We may surmise that the Iran war’s impact on the wine trade is unlikely to be uppermost in the minds of Tehran or Dubai residents. Nevertheless, this economic shock will be real. Inflation soared and glass prices skyrocketed when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022; worse will likely happen now that Gulf oil and gas are choked off. The larger point is that the wine industry has become dependent on unsustainable use of fossil fuels: for energy, for shipping, for the petrochemical feedstocks used in most synthetic pesticides, and for the natural gas used in nitrogen-based fertilisers. At the same time, our use of those fuels is driving climate change.
Together with the other challenges facing the industry, this means that wine now stands at an inflection point.
Consider that wine production globally languishes at a historic low: the OIV confirms that in 2024, the world made less wine than in any year since 1961, thanks largely to climate-change-driven weather problems. Yet even with that low, many wine regions are suffering a crisis of overproduction (California, Australia, Bordeaux) thanks to falling sales and changing consumption patterns. Wine somehow needs to up its offer to consumers.
How did the industry get to this point? We can periodise wine’s development since World War II thus. The first wave was European wine’s recovery in the post-war years, the “trente glorieuses” of economic growth between 1945 and the 1973 oil crisis. A new generation of agrochemicals transformed grape growing, while energy use soared: few French or Spanish vignerons used tractors before 1950, while even fewer used temperature-controlled vinification prior to 1960.
Wine’s second wave, from the 1980s to the first decade of this century, saw it really boom. New techniques and technologies transformed winemaking. Meanwhile new consumers bought these improved wines, as European societies especially grew more affluent. New export markets, including in Asia from the turn of the century, supported huge expansion of vineyards in California, the Antipodes and South America. At the top end, while Robert Parker may have called the 1982 Bordeaux vintage right, that wouldn’t have had much impact without an American upper-middle-class market further enriched by Reaganite wealth redistribution.
Also during the second wave, climate change started to affect wine globally. But nobody really suffered in the latitudes where grapes grow. Indeed it helped places such as Bordeaux, which had often struggled to ripen grapes and suffered several catastrophic vintages in the 1960s and 70s.
That wave came to an end with the 2008 financial crisis and its aftershocks. UK wine consumption peaked around 2008, the US in 2021. In the last decade, new cool-climate plantings (northern Europe, high-altitude/latitude vineyards in Chile and Argentina) haven’t increased net global production. Meanwhile the impact of climate change has become starker. It is regularly bending the typicity of wines out of shape: 2024’s fresher Burgundies are welcome, but those 15% alcohol Côte d’Or reds haven’t gone away. Elsewhere – parts of Chile, Australia, Catalonia – it threatens winemaking’s very viability.
So paradoxically, we’re in a place where on one hand, winemaking standards are higher and the choice available to consumers greater than ever before. Yet at the same time, wine faces its biggest challenges in 80 years in the shape of climate change and faltering demand – and to cap it all now, a new energy crisis and disruption to global trade.
Wine’s third wave will be its adaptation to these conditions. It’s already under way. As Jane Masters MW and I demonstrate in our recent award-winning book, Rooted in Change: The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine, many producers are making the change.
There are dozens of ways wine businesses can cut their carbon footprint and fossil-fuel dependency, but the biggest is packaging. Glass is on average 40% of a bottle of wine’s carbon footprint. I still come across far too many heavy bottles. Indeed most everyday wines don’t need to be in glass bottles at all: the Swedes buy two thirds of their wine in boxes. The Sustainable Wine Roundtable’s Bottle Weight Accord is an important step forward.
Meanwhile renewable energy, mostly solar, is looking a smarter choice than ever. As Tony Milanowski, winemaker at Sussex’s Rathfinny Wine Estate, told me, “Our goal is to be self-sufficient as long as it’s economical. We need to escape from the vagaries of decisions that are not ours.” Organic and biodynamic agriculture have also advanced steadily, up to around a quarter of production now in France and Austria. But the more ambitious approach gaining ground is regenerative viticulture. What makes it especially important is its potential to combat climate change – above all in transforming soils’ water-holding capacity. Roussillon regenerative producer Jean-Marc Lafage says that these techniques add a month to the time before his vines hit water stress during drought.
Regenerative viticulture alone won’t be enough. Many producers are going to have to re-think what grapes they grow and where. I’ve just returned from Australia’s Yarra Valley, where Sarah Fagan, winemaker at Tarrawarra, told me, “In another ten to 15 years’ time, Pinot Noir could be difficult to grow here”; others said the same. So De Bortoli and others are experimenting with Gamay, with different clones, with different vineyard orientations.
Wine’s third wave will also be about the stories we tell consumers. At present, while many people tell pollsters that they want to buy sustainably, it’s debatable how far that actually influences their purchases. But I believe attitudes will shift as we enter a new era of climate emergency and energy shock.
I’m not pretending that the world’s response to climate change and energy security rests solely on our corner of the booze shelves. There are whole industries and governments that must transform their approach. But the wine industry has to do what it can on its patch.
Do we have the imagination and the courage to recalibrate that dramatically? I don’t think we have a choice. And those who do adapt will be best placed to ride out wine’s third wave.
Andy Neather blogs at https://aviewfrommytable.substack.com; photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash