New Sustainability Code
Wines of Chile has a new sustainability code for the wine sector. Read more about the code here.
Claudia Carbonnel, Agronomist and Manager of the Technological Consortia of the Wines of Chile had this to say about the code:
“We are trying to lead the sector towards sustainable development as one way of producing responsibly, and competing and differentiating our industry by incorporating environmental, economic and social measures which comply with rigorous international standards, to give us a competitive advantage.
We have privileged natural conditions that make Chile agriculturally unique with eco-friendly conditions for grape growing, with natural barriers, such as Andes Mountains; Atacama Desert, Pacific Ocean and we are free of phylloxera and other pests. Therefore we can use zero or low quantities of agrichemicals. And the environmental, social and economic requirements have been adapted to our conditions.
The benefits include maintaining demanding markets, opening opportunities for new markets and improve the quality of Chilean wine. It also allows Chile to improve our image abroad.
A group of scientists with the collaboration of a team of wine makers and viticulturists, developed a series of protocols that describe in detail sustainable management practices allowing for an independent third party certification. Such protocols are based on the principles of traceability from vineyards to bottle, rules and requirements achieved by consensus among the industry but coming from sound scientific and technical information, and the ability of measure progress in order to stimulate a cycle of continuous improvement.
The protocols referred to as The Code, are composed of three chapters, each of them covering different areas of the wine production process. A green chapter covers all viticulture practices including cover crops use, pruning strategies, canopy management techniques, soil/nutrition/irrigation management, diseases and pests management. A red chapter covers all winery and office operations including wine composition, energy efficiency practices, water use and conservation and solid/liquid waste management strategies. Finally, an Orange chapter considers all society issues and includes emissions, relationships with other companies, improvement of people and relationship with neighbors and local community. The system considers a series standardized documents and records that participating companies need to complete and a registry of trained auditors to be chosen by each company to report on their certification status.”
PEOPLE BEHIND WINE 