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Award-winning South African winery, Journey’s End Vineyards, is proud to announce it is a founding member of the Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR), in which experts and key stakeholders around the world have joined forces to define global sustainability in the wine industry, for the first time.
Journey’s End was the second wine farm in South Africa to convert to solar power Rollo Gabb of Journey’s End
This collaboration of leading experts is united in their determination to create a world where high quality wine is produced, traded, and consumed in ways that conserve and regenerate ecosystems, protect human rights, foster equality and inclusion, and generate a passion for excellence. Together, Journey’s End Vineyards and 40 international partners will accelerate action as sustainability challenges mount.
From drought to flooding, rising temperatures and increased wildfires, and social pressures around workers’ rights and diversity, the wine industry, like any other, has significant issues to tackle to ensure resilience, keep up with customer demands, and contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Building on the many local sustainability standards for wine, the SWR will develop a global reference standard clarifying the wine community’s consensus on exactly what sustainability means and how it is implemented and measured.
The SWR will host working groups to develop best practice and tools on substantive sustainability issues, raise awareness, connect industry actors, and advocate for the wine community globally as a force for good in the world. This will provide clear and credible guidance on how to get vineyards and wineries on the sustainability pathway and help retailers and consumers engage with and understand various eco-labels and claims.
Rollo Gabb, Managing Director of Journey’s End Vineyards says, “Coming together as a group with an aim of defining what sustainability means for the wine industry, in theory and in practice, represents a major step towards safeguarding the future of wine production and consumption, globally. We are proud to be founding members of this highly progressive collaboration.”
Richard Bampfield MW, the roundtable’s initial chair, adds, “We invite everyone in the wine community to join us,” noting that the SWR will be open to general membership in 2022.
For a full list of the SWR founding members, please visit: https://swroundtable.org/join-us/#founders