Buyer’s Guide to Vintages January 24th Release
John Szabo’s Review January 24, 2026: Can You Taste Climate Change? Chile in the spotlight
By John Szabo MS, with notes from David Lawrason, Michael Godel, Sara d’Amato and Megha Jandhyala
Image: Frogpond Winery, Napa Valley
Can you taste climate change? The answer is unequivocably yes. In the wine world, it means riper fruit flavours, lower acids, higher alcohols. It also means the smoky taste of wildfires, dilute wines from extreme rainstorms, and increasingly often, no wine in your glass at all thanks to spring frosts, no-longer-so-freak hailstorms, floods, polar vortexes, rampant diseases and novel vineyard pests. Last week I attended the fifth edition of Tasting Climate Change in Montreal, a conference dedicated to exploring the challenges and solutions for an industry that is far out on the pointy edge of climate change, like a lighthouse that illuminates the rocky shore ahead. Wine accounts for only about 0.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is more victim than perp. But its high value and visibility also enables it, maybe forces it, to be a leader in sustainability in the agricultural sector. Much is being done.
The buyer’s guide this week covers the January 24 Vintages release. The featured theme is Chile, a country with a robust Sustainability Code for the Wine Industry (SCWI), which measures an impressive 351 individual requirements. The code charts the steps needed to build a truly sustainable industry but at the same time embodies the challenge in communicating the message to consumers. Who, aside from someone working towards certification, is going to comb through 351 calls to action to understand what the certification actually means? Even fewer will compare it to the hundreds of other sustainable, organic, biodynamic, regenerative and “environmentally friendly” labels out there to rate its effectiveness, which, put together, would look like the walls in one of those quaint pubs plastered with paper money from all over the world. It’s enough to make consumers throw their hands in the air and give up. But you shouldn’t. There are simple things you can do to make a difference. What can you do? Read on.
If it’s all too overwhelming, skip straight to the Buyer’s Guide, where we’ve lined up our top picks, which include quadruple alignment on a Niagara sauvignon blanc and a South African pinotage, as well as triple thumbs up for a concrete-aged local chardonnay and a textbook Chilean carmenere.
Tasting Climate Change
As I arrived at the conference, a person with a clipboard stopped me at the entrance and asked how I had gotten to Montreal. I realized at that moment, mortified, that I was part of the problem, caught red-handed. I had taken the one-hour flight from Toronto’s island airport. Fast, convenient, terrible for the environment. Short haul flights are in fact the worst, since taking off requires a huge amount of fuel compared to cruising.
Watch recordings of all the conferences at Tasting Climate Change 2026
But the purpose of the questionnaire wasn’t to outwardly shame or admonish conference goers, but rather so that the founder of the conference, Michelle Bouffard (also one of WineAlign’s National Wine Awards of Canada judges), could calculate the carbon footprint of the event and offset it by planting the necessary number of trees (not the solution, but better than nothing). The conference was about what can and should be done to mitigate climate change, rather than preach, moralize and point fingers. We all know that shaming doesn’t work as a motivational strategy.
I later learned that many had arrived by train, one wine writer from New York City had even travelled 11 hours to get there, instead of a one-hour flight. Another from England had taken her first flight in 20 years, having weighed up the balance of the negative impact of burning carbon versus participating in the conference in order to positively contribute to making change. All these decisions add up. I felt guilty about my own decision. Also exhausted.
We’re required to make these sorts of choices every day: convenience, or lower price, versus the “better” thing to do. It turns out many consumers are also exhausted by this moral quandary. As Nathalie Spielman PhD, NEOMA Business School, outlined in her talk “Understanding Consumer Perceptions of Climate Change,” discussions of climate change have “negative implications on physical and mental health and moral well-being.” There’s even a name for the condition: eco-anxiety.
Spielman shared some other interesting insights and statistics. Not surprisingly, not all consumers are worried about climate change in the same way and to the same degree. Men tend to be on the “low worry” end of the scale, while women fall on the high end. Younger consumers, as well as more educated consumers with better paying jobs, are statistically high worry. Young consumers are in fact angry, disgusted even, at having been left this mess that now needs to be cleaned up.
Also, consumers don’t feel that they are entirely responsible for climate change. In fact, 52% attributed climate change to “Big Companies,” an easy bogeyman on whom to lay the blame. In the wine world, big producers are often seen as the bad guys and the small ones as the virtuous. But the reality is that some of the world’s largest wine companies are also some of the most sustainable. Bottega from the Veneto, Catena from Argentina, and Treasury Wine Estates (global), come to mind, all participants at this year’s conference.
CO2 emissions per person travelling from London to Val Thorens, French Alps
Small, individual actions, it’s often believed, won’t make much of a difference. But we know of course this isn’t true. A river is made up of individual drops of water, as Marc-André Selosse PhD, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris, reminded us.
Economics plays a critical role. Almost half of consumers say lack of affordability is preventing them from living healthy and sustainable lifestyles. Sustainable products and decisions very often do cost more. According to Spielman, consumers are willing to pay up to 12% more for sustainable products. But organic/biodynamic wines are an average of 28% more expensive than their conventional equivalents (from a random sampling of wines on the shelves of the SAQ in Québec).
