Vignaioli del Morellino di Scansano

Sustainability, a guiding light for the Tuscan winery

Environmental sustainability is becoming an increasingly popular topic in the wine industry. Climate change and consumers’ high expectation require wineries to focus not just on producing high quality wines, but accomplishing this while safeguarding the environment. This is a challenge that Vignaioli del Morellino di Scansano, a winery founded in 1972 in the heart of Maremma, in the southern part of Tuscany, has taken on with great care. With a good “By focusing on environmental sustainability we take care of our consumers too…” 600 hectares of vineyards and around 150 members, the winery has a prominent role in the local community and in representing the Morellino di Scansano DOCG appellation in Italy and abroad.

Earlier this year they were the first winery in Europe to receive the PEF certificate, the first European certification that measures the Product Environmental Footprint. It was introduced this year in the wine industry to measure the impact a product has on the environment throughout its life cycle, which in the case of wine starts from growing the grapes in the vineyard and continues through the wine making process going as far as bottling, shipping and recycling the packaging.

This, however, is only the latest goal in an ongoing process that has had the winery at work for many years now, so much so that the winery has long included an organic Morellino di Scansano in its range, while using renewable energy and optimising its consumption of important resources such as water. Thanks to these choices, the winery was among the first in Italy to join the VIVA Sustainable Wine project in 2015, launched by the Italian Ministry of the Environment.

Vignaioli del Morellino di Scansano have also been leading a group of wineries in Maremma in a collaboration with academic researchers from Università della Tuscia and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa, experimenting both the use of Internet of Things technologies (through drones and sensors placed among the vines) and ozone. Indeed, thanks to the sanitising effect of ozone, and through IoT monitoring, it has been possible to decrease the environmental impact of wine production. “Our future goal” says winery director Sergio Bucci, “is to extend the strategies adopted in the experimental vineyards to all of the winery’s vineyards”.

But why is environmental sustainability so important for this winery from Maremma? “We believe that by focusing on environmental sustainability we take care of our consumers too, as well as of the members of our winery and of our region and its future,” says president Benedetto Grechi