Vineyards with a Vision: How Italy's Wine Industry is Going Green

Welcome to 3p Happy Hour! As we all eye the exit door on Friday afternoons, we're raising our glasses to the sustainable wine, beer and spirits brands serving up stiff sips with less environmental impact while benefiting communities.

In the wine-making world, Italy is a full-bodied behemoth, boasting 590 grape varieties and a 4,000-year-old history of wine production. When the Greeks settled there in the 8th century, they aptly named it the land of wine. Stateside, we’ve fully embraced this tradition, importing the most Italian wine of any country. 

Despite the delights of a floral, brick-red Barolo, the industry uses large amounts of pesticides and water, while also creating waste like leftover grape skins, seeds and pulp. Plus, wine production emits greenhouse gases, particularly from packaging and grape cultivation. While it’s only a small amount per bottle, this quickly adds up considering billions of gallons of wine are consumed annually. 

Thankfully, some organizations in the industry are taking the environment as seriously as their Chianti collection. Mezzacorona Group, a community of nearly 1,600 winegrowers and farms in northern Italy, has sustainability at its core. Representing a variety of brands like Mezzacorona, Rotari and Nota, this cooperative is focused on mitigating wine’s environmental footprint. From cover crops to packaging, it’s helping the environment while still offering the perfect pasta pairing.

Mezzacorona Group

Founded in 1904, Mezzacorona was the first winegrowers’ association established in northern Italy, located in the mountainous Trentino-Alto Adige region bordering Switzerland and Austria. Members supply grapes to Mezzacorona’s sustainable winery, where they are transformed into a variety of products, from Pinot Grigio to sparkling wine and grappa. Members actively set policies and strategies for the organization, while receiving information and training in return. 

Another noteworthy principle is the group’s strong commitment to the environment. “At Mezzacorona, generations of families have chosen to operate with respect to the environment, adopting sustainable and integrated production techniques, thus producing genuine products,” Lucio Matricardi, a winemaker at Mezzacorona, told TriplePundit in an email. “A passionate and skillful team of oenologists [experts in wine making] and agronomists work day-by-day in close contact with our vine growers following the entire product life cycle in the vineyards, care during harvesting, and up to the bottling phase.”

Members are also certified under a voluntary national program aimed at minimizing pesticide, fertilizer and water use. “In 2016, all our winegrower members obtained the Ministerial Certification SQNPI — Italy’s National Integrated Production Quality System — for their grapes. And in 2017, this certification was obtained for all our Controlled Designation of Origin wines,” Matricardi said. “A double recognition that guarantees, through a series of controls throughout the supply chain, that our work is sustainable from the land to the winery, from the vineyards to the bottle.”

Widely recognized throughout the European Union, these certifications are renewed every three years. 

Cultivating change

Mezzacorona’s sustainable approach starts in the vineyard, where a number of techniques minimize its footprint.

“Sustainability is woven into Mezzacorona’s DNA — from the careful cultivation of its vineyards to the final bottle on the shelf,” Matricardi said. “In the fields, we practice low-impact viticulture [the cultivation and harvesting of grapes].” 

The cooperative prioritizes soil health by using cover crops and green manure, which is the practice of growing and incorporating plants into the soil.

“Our vineyards are planted with grasses and legumes and benefit from the practice of green manuring,” Matricardi said. “This naturally adds organic matter to the soil. In addition, mechanical operations are kept to a minimum to avoid soil compaction.”

Green manure improves soil fertility, thereby reducing the need for synthetic fertilizer. It also increases the soil’s ability to hold water while preventing erosion and weed growth. 

Mezzacorona also preserves hedgerows and stone walls in its vineyards to provide shelter for plants and animals. In turn, hedgerows reduce erosion, minimize wind damage to crops, and provide habitat for the natural enemies of crop pests, reducing pesticide use.

But winemaking is also a thirsty endeavor. Researchers estimate that producing a standard 750 ml bottle of Italian wine uses anywhere from 451 to 1193 liters of water, with over 97 percent of that used in the vineyards. To address this, Mezzacorona adopted drip irrigation, which delivers water directly to the base of a plant. The practice can reduce water use compared to traditional systems such as sprinklers. But one drawback is the expense of installing and maintaining these irrigation systems.

From sprays to sustainability

Besides the vineyard, Mezzacorona is addressing other skeletons in the Chardonnay closet. For instance, Sangiovese is noted for its hints of leather and tart cherry, not pyrimethanil and fenhexamid. Researchers have found that wine can contain residues of over two dozen pesticides, mainly fungicides and insecticides. While helping to eliminate diseases, insects and weeds, these chemicals can damage the soil, pollute the air and water, and harm wine growers, workers and neighbors. Plus, they can lower the quality of the wine itself.

Mezzacorona still uses pesticides, but strives to minimize their use with a technique called mating disruption, where vineyards are flooded with female pest pheromones to attract males. With pheromones throughout the area, the likelihood of a male finding a female is lowered, consequently reducing their population size. The technique has lowered the densities of a serious pest, the vine mealybug, in California vineyards. 

Mezzacorona has other sustainable measures swirling in its glass, too. “In our case, we have chosen to adopt sustainability standards such as the Equalitas certification, which allows us to monitor our carbon dioxide emissions and work to reduce them through targeted improvement actions,” Matricardi said.

The Equalitas certification focuses on the social, environmental and economic aspects of sustainable winemaking. The program has environmental requirements for soil biodiversity, carbon and water footprints, pesticide and fertilizer use, and social practices like workers’ rights, anti-discrimination policies and training programs.

And since most of wine’s carbon footprint comes from the production and transport of glass bottles, the cooperative is lightening up its packaging, too. “Over the years, we have significantly reduced the weight of our bottles,” Matricardi said. “We also use certified paper for our labels and recyclable cardboard packaging.”

While a positive move to mitigate carbon emissions, lighter glass bottles still have a higher carbon footprint compared to other types of packaging.

Innovative tradition 

As the world’s second-largest producer of wine, Italy’s wine industry was valued at $21.5 billion annually. Fortunately, sustainable wine is set to capture a growing segment of that market, with 57 percent of consumers saying they prefer wines that disclose their carbon footprint in a survey from the food and beverage industry software company Tastewise. And nearly three-fourths of consumers said they are more likely to trust a brand that promotes its environmental impact. Environmentally-conscious organizations, like Mezzacorona, are one sip ahead of the competition.

“Our farmers have deep roots in the region,” Matricardi said. “And their commitment to the land runs generations deep, making sustainability a shared priority driven by genuine care and long-standing connection.”

Editor's note: The author received wine samples from Mezzacorona Group. Neither the author nor TriplePundit were required to write about the brand.