Seven Sustainable Wines to Save The World

Sustainability is the latest watchword in wine-making with producers not only ditching chemicals to go organic but looking at packaging, water use and treatment of workers

In the wine world, one word is on everyone’s lips: sustainability.

It includes organics, but stretches far wider – to packaging, water use, fair treatment of workers and much, much more.

As South African trailblazer Bruce Jack notes: “The world’s population has finally woken up to the damage we are collectively doing to the planet.”

His latest initiative is the bouncy, juicy, happy Bruce Jack Chenin Blanc in an eco-friendly box (1.5 litres, £13, Tesco – there’s a cinsaut/pinotage red, too): fully recyclable packaging, profit helping good causes, from a company aiming to be carbon neutral next year.

All the excellent wines 2019 vintage) that follow also have sustainability credits. From volcanic Sicily, Tenuta delle Terre Nero organic Etna Rosato (£16.20, Justerini & Brooks) is a layered, complex, very special all-season rosé.

It’s from Etna’s main red variety, as is Cortese Nostru Nerello Mascalese Terre Siciliane IGP (£12, slurp.co.uk, jeroboams.co.uk) – but for this scented, spicy, silky red the vines grow on a newly restored organic estate towards the island’s southern shore.

On the Italian mainland, Castello Banfi is looking to tackle climate crisis with better-adapted vines – hybrids and new clones of Tuscany’s classic sangiovese – in a broader sustainability programme. For now, Banfi La Pettegola vermentino (£15.50, farehamwinecellar.co.uk) is a rounded, rich, flavoursome yet fresh winter white.

Across the world in New Zealand, Smith & Sheth Cru (£19, nzhouseofwine.co.uk) is fine Marlborough sauvignon blanc, full of classic but not OTT aromatics, with half the grapes coming from biodynamic vineyards.

In Australia’s isolated south western corner, Vasse Felix was Margaret River’s founding winery, 53 years ago. Out of disaster – the first harvest was lost to rot and pilfering birds – has come wide acclaim, and tempting, varietally characteristic wines such as Classic semillon/sauvignon blanc (2020) and shiraz (both £12, Tesco), from grapes grown without synthetic herbicides, fungicides, pesticides or fertilisers.