wines are up 60% since U.S. products were pulled from shelves, with VQA reds and whites growing 71% and 67%, respectively.

Natalie MacLean 00:02:54 Meanwhile, B.C. wines have surged 55% at Ontario stores. Nova Scotia wines are up 30% and Ontario Craft Wineries president Michelle Washington told CBC on October 4th that sales across all retail channels have jumped 78%. Restaurants are following suit and some Ottawa establishments are now reporting Ontario wine sales up 30% since swapping out California bottles in marketing moves. Alternative packaging is having its main character moment this October. And it’s not just about sustainability. It’s genuinely reshaping how wine reaches consumers. Shannon News Daily reported on October 14th that the industry is going full tilt into aluminum bottles, pet pet containers, which stands for and I’m going to mispronounce this. Polyethylene terephthalate paper bottles and lightweight glass to slash carbon footprints and open up new drinking occasions sounds like a real marketing buzzword there. The shift isn’t purely environmental, it’s strategic. Wineries are betting that someone who’d never crack open a regular glass bottle at a concert or on a hiking trail might happily sip from a can or aluminum bottle, expanding wine beyond the dinner table and bubbly lovers, mark your calendars.

Natalie MacLean 00:04:12 Global Champagne Day is this Friday, October 24th, giving you the perfect excuse to pop some sparkling wine open and toast absolutely nothing in particular. Expect even more sparkle as brands rev up for Champagne Day, blending high glam and high camp Veuve Clicquot pink friendly dress up your bubbles reels are already grabbing millions of loops this week. So how is the harvest going? Glad you asked. This week brought encouraging reports from major wine regions. France is bouncing back beautifully after last year’s disaster. The agriculture ministry forecasts 40 to 42.5 million hectoliters for 2025, up a whopping 17% from 2024, with Burgundy, champagne and the Loire Valley all recovering nicely from adverse weather. Italy’s holding its crown as the world’s largest producer with 47.4 million hectoliters expected. That’s the equivalent, by the way, of 6.3 billion bottles, up 8% from last year, according to the estimates. Closer to home, Ontario’s 2025 harvest is looking stellar despite summer heat waves and drought cutting yields. Researchers at Brock University reported on October 2nd that quality is excellent, with slow ripening extending harvest into early November.

Natalie MacLean 00:05:35 British Columbia is experiencing what winemakers are calling a remarkable comeback after the 2024 devastating freezes, with ideal growing conditions, generous yields and harvest wrapping up in mid-October. Nova Scotia’s cool climate magic is unfolding right now with sparkling wine grapes finishing in October and reds coming through in November. And here’s a delightful tidbit England’s Roth Finney Wine Estate deployed an actual squadron of Falcons, hawks and even a Chilean Blue Eagle starting in mid-September to guard their ripening grapes from hungry birds, replacing 300km of plastic netting with nature’s own air force. Those falcons, by the way, aren’t just any birds. We’re talking peregrine gyrfalcon hybrids that can hit 200 miles an hour, speeds, merlins darting between the vine rows, and a genuinely intimidating Chilean blue eagle keeping pigeons properly terrified. Visitors to the Sussex estate can sip sparkling wine while watching nature’s most elegant pest control system in action, which beats the heck out of listening to those propane cannons blasting or those awful squawk boxes that always make me think something has died in the vineyard. All right. Something to make you smile.

Natalie MacLean 00:06:55 A study is making Waves this past week, published October 13th by the research company Boing Boing. And it says that researchers tracked 4000 wines across 14 wine competitions and found that 1000 wines won gold medals in one competition, but failed to place in others, with only 10% of judges consistently rating identical wines in the same medal range. Personally, I’ve always felt that wine competitions were akin to the awards given out at kindergarten graduations where everyone goes home with a prize. And that reminds me that writer Robin Goldstein once created a fake Milan restaurant and submitted a wine list of bottles that the Wine Spectator magazine had previously panned as swampy and like turpentine. And then they gave the nonexistent restaurant an award of excellence. Love it if you have some wine, news or a quirky story you think I should share on this podcast. Email me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. I’m also sharing wine news and wine reviews on Instagram where I’m at Natalie MacLean wine. So follow me there. I’ll follow you back if you’re listening to this podcast early on Wednesday morning when it’s published.

Natalie MacLean 00:08:07 Join me on city TV’s Breakfast television at 9 a.m. eastern when we chat about Come Over October, the international movement that’s gaining great traction with wine lovers around the planet. Then, at 1 p.m., tune in to CTV’s The Social when we chat about terrific wines for fall. Both shows are national. Let me know if you’d like to have your brand featured on future TV segments, or would like to advertise with us through our podcast, newsletter, website, social media or mobile apps. If you represent a winery, distillery, brewery or an agency or regional council representing wine, spirits, cocktails, food, lifestyle or decor brands, please email me at Natalie at Natalie MacLean. Com. Back to today’s episode. Two of you are going to win a copy of Andy and Jane Masters terrific new book, Rooted in Change The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine. I have two copies also of Doctor Tuffy Meyer’s book, The Wines of Brazil to give away Luke Pryor from Pointe aux Trump. Quebec has won a copy of Sarah Jane Evans book, The Wines of Central and Southern Spain from Catalonia to Cadiz.

