What drives your choice of wine? Price? Style? Cultivar? Perhaps it should also be sustainability, which has evolved from a buzzword in the world of wine to shaping the future of viticulture.
In the world of luxury, perception counts. And pouring from a hefty wine bottle sends a subtle signal that this is a wine to be reckoned with. Which is, of course, ridiculous. Glass bottles are simply a largely airtight container – except for the cork – and with wine increasingly shipped worldwide the carbon impact of gratuitously overweight wine bottles is enormous.
To encourage the wine industry to up its game and reduce bottle weights, in 2023, leading retailers across Europe and the United States signed the Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR) Bottle Weight Accord, reducing the average weight of an empty 750ml wine bottle from the current average of 550g to below 420g by the end of 2026. The SWR reckons that this 25 percent drop will save more than 23 million kilograms of carbon per year. These five wineries are doing their part for South Africa.
The weight is over
Locally, Radford Dale is leading the charge, with their Winery of Good Hope range now available in bottles that clock in at a featherweight 410g. Along with using less glass, all labels, stickers, and cardboard boxes are fully recyclable. Biodynamic Stellenbosch estate Reyneke Wines is also making a bold move, slashing its bottle weight by 20 percent from the 2025 vintage, made with 40 percent recycled glass. Now we consumers need to play our part by not falling for the allure of the hefty bottle.
Buy: The Winery of Good Hope Bush Vine Chenin Blanc, which includes grapes from a low-yielding 50-year-old vineyard.
Going organic
For years organic wine producers sat on the fringes of the global wine industry, but the past decade has seen a groundswell of consumer support for organic – and biodynamic – wines that take planet-friendly farming seriously. Global sales of organic wines grew 145 percent in the decade to 2022, and although it remains a niche in the local industry, a bellwether of the trend is the formation this year of Organic Wines South Africa. The new organisation brings together 11 certified organic producers – the likes of Avondale, Starke-Condé, Org de Rac and more – to elevate the calibre and reputation of organic wines from South Africa and support other producers in the journey of organic conversion.
Sip the: multi-faceted Cyclus white blend from Avondale Wines. Their motto is Terra Est Vita meaning ‘Soil is Life’.
Supporting Conservation Champions
Vineyards are inescapably a monoculture, turning diverse hillsides into a carpet of – admittedly attractive – trellised vines. But a growing number of wineries balance their intensive viticulture with concerted investment in preserving indigenous vegetation, creating natural corridors for predators and pollinators, removing invasive trees, and fostering healthy soils through the use of cover crops. Driving this behaviour is the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Conservation Champions programme, which has seen 60 producers across the Cape Winelands, commit to combining sustainable viticulture with care for the environment.
Try the: walking trails on Bouchard Finlayson Estate in the Hemel-en-Aarde valley, which has more land under conservation than cultivation.
“The World Wide Fund for Nature’s Conservation Champions programme has seen 60 producers across the Cape Winelands commit to combining sustainable viticulture”
Pour me some empowerment
Economic empowerment and the redistribution of entrenched wealth is another hot topic in the Winelands, but a handful of forward-thinking wineries are taking bold steps to ensure workers share in the – literal – fruits of their labours. By leveraging the farming, cellar and marketing smarts of the larger estate, empowerment projects have a much better trajectory for success. Kleine Zalze in Stellenbosch has Visio Vintners, Diemersfontein’s Thokozani combines wine with property investment, while the Bosman Adama agribusiness blends an ownership model with deep-rooted social improvement programmes.
Spend on: wineries that actively work towards economic empowerment. Try the Bosman Adama White blend of Chenin Blanc and Grenache Blanc.
What about the workers?
Labour relations have long been a contentious issue in the Cape Winelands, but organisations like the Wine and Agricultural Ethical Trading Association (WIETA) advocate for an improved standard of living for farm workers across the industry. Providing toolkits for employers and advocacy for workers – on topics as diverse as housing, child labour, working hours and safety – WIETA members sign up for a code of conduct of social accountability.
Look for: wines from WIETA members who adhere to fair labour practices across the supply chain. The Bateleur Chardonnay from A-rated DeWetshof is superb.
