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March 12, 2024
You have probably heard stories about how climate change is a major threat to some of the most cherished foods and beverages worldwide, such as coffee, chocolate, corn, and of course, wine. Because the grapes used for wine are so sensitive to temperature and other growing conditions, many winemakers are looking for ways to minimize the industry’s impact on the climate. For today’s episode, Dan and Alison speak with Jess Baum, senior director of regenerative impact at Bonterra Organic Estates, here to talk about sustainability in the wine industry. Jess explains why it is important to put a cork in certain winemaking practices (like heavy bottles, for example). We promise you won’t be bord-eaux!
Show notes:
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Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And with me is my co-host, Alison Davis. Hey, Alison, how's it going?
Alison Davis: Hey, Dan, I'm so great, because today we're going to discuss one of probably actually my favorite topic that we've covered so far on this show, and that is wine. Most of our listeners don't know this about me, but I was actually a bartender before working at EESI. So I kind of feel like I've actually spent years preparing for today's episode without even knowing it.
Dan: Yeah, the idea for a wine episode first came up last season, when we talked to author Rob Verchick about his book, “The Octopus in the Parking Garage.” And Rob told us about how he's encountered a lot of folks who first became interested in climate because they realized how it connects with something else that they're already very passionate about.
[Rob Verchick] One of the things I noticed—because I did interview, as you say, a number of folks who were doing meaningful things—and one of the things I realized is that for the most part, they don't start out saying, “I have this dying passion to save the environment, and so I'm going to get involved in climate action.” It doesn't start that way. It starts by, you know, let's say a 13-year-old girl who says, “I'm really interested in scuba diving because I've seen Finding Nemo.” And then when she gets involved in scuba diving, she ends up learning a lot about coral […] Whatever it is, you might be really interested in wine, and be very interested in what varietal wines are doing in various places in the United States or elsewhere. And you don't even have to find a new group, because you might already belong to a group that shares wine or whatever it is. So all you’ve got to do is go to the group you already have, and say, “How is climate change going to affect the thing I care about?” And you go in through that side door. And I think it makes all the difference, because then you already care about something.
Dan: So this example about wine really interested me and I'm sure it resonates with a lot of people in our audience. I admit I love a good glass of wine, Pinot Noir, other varietals. Really enjoy that. It's a fun way to sort of experience tastes from around the world. And I'm an avid reader of The Washington Post's weekly wine column that comes out every Wednesday. That particular columnist Dave McIntyre has some fantastic pieces of late exploring how climate change is affecting the wine industry. And on the flip side of that, how wineries can minimize their environmental impact.
Alison: So wine is first and foremost an agricultural product, and the grapes used to make wine are extremely sensitive to even small shifts in climatic conditions, let alone severe weather or wildfires. So it makes sense then that an increasing number of wineries are taking steps to become more sustainable. Back in December while working on EESI’s coverage of the United Nations Climate Summit COP 28, I was really happy to see that my favorite winemaker Concha y Toro attended the conference as a sponsor of the Chile pavilion. What's more, the company announced a net zero target date of 2040, which is a decade earlier than its original 2050 target. For today's episode, we reached out to Concha y Toro’s US subsidiary Bonterra.
Dan: Here to talk with us about sustainability in the wine industry is Jess Baum, senior director of regenerative impact at Bonterra Organic Estates. Jess leads a broad scope of sustainability initiatives for the California based winery including B Corp certification, which measures social responsibility and environmental performance. Jess also oversaw Bonterra's initial regenerative organic certification in 2021, and is spearheading its forthcoming Climate Action Plan. Before joining Bonterra in 2020, she used her talent for engaging employees and consumers in sustainability as the director of sustainability for Snooze, a Restaurant Group headquartered in Colorado. Jess, welcome to the show.
Jess Baum: Thanks so much. I'm so excited to be here today.
