Ecological criteria for a sustainability assessment using the example of the online certification “Nachhaltig Austria” (Sustainable Austria)
Authors: Rosner Franz G. , Richter Barbara 
Published: February 2024

The sustainability initiative must not focus on just a few and often ideologically occupied activities in wine production, but must bring about a transformation of all essential activities in the vineyard and cellar into more sustainable production. For this reason, the online tool “Sustainable Austria” has been introduced in Austria since 2015, which now covers around 25% of Austrian wine production and thus allows representative conclusions to be drawn about overall production. The data from 2019 to 2021 were used to evaluate part of the approximately 360 activities for assessing sustainability in vineyards and cellars.

In addition to the type of plant protection products, a targeted, efficient and economical plant protection application must be made, which can save up to 40% of plant protection products through the use of tunnel and recycling technology and low-loss spraying technology (application by 60% of winegrowing enterprises). While only 0.6% fungus-resistant grape varieties were planted in 2019, this figure was already 7% in 2021. While 30.5% of vineyards were treated with herbicides in 2019, the area fell to 11.8% in 2021. This trend is continuing and can in any case also be attributed to the advice and awareness-raising provided as part of the certification. Retreat areas for flora and fauna represent important biodiversity-promoting measures. More than 1/4 of the certified vineyards have a biodiversity area of over 10% of the vineyard area, more than half over 5% of the vineyard area. While wine producers prefer biennial and perennial greening at 51.3%, 74.4% of grape producers choose autumn/winter greening.

The wine industry's contributions to the achievement of the European Green Deal represent key environmental sustainability objectives. 11 wineries are already energy self-sufficient. The building rating A, A+, A++ and the earth cellar represent the best energy efficiency, which is achieved by more than 2/3 of the Austrian wineries. Furthermore, the share of renewable energy in the wine cellar has increased from 56.3% (2019) to 78.9% (2021). On the other hand, the use of new glass bottles is over 80%, while the refilling rate of glass bottles is only 6%. But the share of lightweight glass was 56.6% in 2021. If it is mentioned in this context that about 50% of the greenhouse gases can be attributed to the glass bottle and the refilling of glass bottles causes 59% less GHG than bag-in-box, a trend reversal for washing and filling used glass must be increased in the future. Cardboard packaging takes the lion's share with around 93%, whereby fortunately the share of packaging that has a recycling share of over 50% predominates with 68%.

About 1/4 of the vineyard areas are irrigated, whereby overcrown irrigation is of no importance and only water- saving drip irrigation is used. The average amount of irrigation is 41 mm. An economy-of-scale effect can be seen in the water consumption per litre of wine in the cellar. Water consumption in small businesses with less than 10,000 litres of wine production is around 15 litres, whereas it drops to around 3 litres in businesses with more than 500,000 litres of wine production. Wastewater management is very strictly regulated in Austria and requires additional measures and official obligations for wastewater treatments like neutralisation, sedimentation basins and complete wastewater treatment before discharge amount to about 57% in 2019.

The majority (about 2/3) of the grape harvest is harvested by hand. With about 1/3 fractionated harvesting, i.e. multiple selection of ripe and unripe grapes to increase quality, the ambitious quality production is underlined. The use of declarable quantities of allergenic protein-based wine treatment agents, sorbic acid, DMDC and/or lysozyme plays no role at all in Austria. While in 2020 and 2019 the natural or no tartar stabilisation was around 25%, this proportion increased to around 40% in 2021 due to the cold natural weather conditions. About half of the wines are stabilised by adding metatartaric acid, gum arabic, carboxymethyl cellulose or mannoproteins, while about 10 to 15% are stabilised by artificial cooling.

Finally, it is concluded that raising awareness about negative sustainability activities and providing information about alternatives has led to a positive sustainability development in the Austrian wine industry and continues to do so.