Carbon neutral next step for organic winery

Updated April 18, 2012 14:26:06

David Bruer is something of a wine industry pioneer, for his commitment to making his wines carbon neutral.

He is pushing for an Australian first, to turn his Langhorne Creek organic winery, south of Adelaide, into a carbon neutral operation.

Mr Bruer already runs Australia's largest dedicated organic winery. Going carbon neutral would make his Temple Bruer label the only winery in Australia to be both organic and carbon neutral.

Audio: Organic winery now seeks carbon neutrality (ABC News)

He has a seven-point plan to reduce carbon emissions and has started with a switch to lightweight bottles.

This has reduced his carbon footprint by 19 per cent and saved 60 tonnes of CO2.

The bottles weigh 360 grams rather than the standard 560 grams, so there is less carbon emitted during production and less fuel used in transport.

Mr Bruer says the consumer response to the lightweight bottles has been largely positive.

"We've done a lot of work on labels. What we did is we shrunk our label by 5.1 per cent and situated it down closer to the bottom of the bottle. You can't really tell which is the lightweight bottle," he said.

"The marketing people were dead against lightweight bottles and we had to come up with something that wouldn't compromise sales. We also put on a label saying clean and green lightweight bottle.

"It's hard to know if it's been a marketing advantage. All we can say is we're making money."

Mr Bruer is a strong supporter of a federal Carbon Farming Initiative, which promotes sequestration through biochar.

Another area he is working on is revegetation.

"We stumbled into revegetation by accident. My wife and I were always greenies so we revegetated before there was any incentive to do so," he said.

Power concerns

Other wine industry veterans are more cautious about carbon issues and farming.

John Angove, managing director of Angove family winemakers in South Australia, agrees the Carbon Farming Initiative could be positive.

But he is concerned about the impact the carbon tax will have on the wine industry.

He says cost increases will be mainly for electricity.

"The industry has been proactive in reducing electricity consumption. The primary area for that is in temperature control, in the production process," he explained.

"The cost will probably have to be passed on to consumers. Australian consumers are supposedly getting some tax benefits that might help, but 60 per cent of production is exported.

"Those consumers aren't getting those same tax offsets, so 60 per cent of our business will be significantly impacted from a competitive point of view."

For his part, Mr Bruer is installing solar generation as a way to reduce the impact of electricity prices.

Topics: environmental-impact, environmental-policy, environment, environmental-technology, pollution, government-and-politics, food-and-cooking, viticulture, agricultural-crops, food-processing, community-and-society, food-and-beverage, langhorne-creek-5255, adelaide-5000, sa, australia

First posted April 18, 2012 14:14:38