Dan: It's great to have you. I’d like to start by talking a little bit about the impacts of climate change directly and specifically thinking about something like rising temperatures, and what effect that might have on the taste and quality of grapes used for wine. And I'm also curious across your winemaking portfolio, do these effects differ across different varietals?
Jess: That's an excellent question. And I think it's one of the reasons why wine is such an interesting platform to speak about the climate crisis because not only are we farmed on the frontlines of the climate crisis, but historically and culturally wine has always reflected terroir has always reflected the climate and its origin. And so, and it has a vintage, right, so much of so many of the products we purchase. You know, my coffee doesn't say even when I buy from small local roasters and know exactly where my coffee came from I still, I assume I know the year but it's not sold in a vintage and so talking about something that has that annual vintage as well as the terroir piece is interesting. And the reality is that the increasing heat due to the climate crisis does pose a real challenge to Winegrape chemistry. It impacts flavor, aroma and sugar synthesis as temperatures rise above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, especially in warm areas. And we see a lot of that and unprecedented heats that we haven't seen before. This heat can be really detrimental especially to white wine grapes, causing undesirable non-varietals flavors, so changing what we would expect of a white wine grape, which adds to what needs to be done in the vineyard to manage wine resilience. In certain cases, winemakers will intentionally induce great dehydration to achieve certain flavor profiles and higher alcohol content, which we see in some Zinfandel production. But this practice is not suitable for many grapes where acidity and aromatics are crucial for quality. So it is both a craft and a science that happens both in the vineyard and in the cellar, and definitely shows up in the glass.
Dan: Jess, you said something about winemakers and winemaking being on kind of the frontlines of climate and kind of been that way forever. And you all your vineyards are based in, are located in California. And California had kind of a rough go of it lately, there have been terrible, terrible wildfires, terrible, terrible droughts, but also things like atmospheric rivers and crazy flooding. And it's been just a real, real mess out there in terms of weather. And these events are becoming more frequent, they're becoming more severe. They might even be coming a little bit weirder for people who have never heard of these kinds of weather phenomenon before. How does Bonterra prepare for and adapt to these kinds of climate hazards, including ones that maybe you weren't thinking you would have to adapt to?
Jess: It's real, farming on the frontlines of the climate crisis definitely brings these harsh realities to life in very tangible ways. So, so I think there's two pieces, and one of them is that farming on frontlines and seeing the extremes because I think a lot of us are shielded from that somewhat, we're buffered by where we are living in the northeast, previously. There's a buffer there that we see, we see hurricanes that are increasing in intensity. And I actually lived in Northern California many years ago, and it was there were fires, but it wasn't like it is now. Now you know, we have had employees evacuated from their homes, we've had smoke tamp, we've had so many, just like real crises that kind of smack us in the face and affect our people and affect our business. And I think that that really inspires us, not even inspires us, but makes us understand that this is a crisis. This is not just another thing that's happening. And so we prioritize them in the mitigation of the climate crisis through setting science based targets aligned with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which, as we all know is like a weird thing to say today when we know that warming likely won't be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but we're still holding ourselves to that standard. Additionally, our regenerative organic certified practices on the vineyard, such as planting a diverse mix of cover crops, bringing sheep on the land, engaging in low to no tillage, and compost application promote healthy soil which becomes ever more important to adapt to our changing climate. This really promotes resilience right when soil is healthy, it acts as a sponge, which provides a bit of a buffer in the presence of both severe drought and severe flooding, which we currently can can see in a single year sometimes. So that, that increases the resiliency of our of our farms, and keeping the soil covered reduces heat retention. As we know, bare soil attracts and absorbs the sun's radiation, increasing the heat decreasing the life in the soil. And so these practices really, in some ways insulate us a bit more in the face of this changing climate. Additionally, we're replanting, what we are calling the vineyard of the future, as some of our historic vineyards that have been in existence for 40 plus years, reached the end of their life. As we replant, we are redeveloping portions of these vineyards with new vines that are planted on drought tolerant rootstock. And we're using innovative canopy management practices to increase vine resilience. You can imagine the vines that were planted in the 60s in the late 60s and the early 70s in the 80s were not designed, not even designed were not adapted to deal with the conditions that we're facing today. And as our climate changes, so too, does the root stock itself. So the vineyard of the future is not just what we're planting for today, but what we're planting for the challenges we know are to come.
