The ethical drinker Read to make a difference

We meet the authors of a new book on sustainability in wine

- By Natalie Earl, Decanter Sustainability Editor

In a new book published this month, Master of Wine Jane Masters and journalist Andrew Neather embark on an ambitious project to map the wine industry's impact on the planet and assess the options for making it more sustainable. I sat down with them to understand how and why they came to write this poignant book, Rooted in Change: The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine.

‘Anyone who is passionate about wine or enjoys drinking wine should be aware that climate change is having a big impact on wine regions and the style of wines produced,’ says Masters, a buyer at UK wine retailer Majestic with a background in winemaking and biochemistry.

‘It is not a given that Bordeaux will be able to make wine that is recognisable as Bordeaux even in 20 years, certainly not 50 years – and that’s shocking,’ says Neather, a former political speechwriter and the London Evening Standard’s wine critic for 11 years. This seems to me to be as good a reason as any to start thinking about how we can all drink wine more sustainably.

Neather had been thinking about writing a book about wine and climate change due to the increasing frequency of extreme weather events affecting vineyards worldwide. For Masters, a self-proclaimed nerd, ‘the idea started from a desire to understand all of the different aspects of sustainability and how they interact with one another, and to simplify some of the language and the science behind it’.