Sweet Love for Planet Earth — The Contradiction of Sustainability in UK Cider & Winemaking
I have yet to see a wine marketed as sustainable without fighting the urge to scream.
It’s not that I don’t believe in sustainability—God knows every ounce of it is needed if there’s any chance of reversing the environmental damage humans have caused—it’s just that I don’t believe there is any real omnipresent clarity, or care, as to what the term means. The word itself is enough. No further questions.
There is a difference, to me, between sustainability as a language and sustainability as a process. The former is easy to put into practice, the latter is not—therein lies my issue.
It’s in this casual (mis)use that the convoluted definition of sustainability is becoming diluted, and an implication that there is a single sustainability-fits-all approach.
If only it were that easy.
* * *
Before the meaning of a word is interrogated, it’s important, I think, that where it came from must first be investigated.
While “to sustain” has been in the English language for some time—origins lie with the Latin sustinere, “to hold up”—sustainability defined in terms of development can be traced back to 1987.
It was then that Gro Harlem Brundtland (former Prime Minister of Norway and first head of a sub-organisation of the United Nations named the Brundtland Commission) defined sustainable development as the following:
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Illustrations by Helen Hugh-Jones
This definition was a political response, published in a document entitled “Our Common Future” aiming to address the growing concern between rising economic growth and environmental destruction by aligning the two together.
Over three decades later and sustainability as a precursor for consumption is everywhere, used, not necessarily as a reassessment of our needs, but as a justification for them—exactly as politically intended. Without needing to dissect exactly what the term means, if a product has the word sustainable attached to it then the theory there is no ethical consumption under capitalism has automatically been disproved.
There is no regulating body, no list of criteria to be met, sustainability is a word so broad and so vague that it can be applied to everything—from the toys that come with Happy Meals to eco-friendly packaged wine available via Amazon Prime—with no need for expansion or explanation.
It’s about time that changes.
* * *
When I think of the virtuousness attached to sustainability I think of how I was paid minimum wage to work in a Michelin graded restaurant; it would take me fourteen hours to earn enough to pay for a meal there. I think of the maker I originally interviewed for this piece, who was so rude and obstructive to female and non-binary attendees at an event that their quotes were promptly removed from this article. I think of how every single maker I spoke to during my research—too many to include and for that I can only apologise—gave a completely different answer when I asked what sustainability means, none of them incorrect in doing so.
It was a conversation with Albert Johnson of Ross-on-Wye Cider and Perry Company about machine harvesting that first got me thinking about the gap between sustainability as a word and sustainability as a practice.
You see, hands have a tendency to be idolised in “sustainable” drink making. Hand-picked, hand-sorted, hand made—regardless of the terminology, a product is often deemed a superior quality when the fruit is handled by people over machines. But where hands are called to be present, it must be so in both the making and the payroll.
“We would like to handpick fruit,” Albert tells me. “But the truth is if you hire people to handpick your fruit you end up having to charge a lot more.”
““Hands have a tendency to be idolised in ‘sustainable’ drink making.””
I think sustainability at its core is about finding a balance between people, profit and planet. While there is no question that the planet is in dire need of businesses looking out for it if those businesses cannot pay their staff well enough to sustain a living and in time cannot make enough profit to ensure the longevity of their work then their efforts can only last so long. If the use of machines will help ensure this then, for want of a better phrase, I don’t see that being the end of the world.
“It's also true of handpicking that a lot of it, especially for small makers, is done by themselves, or with friends volunteering. In cases like that, it becomes even more important that we should be prepared to start paying more for our cider” Albert says. “It remains to be seen whether cider makers are willing to eat that margin or consumers would be willing to pay more.”
“Machine harvested fruit is not going to be as clean as handpicked so sulphites are more necessary. You may be making a cider without sulphites, but there are other questions to be asked about the cider.”
When hands are treated as detached entities taken for granted they serve very little. As Albert points out there’s a bigger picture that needs piecing together in order to really understand and appreciate sustainability, one that, as daunting as it may seem, can be tackled question by question.
* * *
While describing something as sustainable is easy, creating a product that is sustainable is not, and comes in so many forms that to use one word to cover those complex intricacies creates more ignorance than good.
Here’s the thing: if sustainable winemaking—in the many forms it can take—was easy, then all wine would automatically be sustainable and the use of sustainability as a differentiating marketing tool would disappear in the process.
