The new vintage of Digby's flagship wine is now available! Look for the 2014 Vintage Reserve Brut.

SUSTAINABILITY

Digby’s commitment to the environment is embodied in the closing lines of the the Digby toast, replicated on every bottle we sell:

TO GREEN AND PLEASANT,
TO ENGLAND.

We scrutinise the grape-to-glass environmental consequences of every bottle. Here are just some of the things we are doing to ensure the sustainability of our wines…

 

GRAPES

A bottle of Digby contains about 1kg of grapes and, during the growing season, the vines remove around 300g of CO2 from the environment through photosynthesis.

We choose our vineyard partners carefully to ensure that they play their part towards our sustainability, with one declared its county’s Environmental Business Of The Year 2019.

Digby’s own Hilden Vineyard hosts an array of beehives, promoting the bees essential to maintaining balance in nature.

BOTTLES

The biggest single contributor to carbon emissions in the production of any sparkling wine is the manufacture of the glass bottles and their subsequent transportation, whether empty or full.

Using lighter bottles not only means less material and energy in production but also lowers the CO2 footprint of transportation (see below).

We use 835g Ecova 75cl glass bottles from Verallia (a Saint-Gobain company), which are 15% lighter and generate 15% less CO2 to manufacture compared to traditional Champagne bottles.

Verallia’s manufacturing process can take in up to 100% recycled glass (so one bottle can literally last a lifetime if correctly recycled).

In 1990 Verallia committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030. Thus far, they have reduced by 28%. Read more here.

FOILS

Look out for the leaf on our bottles’ necks. We use ABSOLUTE GREEN LINE foils from Sparflex as they offer a much greener solution to the traditional model, thanks to:

  • 80% CO2 less emissions
  • A plant-based (sugar cane) polyethylene layer instead of glue – renewable, and made using a growth-production cycle that absorbs 2.15 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of material produced.
  • Sparflex’s special welding process, which eliminates the need for synthetic glue – their water-based inks are completely renewable and reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds.

CORKS

We use 100% natural cork closures as this allows very gentle breathing of the wine through the final stage of the ageing process. Cork farming is generally considered to be sustainable and, in fact, each sparkling wine cork has 562g of CO2 bound up inside it which the tree has removed from the atmosphere.   According to Portugal’s largest producer of cork, Amorin, accounting for the CO2 caused by production, each cork is net negative to the tune of at least -400g, which effectively negates the CO2 footprint of the glass bottle.

WIRE HOODS

We use traditional wire hoods with no additional plastic coatings.

BOXES

Our transit boxes for trade are made from recycled paper/pulp.

In our Tasting Room we recycle all cardboard and re-use the pulp inserts.

For consumer shipping, we have to use much tougher boxes to withstand the harsh environment of our courier networks and avoid waste through breakages. These are made from recycled cardboard and are themselves 100% recyclable.

TRANSPORT

One of the largest contributions to the CO2 footprint of a bottle of wine is transportation. We minimise road and air haulage where possible by transporting Digby wines internationally by sea containers.

And it pays to drink local: for our domestic UK market, the CO2 impact of moving bottles from the winery to your glass is considerably lower than that of imported wines.

THE LAST MILE: PLANTING TREES

Depending on where a bottle of Digby is consumed, we estimate its footprint to be 1.2 – 1.75 kg CO2.

For all wine sold from 2020 onwards, we have been planting trees to net out this gap. The first were planted on our doorstep, just outside of Arundel.

Sign up for news and events

* indicates required