And the Porto Protocol’s new guide to environmentally friendly wine packaging, pictured above right.
Before I get to global news, I have a few pieces of site news – as of 26 December our team at JancisRobinson.com has begun a re-release of a series of BBC TV programmes filmed in 1992 and 1998 called Vintners’ Tales. In these videos Jancis conducts 10-minute interviews with notable wine personalities. The first two, featuring the late Harry Waugh and Bill Baker, are now up on YouTube.
Next, Julia published an article on the region of Guria in western Georgia yesterday and, to my knowledge, it is the most comprehensive English-language article on Gurian wine in existence. I highly recommend you check it out.
On to the news!
Positive forecast for NOLO beverages
According to a report published by the IWSR, a global drinks data collector, on 18 December, NOLO (no- and low-alcohol) beverages in 10 key markets (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, South Africa, UK, US) are expected to experience 4% compound annual growth (CAGR) by 2028, with the majority of that growth in the no-alcohol segment – forecast at 7% CAGR. New consumers of NOLOs tend to belong to Gen Z and Millennial cohorts and are decreasing their purchases of alcoholic beverages.
Because January tends to be especially big for sales of non-alcoholic beverages, I would like to point out that my colleague Tamlyn Currin published a compelling NOLO guide last month – and yes, it’s compelling even for those of us who will not be abstaining.
Champagne slump
While the decline of champagne sales have been in the press since mid 2023, recent news is still disheartening. According to Wine-Searcher, the annual December meeting of the Association Viticole Champenoise (AVC) began with a statement from their co-president David Chatillon, also president of the Union des Maisons de Champagne (UMC), that 2024 champagne sales were likely to be down 10% by volume and 5% by value compared with 2023 – a year that had already seen an 8.2% drop in sales. So in the last 24 months, champagne has seen sales by volume drop by almost a fifth.
While this isn’t good news for the wine industry, it’s not terrible news for consumers. Liv-Ex (London International Vintners Exchange) tracks fine-wine pricing and their ‘Champagne 50’ index has fallen by 26.3% since 2022. If you are US-based, now might be the time to stock up on champagne. Donald Trump will be sworn into office on 20 January and has promised 10–20% tariffs on all imports, regardless of origin.
Cava commits to organic viticulture
Back in April 2021, DO Cava announced that by 2025 they would require all Cava de Guarda Superior wines – an umbrella category that includes Reserva, Gran Reserva and Cavas de Paraje Calificado – to be 100% organic. On 3 December the president of the DO Cava Regulatory Council, Javier Pagés, confirmed that the DO would meet its 2025 deadline.
While there are a couple PDOs (Protected Designations of Origin) that mandate organic certification – DO Penedes and AOP Les Baux-de-Provence – DO Cava is the first to incorporate organic certification into a PDO quality hierarchy. This means that while entry-level Cava can still be farmed conventionally, top-tier Cava must be organic.
A guide to wine packaging
Most people watching this know that wine quality has nothing to do with a wine’s packaging and that every gram of glass weight in a wine bottle has a negative impact on that bottle’s environmental footprint. For this reason, environmentally minded producers have begun to reduce bottle weights, use alternative packaging and campaign for bottle-reuse systems.
Despite all the progress that’s been made in recent years, it remains confusing which packaging options are the most environmentally friendly and what local regulations allow or require. Which is why the Porto Protocol has assembled Unpacking Wine, a 249-page guide on wine packaging. While this guide is geared towards producers, there are a few things I took away that are important for us as wine-drinkers.
- The successful implementation of environmentally friendly packaging relies on all of us choosing to buy wine in lightweight glass and alternative packaging.
- Reuse systems rely on us to bring the bottles back. Recycling reusable bottles requires more energy than reusing them.
- Generally speaking, green and brown glass are more sustainable than clear glass. This is because clear glass is first-use. As soon as it gets mixed in with green and brown glass during recycling, it’s no longer clear. So don’t be upset if your favourite rosé producer goes green.
- Just because something is recyclable doesn’t always make it the most environmentally friendly option. Raw-material extraction, water use and carbon emissions during manufacturing and transportation, as well as the end-of-life processing options in the market where the product is consumed, all play a role. For example, the bladder on a Bag-in-Box isn’t recyclable in many countries but BiB still has the lowest carbon footprint of any packaging option.
I’ll include a chart from the Porto Protocol guide that shows the relative carbon footprint of different packaging options. Please keep in mind that manufacture and recycling is different for every country and the chart is based on Nordic countries – which have an incredibly high recycling rate.
New US alcohol advisory
Finally, about 10 hours before this newscast was recorded on 3 January, the US Surgeon General, Dr Vivek Murthy, released a new advisory on alcohol and cancer risk.
The new advisory calls for an update on health warning labels for alcoholic beverages to include cancer risk as well as a reassessment of the dietary guideline limits for alcohol consumption. Ultimately it will be up to Congress on whether they want to implement these recommendations. The advisory does not take into account all-cause mortality. Last month’s report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) found that moderate alcohol consumption is associated with lower all-cause mortality. Read more about that in my 21 December news roundup.
That’s all for this episode of the wine news. If you enjoy this newscast and would like to see it continue, please subscribe to JancisRobinson.com. And if you have breaking news in your area, please email news@jancisrobinson.com.
This is a transcript of our weekly five-minute news broadcast, which you can watch below. You can also listen to it on The Wine News in 5 Podcast. If you enjoy this content and would like to see more like it, please subscribe to our site and our weekly newsletter.