As part of its 150th celebrations, The Wine Society today announces the launch of its first Climate & Nature Programme.
Designed to help growers invest in nature-based projects in their vineyards, Wine Society suppliers will be invited to apply for the annually renewed funding to support the implementation or expansion of viticultural or vineyard projects.
2024 is the first year for this annual supplier investment programme, offering £60,000 of funding. The intention is for the business to increase the fund made available in future years.
Whether a new project or building on a pre-existing one, the aim of the programme is to support producers to restore nature and biodiversity in and around their vineyards, capture and store additional carbon dioxide, increase the resilience of their grape production to the changing climate or improve financial sustainability in the long term.
This can be anything from planting trees and hedgerows in and around vineyards, to adopting more regenerative farming practices that promote biodiversity (above and below ground), restore soil health and mitigate carbon emissions.
Alongside The Wine Society’s ongoing efforts to reduce total carbon emissions, the Climate and Nature programme enables the member-owned cooperative to play its part in supporting carbon removal efforts. But rather than paying into an external carbon offsetting scheme, it is instead investing the equivalent funds into its own supply chain (insetting), supporting growers through the annual programme.
According to The Wine Society’s Sustainability Plan and Carbon Reduction Roadmap, it is committed to halving its total Scope 1, 2 & 3 carbon emissions by 2032, on the road to being net zero by 2040.
Dom de Ville, The Wine Society’s Director of Sustainability, said, “Agriculture – including viticulture – is one of the key drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss globally, but also offers one of the greatest opportunities to reverse this and help slow climate change. We want to help our producers survive and thrive in the face of climate change and we believe investing in nature is an important way to achieve this.
“We often hear that growing grapes is becoming harder, in no small part due to the world’s changing climate which brings with it ever more extremes – temperature, droughts and floods, pests and diseases and unpredictability. We want to play our part in helping growers become more resilient, more financially sustainable and part of the solution to the climate and nature challenges we all face.”
Find out more about The Wine Society’s Climate & Nature Programme
The programme is open to all producers who supply wine to The Wine Society. The deadline for applications to join the programme is 20th May 2024.