Natalie MacLean 00:09:21 I have one copy left to give away. If you’d like to win a copy of any of these books, please email me and let me know that you’d like to win. It doesn’t matter where you live, I’ll choose five winners randomly from those who contact me at Nathalie at Natalie MacLean. Com keep them for yourself or give them as gifts. The holidays are right around the corner. In other bookish news, if you’re reading the paperback or e-book or listening to the audiobook of my memoir, Wine Witch on Fire Rising from the ashes of divorce, defamation and drinking too much. Hey, national bestseller on one of Amazon’s best books of the year. I’d love to hear from you at Natalie at Natalie MacLean dot com. I’ll put a link in the show notes to all retailers worldwide at Natalie MacLean 4360. Okie dokie, on with the show. Jane Masters became a master of wine in 1997, and was elected as chairman of the Institute of Masters of Wine in September 2016. She is an independent wine consultant with over 30 years of wine experience and clients around the world.

Natalie MacLean 00:10:25 She also works with the Majestic Wine Group in the UK. Having originally trained as a winemaker at the Institute of Technology in Bordeaux. Jane worked in wine production in France prior to joining the wine buying team at majestic, and she has also filmed several wine shows and written sections for Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine and Wine. Opus. Andy Nether is a freelance British journalist, a former academic, historian, environmental campaigner, political speechwriter and newspaper journalist. He was the London Evening Standards wine critic for ten years. He now blogs weekly on wine and food at A view from My Table. Writes a regular column for Tim Atkins website and is contributed to publications including The Independent, Harpers and The Club Chic. They join us now from London. Welcome, Jane and Andy. So great to have you here with us.

Jane Masters 00:11:24 Thank you. It’s great to be here. All right. All right.

Natalie MacLean 00:11:27 Great. So let’s just start off with some of your more memorable wine moments before we dive into the book. Jane, tell us about a few times during wine trips when you have crossed paths with celebrities.

Jane Masters 00:11:40 Oh, well, you know, I don’t travel so much these days, but I used to literally travel around the world non-stop. Many times I’ve come across different celebrities and different different places in airport lounges. Probably one of the most memorable was actually staying in Buenos Aires in the hotel there. When we arrived, I was with a work colleague and they said, oh, hang on a minute, something funny about your booking, and went off and shuffled a few papers around. They said, we’re moving your rooms, you’re moving into the annex. And we’re like, why? Why is that? Oh, because Madonna’s here in the hotel and we need are we only people with security ratings can go into that part? So we were then on the floor beneath Madonna, and of course, I thought it would be quite nice to sneak up there and see if we could actually meet her. So we got the lift up to the next floor, the great big busty security man sort of saying, you’re not coming.

Natalie MacLean 00:12:33 I wouldn’t let you up there. She was filming Evita.

Jane Masters 00:12:36 She was filming Evita at the time. Yeah. So it’s quite a long time ago now, but I’ve come across various other musicians and TV people, and once in a airport lounge in Hong Kong. It was very interesting. It was a very small lounge, actually. And I was just sitting there and I thought, that’s Cliff Richard. And it’s like, no, it can’t be. It, it can’t be. And I just looked up from my book and someone across the room would say, it’s him. And then he was having this conversation with his manager about, did the show go all right? I was really, really nervous. And I was thinking, gosh, that’s amazing that somebody that chooses to do what he’s done, done it for so long, was still nervous before performances and things. So we’re all human after all.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:20 So yes, that’s reassuring.

Natalie MacLean 00:13:23 What about traveling in South America?

Jane Masters 00:13:26 That’s probably not as adventurous as it used to be, but several times in South America, I’ve arrived late at airports to find the person that was meant to be coming to collect me has not turned up, and I’m sort of there with my big bags and sort of abandoned.

Jane Masters 00:13:43 On another occasion, I was staying in Santiago. This is going back about 30 years again with a colleague, thank goodness. And we were due to be picked up on a Sunday afternoon and drive sort of three hours south of Santiago. So the guy turned up. We got in the car. Next thing we know is about 20 minutes down on the journey. He pulls over into a side lane, opens the door. This guy gets in. We’re thinking, this is all a bit strange, but of course neither of us spoke very much Spanish. And the next thing we know is the guy sort of fiddling around. He’s getting his gun out, and we’re sort of sitting in the back of the car going, are we actually being kidnapped here or what’s going on? so we both sort of sat there looking at each other, but we did get to the winery and then we we learnt afterwards that the guy was actually an off duty police officer who the chauffeur had asked to accompany him on the journey, just in case there were any bandits on the route.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:41 Right? It would have been nice to know that. Yeah.

Jane Masters 00:14:44 We made it through.

Natalie MacLean 00:14:46 And Andy, you have also been on many a wine trip. Maybe tell us about the Georgian trip where you had to contend with a food issue.

Andrew Neather 00:14:56 Well that’s right. I mean, it was it was just the sheer amount of food. So the Georgians, this was last year. They’re very proud of being the cradle of wine. They’ve been making wine for 8000 years.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:06 Wow. And we’re referring, of course, to the country, not the state.

Andrew Neather 00:15:09 The country, not the state. Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing wine, amazing food. But they do serve you if you’re visiting there two banquets a day and I mean with multiple courses. And then there’ll be sort of snacks. And so the sort of snack you’ll get if you’re going to visiting a winery sort of late afternoon will be the equivalent of quite a large English meal in and of its own with kebabs and things and, you know. Wow.

Andrew Neather 00:15:32 So, yeah, I put on a bit of weight during that trip, I think.

