Climate Talks by Porto Protocol

This discussion will explore regenerative viticulture’s impact on water conservation in this engaging webinar. Learn from experts as they share strategies for saving water in vineyards. Discover innovative approaches that promote sustainable water management while maintaining wine quality. This webinar inspires vineyard owners, winemakers, and enthusiasts to embrace regenerative viticulture for a sustainable future, preserving water resources and ensuring the wine industry’s longevity.

Jessica Villat will host the talk with Elizabeth Whitlow (Regenerative Organic Alliance), Mimi Casteel (Regenerative Viticulture Foundation) and Francisco Font (Associación de Viticultura Regenerativa).

This Climate Talk is a Business Edition, in which we explore how sustainability and profitability can go hand in hand, through the voices and best practices of different representatives of the wine trade, such as importers, distributors, retailers and traders.

Steven Campbell (from Campbell Kind Wines), Melissa Monti Saunders, Master of Wine (from Communal Brands) and Dom de Ville (from The Wine Society) talk about embracing Sustainability, social impact, packaging, and the benefits in the long term.

More information here

Also available on YouTube

Dans le contexte du changement climatique, les cépages jouent un rôle important dans les solutions adaptation. Sachant que selon l’OIV, il existe 6000 cépages et que 13 d’entre eux couvrent le tiers des vignobles, est-il nécessaire de considérer les hybrides? Alors que certains ont la certitude que les hybrides vont jouer un rôle positif dans le futur, d’autres prônent l’exploration des cépages existants et de leurs clones ainsi que des recherches plus avancées sur les porte-greffe.

This Climate Talk was hosted by Mimi Casteel from Hope Well Wine with Claudia Kammann from Hochschule Geisenheim University, Hans-Peter Schmidt from Ithaka Institute and Antoine Lespès from Domaine LAFAGE as guest speakers.

In the ever-expanding ocean of sustainability technologies, you have undoubtedly heard the term biochar. Once relegated to fringe-conversations, biochar has now gained a strong foothold in mainstream academic and applied research, and its use is being studied for everything from climate change mitigation to restoration of soil carbon stores, recovery of soil structure, nutrient cycles and function, soil remediation and detoxification applications, bioenergy production, and more.

Biochar is a specific form of charcoal produced through pyrolysis, which is the conversion of organic materials (biomass) under very high temperatures (greater than 500*C) to black carbon in the absence of oxygen. This form of Carbon is incredibly durable and resistant to decomposition that it can be a long-term storage form of Carbon in soils. The production techniques used in making biochar are commensurate with its potential benefits, and anyone considering biochar should become fluent in the best practices for its production. However, given the almost unfathomable sources of feedstocks, from animal manures to thinning of forest biomes for fire mitigation, to crop residues, biochar is a very exciting topic and its potential benefits in the climate crisis are myriad.

For farmers and land managers, biochar is exciting for a number of reasons, which we will get into deeply today. Its alkalinity can naturally lower acidic soil pH, can help hold soluble positively charged cations like Calcium and Potassium, it can decrease soil bulk density in compacted soils, increase aggregation, aeration, reduce leaching, bind and sequester toxins, and perhaps most importantly (at least to me), biochar has an unparalleled potential in the campaign to rehydrate soils most at risk for desertification. I’ve seen this benefit myself, and I am really looking forward to exploring all of these topics with our panel of experts.

Wine is first and foremost an agricultural product, extremely vulnerable to climate change. Its impact is being experienced by vintners in a variety of ways, as extreme weather events, from droughts to heat waves, from out of season hail to floods, are impacting yields, phenology, wine quality and taste and vines health. Harvests have been lost and new regions have arisen because of it. 

But just as wine production is affected by a changing climate it also contributes to enhance it in a variety of ways, may it be through the choice of packaging, viticulture practices or transportation.  

In this Climate Talk we’ll seek to understand how key education institutions around the world are changing their curriculums to prepare a new breath of future vintners, viticulturists, and wine business managers to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to address the new reality they will encounter and ultimately protect the wine industry.   

GUESTS: 

HOST: 

In this podcast episode, you will listen to Anna Brittain (MD at Napa Green), Marja Aho (Sustainability Manager at Alko Oy) and Polly Hammond (MD and Founder 5Forests) representing 3 different stakeholders with tremendous experience in sustainability in wine to share their expertise and experience with the audience.