Alison: So last year EESI held a briefing about organic farming and the benefits that it can have for climate and other co-benefits as well. The links that will be in the show notes if anybody's interested to check it out. But I was really interested in doing research for this episode and learning about the Regenerative Organic Alliance. So this is a relatively new organization that's focused on soil health, animal welfare and social fairness. I'm wondering if you could tell us about how Bonterra’s regenerative organic certification is different from a typical organic certification?
Jess: Absolutely. So I'll share first, that the Regenerative Organic Alliance is a nonprofit that was created in partnership between Patagonia, Dr. Bronner’s and the Rodale Institute. And it is different than a typical organic certification in that it sees organic as a baseline. So you must be organic certified to become regenerative organic certified, which I'll say, I'll use the term ROC we will use ROC as an acronym. ROC looks at organic as a baseline and then looks at three pillars atop that, and you mentioned them before soil health, animal welfare and social fairness. So in order to achieve ROC, you must be doing all three of these things. Organic, focuses on what you can't do, ROC focuses on what you must do additionally. So that includes what I've talked about with soil health previously, those regenerative practices of animal integration of diverse cover cropping, compost, application of conservation tillage, and then on the animal welfare side, it's really looking at ensuring that animals have the five freedoms and are humanely raised. And then the social fairness piece, I think, is what really sets ROC apart from other certifications. And it is really designed to ensure social fairness on farm. So in order to become ROC certified, first, we have to be audited. And we have a social fairness audit, that includes not just our office workers, not just our winery workers, but our agricultural workers, including seasonal workers, and farm labor contractors, which is really radical. We open our books to these auditors, we show them what we pay, we show them hours worked. And we're really proud to share that we pay all of our employees, including those seasonal workers, not just minimum wage, but a living wage. And I believe 110% of a living wage is what we're actually paying for our region. So the social fairness piece is a key differentiator. And really, the premise of ROC says, Can you be regenerative if you are not having a regenerative influence on your workers? It's not just about soil health, it's about really all living beings. And my favorite, really concise statement around what ROC is and does comes from the late great Paul Dolan, who is the president of our organization in the early 2000s. And also a driving force behind the Regenerative Organic Alliance. And he said, that regenerative organic agriculture as farming and service of life, and what he meant by that was not just the life of the plants, he also meant the life in the soil, the life of the animals on the land and the lives of those who work on the land.
Alison: That's so fantastic. And since you brought up social fairness, I'm actually going to switch the order of my questions a little bit. I was going to ask this a little bit later. But, um, among Bonterra environmental credentials is its B Corp certification, which includes a score for worker satisfaction. And this is really interesting to me. So could you talk to us a bit about how employee wellbeing fits into your overall vision for sustainability?
Jess: Absolutely, I truly believe that environmental sustainability is a practice focused on preserving humanity. Right? The Earth is not going anywhere. The Earth has survived several mass extinctions and will survive another. Humans not so much. And so, for me, environmentalism in general is really all about finding a future for humanity, given like a lot of us care a lot about trees and plants and birds. I care a lot about salamanders too. And soil microorganisms, like all these things matter and not trying to minimize that, but sustainability is really the practice of finding a robust future for humanity. We cannot do that without incorporating the human element. We can't do that without being focused on and accountable to promoting human well being. And our HR department does a really incredible job of not just making sure that we comply with California standards, which are super high for worker treatment, but really going above and beyond. So worker wellness, as you know, is one of the pillars of B Corp certification. And we answer a whole bunch of questions and look at a whole bunch of things and really live and breathe that in all we do. And that includes not just treating workers well, but also engaging them in purpose, which I think is something that is crucial as we live in this changing planet. And as our workers work on the frontlines of the climate crisis and see the changes to our climate that like normally a human shouldn't be able to see in one lifetime, right? It's really important that they feel connected to a greater purpose. And, and that greater purpose be aiming to solve an existential problem. And so delivering not just on wellness, but also on purpose is crucial.