Jane Masters 00:15:35 I think quite a few wine regions. Wine is part of food and hospitality. And quite often you can you can get these. Splendid. But everyone wants to show you the best, don’t they.

Andrew Neather 00:15:46 Yeah. No, they’re very nice.

Natalie MacLean 00:15:48 That’s true. All for the cause, Andy. And then another time you were stuck in Lebanon because of the war. Were you actually writing about politics or wine at that time?

Andrew Neather 00:15:56 That was the first time I was in Lebanon. I was writing about wine, but I. I had the misfortune. This was the sort of worst timed wine trip ever. I got in on what was actually the last flight into the country. There’s been an uprising by Hezbollah against the government that day. This was in 2014. By the time I got there, they blockaded the airport and I showed the immigration officer my passport. You said you’re a journalist. And I said, yeah, he said, so you’re here to cover the situation.

Andrew Neather 00:16:24 I said, no, I’m here to write about Lebanese wine. I’m going to Zahle in the Bekaa Valley. And he said, you’ve got a long walk and handed me back my passport. Oh, oh. Anyway, it was a long story, but I did manage to meet various winemakers, including the legendary usher of Shattered Mazar. I didn’t actually make it to any vineyards, and ultimately I escaped in a taxi. There was only two border crossings into Syria. Left and Syria was safe at that point. And so I was very glad when I hid in it.

Natalie MacLean 00:16:56 Oh my gosh. And tell us about the wine that stripped paint. You were drinking something that stripped paint.

Andrew Neather 00:17:04 It’s just sort of gone down in family law. In my family, we were once staying in the Dordogne. This is I mean, a long, long time ago. I was in my late teens, the very old guy next door to us who was in his 90s. He said, I’ve got a buddy who makes wine, which is Gonzales.

Andrew Neather 00:17:21 And we said, okay, great, let’s take his term and went there. These guys only spoke Occitan patois to each other, which is sort of halfway between Spanish and French. We came away with a big, I guess it was like a five liter jug of the stuff, and we kept it during the week on a painted tin tray, and there was a bare patch of metal underneath it at the end. The drips had taken out drinking it all week.

Jane Masters 00:17:48 Obviously it’s a great.

Andrew Neather 00:17:50 One over drunk. I’d have to say, actually.

Jane Masters 00:17:52 But you can do that.

Andrew Neather 00:17:55 Well, probably. Yeah.

Natalie MacLean 00:17:57 Well, let’s talk about better wines than that then. So do you have your book with you?

Jane Masters 00:18:02 We don’t unfold it. It’s actually at the printer.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:05 At the printer. Okay. Okay.

Jane Masters 00:18:07 The actual publishing date is next Wednesday the first.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:10 So people will be able to get it in all the usual places. But imagine you’re holding up the book now. Read the title and subtitle to us.

Jane Masters 00:18:19 So it’s called Rooted in Change The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine. I guess it does what it says on the tin. It covers all aspects of sustainability across the global wine trade. So everything from growing grapes to making wine to how wine is packaged.

Natalie MacLean 00:18:37 And what drew you to this story in the first place? The two of you.

Jane Masters 00:18:40 I became first interested in sustainability through climate change. Really. So climate obviously has always had a very important influence over the style of wines and quality of wines that are made and where they can be produced, what grape varieties can grow where. So. Ever since training as an analyst in Bordeaux many years ago, we learnt about the impact of climatology and weather patterns and the impact it had on the grape vine and the grapes that are produced. But at that time, I would say that even the professor that we had of climatology actually mentioned climate change. I can remember this. This is going back a long, long time now and said, but there’s no real scientific consensus that it’s happening because it’s happening basically more and more over in the early 2000, even earlier than that, people were talking more and more about it, and I got quite interested in just understanding what was going on, trying to not just think about it from a wine point of view, but from a more of a science point of view.

Jane Masters 00:19:44 Yes. So I guess I read quite a lot of quite dry sort of IPCC reports and what’s IPCC?

Natalie MacLean 00:19:51 I dare I ask some long committee something, something on the protection of climate, climate change.

Jane Masters 00:19:58 So it’s the 5000s of scientists around the world all coming together and sort of looking at that. So that’s how it started, really. And then I guess a couple of years ago, I was much more serious about wanting to understand climate change, what was causing it. And that led me into sort of learning about other aspects of sustainability more and more. And, you know, the more you learn, the more that is to learn. And you realise that it’s actually quite complicated, to make it simple. So.

Natalie MacLean 00:20:28 And how about you, Andy?

Andrew Neather 00:20:30 Yeah. Well, I mean, I’ve been very interested in climate change. Very concerned about it for I guess for 25, 30 years. I mean, I was really converted to environmentalism properly when I worked for the campaign group friends of the Earth in the late 90s, early 2000 and worked on on it then at the time of the Kyoto treaty and so on.

Andrew Neather 00:20:52 And I was just really struck over the last few years, the last sort of two, three, four years, the incredible concentration of climate disasters that were hitting the wine world. I mean, you know, disastrous fires in, you know, California, Oregon. This year we’ve had Napa, on Oregon, Australia, all sorts of places in Europe.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:12 Canada as well.

Andrew Neather 00:21:12 Yes, Canada, the flies in B.C. we’ve had catastrophic droughts in Europe, most recently in Catalonia. But also, I mean, in Chile has had a mega drought, which is sorta over, but not really for the last decade or more. Really. Africa, South Africa, incredible hail incidents and frost incidents in Europe. People talk about vines. Being the canary in the coal mine for climate change is a very sensitive plant really. It grows in quite a narrow climatic band and it really is an indicator. It’s one of the first plants to really suffer. And you can see that. And and it was seeing that happen in front of me that I really made me want to write about this and explain it properly.

Natalie MacLean 00:21:59 And what made the two of you team up? Did someone bring you together or were you out for drinks and said, let’s do it?

Jane Masters 00:22:04 Yeah, she was our publisher, Hermione. So we both, over quite a short period of time, happened to be introduced. And to meet Hermione. I think you met her first, didn’t you? Yeah. And then literally a couple of weeks later, I was at a wine event in central London and told her that I was interested in writing, and it started sort of through my own research, sort of putting together ideas for a book. And she said, oh, well, I’ve actually I’ve just literally met a journalist and we’re already working on a project. Would you be interested? And then she spoke to Andy and said the similar thing, I guess, would you be interested in co-writing? And we said, well, we sort of need to meet each other first and sort of see whether we agree on not everything, but, you know, whether we get on how we work.

Jane Masters 00:22:52 She put us in touch. We had a lunch one Saturday afternoon in central London, got on and sort of things went from there really.

Natalie MacLean 00:23:02 Now, what did you disagree on? Surely you didn’t agree 100% on everything, because there are a lot of sticky issues when it comes to the environment.

Jane Masters 00:23:11 I can’t really think of it. And the first thing Andy said when he arrived today was, was, is there anything that you can think of that we didn’t really agree on? And it’s like, no, we are actually fairly consistent in approach. I guess the anything that we talked about was where we think, have we got the balance right in the book? Are we being too preachy? Are we being objective? Are we being scientific enough without being over sort of nerdy and scientific? So that’s the things that we probably discuss more.

Andrew Neather 00:23:41 Yeah. I mean, I think it was a really good match, actually. And I think essentially we both appreciated each other’s skills. We really both brought a sort of unique skill set to this.

Andrew Neather 00:23:51 I mean, Jane knows far more about the science of wine and the science of climate change come to that than I do. And on the other hand, you know, I’m a proper writer. I’m a professional writer and journalist, and Jane isn’t, so we really didn’t. I mean, I know I learned from some of the stuff that Jane had written about winemaking, for instance. I, you know, and I thought I knew a lot about winemaking, but I learned from that. Similarly, I plant biology, for instance, as well.

Natalie MacLean 00:24:16 Yeah. And how did you avoid being too preachy or alarmist and yet make your points deeply enough? Like, how did you strike that balance?

Jane Masters 00:24:26 I think it’s about looking at the facts and putting things into context and just looking objectively at what is going on. We don’t want to be scaremongering or anything, but there is no doubt that climate change is happening, and there is no doubt that it is being caused by the way in which we as a human race are living, and in particular, the way in which we use fossil fuels.

Jane Masters 00:24:50 And it is scary, but we don’t want to be frightening people for the sake of it. But we do believe that there is a wake up call. And I’m not suggesting that the wine trade on its own, or producing sustainable wine is going to solve all the world’s problems. But there’s no one industry, or no one person or no one government that can actually do it on their own. It’s going to be a collective effort. And we wanted to just put that to context and to inspire people, see some of the great things that are being done by certain people and certain companies around the world.

Andrew Neather 00:25:26 Absolutely. I mean, it was I was traveling for quite a few months earlier this year doing field research, and I know Jane has the scene as well. And it’s really inspiring to meet some of these farmers, winemakers who are doing great things out there. And the other thing I’d say is that it’s quite hard to preach, even if you wanted to, because there aren’t easy solutions on these things.

Andrew Neather 00:25:49 It’s maybe sort of frustrating in the sense that we’re very often led to believe that with consumer capitalism, you know, you can buy a certain product or avoid a certain type of packaging, say, and then everything will be okay. And it’s really just much more complicated than that. But that was one of the surprising things to me. Digging into this subject was ultimately, you’re talking about the complexity of global supply chains, all sorts of industrial processes associated with packaging and other things as well. And there just isn’t a simple answer. A lot of the time. It doesn’t mean to say you can’t make sensible choices as a consumer.

Natalie MacLean 00:26:30 And what would those be? What would be your top sensible choices? Is it that we should be looking for those who farm organically biodynamic and light bottles? Is it that kind of thing?

Andrew Neather 00:26:41 Those things? Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, it’s important to recognise that organic and biodynamic wines are not sustainable. I mean, there’s no such thing as this sort of end goal.

Andrew Neather 00:26:49 And you tick this box. They are certainly better for the environment. They’re certainly better for biodiversity and things. They’re usually lower in terms of their carbon emissions as well. So that’s a good choice to make in terms of the packaging. I mean, you know, this is a whole other area where we don’t need to get into it right now. But the biggest chunk of a bottle of wine’s carbon emissions is just the bottle. So around 40% on average.

Jane Masters 00:27:17 Wow.

Andrew Neather 00:27:18 But then there’s a difference between, say, the heaviest bottles weigh over a kilo, just the bottle. And then there’s a group. The Sustainable Wine Roundtable has got together a bunch of retailers in the UK and in North America, and they’re pushing for a new standard liter bottle of 425g.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:37 What is that impounds just for those who aren’t on the metric system? I’m bad at these conversions, but.

Andrew Neather 00:27:42 125g.

Jane Masters 00:27:44 Probably about a.

Andrew Neather 00:27:45 Pound, about a pound just under a pound.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:47 And then a kilo would be kilo.

Jane Masters 00:27:49 Pound 2.2.2.

Natalie MacLean 00:27:50 £2.2. Okay. Yeah. Quite a wide.

Jane Masters 00:27:53 Ratio at the top.

Andrew Neather 00:27:54 End. I mean I’ve come across bottles that at 1.2 kilos you’re talking about really about a third. And that makes a really big difference for carbon. And not just is the manufacturer of the glass. It’s also much heavier to transport. You get into these sort of complexities. I think it’s fascinating actually, as well as being sort of scary. That’s the reason that glasses is such a big deal. So the other thing you can do, if you’re buying a regular wine to drink on a weekday night. You’re not aiming to sell it or anything. You can look at wine in cans or in other alternative packaging, like for instance, or bag in a box. That’s completely fine. I mean, for ordinary everyday wines, it’s absolutely fine. There’s no damage to the wine and it will not go off before you finished it. Well, at least not right. I drink wine, but.

Natalie MacLean 00:28:46 Or those listening to the podcast.

Jane Masters 00:28:48 And this is part of the reason people are overwhelmed, whether they’re people in the wine trade, whether they’re in other industries, whether they’re consumers, is that there is no one easy answer. So, as Andy says, even organic, biodynamic, conventional farming uses a lot of agrochemicals in whatever it is, not just growing grapes, but any agricultural product uses them. And when those were developed mainly post-Second World War, we believed that what they were doing, it was increasing yields, helping to feed more people, produce more food. We now know the impact that those have on biodiversity, on the amount of sort of life in the soil and therefore the impact on the carbon that’s contained within soil, as well as all the emissions that are associated with producing and shipping those agrochemicals from wherever they’re manufactured to where they’re applied in the vineyard. There’s no one way of saying actually organic is best. Conventional farming is best. It really depends on the conditions under which grapes are being grown. But one of the big talking points and trends at the moment is research into what we call regenerative farming.

Jane Masters 00:30:01 So regenerative viticulture. So that is where people are minimising inputs in terms of agrochemicals that are going to affect your life in your soil, in essentially trying to retain and keep all the carbon that’s in living organisms, that’s in organic matter, that’s in the soil. Just build up your carbon content in the soil. So that’s one thing.

Natalie MacLean 00:30:27 Does that net out neutral regenerative farming. Like is that what sustainable is?

Jane Masters 00:30:32 I think it’s part of the answer. But you know, just like if you farm the grapes regenerative or organically, that is better for the environment and better for a carbon emissions in the vineyard. But if you then put that organic or regenerative farmed grapes and make it into wine and put it into a very heavy weight glass bottle that you then ship from one side of the planet to the other. Because about 50% of the world’s global wine production is exported to another country, and much of it goes very long distance. That’s not sustainable when you look at the overall picture.

Andrew Neather 00:31:13 Also, that bottle, a lot of bottles are shipped large distances around the world.

Andrew Neather 00:31:17 So for instance.

Jane Masters 00:31:17 Empty bottles before packaging?

Andrew Neather 00:31:19 Yes, exactly. So. For instance, in the American industry, California and so on, a lot of those bottles are actually shipped in from China. So even before it’s filled, your bottle has traveled thousands of miles. There’s been a lot of carbonate. Then it’s filled and then it’s exported, possibly back to China or to to Europe.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:37 And is that just economics? Because China will make those bottles cheaper than in the US. Okay.

Andrew Neather 00:31:42 Then you get into questions about, you know, there are different levels of emissions according to how you make the bottles as well. Generally, the Chinese factories will not be as efficient as most efficient factories in France, Germany, the UK, for instance.

Jane Masters 00:31:55 Right.

Natalie MacLean 00:31:55 Right.

Jane Masters 00:31:56 You could go on and on and on and on. And I said, because again, it’s looking at how efficient each of the glass foundries is, where the energy comes from. So to smelt to make a glass bottle from sand, you need to achieve extremely high temperatures.

Jane Masters 00:32:11 Most furnaces run on natural gas because that’s the only way that you can get to those hydrogen. But there’s a lot of research going on looking at smaller foundries, electric, ultimately moving to hydrogen powered furnaces. There’s a lot of stuff happening.

Jane Masters 00:32:27 And.

Jane Masters 00:32:28 There’s no one single answer.

Andrew Neather 00:32:30 We went down quite a lot of rabbit holes.

Jane Masters 00:32:32 I’ll bet.

Natalie MacLean 00:32:33 We’re going down one right now, but it’s just it’s fascinating. But what’s the most surprising insight you discovered while you were writing the book? Let’s start with Andy.

Andrew Neather 00:32:42 Well, I think for me, I mean, it’s exactly this sort of stuff that which we’re discussing about the complexity of global supply chains and about how there are so many industrial processes involved. It’s just complicated. And there are carbon emissions and things to consider at every stage. You know, even though obviously I’m a wine professional, I know a lot about wine. I had never been a bottle factory before. I hadn’t been to a large recycling plant, but I was to visit, for instance, one of the world’s largest cork factories making corks in Portugal, which is the, you know, by far the world’s largest producer.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:17 What surprised you about the way they were making Cork there? From the sustainability point of view.

Jane Masters 00:33:22 Cork is, there is no doubt, the most sustainable way. If you’re going to use glass bottles, Cork is the most sustainable option as a closure.

Jane Masters 00:33:31 Oh, over screw caps. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Jane Masters 00:33:33 Way way way way way more.

Natalie MacLean 00:33:35 I didn’t know that.

Jane Masters 00:33:36 Okay.

Jane Masters 00:33:36 Cork oaks, the actual plants, the trees. They live for 200 years. They themselves, as they grow, store carbon within them. They encouraged biodiversity within the cork forests. And then the cork stopper itself, which is essentially the bark of the cork oak that’s been punched out again is a carbon store, whereas aluminium screw caps. We all talk about aluminium as being extremely sustainable because it can be recycled and yes, it can be recycled many times over. But the reality is most screw caps are not recycled because they’re just too small and they sort of fall through. They don’t get picked up at the recycle plants, and they don’t get disposed of necessarily in the right way by consumers.

Jane Masters 00:34:20 But aluminium is extremely energy intensive, to produce, particularly if you’re talking about primary aluminium, which requires the mining of bauxite, which creates a lot of environmental damage, but is extremely energy intensive as well. Even if aluminium is recycled, and using recycled aluminium uses less energy. But actually, because the world is growing, its demand for aluminium is growing, for aeroplanes, for cars, for all sorts of other things. The demand for aluminium is increasing. So the more we switch anything into aluminium, the more that then requires energy to be used to extract.

Andrew Neather 00:35:03 Even if you recycle something for aluminium, I’m not actually sure what the melting point is, but it has to be over a thousand degrees. So you’re talking about furnaces generating enormous amounts of carbon emissions. Even if you’re recycling, it’s much more carbon intensive if you’re crushing up bauxite and smelting. But it’s still.

Jane Masters 00:35:22 And.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:22 I don’t know if you mentioned this just awhile back, but the cork forest, they’re also preserving a natural habitat, right? Like the birds and animals and all the rest of it.

Jane Masters 00:35:31 So a natural habitat. And the other thing that I don’t think many people realize, because there have been some really quite serious wildfires in Portugal as well in recent years, but they act as a natural fire barrier. So with increasing drought, very high temperatures, they act as a natural barrier.

Andrew Neather 00:35:50 But because a is a natural fire retardant.

Jane Masters 00:35:53 Yeah. Oh is it it.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:54 Doesn’t.

Jane Masters 00:35:54 Burn. No. Oh right.

Natalie MacLean 00:35:56 So it’s a tree that doesn’t burn.

Jane Masters 00:35:58 Oh, no.

Jane Masters 00:35:58 Have you ever tried burning at all. Did you ever know the game? Ebel Dibble, we used to play at university.

Jane Masters 00:36:03 What is it?

Natalie MacLean 00:36:04 What game have I been missing?

Jane Masters 00:36:05 What is this game?

Jane Masters 00:36:06 The story for another day. But you. Since the end of a court. If you try and do that, you will find it. The court does not burn at all. It will blacken and you’ll get a sort of charcoal y when you play ible dibble if you get it wrong. You had the mark on your face.

Andrew Neather 00:36:19 I have to say, I’ve never played this game, but we’re not going to get into English drinking games.

Jane Masters 00:36:24 Just, just oh.

Natalie MacLean 00:36:26 There might be a lot of interest in that. So let’s shift to viticulture. Growing grapes in South Africa. It seems to emerge as a leader in your book in biodiversity focused viticulture, what innovations there impressed you most? Maybe you can pick out a few specific examples at wineries you visited.

Andrew Neather 00:36:43 The thing to say that, for a start, is that the South Africans are able to do this, or at least the forward looking producers who who want to, partly because of the size of the estates. So, for instance, you can decide to set aside 50 hectares, which is, gosh, what’s that in Imperial? 50 hectares is what, over 100 acres, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, you can afford to do that, whereas you can’t do that in Burgundy, say, or even in Bordeaux.

Natalie MacLean 00:37:08 There’s just much more land available in South Africa.

Jane Masters 00:37:12 Okay.

Andrew Neather 00:37:12 Well, they do that. I mean, they’re trying to do various things. I mean, for instance, you can set up wildlife corridors. So if you’ve got cultivated land, it prevents animals, particularly prey animals. But all animals, they’re not keen to cross that land, and particularly in South Africa or in the Western Cape. The natural vegetation before it was cultivated, it’s called fynbos. It’s a sort of a mediterranean sort of scrub and shrubs. They’re various people. Like, for instance, Johan Rennick is a biodynamic producer in Stellenbosch. He is joining up some sort of remaining bits of fynbos and rewilding bits to join together these islands into corridors and elsewhere where they’ve done this. So, for instance, the Delima estate, you get animals coming back actually quite quickly and you get sort of porcupines, you even get Cape leopards. The Cape leopard is highly endangered. It actually helps with the balance of the land because you need Predators and particularly birds raptors because they will deal with rodents and snakes and things.

Andrew Neather 00:38:15 It’s restoring the natural balance of the land.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:18 And are rodents and snakes eating the vines or something? Are they predatory on the vines?

Andrew Neather 00:38:24 It’s just the ecosystem is out of balance. If you’ve got a pest like that.