This panel was part of the hybrid event at the Instituto Politécnico de Viseu on December 13th, where we presented the results of a study in partnership with 5 wine regions that represent in total 38% of Portugal's wine (volume and area), that resulted into an "immersion" into sustainability in these wine regions.

We spoke and got to know dozens of wine and grape producers, their practices (the sustainable and not-so-sustainable ones), their challenges, and their needs to, ultimately, bring together a characterization of the status of sustainability in these regions and routes to prepare a sustainable development path for the future. We also invite you to see the documentary on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPyUNJPJY2Y

This Climate Talk is a Research Edition, dedicated to the work generated by academia. 

We counted with different experts and researchers from distinct European Universities, who will share the result of different studies, carried out from different perspectives, around the world of vineyard microbes.  We seek to understand how our practices influence the health of our vineyards, the environment, and the wine, exploring the structure, function and management of the vineyard microbiome.  

It took place in the form of a hybrid event, with a live audience of students from UTAD (Trás-os-Mosntes University).  

HOST 

Tom Croghan, The Vineyards ad Dodon / USA 

GUESTS 

Kees Van Leeuwen, Bordeaux University's Institut des Sciences de la Vigne et du Vin / France 

Andreia Figueiredo, Science Faculty of Lisbon University / Portugal 

Alex Gobbi, University of Copenhagen / Denmark

In this Climate Talk, the words reduce, reuse and rethink will be on top of the discussion. We’ll explore why and how a circular approach can provide the way for (wine) companies to establish waste management initiatives for inorganic and organic waste that enable them to close the loop.  Our guests and host will share practical examples to help us understand how to apply circular economy in our daily practices, reduce waste streams in the wine industry and rethink the way we approach the word “waste”.  

HOST: 

Marta Juega / Alliance Wine / UK  

GUESTS:  

Michele Manelli / Salcheto / Tuscany, Italy   

Patricia Berardi / Textura Wines / Serra da Estrela, Portugal   

Stephanie Barger / Zero Waste / True Certification / California, USA

Global wine consumption has not been steady, but the risks associated to climate change have grown significantly. Consequently, so have the number of discerning drinkers looking for evidence of a sustainable approach from their favorite wines.  Retailers are a key stakeholder of the wine value chain. They can impact, even determine, the entire supply chain, from production to bottling choices, from logistics to transportation and, therefore, the climate impact of a wine.  But ultimately, the most effective pressure for change is likely to come from consumers, who are being bombarded with Climate Change reality and calls to action way before reaching a supermarket shelf. This puts retailers in a unique position to educate and influence them in their so-called FMOT (First Moment of Truth), that is, in the 3-5 seconds time span in which they take their ultimate purchasing decision.  This virtual round table is about understanding how the retail industry is playing its role as part of the solution to mitigate the wine industry’s climate impact, influencing consumers and producers alike.  

GUESTS: 

Marcus Ihre / Systembolaget (Sweden) - www.systembolaget.se/  

Carmel Kilcline MW / Marks & Spencer (UK) - www.marksandspencer.com 

Scot Case / National Retail Federation (USA) 

HOST: 

Marta Mendonça / Porto Protocol -  www.portoprotocol.com/

The use of grazing animals in vineyards seems to be of increasing interest and use around the globe. The information available indicates that it is a vineyard management tool that finds compatibility with regenerative, organic, and biodynamic farming practices.  This discussion will focus on the many benefits to this technique of vineyard management.  You will gain information from vineyard managers about their experiences and the reasons for their choice of animals and the how and why they integrated this tool into their vineyards along with results of their decisions.  Finally, we’ll discuss how animals enhance carbon sequestration, soil health and biodiversity and offer reduction in the use of herbicides and chemicals. This is a unique opportunity to learn about and understand this growing trend that has been around for centuries and pose questions to our guests from around the world.  

GUESTS: 

- Kelly Mulville. USA - Paicines Ranch (California) - https://paicinesranch.com/  

- Lígia Santos. Portugal - Caminhos Cruzados (Dão) - https://caminhoscruzados.net/  

- Johan Reyneke. ZA – Reyneke wines (Stellenbosch)-  reynekewines.co.za   

HOST: 

- Tom Croghan. USA – The Vineyard at Dodon (Maryland) -  https://www.dodonvineyards.com/