Ep61 Alisdair Tulloch on the first-mover advantages of going carbon neutral

Agriculture is often vilified for its environmental impact. But what if agriculture could be carbon neutral? Is that even possible? And what would it cost?

Alisdair Tulloch, a fourth generation grape grower, believes it’s not only possible but also profitable.

After seeing looking at 70 years of seasonal data for their vineyard, Alisdair saw that the harvest date was gradually moving forward. This, combined with extremely high temperatures in the 2017-18 growing season that required roll out irrigation, led Alisdair to start researching climate change and the impacts on vineyards. But research wasn’t enough, Alisdair decided to take action: Keith Tulloch Wine is now certified carbon neutral.

In the wine industry we’ve been seeing this problem for a long time, and there was this moment where it was really like clear to me that this warming trend, and the issue we have with the changing climate and viticulture, has got a really bad end point… I wanted to make sure that we were doing everything on farm that we could so that I wasn't just complaining about it, but I was actually doing something.

In this episode, Alisdair shares the journey to a carbon neutral winery- from deciding to become carbon neutral, to get a baseline, to prioritizing and making improvements. We also cover:

  • The practices and management decisions Alisdair has made, and what’s working (or not);

  • Why there’s a first-mover advantage of going carbon neutral;

  • The ROI of carbon neutrality for Keith Tulloch; and

  • The potential of policies and carbon markets to unlock value for farmers. 

Resources and Links

To follow Alisdair’s journey:

Looking for Keith Tulloch wines?

For more info on the LCA that Alisdair did, check out Pangolin Associates, the group they used: