What a pity Nedbank decided not to follow the French example of drawing attention to organic wines and the threat climate change holds for classic wine styles. Last weekend 713 French men and women stripped off in a vineyard in southern Burgundy “posing naked to save French organic wines” from the threat posed by climate change.

According to Greenpeace who organized the event, global warming is affecting wines which “end up having higher sugar levels and alcohol content while retaining less acids – which means they are unbalanced with an overripe flavour and heavier texture.” The naked vineyard was documented by American artist Spencer Tunick, who in spite of his name, is a man with a fetish for taking nude photos to make a point.

Nedbank have gone the more conventional route and are sponsoring two competitions around organic wine with WINE magazine. As Lourens van Schoor explained, the Nedbank Organic Challenge consists of two competitions running in parallel: an organic wine quality competition and a Best Environmental Practice Award.

His company Enviroscientific is the audit body for IPW (Integrated Production of Wine) and specializes in scientific evaluation/assessments of all aspects relating to environmental sustainability. Enviroscientific also conducts all audits for Woolworths’ new Farming for the Future System that they developed for them (fresh produce, not wine). The company is also reviewing all Biodiversity & Wine Initiative (BWI) applications as scientists and is also sponsoring a farm and winery audit for EnviroWines certfication for the winner of the competition.

Of course organic and environmentally friendly practices in the wine industry are not the same thing. As Lourens comments “this is something people are not aware of in general – organic standards do not provide guarantees relating to pollution control (e.g. no criteria for wastewater disposal, legal or illegal), and in fact, producers are clearing natural vegetation and destroying biodiversity to cultivate virgin soil are just some examples. Organic is a food-safety issue (spraying of chemicals) and yes, this overlaps with the significant environmental aspects, but for the rest… most people would be surprised!”

An opportunity was missed of seeing the Nedbank executive team all together in the all together, although perhaps the bankers could meet organic winemakers halfway and schedule the awards function for Sandy Bay.

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