Alison: Another thing that I was really interested to read about doing research for this is that the bulk of the carbon emissions associated with a bottle of wine actually don't come from the wine but from the bottle. And that's because the process of manufacturing glass requires a lot of heat. How does Bonterra’s bottle weight stack up against the industry average, which is about 500 grams. And how much of an impact does this in-turn have on the transportation emissions?
Jess: It has a huge, huge impact. And I'm happy to say we have not finished our 2023 greenhouse gas assessment yet, that is in process and will be completed in the next month. And we're looking forward to sharing more from that. So what I'll be sharing now comes from our 2022 inventory, which has been completed and verified and kind of set in stone. So in 2022, our average glass bottle weight was 472 grams. So below the industry average, not quite where we'd like it to be. But I'm really proud to say that in 2023, we made some decisions to lightweight a significant portion of our bottle purchases, and that reduction was about 25% for those bottles. And so I don't have the numbers yet for what the average will be in 2024 when that change comes into play, but it will be significant and will significantly reduce emissions, I'm going to share just a few numbers that I pulled our glass and transportation emissions combined account for more than half of our footprints, more than half. And you said something that's important, which is that part of the reason for this is the heat that it takes to create glass. And that is true. However, it's not the whole story. The other piece is the energy and the intensity of mining for the minerals that are included in the creation of glass. So something that I want to talk about for a minute that we don't hear a lot about, we talk so much about lightweighting. And it's so important. And I don't want to minimize that. And I do want to speak to the transportation piece. The thing that shocked me, when we did our initial greenhouse gas assessment was the impact on carbon reduction of increasing recycled content of glass and removing that piece of the extraction of the materials needed to create glass. I'm proud to say that the industry average for recycled content of glass is 23%. And ours in 2022 is at 31%. And that really does have a significant impact in looking at, at emission factors. It's, it's quite incredible. Speaking to transportation, and I'm going to share some numbers around the lightweighting decisions that were made this past year that have not yet gone into effect. And I'm going to share about the carbon intensity rather than, than the weight of the bottles themselves. Because I don't know if I'm allowed to do that yet. So I'm gonna share about the carbon intensity and share that, that reducing the emissions of one of our core bottles by 25% led to a reduction of emissions equivalent to our entire scope one emissions. So basically just by making that one choice, we reduced our emissions enough to account for all of the farm equipment, all of the natural gas, all of the propane used in our manufacturing and agricultural facility, which as you can imagine, is not it's not like an office building. It's not insignificant. And that came in part from the transportation reductions. About a third of it came from the transportation reduction, like the reduction in glass weight in transportation, and two thirds came from creation of the glass itself. Something that this is not accounting for, that we, we have to build in the added complexity into our modeling, but haven't yet is the fact that when we have lighter glass, we can put more pallets on a truck. So this is just looking at weight times distance, is really what that's looking at here, we're not looking at the number of trucks, and we're in a rural area. So as you can imagine, if we reduce the trucks that need to come to us by even 10%, that's significant. And that's even adding significance atop, just transporting the weight of glass alone. And so one of the benefits of greenhouse gas assessments and modeling, it's a lot of work. But it really gets you to a place where you can see things in black and white. And I want to be clear that carbon is not everything. I don't want to fall into a carbon tunnel vision situation where we're not considering biodiversity and effect on humans and water and all of these added complexities. But it is interesting to be able to say, wow, when we make this one change, look at the huge impact. And I think that the recycled content is that, and and the transportation were big unlocks for us. And now we can kind of improve our modeling to account for more pallets per truck.