Jane Masters 00:38:28 You’re.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:29 Not keeping them in check.

Andrew Neather 00:38:31 And similarly biodiversity. I mean, you can use, for instance, recreating bits of wetland. So like there’s a I can think of one producer where they’ve, you know, they’ve done that. And it actually helps have a cooling effect on the vineyard around it because you’ve got this, this sort of body of water. You find this sort of unexpected effect when you sort of restore nature to what it was. It’s not completely what it was because there’s a vineyard there, obviously, but sure.

Natalie MacLean 00:38:58 And of course, vineyards are a monoculture, right? They are very intensive because it’s not mixed farming. It’s the same vines every year.

Jane Masters 00:39:07 There’s several things that you said that absolutely in some of the classical regions. It’s monoculture. You walk out and you walk along and you see vines, vines, vines, vines and and not little else.

Jane Masters 00:39:20 And if you went back 20 years, probably the vines were all neat and prim and trimmed, and there was no weeds, no cover crops between rows, nothing like that. But even in some of these classical areas, now we’ve started sowing cover crops. The great thing about vines is that, like fruit trees, orchards, they live for a long time. So vines can live decades and some even longer than that. The roots go very, very far down into the ground. And by creating this biodiversity with the larger sort of mammals and birds and other things, it’s just all part of a system. So it starts to also build the insects all the life in the soil. It becomes a natural organic circular economy, if you like, and that helps protect vines against disease. It helps reduce the pressure. You know, some of these insects actually keep the predators from the vines at bay. So it just becomes a much more resilient system that also captures and retains more carbon within it.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:27 And that sounds idyllic.

Natalie MacLean 00:40:29 But is this regenerative viticulture? Is it a large scale solution versus, you know, just great for boutique wineries?

Jane Masters 00:40:38 I think people are still testing out and trying to understand how to regenerative farm vineyards. You know, the idea is that you’re building up the carbon content in the soil over time. So it takes time to actually test those soils and do those analyses over years and decades to see whether you’re actually achieving it. One thing I would say is that quite often people think that regenerative is a version of organic, but actually the principles of regenerative farming or regenerative agriculture can be used in organic and biodynamic or in conventional farming, so that you are still building up this carbon store in the soil. You have got some big companies like O’Neill’s in California who have done lots of products.

Andrew Neather 00:41:25 Jackson Family Estates.

Jane Masters 00:41:26 Jackson.

Jane Masters 00:41:27 Family Estates, Torres are doing a lot of experimentation and research on it. So yes, a lot of these things are easier to do on a small scale, but there are people actually looking at how it can be done.

Andrew Neather 00:41:39 I think there’s a there’s a very current debate at the moment, particularly in the US, around basically how you take regenerative viticulture forward in a way that does actually go beyond just boutique wineries, that actually does it at scale to make a real difference. That was the reason for the O’Neill trial, and I actually visited Paso Robles in California in January this year, and I was there for a briefing that the guys from O’Neill were giving to their sort of reps who dealt with growers because they’d wanted to do this large scale, a 50 acre trial, basically to see if they could do it without it affecting yields and costs too much. So before they would ask their growers to do that, and I mean O’Neill, a top ten US producer. I mean, they’ve got thousands of hectares which are farmed for them by contract growers. Their conclusions were really positive. I mean, they made almost no difference to yields. There might be some small difference in terms of labor costs, but basically it’s doable. And Jackson Family Estates on the same trip I visited a big field trial.

Andrew Neather 00:42:45 They’ve been running for a few years, actually, and they said very similar things. Now, that’s not yet the same thing as putting that into practice, but it’s quite encouraging, I think, because absolutely, you need to take it beyond being a boutique thing.

Natalie MacLean 00:43:00 Yeah. And you mentioned Tablas Creek in California, which is generating 102% of their energy needs. How are they doing that?

Andrew Neather 00:43:08 They’ve just they’ve got a lot of solar panels, basically.

Jane Masters 00:43:11 Okay.

Andrew Neather 00:43:12 Tablas is really interesting. They were the first vineyard, I think, in the world, certainly in North America, to be certified regenerative. They were already organic and biodynamic. So they do. For instance, you question about the monoculture. When I was there, they were they were sheep grazing. They’re looked after by these flock guardians, which were these big dogs, these mastiffs. And they’re not just farming vines. And on the energy side, yeah, they’re there’s this big solar array, you know, they’re really improving. You can do it.

Andrew Neather 00:43:44 But I mean it it’s interesting talking to them, talking to Jason Haas, the co-owner, who just said, you know, you’re always looking for basically where you can improve. What can we do better on. So for instance, I was discussing with him the fact that effectively their emissions from tourism. So tourists driving to go there. Obviously they have a big cellar door operation. You need to include those carbon emissions and all these people driving to you in your calculations. And they were pondering how to deal with that.

Jane Masters 00:44:15 Just to add to the solar point, you asked earlier, you know, what was one of the most interesting facts that we sort of came across whilst writing this book? Well, this isn’t a fact that actually came across writing the book. It was something that I came across much earlier, which just really struck me. And it is the sun gives enough power in less than an hour to provide the total energy needs of the world for a year.

Jane Masters 00:44:43 Wow.

Jane Masters 00:44:44 And that is written by a guy called Chris Goodall who wrote a book called The Switch, which was inspirational for me.

Jane Masters 00:44:52 So I read that quite a long time ago now, but just showed the impact that actually switching to renewable energies would have and actually how achievable it can be.

