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Vineyards—from Napa Valley to biodynamic wineries in Europe—collectively occupy over 28,500 square miles with the world’s grape-growing vines. This vast network is connected to every system on Earth, in one way or another.
Production standards, farming practices, and the combined biodiversity of all these vineyards intertwine wine and climate change in complex ways.
Grapevines themselves are natural “carbon sinks,” digesting those infamous greenhouse gasses into fresh, clear, and life-affirming oxygen. However, winemaking carries its own set ecological consequences—better or worse.
Explore the tender relationship between wine and climate change, and know your part in forming a regenerative wine industry..
Key Takeaway: Wine and climate change represents a delicate connection that cuts from the biological to environmental, and into the commercial. Bars, wineries, and wine lovers will decide the fate of both through their farming and buying.
Bottle to Biome: How Wine and Climate Change Relate
Sustainable practices (like biodynamic wine and solar-powered vineyards) suggest a definite connection between wine production and climate conditions. In places like Southern California or Paso Robles, careful cultivation is widely practiced.
Sustainable vs. Industrial Wine and Climate Change
Makers of sustainable, organic, and natural wine strive to cut carbon emissions every year. But why? Winemaking—in fixed, farming tradition—is notoriously difficult to promote as eco-friendly or green:
- Fertilizers and farming machines produce huge levels of nitrous oxide and CO2.
- CO2, nitrous oxide, and other gases raise global temperatures and disrupt climates.
- Fossil fuels used in growing, harvesting, and bottling also accelerate climate change.
Typically, the only reason not to promote more sustainable, closed-look viticulture is the higher initial cost. While these strategies are long-term and forward-thinking, they are not yet inexpensive.
Carbon Emissions, Wine, and Climate Change
Comparing the impact of sustainable wine vineyards and traditional, gas-powered cultivation shows drastic differences:
- Sustainable brands using organic compost and solar power emit less than 1 kg of CO2 per bottle.
- Traditional vineyards produce 50 kg of CO2 to bottle the same amount of wine.
Napa Valley wineries also cut carbon impacts by re-planting and re-using resources. Their counterparts and conventional winemakers, on the other hand, contribute more to deforestation than positive effects for the environment where their livelihood is grown.
Likewise, bars and restaurants that buy locally reduce their own negative contribution to wine and climate change. They don’t add quite so much to the calculation of carbon that counts against every moment of inefficiency.
The difference is clear. Establishments that don’t hold the same values for ordering, selling, and wine storage amplify climate change consequences through long-distance truck delivery, fuel-burning freight trains, carbon-making air carriers, single-use shipping materials, vast packaging waste, and so on.
How BinWise Supports Efficiency and Our Environment
Eco-friendly and luxury restaurants recognize BinWise for its ability to streamline wine storage and inventory management—ensuring inventory tracking, ordering, and automations run with fine-tuned precision.
- Wine-Optimized Tracking: BinWise tools track wine bottles with custom tags, fields, and wine-specific parameters, allowing bars and restaurants to manage bar inventory with unparalleled accuracy.
- Automated Reordering: According to wine sales trends and inventory patterns, automations can protect availability and prevent stock-outs for sustainable, high-demand wine.
- Waste/Cost Reduction: Alerts for expiring bottles can prompt staff to promote and pair wines that need to move quickly, helping to lower costs and reduce inventory waste.
Technology like BinWise helps bars and restaurants meet ambitious goals. With stronger, leaner operations, wine bars and full-service restaurants can attract new customers to high-margin offers, winning loyalty with consistent experiences.
Empower your restaurant with sophisticated improvements to inventory practices. Show how you share their values through sustainable sourcing. Capture the customers already waiting to support a more responsible approach in a high-speed industry.
Frequently Asked Questions About Wine and Climate Change
Watch how wineries, bars, and restaurants wonder about the relationship between wine and climate change. Aside from global responsibility, the connection is questioned, marketable, and competitive from the commercial perspective.
Get answers, and find out how your bar or winemaking can sell more wine that changes the world for the better.
How does traditional vs. sustainable wine and climate change compare?
Sustainable wines produced with solar-power, manual labor, and conscientious farming standards protect the ecosystems they depend on to grow, harvest, process, and bottle wine. In contrast, more industrialized and unconcerned vineyards can endanger the land needed to grow their product
Wine and climate change may prove incompatible without more sustainable, eco-friendly wine brands. Regions good for grapevines are sensitive biomes. Slight variations in temperatures—or completely extreme weather—threaten the consistency of wine quality by disrupting delicate wine regions.
Will climate change affect winemaking, availability, or taste?
Definitely. In addition to precipitation and weather patterns, temperatures alone, high or low, change how grapes ripen, shifting their alcohol content, levels of acidity, and ultimately the wine produced.
Some wineries have tried to use more “heat-resistant” grapevines in an effort to balance out the uncertainty in an ever-changing environment.
What can bars, wineries, or restaurants do to help wine and climate change?
To encourage climate stability, bars and restaurants can prefer to buy organic, local, and sustainable wines—exclusively or alternatively. The wine that is bought is the wine that will be made and that establish standard practices in the global wine industry.
Ordering only certified-sustainable wines means bars, restaurants, and customers can uplift eco-friendly wineries simply by changing their wine list. This eventually incentivizes competitors to shift from industrial to sustainable viticulture.
