GREEN LIGHT FOR PROGRESS

Joy Walterfang reviews the year in South Australia

IN JULY last year the Federal Government's chief climate change adviser, Professor Ross Garnaut, predicted that South Australia will be hit the hardest by climate change - a change which he says will eventually destroy our agriculture, unless something is done pronto. "We all know that South Australia is the driest state and already a hot state, so increases in heat and decreases in rainfall do more damage here than elsewhere," he said. "The problems of the Murray-Darling are most intense at this end of the river system and the wonderful and valuable wine industry of South Australia, especially the high-quality wines, are especially vulnerable to temperature."

But despite the gloomy predictions and continuing dearth of liquid from above and below, South Australia is actually turning quite a nice shade of green. The wine industry has always been proactive but never more so than now. A couple of months before the Garnaut pronouncement, South Australia's winemakers and grapegrowers had already signed a Sector Agreement with the State Government to do their bit for climate change by accurately tracking and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

They are the first industry group in the nation to sign such an agreement. Premier Mike Rann utilised a visit to the prestigious London International Wine Fair for the co-signing with Orlando's chief winemaker, Philip Laffer, representing the SA Wine Industry Association, and Jim Caddy, chairman of CCW Co-op Ltd, batting for the Wine Grape Council SA.

The goals of this agreement are all-encompassing: improve energy efficiency, increase recycled water use, reduce waste to landfill, develop other greenhouse gas emission strategies and position the SA wine industry to become a world leader in relation to new technologies and product innovation to adapt to climate change. While the Sector Agreement is focused on wine grape growers and wine manufacturers, there is still no way of accurately measuring the full carbon footprint of the wine, from the time the grape leaves the vine to the time the wine is consumed. So, last year, South Australia's latest Thinker in Residence, Professor Andrew Fearne, undertook to model the ‘Vine to Dine' carbon footprint.

When announcing the appointment, Mr Rann said, "Professor Fearne's study will be the first of its kind to investigate both the economic and environmental impacts of selling South Australian wine in the key and highly competitive wine market of the United Kingdom - a lean and green study."

While on the subject of the competitive UK market, South Australia has a huge 72 per cent share of the nearly $1 billion of annual Australian wine sales. The giant supermarket chain Tesco, the single largest distributor of Australian wines in the UK, is aggressively pursuing a ‘Greener Living' campaign and has recently started freighting its wine stocks from Liverpool to Manchester by barge to save on carbon emissions. Food miles are going to be a hot new issue for the geographically challenged Antipodes to deal with; having an exceptionally green product will be a good start.

The McLaren Vale Grape, Wine and Tourism Association acknowledges its region's cleanest and greenest grapegrowers and wineries with annual awards. Rosemount Estate was recognised not only for significantly reducing the volume of water it uses, but at the same time improving the quality of waste water produced.

Gemtree Vineyards, another award recipient, has spent the past 10 years developing the Gemtree Wetlands by rehabilitating a 10ha site at McLaren Flat. The site, which was once a dumping ground for farm machinery and rubbish, now contains six interlinking dams and over 30,000 native trees and shrubs. Native fauna, including endemic frog species, have been encouraged back to the area.

McLaren Vale company, Paxton Vineyards, became the first Australian winery to join ‘1% For The Planet' - a global organisation of environmentally aware businesses which donate one per cent of their annual sales to environmental causes each year. Paxton's first recipient was Friends of Aldinga Scrub, a local organisation involved in protecting the last remaining native coastal vegetation of the region.

Grapegrowers right across the state are busy improving their soils, cutting back on chemical use and generally manipulating their vines to be less dependent on irrigation. At the same time, wineries are purifying and recycling their waste water, growing tree lots and generally reducing energy costs.

There are so many vineyards, and other food producers, going bio-dynamic these days it has created a national shortage of cow horns, according to recently converted McLaren Vale vineyard manager Richard Leask.

Cow horns are central to bio-dynamic farming techniques and are used for the preparation of fertiliser. Cow manure is packed into cow horns which are then buried underground during winter. Come spring, the horns are recovered and a minute amount of the manure is mixed with a large quantity of water, which is stirred for an hour in a vortex and then sprayed on the crop. Paxton, which has some of McLaren Vale's largest vineyard holdings, has converted some of its vineyards to bio-dynamic practices and is very pleased with the results so far. "The foundation of bio-dynamic farming is soil health," says Toby Bekkers, Paxton's senior viticulturist.

And there is lots of proactiveness, there should be such a word, happening in Yalumba's Oxford Landing Estate vineyard, near Waikerie in the Riverland. For the past four years the company, in conjunction with SARDI, has been experimenting with stressing its vines to the maximum level by reducing their water intake to just 10 per cent of normal levels - about half a megalitre per hectare.

Cabernet vines were first for the water torture and this year chardonnay vines have been added to the experiment. "The irrigation trials will push the boundaries beyond what is considered commercially possible," says Yalumba technical manager Ashley Ratcliff. For the next three seasons water to these vines will be cut back to almost nothing and then gradually revert to normal irrigation levels. "We are effectively mothballing the vines but at the same time seeing if we can get a viable crop," says Ashley.

SARDI scientists will measure irrigation volumes and salinity, groundwater levels, soil moisture, grapevine canopy, soil and plant salinity, plant stress and yield, as well as fruit and wine quality. The low rainfall of Waikerie means it's not an area where you could realistically consider dry-grown vines, but these trials will produce a drought survival strategy for vignerons by establishing the absolute minimum water requirement for growing commercial crops.

There is a lot of support to help the wine industry make the transition to green. To help wineries implement greener management practices there are greenhouse training courses and an Internet-based toolkit produced by the South Australian Wine Industry Association, with support from the Environment Protection Authority. The toolkit provides an introduction to how the wine industry can implement better, smarter and  more efficient supply chain management, and in turn reap economic and environmental benefits.

Each year the EPA's Greening the Supply Chain programme provides financial assistance or professional advice to help companies improve their environmental management practices. In 2003, the Yalumba Wine Company and 10 of its suppliers participated in the program and collectively saved over $86,500 as a result of reductions in waste to landfill, resource usage and energy consumption.

So what else has been happening?

A South Australian icon, Hardys, was proclaimed the most powerful Australian wine brand in the world after an annual study of almost 10,000 of the world's wine and spirit brands by UK brand valuation consultancy, Intangible Business. A few days later, Hardys' Constellation Wine stablemate Banrock Station was also named one of the world's most powerful wine brands. And the Hardy Wine Company's Berri Estates Winery still remains the nation's largest wine processing facility, crushing 220,000 tonnes annually.

Four South Australian producers came home from the 2008 International Wine Challenge in London clutching Best International Wine trophies. Two were awarded to Clare wineries: Kilikanoon for shiraz and Tim Adams for semillon. Majella in Coonawarra had the best cabernet and the Barossa's Yalumba the best viognier.

The Barossa Valley has been named one of the world's top 10 wine destinations by the world's largest online travel community, TripAdvisor. It was the only Australian destination to make it onto the prestigious list, alongside European regions such as Bordeaux and Tuscany. The TripAdvisor website is home to more than 15 million reviews of holiday destinations.

SA also has a movie star wine - albeit more a shooting star. If you had been very quick you would have seen Barossa's Two Hands Harry and Edward's Garden Shiraz sitting on a table between Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon in the hit movie Sex in the City.

The Adelaide-based Australian Wine Research Institute has cracked the genetic code of wine yeast, paving the way for development of improved yeast. "Today, we are unlocking the potential of yeast for winemakers, using genes to our advantage, without resorting to genetic engineering," said AWRI managing director, Professor Sakkie Pretorius. "By understanding the biology of yeast and the chemistry of wine we can use science to give the Australian wine sector an opportunity to innovate and maximise its market potential."

Legendary wine scientist, 96-year-old Ray Beckwith, was honoured again with the naming of Beckwith Park, a new industrial and business park at Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley. Ray's discoveries of how to control bacterial spoilage in wine back in the 1930s enabled the Australian wine industry to become the cleanest and most competitive in the world. Ray is also the scientist who helped winemaker Max Schubert develop Penfolds Grange.

Another favourite South Australian son, Brother John May, has just completed 45 consecutive vintages at Sevenhill in the Clare Valley, and to celebrate this achievement a wine has been named after him: the Br John May Reserve 2004 Shiraz.

A state report would never be complete without citing the latest achievements of another icon - Grange.

A bottle of 1951 Penfolds Bin 1 Grange fetched a record $53,936 at Langton's annual Penfolds Wine Auction in Melbourne in 2008. The 1951 vintage is seen by some observers as wine's equivalent to powered flight!

It's interesting to note that in 1978 the latest release Grange, the 1973, was retailing for $12 a bottle. When asked what he thought about such a ‘high' price, Max Schubert thought it quite reasonable. But when a 1963 Grange sold at auction for $32 in the same year, Max thought that was going "a bit overboard".

This April the biennial Barossa Vintage Festival Wine Auction will be watched eagerly by collectors around the world, with one of the most prestigious catalogues of Barossa wines assembled in more than a decade. Imperials of 2004 Grange and 2004 Hill of Grace will go head to head under the hammer, along with a rare 1985 Grange Imperial.

But while some wines go under the hammer, some of SA's top drops could be going under bitumen! A 20ha area of  Coonawarra vines could vanish if council plans to build a highway bypass around the town of Penola succeed. The plan to compulsorily acquire vineyard land from the Fosters Wine Group, the Rathbone Wine Group, Jim Barry Wines, Bill Brand and Mark Messenger and the Williams family has sparked a fierce battle between the winemakers and the local Wattle Range Council.

Rathbone Wine Group director Darren Rathbone, whose family owns Parker Estate - which stands to lose about 10 per cent of the vines which produce  its $80-a-bottle Parker Coonawarra Estate Terra Rossa First Growth - said he was amazed at what the council was attempting. "To be destroying some of Australia's best vineyards is criminal," he said. "It wouldn't happen in the Barossa Valley, Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Napa Valley or the Yarra Valley. It's irreplaceable land."