Dan: It is amazing how noticeable it is, when you start paying attention to that sort of thing. Speaking of paying attention to that sort of thing here in DC, we're paying a lot of attention to sustainable agriculture, because we're waiting for Farm Bill to start moving. And because we're tracking USDA and other investments in rural areas that were provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, and I'm curious, from where you sit at Bonterra, how have you been thinking about these federal investments? And are there any that you're especially excited about or that you've been able to take advantage of. And if you had maybe one or two suggestions for folks here in DC to consider, what are a couple ideas for things that we could do that would make it easier for more winemakers to follow in your footsteps and embrace more sustainability.
Jess: I want to circle back for just a moment on the lightweighting conversation because of something that you just said, which is that you, you are paying attention to the weight of wine bottles. We, I think are seeing a real a, real shift in in consumer perception and also around industry trends. It's becoming an industry wide kind of sea change to move towards lightweighting. And it's gotten to the point where we're expecting retailers to set limits on what they will and won't carry. And that's really needed. Because for a long time, there was this weird consumer perception that the heavier the bottle, the better the wine, that bottle weight had to be heavy to a certain degree to be considered a good value. And so there was a lot of fear for marketers, I think of lightweighting harming sales. And we're finally in a place where we see and understand that that's actually the opposite of what's true. And that lightweighting is good for sales and consumers have woken up and are paying attention and so to anyone listening. Next time you're shopping for wine, I challenge you to do some some bottle weight comparisons. And there's some interesting things happening and even in Canada, there are laws around bottle weight for wine below a certain price. So the bottles that we send to Canada are much lighter, because that's what's required and hopefully we get to a place where we're doing that here and elsewhere.
Dan: I'm going to see you're circling back with my own circle back because one other thing that I've thought a lot about because I've kind of been made aware of it, there's a there's a tradition of winemaking and a lot of things in agriculture if it was done one way and it worked, well, continue doing it. And, and I've also thought a lot about, you know, other aspects like the use of cork, use of synthetic materials, the screw tops, which I actually really appreciate screw tops, especially if you're going somewhere where you're allowed to have wine, like at a concert or something. But then also, the little piece of foil at the top, which I don't, I guess it's I guess it needs to be that not all bottles have it. But like when you start adding the stuff up, I mean, if it doesn't impact the quality and the tastes, which is kind of the most important thing. Like it is interesting that sustainability is driving sort of this reevaluation of what is sort of identified with quality, and, and pace and tradition. So it is interesting to see, like, companies like yours, reevaluate these kinds of things. And as a consumer, if it's better, or if it's the same, great, why not?