And yet producer after producer at the conference insisted that sustainable practices, while usually requiring bigger up-front costs, will save money in the long run. But there’s no escaping the reality that wine is expensive to make. And while doing it sustainably may save a producer some money over time compared to what it costs them now, a large, conventionally farmed, high-yielding, heavily irrigated vineyard loaded with chemical fertilizers and pesticides will always make less expensive wine than an equivalent sustainably-farmed vineyard. But it will be unsustainable in the long run.
So, perhaps we should just admit that wine is an expensive, luxury product — like beef — and shouldn’t be cheap?
In a panel discussion on the role of communicators in sustainable wine, Felicity Carter, Drinks Insider & Areni Global, Véronique Rivest, Sommelier & Soif Bar à Vin, and Tara Q. Thomas, Managing Editor at JancisRobinson.com talked about the tension between wanting to recommend only the “right wines,” as Rivest put it, responsibly produced but often more expensive, while trying to remain inclusive and not alienate an entire consumer segment for whom price is the main motivator, or who simply cannot afford expensive wine. It’s a tough choice in the face of declining wine consumption worldwide. Excluding a vast number of consumers, and potential consumers, by appearing too elitist and impossibly expensive would upend the wine industry. But at what cost to the planet does inclusivity come?
Rivest, when asked whether sustainability forms part of the buying strategy for her program at Soif wine bar in the Gatineau, responded flatly: “It’s non-negotiable. You cannot work in food and wine today and not be concerned about sustainability, for me it’s almost an obligation.”
Yet, at the same time, this obligation sets the commitment to sustainability on a collision course with inclusivity and affordability. Rivest adds: “If you are a big champion of sustainability and you have a wine list that starts at $100 a bottle, I’m sorry, you’re not doing a good job of bringing consumers to the table.”
Can wine be both sustainable and affordable?
Rivest’s solution is to buy sustainable wines at a sustainable (higher) price, but lower margins on the wine list to keep them relatively affordable. I’m sure we’d all love more restaurants to follow suit.
Illustration by Shaivalini Kumar, Imagine5 Magazine
What Can You Do?
For the consumer, the solution is to drink less but better. I think I heard that somewhere before. Your yearly spend on wine needn’t increase, but frequency must decrease — similar to eating a high-quality steak once a month instead of cheaper industrially raised beef once a week.
In raw wine terms, I’m happy to go on public record stating that any bottle of wine sold in Ontario for $10 or less cannot be truly sustainably made, and probably not even under $12 (if you know of any, please send details).
Look for certifications. The wine industry is not free from greenwashing, but it’s certainly less performative than many. And not to mention that it’s also much harder to get away with than it is in less regulated and legislated industries. The wine industry loves regulations. The majority of claims are audited and certified. Mentions like “organic” and “biodynamic” are controlled terms and can’t be applied to labels without proof.
Evidently, not all certifications are created with equal rigor, but even without researching all the details, a certification at least indicates some kind of third-party audit, some oversight of practices employed. And while those practices might not amount to full sustainability, a certification reassures you that the producer is on a path to being more sustainable. We should encourage the companies who are taking the right steps. Journey of a thousand miles. As an example, Laura Catena of Catena Wines in Argentina shared with conference attendees how moving towards sustainability has become a sort of sporting competition within the Argentinian wine industry, with producers vying to outdo one another. The sustainability code there is a work in progress, but it’s the right work to do.
And please, don’t buy wine in stupidly heavy bottles, at any price. This is the easiest and most immediate thing you can do to drink more responsibly. Accounts vary, but according to most sources, some 50% of a wine’s carbon footprint comes from packaging and transportation. Unnecessarily heavy glass bottles, and I’m talking about the ones that weigh up to a kilogram when empty, are more energy-intensive to make and obviously to transport. Shaving just a few grams off a bottle has a huge impact in a container that transports thousands of bottles. And bottles as light as 300 grams are now available.
Buy local. This cuts down your “wine miles” significantly. But remember, it’s not necessarily and always the most sustainable option. A locally made wine from industrially farmed vineyards, bottled in heavy glass, and shipped by courier to your front door or delivered one bottle at a time by an Uber driver, is definitely not sustainable. Instead, look for wineries certified by Sustainable Winegrowing Ontario or better yet, seek wines that are organic/biodynamic-certified.
For my part at the very least, I will continue to recommend, as often as possible if not exclusively, wine produced sustainably. And next time I’ll take the train.
Buyer’s Guide Vintages January 24: White, Sparkling, Fortified
Volcanes De Chile Reserva Sauvignon Blanc 2024, DO Valle De Leyda, Chile
$14.95, Woodman Wines & Spirits
Michael Godel – Sharp, pungent and immediately expressive sauvignon blanc. Quite the level of intensity for a $15 white.
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That’s all for this report, see you ’round the next bottle.
John Szabo, MS
Use these quick links for access to all of our January 24th Top Picks in the New Release. Non-premium members can select from all release dates 60 days prior.
John’s Top Picks – January 24th
Lawrason’s Take – January 24th
Michael’s Mix – January 24th
Sara’s Selections – January 24th
Megha’s Picks – January 24th
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