It has been a bit of a reflective week for Aura, thanks to two nostalgic moments. Both of these moments were provoked by good things happening to The New Zealand Wine Company, an Aura client, and also an employer that is on the CV of a couple of those involved in Aura Sustainability.

On Thursday night The New Zealand Wine Company, better known as Grove Mill Wines, won the New Zealand Government’s Green Ribbon Award. This coveted award was bestowed for making quality wine with minimal environmental impact.

It is now nearly 4 years since Grove Mill became the world’s first carbon neutral winery. It is fair to say that appreciation for this achievement was slow to arrive, but arrive it did and it still continues almost 5 years after myself and Grove Mill Chief Winemaker, Dave Pearce, put in place the companies sustainable development strategy.

Although at the time we thought we had a tiger by the tail, I don’t think myself, nor Dave, let ourselves believe that the strategy would be as successful as it has become. This was mainly because consumer perception of sustainability was so incredibly niche 5 years ago. It was a leap of faith and credit has to go to those at Grove Mill whom allowed this to happen and also to those that continue to drive it forwards in the present day. Congratulations.

The other nostalgic event that occurred also involved Grove Mill. I was googling blogs to see what was occurring in the world of sustainability and wine, much to my surprise I found a recently published blog written by the noted American travel journalist David Lansing. David had visited myself and Dave Pearce out at Grove Mill over 2 years ago. We had spent the afternoon in the wetlands drinking wine and discussing sustainability, as well as many other topics. From memory, most of the things discussed were subjects that should not be broached with a journalist you have just met. Fortunately we made sure the glass never really left Mr Lansing’s hand and therefore restricted the amount of shorthand he was able to take!

So with this brief period of reflection over we are ready to drive sustainability strategy in wine forwards and anticipate where the opportunities in sustainability are over the next 5 years. Cheers.

Aura Sustainability strategist, David Pearce, appears on NZI Business to discuss why it is of importance for businesses to pay attention to international mandates on climate change.

Exporters warned to pay attention to Copenhagen from EnviroTweets on Vimeo.

The change was obvious, it was like not seeing your 3 year old nephew for 18 months. The difference is striking. Maybe it was because the last time I travelled to North America everything was about the election and nothing much in between, but during this stay in North America it has been obvious that sustainability has become a core subject.

The first thing that led me to this conclusion was during my usual round of google news-ing (is there a term for this I wonder) which has developed over time into a well refined amount of keyword searches. Having gnewsed "carbon label" a barrage of results ensued around Walmart making the announcement that it had decided all its products should display an environmental measurement at some point in the future. This was the big news of the day and as I turned on the hotel TV a number of news channels were running it as a story.

After watching TV for a while and seeing adverts for such goods as green bags and hybrid cars, Martha Stewart's cooking show came on. She had one of her staff members cook a family classic, a sort of mexican spice infused fish stew. At this point having had little to time to digest the sudden onslaught of sustainability propaganda just put in front of me the second thing occured, and this was the knockout punch, Martha turned to her TV audience and told them that the only fish they should use in this stew should be certified sustainable.

These two moments gave me an insight into the changing (or maybe changed) green market in North America. If supermarkets and the media (as well as advertisers) are now actively promoting sustainability as a choice, how long will it be before environmental credentials such as carbon, water, resource usage, land stewardship, agrochemical use and social equity become soft market entry requirements - or as put here, trade restrictions.

As always with sustainability this change offers both risk and opportunity, but really it is a wake up call for producers to start measuring their (and their supply chains) environmental impacts, understanding how competitive they are and how these impacts can be reduced. Of course it will also allow early adopters to take the high ground and potentially build new markets for their products.