Speaking to winemakers across the UK, it was fascinating to see how their definitions of sustainability differed. From urban wineries to regenerative vineyards, the one thing that they all had in common was the time, thought and effort put into looking after both the planet and its people.
“I think for the most part there's a preconceived notion of what sustainability is but really I think the definition of sustainability is so broad and there's a lack of clarity,” Sergio Verrilo of Blackbook Winery tells me.
“A lot of what we do is looking at sustainability as an entity rather than a singularity regarding environmental impacts,” he says. “All-encompassing sustainability really is around community, fair labour—that's our thing.”
“We started working with local [high] schools, bringing people in on apprenticeships, who would otherwise not be exposed to wine or would have this preconceived notion that, you know, wine is a bit pompous and pretentious, which it certainly can be, so it’s trying to break down the barrier.”
The importance of early education in appreciating and understanding sustainability wasn’t something I’d previously considered. But as Simon Day—Head of Production at Kingsthorne Winery and maker for Sixteen Ridges Vineyard and Once Upon A Tree cider—explained to me, education is vital, and for him specifically, that means an awareness of what grows well in the UK climate.
“I would love to see better education and availability of wines of disease-resistant varieties [early ripening, frost resistant Ortega for example.] We have a few already in the UK, and you can all but eliminate the need for fungicide spraying,” Simon tells me.
“Unfortunately, buyers don’t like them because consumers don’t know them, but they can make very good wines, and here is the need for education,” he continues. “The more commonly planted varieties (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Pinot Meunier) are all pretty disease susceptible and require considerable pesticide input, canopy management and labour to reduce disease pressure, and it is very difficult to grow with any financial viability without pesticides in our humid climate.”
If I ask you what sustainability means to you would you have considered high school education as an answer? Or that in order to drink locally—so as to pair with the encouragement to eat seasonally—that may involve seeking alternatives to Pinot Noir? I certainly didn’t before starting this piece. It makes me wonder what else I haven’t considered or remains to be thought of.
* * *
It’s vital that sustainability undergoes detailed anatomy. As seen with the cases of Valentina Passalacqua and, more recently, Krista Scruggs, it’s not acceptable to idolise a winemaker for their environmental efforts if those principles don't translate to their social structures too.
This is where the convoluted manner in which wines are labelled comes into play.
““No wine qualification in this world will cure the distrust I hold for any label depicting a tractor””
Never one to restrict conversations about wine to wine professionals only, I asked Jonathan Nunn, Editor of award-winning food newsletter Vittles, for his thoughts on the pitfalls of a wine label when it comes to matters of sustainability:
“Labels give the customer a very easy binary to choose between: the grapes are either hand-picked or they're not the wine has no added sulphites or it has, the wine is either natural or it's not natural,” Jonathan says. “Although some labels like Fairtrade try to, it's impossible to binarise matters of ethics and pay like this—therefore you start to see this conflation of ‘what is good for the land’ and ‘what is good for the customer’ with ‘what is good for the worker.’”
When so many wines are bought via label imagery and buzzwords—no wine qualification in this world will cure the distrust I hold for any label depicting a tractor—what does this mean for those of us that occupy the middle ground between maker and customer?
“When you're selling an agricultural product, as a vendor you have to assume that most people buying from you are not going to ask the complex questions that need to be asked,” Jonathan explains. “So the onus is on you to do the research yourself and pass on as much of that information without sounding too preachy.”
“It's down to the vendor to ask those hard questions about pay and to not peddle simplistic narratives to their customers.”
* * *
This piece took longer to come together than I care to admit to, timid in my fear that once published, this too would become binarised, my words good or bad, my opinions right or wrong.
But it’s in learning to step away from performing perfect consumerism and communicating impenetrable, unchanging opinions on the matter that the meaning of sustainability is slowly beginning to reveal itself.
So here is my current definition of sustainability—one that I hope will evolve as I do:
Sustainability is people being able to afford the product they are being paid to make. Sustainability is thoughtful engagement in our processes. Sustainability is dissection of language and appreciation of labour. Sustainability is understanding why choices may be taken and why they may differ from others. Sustainability is consumer purchases made with thought and curiosity to match the care and consideration taken by those who make our drinks. Sustainability is an epistemology of our supply chains and for considered wine to be a choice all have the luxury to make.
Sustainability is a world, not a word. A world we have no choice but to question and build together.
