A big day in the north

In early March, wine merchants from Scotland and northern England joined a round-table discussion on a variety of topics that affect the wider independent trade.

Our coverage, which began in our April edition, concludes here.

Organised in partnership with Hatch Mansfield

How important are sustainability and green issues?

Ray Nicholls, Ripponden Wine Company, West Yorkshire: I think there is an acceptance that producers are doing more. I think everyone assumes that’s what’s happening.

I don’t get asked a huge amount of questions like “tell me about this wine and what that producer’s doing to reduce their carbon emissions”.

I also don’t think our customers are probably as aware of alternative formats as a sustainable option. I’m seeing stuff that’s coming through in cardboard bottles and cans and all that sort of stuff. People aren’t coming to me and asking for them because I don’t think they know about them yet.

Douglas Wood, WoodWinters: We don’t have a lot of people coming into the shop asking which wine is more sustainable, but we advertise it and talk about it. One or two large customers have asked us to fill out a survey about how much solar we have, and what our carbon footprint is. All our sales reps have electric cars, and we’ve got one electric van. We’ve got solar, and we recycle plastic and glass.

Mark Stephenson, Grape & Grain, Morpeth: I’ve got a couple of customers who will only buy European wines as they believe they have a smaller carbon footprint. But I think if you were to really break down the numbers, that might be a theory that could be argued against. I hear more from my customers about organics rather than the sustainability issue.

Graham Holter, The Wine Merchant: As a retailer, how much can you realistically do to be greener? Presumably you can’t start harvesting rainwater.

Mark Stephenson: You know, we have so many rules and regulations in the town about how our shops have to look. We can’t have lights or shutters on the outside, so any modification to create a system that would allow us to collect water … there’s not a lot for us to work with.

Richard Meadows, Great Grog, Edinburgh: I think there is more demand for lighter glass and stuff. We ship bladders from Alicante and the wines are pretty good. I drink them. They are supposed to be much more CO2 friendly but nobody seems to have the figures.

Andrew Lundy, Vino, Edinburgh: I have a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc that’s bottled in Europe. Maybe four or five years ago I would have had a negative reaction to that – people want to think the winemaker lovingly placed it in the bottle and kissed the lid. But now I think they are more open to the environmental benefits. Maybe it’s down to countries like New Zealand to say, “we’ve done all the carbon neutrality that you’re going to need”.

Richard Meadows: I’d like to see what percentage of Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand is UK bottled.

Ben Knollys, Hatch Mansfield: It’s lower than for some countries because none of the big producers are doing it. Once something has left New Zealand, you don’t know what the temperature is going to be when you’re crossing the equator in three weeks’ time or whatever. And there are temperature spikes in the containers for bottles, whereas with bladders, that doesn’t happen as much. So from a quantitative point of view, there’s a very strong argument for it. It’s definitely greener, there’s no doubt about it.

Obviously, there are complications and variables. For example, where is the glass being sourced?

Graham Holter: UK bottlers would say that their facilities are often more sterile and more efficient than bottling at source.

Ben Knollys: Yes, and the wine’s fresher. If you’re looking at Sauvignon Blanc, you’ve got an extra 10 weeks’ shelf life.

Archie McDiarmid, Luvians, St Andrews: As a general rule, people care about organics, sustainability and biodynamics very deeply, right up until they see the price tag, and then it becomes an awful lot less important to them.

If the liquid is every bit as good, and the prices work, if one wine is more sustainable than the other then we’ll go for the sustainable wine, so it’s a useful tiebreaker.

You can make a wine vegan, but it doesn’t make it healthier or better. I think a lot of winemakers are finding better fining agents.

Graham Holter: If you hear about a fantastic producer in a region you’re interested in, but they don’t seem to have many sustainability credentials, would it make you less likely to list the wine?

Ray Nicholls: It wouldn’t stop me buying the wine if it was good.

Douglas Wood: I’m more interested in biodynamics. I believe in the science behind the holistic side of it for sure. But the palate should lead.

Ben Knollys: When we’re working on our tastings, we try to pick dates that are fruit days or flower days. We’ve got biodynamic producers; you can see the health of their vineyards.

Richard Meadows: They’re crackers. They’re just OCD. That’s why they’ve got good vineyards.

Ben Knollys: In 1996 Louis Jadot started biodynamic farming in Moulin-à-Vent and within about three years the life cycle of the vines changed dramatically. They had a year when the weather was all out of kilter and a neighbouring vineyard was using lots of sprays and their vines couldn’t cope. But Louis Jadot’s vines did really well.

Archie McDiarmid: Biodynamics is a really excellent soil management system.

Richard Meadows: The thing about biodynamic growers, they are more obsessive. You said it’s the attention to detail. They’re just more OCD, that’s the thing. I say let’s leave it at organic.

Ben Knollys: Organics is a whole other thing, though. There are arguments about the extra runs of the tractor through the fields creating soil compaction.

Richard Meadows: Soil compaction is a big, big issue. I studied forestry. I almost got a degree once.

Ben Knollys: What do you think about wine in keg – say, 25-litre KeyKeg?

Andrew Lundy: It’s got to be good wine and a good price. I don’t want this strange, weird wine that a bar in London has on a back bar tap. I want the customer to come in and walk out with a nice bottle of wine.

It’s something the DRS [Deposit Return Scheme] may bring up more. The guy from Circularity Scotland didn’t have an understanding of what a growler was, which is frightening when you’re thinking about what he’s doing as a job.

We’ve tried it with beer in the past and the machines that we had were originally designed for Prosecco.

You’ve got to keep it in the right condition and when you’re in an old tenement building, it’s not very forgiving.

Richard Meadows: We gave up on it as well.

Andrew Lundy: The idea is great, but people want choice. When they come to you, they want to be able to choose from 200 beers. You can’t do that if you’ve still got the same beer that you had last week, and to get the volume through is really tough. Refilling wine bottles in shop, though …

Richard Meadows: We’re doing that. It’s just the 3-litre box and it’s cheaper. Customers come in to refill. We specify their bottle must be clean and resealable and it must be 75cl.

Andrew Lundy: Apparently milk bottle plastic is not included [in DRS], and the thicker kind of cough syrup plastic bottles are not included because it’s the wrong kind of plastic. So if you want to put your wine in milk cartons, then you won’t have any DRS. I’m sure breweries might have a take on it.

Archie McDiarmid: I think we’re genuinely committed to the sustainability side of things in Scotland, but we still don’t have a factory in Scotland for recycling any of this plastic.

Ben Knollys: Presumably the returns element of the DRS plan presents the biggest challenge for you.

Andrew Lundy: I think we’ll probably get an exemption because we don’t have the space and there are various health and safety issues.

We’ve got lots of small supermarkets near us, so we should be fine on that front. But actually does that then become a negative, because all our customers are going to go to Tesco to take the glass back?

Archie McDiarmid: I think DRS is in its current form is dead. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Whether or not that’s just another delay, whether it’s a fundamental rethink ...

But there is definitely a very big part of Scottish Government and the civil service and the people advising them, where there’s some real ideological anti-alcohol campaign.

We haven’t even touched upon the fact that the Scottish Government has declared war on the entire alcohol industry by suggesting that all booze is evil and all Scottish people must be protected from it. And so we can’t advertise it.

If you follow the consultation through, we can’t even donate a bottle of wine to a local raffle, because that would be seen as sponsorship.

Taking it through to its logical conclusion, we’re not allowed to have a shop window. We’re going to have to go full-on Soho sex shop and black the whole thing out.

Andrew Lundy: That might bring customers in.