Andrew Neather 00:45:07 It’s also, as we should say, it’s doable in less sunny places than California. So like I was talking just recently to several English wine producers about who’ve put in solar power and, and are managing to generate maybe half of their power that way, which you know how cloudy it is here a lot of the time.

Jane Masters 00:45:25 That’s true.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:26 Yeah. No. That’s fabulous. Well, there you have it. I hope you enjoyed our chat.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:35 With.

Natalie MacLean 00:45:35 Andy and Jane. Here are my takeaways. Number one, how can the wine world tackle climate change? And why is choosing sustainable and biodynamic wines not enough? As Jane explains, there’s no doubt that climate change is happening, and she’s not suggesting that the wine trade or consumers on their own, or even producing sustainable wine is going to solve all the world’s problems, though sometimes I personally feel after 3 or 4 glasses I could solve world peace.

Natalie MacLean 00:46:04 Anyway, it’s going to be a collective effort. Andy and Jane wanted to inspire people to see some of the great things that are being done by certain people and companies and wineries around the world. And, he adds, there aren’t any easy solutions, and we’re often led to believe with consumer capitalism that you can buy a certain product or avoid a certain type of packaging and that everything will be okay. And it’s really much more complicated than that, because we’re talking about the complexity of global supply chains and all sorts of industrial processes associated with packaging and other aspects. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t make some sensible choices as a consumer. Number two, what happens when vineyards embrace biodiversity with cover crops, insects and wildlife? Jane says that in some of the classic wine regions, wine is a monoculture. You walk out and all you see are vines and little else. And if you went back 20 years, the vines were probably all neat, prim and trimmed. There were no weeds, no cover crops.

Natalie MacLean 00:47:04 But even in some of these classic areas, now, they’re starting to sow cover crops between the vineyard rows. And the great thing about vines is that, like fruit trees or orchards, they live for a long time, decades, sometimes even longer. The roots go very far down into the ground. And by creating this biodiversity with the larger mammals and birds, it’s all part of the same system. So it starts also to build the insects. And that, of course, leads to more life in the soil. It becomes a natural, organic, circular economy and environment. And this also helps to protect the vines against disease. Some of those insects keep predators of vines at bay, so it becomes a much more resilient ecosystem and also retains more carbon within it. And number three, how are wine producers in South Africa, rebuilding natural ecosystems around their vineyards. So, as Andy explains, you can set up wildlife corridors if you’ve got cultivated land. It prevents animals, especially prey animals, from crossing because they just don’t want to go in those areas, particularly in South Africa on the Western Cape.

Natalie MacLean 00:48:15 The natural vegetation before it was cultivated was called fynbos, and it’s a mediterranean sort of scrub or shrub. Johan Reinecke is a biodynamic producer in Stellenbosch, and he rewild bits of his property to join together these islands into corridors. At Dillingham estate the animals came back quickly. Porcupines, Cape leopards, which are highly endangered. And it also again helps with the balance of the land because you need predators, particularly birds and raptors, because they deal with the rodents and snakes and it’s restoring the natural balance of the land. If you missed episode 258, go back and take a listen. I chat about why Sustainable winegrowing matters with Anna Brattain of the non-profit organization Napa Green. I’ll share a short clip with you now to whet your appetite.

Anna Brittain 00:49:10 On average, 40 to 50% of emissions from a winery operation, including the vineyard, come from packaging and distribution alone. So boxes, what’s in the boxes and then getting the glass to your facility and shipping that out to your distributors, your retailers, your customers, your wine clubs.

Anna Brittain 00:49:29 That is often half of the entire emissions footprint of a winery. So we work with our members really closely on green packaging. They’re not allowed to use styrofoam except for rare exceptions.

Natalie MacLean 00:49:41 Oh that’s good. That’s stuff so annoying. It goes all over when you open the box.

Anna Brittain 00:49:45 It’s everywhere and it can’t be recycled, and it has toxic chemicals in it. It ends up in the landfill, and it sits there for a thousand years, and it can leach into the groundwater. So gotta get rid of the styrofoam.

Natalie MacLean 00:50:01 You won’t want to miss next week when we continue our chat with Andy and Jane. If you liked this episode or learned even one teensy weensy thing from it, please email or tell a friend about the podcast this week, especially someone you know who be interested in learning more about sustainable wines. It’s easy to find the Unreserved Wine Talk podcast. Just tell them to search for that title or my name Natalie MacLean Wine on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, their favorite podcast app, or they can listen to the show on my website at Natalie MacLean.

Natalie MacLean 00:50:32 Com. Email me if you have a tip, question, or if you’d like to win one of five copies of the books I have to give away. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this episode, or if you’ve read my book or are listening to it in the show notes, you’ll find a link to take a free online food and wine pairing class with me, called the Five Wine and Food Pairing Mistakes that can ruin your dinner and how to fix them forever. At Natalie MacLean. And that is all in the show notes and more at Natalie MacLean. Com. 360. Thank you for taking the time to join me here. I hope something great is in your glass this week. Perhaps a wine that is both sustainable and sustains you through an evening.

Natalie MacLean 00:51:22 You don’t want to miss one juicy episode of this podcast, especially the secret full bodied bonus episodes that I don’t announce on social media. So subscribe for free now at Natalie MacLean. Meet me here next week. Cheers!