Jess: I couldn't agree more. And I'll say that up Ontario, we really believe that any climate action plan, any climate action whatsoever, is incomplete without looking at the advocacy piece and advocating for systems change. For instance, we are not going to be able to single handedly electrify freight, right. Like that's not within our operational control. There are things outside of our operational control that have a huge impact on our carbon footprint. And in order to, to fight for those things, we have to lobby and unite and advocate for them. Right, to change the systems that we're part of in order to create a more sustainable future for all of us. And so we we do unite with other like minded brands and spend time on the Hill. In fact, my two colleagues, Meredith Soden, who leads our communications and Joseph Brinkley, our director of regenerative organic agriculture, will be headed to DC next week, to lobby and advocate with with lawmakers on on climate action, and asking for investments in in the country that accelerate the just transition to an advanced clean economy. And we're really excited to share more on that next week as those conversations unfold. We have not benefited from the Inflation Reduction Act, but we have benefited from California specific legislation. In one instance, we were able to purchase two e-tractors that are basically at half price at a price that put them at the same price of a conventional tractor. And I think that is so important. And the Inflation Reduction Act, I see it as providing equity, right, like creating a more equitable system where we have to make it so that it makes financial sense, as well as ethical sense to decarbonize, we can't be expecting farmers of all people to be able to invest heavily in things that cost more, especially when the market isn't allowing for an increase in cost of goods sold right like that something has to give. And so I think the Inflation Reduction Act and similar legislation that's happening California, has the effect of kind of like elevating that platform to allow for some changes to happen. We do advocacy work in California. And so my colleague, Meredith actually went to Sacramento a few months back to advocate for the passing of State Bill 251, and 263. And these were, you probably heard these were a national news. They were California's groundbreaking climate risk disclosure bill and emissions disclosure bill. And they passed, we're really psyched to say that passed in 2023. And we really advocated for these from the standpoint that disclosing emissions is doable for a medium sized agricultural business. So like, bigger businesses should have to do it. And this, and also bigger businesses putting effort, and putting effort into doing that will pave the way for smaller businesses. I mean, just in the 10 ish years that I've been doing this work, what we can measure has gotten, what we can measure what we have access to measuring, I should say, because like, you could always do a Scope three inventory if you had 100 grand to pay for it. But today, this information is more accessible and the more larger businesses get on board, the more accessible the tools become and the better the methodology becomes. We hoped that the passage we believe that the passage of these bills will set the tone for other states to follow. As far as the Farm Bill, we read really advocate for organic priorities for research for technical assistance for an organic transition and also for crop insurance to support farmers and take some of the burden off of them, we have to make it so that we're giving some room for risk taking, for changes. We also, we find that legislators truly value hearing from businesses and really value hearing their real world experiences and how they can be supported. And if we're not showing up and other businesses are not showing up, then others may show up to advocate for the opposite, right. And so I think as an individual, just like voting is important. As a business, advocating and lobbying for versus static change is critical.
Dan: Well, Jess, it was really, really great to talk with you. And Alison, I know we really appreciate your enthusiasm for all of this. And you know, as customers, very thankful for all of the effort that you all put into making a good quality product that is less costly and carbon intensive to transport all the way from California, to the District of Columbia. So thanks so much, Jess. Well, Alison, that was a really fun conversation, it was very cool to hear from Jess about her enthusiasm for her work, but also the really interesting commitments that Bonterra is making, and also how they're taking steps to implement those commitments. You know, I mean, it's really, this is a great example of something that our board chair talks a lot about, which is sort of the role of business in the climate, climate solutions debate. And, you know, not only is Bonterra stepping up to make its opinions known about sort of its version of or its vision for the future, it's also taking really concrete and steps, it's exposing itself to accountability for those steps. And it's very clear that it's making a difference for its employees, for those who live in the communities where Bonterra’s vineyards are located. And also making a difference for those of us who, you know, are happy Bonterra customers. So really appreciate just his willingness to join us on the podcast and, you know, cheers to her. It was great.
Alison: Yeah, I think it's clear that climate responsibility is a very popular business model. And unfortunately, that's because we see a lot of greenwashing with pretty big companies. So it was so nice to talk to someone from a company where you can tell that they really believe in sustainability and the way that they're incorporating it into their product. And I could definitely tell that, especially from the way that Jess was talking about how the impacts of climate change are harsh on the farmers, harsh on the grapes, but also just as harsh on the people on the people who work for them, especially the farmers. And so it's really cool that the company is able to take that hardship and turn it into inspiration for their mitigation efforts, which are really substantial. I was very impressed with a lot of the projects that she was talking about. And in terms of the policy piece, I was reminded of our conversation that we had two episodes ago with Nora Kyassa, and she was talking about California’s strong policy regarding clean transportation. So it's really nice to highlight some of the policies coming out of California that maybe our federal policymakers could take notice of in something like the Farm Bill. If you want to learn more about EESI work on sustainable agriculture, or to check out our Farm Bill resources, head to our website at eesi.org. Also, follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time!
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