Spreading the message
Dr Richard Smart is a distinguished wine consultant with a long history of warning about the effects of climate change (he was kind enough to contribute to the first article I wrote for Decanter on the subject, in 2005).
But the criticisms of Decanter in his letter in the last edition are neither accurate nor fair. Decanter has been highlighting the issue for years. In the past year, it has published magazine articles exploring the environmental impact of wine production (‘Wine: a sustainable option?’, April 2019); the need for the wine industry to play a leading role in mitigating climate change (‘Climate change: time to act’, July 2019), as well as website articles stressing the need for the wine industry to act (see, for example, ‘Al Gore tells wine industry to act on “global emergency of climate change”, March 2019 and ‘Wine world needs more urgency on climate change, says Torres’, April 2019). I know because I wrote them.
These articles addressed all of the issues that Dr Smart highlights in his letter, including the need for the wine industry to make more effort to curtail CO emissions; the impact of transport and packaging; carbon footprint labelling on bottles for consumers; and the leadership being shown by Miguel Torres in areas such as carbon capture. It is therefore hard to see how he can justify his assertion that Decanter does not concern itself with the issue.
Dr Smart is also quite wrong to suggest that the Porto Climate Change conference was mainly concerned with the effects of climate change on the wine sector. The focus of the conference was explicitly on what the wine industry can do to mitigate climate change.
None of which is to suggest that Dr Smart is wrong to draw attention to the urgency of the issue. Climate change poses a grave threat to the sustainable future of humanity, and the wine industry, for the most part, is currently not doing nearly enough to reduce its carbon footprint and its impact on the natural environment. I agree with Dr Smart that Decanter readers can and should play an important role by supporting the growing number of producers and retailers – still too few – who are leading by example.
Rupert Joy, Devon