Sustainability

CLIMATE CHANGE

It has long been recognised that climate change represents the biggest risk to the global wine sector. We must act now in a co-ordinated and unified way to put adaption & mitigation strategies in place to reduce the emissions that cause climate change across the entire wine production and supply chain.

Brokenwood Wines has committed to adopting the Australian Grape & Wine sector’s, Emissions Reduction Roadmap which highlights the opportunities we can collectively take to decarbonise and drive action.

It focuses on reducing emissions within our areas of control by 2030, where there is realistic opportunity for the sector to reduce its emissions by over a third (42 per cent) by targeting emissions generated in the vineyard, in the winery and throughout the supply chain.

The sector’s journey to net zero by 2050 will require collaboration and partnerships across our sector and other industries, integrating emerging technologies and greater emissions reduction performance from high-emitting supplier industries. This includes glass manufacturing and transport sectors & as a last resort may require offsets to achieve net zero by 2050.

The Australian wine sector’s Sustainable Winegrowing Australia allows producers to track their progress in adoption of sustainable practices & enables emissions data to be captured. Brokenwood Wines has been a certified member of Sustainable Winegrowing Australia since 2021.

BIODIVERSITY

Our Graveyard Vineyard is one of four demonstration sites selected to be part of the National Ecovineyards Program in the Hunter Valley region with a Biodiversity Action Plan enhancing soil health and planting native insectary corridors to increase functional biodiversity in the Vineyard. We have planted some native insectary corridors & mid row cover crops to try and enhance biodiversity & promote resilience in the Vineyard & reduce our chemical usage.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY

We’ve done a lot of work around improving our energy efficiency onsite by upgrading our refrigeration plant and supplementing our onsite energy usage with a 99kW Solar PV array, this has reduced our energy usage by 23%. 

Installation of LED Lighting across the entire site is estimated to produce savings of up to 70% of our entire lighting bill. The install was completed in December 2019.

STRIVE 4 SUSTAINABILITY SCORECARD

With more and more travellers searching for responsible tourism options, we decided it was important to show you how we are striving for tourism sustainability.

Thanks to support from Destination NSW, we took Ecotourism Australia’s Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard for a snapshot of where we are up to on our sustainability journey by assessing our practices across the four pillars of sustainability: sustainable management, environmental impacts, cultural impacts, and socio-economic impacts.

The criteria are based on Ecotourism Australia’s globally recognised, best practice criteria for sustainability in tourism. Scorecard responses are assessed by a trained sustainability assessor within the Ecotourism Australia team before a personalised score is provided. The score is based on the information provided, and evidence or examples of how a business applies sustainability principles in practice helps raise the overall score.

View our Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard HERE

Learn more about the Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard HERE

The Hunter Valley Inaugural Vintage Smoking Ceremony took place in January 2023 at Audrey Wilkinson Vineyard. Pictured: Stuart Hordern (HVWTA President), James Agnew (Agnew Wines) & Uncle Warren.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

Brokenwood Wines acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which our business operates in the Hunter Valley, the Wonnarua Nation Peoples. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.