The Orange Wine Region was recently granted $17500 from Landcare Australia to commence a project that aims to enable to join Entwine to benchmark the regions vineyards and wineries in terms of their energy use. 

Entwine is as an ‘umbrella’ sustainability program. Under the Entwine umbrella there are two components for members – the reporting of sustainability metrics to the AWRI and participation in an approved certification program. Entwine provides credentials which cover the fundamental components of sustainability (environmental, social and economic) and can be applied to both the vineyard and winery. The program provides benchmarking tools and resources to enable planning, evaluation, control and communication. Entwine will be changing its name to Sustainable Winegrowing Australia or SWA from July  2019. 

Vineyard members covering 845 ha or approximately 67% of the total hectares in the Orange Wine Region. These Vineyard and Wineries are as follows

• Angullong Vineyard
• Bantry Grove
• Brangayne 
• Cargo Road Wines
• Cumulus Vineyard 
• Swinging Bridge 
• Philip Shaw Wines 
• See Saw Wines
• Strawhouse Wines

The current data suggest that the majority of Entwine members in Orange fall below the national average in 2017/18 in terms of Energy Use.

Participants were assisted to join the Entwine program during a workshop in January 2019 and were able to enter their 2017/18 sustainability data into the Entwine online database. Those who were able to complete this were able to access individual benchmarking reports in real-time and customise them for their own needs. There was significant group discussion about the interpretation of the benchmarking reports and areas for individual improvement were identified, especially in energy, water and fertiliser use.

The long term strategy is to create a program that specifically relate to a Cool Climate region so that the regions growers can reflect on the data that specifically relates to the Orange Wine Regions rather that comparing it to warmer climate areas.