Hello and welcome to Sustainability Uncorked, the podcast for UK grape growers and wine producers. I'm your host Victoria Rose, owner of Vine Media Relations, and in this first episode of the show, I caught up with Chris Foss to find out more about the Sustainable Wines of Great Britain scheme. Promised links: https://www.winegb.co.uk/home-visitors/sustainable-winegb/ (https://www.winegb.co.uk/home-visitors/sustainable-winegb/) Contact Chris: swgb@winegb.co.uk If you’d like to support the show financially, donations can be made via: https://www.patreon.com/vinemediarelations (https://www.patreon.com/vinemediarelations) Show highlights: [01.27] Where did the Sustainable Wines of Great Britain scheme originate from? [04:04] Who decided what was going to be included in scheme? [04:51] When did the scheme launch and who is involved at the moment? [05:56] What are the actual main aims of the Sustainable Wines of Great Britain scheme and what support is on offer to UK growers and winemakers at the moment? [07:44] Do growers and winemakers have to join the scheme to be sustainable? [09:31] Why the scheme is focused on best practice. [10:57] How can people tailor the scheme principles to best suit their business? [14:17] Who is auditing the scheme members? [15:31] What do growers have to record? [17:41] Why the scheme isn’t a one-size fits all approach. [18:32] Considering the water used per bottle of wine. [20:37] Banned practices and herbicide. [22:52] The most challenging aspects of the scheme. [25:00] What will growers be able to take away from the carbon footprint calculator? [29:27] Is the UK lagging behind the rest of the globe when it comes to wine sustainability? [31:08] Getting the message out to consumers and trade. [34:01] Opportunities for scheme sponsors. [36:22] How growers and winemakers can join the scheme. VR: So just before we dive in for anyone listening who hasn't come across Chris before, he's probably most well-known for setting up the wine division at Plumpton College in Sussex, through which most people in the industry have studied, or at least attended short courses and refresher courses. Chris retired in June last year, and he's now Chair of WineGB’s Sustainable Wines of Great Britain scheme. Chris, we first spoke about the scheme last year at the London Wine Fair and it's been really interesting to follow its development. But for those who haven't come across it before, I just thought you could start by explaining where the idea came from. CF: The scheme really started about 10 years ago when the Minister of Agriculture had some funding through the RDP scheme, and offered that to Plumpton to do some training. And we did a lot of training. We started up for what's called Wine Skills at that time. But we also agreed that we would spend some of this training on sustainability. In order to launch this project, we employed Alistair Nesbitt, who then went on to do a PhD in climate change and is now running Vinescapes, a consultancy business. So we employed him for a couple of years and what he did was review all the sustainability wine schemes that existed throughout the English speaking world, and relative schemes like LEAF and Red Tractor and so on. He went through and mapped all their guidelines, and then found commonalities. Then we gathered growers and winemakers together in England, and it was a little bit like a game of cards. We wrote all the guidelines down, and the growers had to see which ones they would reject and which ones they would accept. So, say for instance, everything on irrigation went into the negative pile, whereas those on protection of bees went on to the positive pile. And we drew up a sort of a blueprint for a sustainable system for the UK based on that. Unfortunately, just before we could launch it, there was an election, the money disappeared and at that point, we had to let Alistair go. So when I retired in June... Support this podcast
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Sep 25 202048 mins
41 mins