Beyond Food Miles: The Environmental Impact of New Zealand Wine
How sustainable is a bottle of wine that has travelled halfway around the world? Research from New Zealand Winegrowers shows why distance alone tells only part of the story, and why the way wine is grown, made and packaged matters just as much.
For a winery in Hawke’s Bay, at the eastern edge of New Zealand, distance has always been part of our story. Te Mata Estate wines have travelled to tables around the world for generations, carrying with them the character of our vineyards, our climate and our winemaking traditions.
But as consumers become more aware of the environmental impact of the products they purchase, an important question arises: how sustainable is a wine that has travelled thousands of kilometres to reach them?
Research highlighted by New Zealand Winegrowers suggests the answer is considerably more interesting than the distance on a map might indicate.
Why Food Miles Don’t Tell the Whole Story
The concept of food miles is familiar. The further a product travels from its place of origin to the consumer, the greater its presumed environmental impact. It’s a simple idea, but one that overlooks much of what determines a product’s actual carbon footprint.
A more complete approach, known as a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), considers the environmental impact of a product from beginning to end. For wine, this includes growing grapes, making wine, manufacturing bottles, packaging, transport and eventual disposal or recycling.
Research cited by New Zealand Winegrowers found that, in a studied example of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc exported internationally, shipping accounted for just 22% of the wine’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
Production accounted for approximately 37%, while packaging contributed another 35%.
In other words, around three-quarters of the emissions in this example came from activities other than international shipping.
This is an important distinction. While the distance a wine travels certainly matters, the way it is grown, made and packaged can have a much greater influence on its overall environmental impact.
Why Shipping Wine from New Zealand Can Be More Efficient Than Expected
New Zealand is geographically remote from many of its major wine markets. Yet distance is not the only factor determining the emissions associated with transport.
How a product travels is equally important. Most New Zealand wine exports are transported by sea. Modern container shipping can move large quantities of goods with relatively low emissions per tonne of cargo compared with road or air freight.
According to research highlighted by New Zealand Winegrowers, transporting goods by truck can generate approximately ten times the emissions per tonne-mile of container shipping. This means that a bottle of wine shipped thousands of kilometres by sea can, in some circumstances, have lower transport emissions than a bottle travelling a much shorter distance by road.
New Zealand also benefits from a high proportion of renewable electricity, helping to reduce the emissions associated with energy-intensive activities such as winemaking and packaging. None of this means that international transport is without environmental cost. Rather, it shows why the full journey of a product, including how it is produced and how it travels, is more useful than distance alone.
Why Wine Packaging Matters So Much
One of the most interesting findings in the New Zealand Winegrowers research is the importance of packaging. In the Sauvignon Blanc example, packaging was responsible for approximately 35% of the wine’s total greenhouse gas emissions, substantially more than international shipping.
Glass bottles are a major contributor because producing glass requires considerable energy. The weight of a bottle also affects the energy required to transport it. This makes lighter glass bottles, recycled materials and more efficient packaging important opportunities for the wine industry to reduce emissions.
At Te Mata Estate, we’ve used recycled-glass packaging supplied by O-I for more than 15 years and have continued to introduce lighter bottles across our range. These improvements reduce the amount of glass required and the weight of wine transported to our international markets.
As we’ve explored in our earlier article on lighter glass bottles, even relatively small changes in packaging can have a meaningful effect when applied across an entire production and distribution system.
The Wider Sustainability Advantage of New Zealand Wine
New Zealand’s wine industry has developed a strong international reputation for sustainability, supported by the Sustainable Winegrowing New Zealand (SWNZ) programme. Today, approximately 98% of New Zealand’s producing vineyard area is certified under SWNZ, while around 90% of wine is produced in certified facilities.
The programme considers six important areas: climate change, water, waste, soil, plant protection and people. This broader approach is important because sustainability involves much more than carbon emissions alone. Healthy soils, responsible water use, biodiversity and the wellbeing of vineyard and winery workers are all essential to the long-term future of winegrowing.
New Zealand’s relatively temperate climate and high proportion of renewable electricity also offer advantages, although environmental performance varies between individual vineyards, wineries and production methods.
The New Zealand wine industry has established a roadmap towards net-zero emissions by 2050, with improvements in energy use, packaging, transport and vineyard management all playing a role.
Sustainability at Te Mata Estate
At Te Mata Estate, these questions are especially important. Our vineyards have been producing wine in Hawke’s Bay since 1896, and caring for the land is inseparable from our responsibility to future generations.
Our approach combines the preservation of our vineyards with practical improvements in how we grow, make and package our wines. Through our partnership with Kea Energy, 100% of the electricity we use comes from renewable New Zealand energy sources. This covers our winery, cellar, bottling operations and vineyards.
Alongside our work with lighter and recycled-glass bottles, we continue to develop our vineyard practices through precision viticulture, careful soil management and companion planting. These initiatives are part of an ongoing effort to reduce our environmental impact while maintaining the quality and character of our wines.
The research on food miles reinforces the value of this approach. Environmental responsibility is not determined by any single decision or measurement. It comes from improvements made across the entire life of a wine.
From Hawke’s Bay to the World
There is something remarkable about the journey of a bottle of New Zealand wine. Grapes grown in a particular place, shaped by a particular season and transformed through careful winemaking, can be enjoyed thousands of kilometres from their origin.
That journey has an environmental cost, and reducing it remains important. But understanding the true impact of a bottle requires us to look beyond the distance it travels and consider everything that went into making it. For Te Mata Estate, that means continuing to improve how we use energy, manage our vineyards and package our wines, while sharing the distinctive character of Hawke’s Bay with the world.
Great wine begins with a sense of place. Its future depends on how carefully we look after that place.
Further Reading
