Waste Not

July 2026

Reading an article about the historic wildfires burning in France and Spain this last week of July, I thought this excerpt from an interview with a Bordeaux vintner perfectly summed up the state of the global wine (and grape) industry: “ ‘For the wine industry, it’s one thing on top of the other,” he said. There’s been drought, heatwaves, tariffs, labor challenges and historically low consumption. “It doesn’t make our lives very easy.”

Anyone growing grapes anywhere in the world would agree. As this French winemaker plans how to evacuate the horses, goats, chickens and llamas from his 1365 chateau, he sees an industry that’s sustained families for hundreds of years literally going up in flames. The fires serve as an analogy for the confluence of events shaking our industry to its economic core.

But some forward-thinking scientists are working to find new ways to help sustain grape-growing and winemaking with things that would otherwise be taken out with the trash.

Believing that wine, table grapes, raisins, and juice and jelly are not the only valuable outputs of a vineyard, these recent valorization efforts focus on grabbing grapes a greater share of the emerging bioeconomy. The byproducts of grape production—the seeds, stems, pruned canes, pomace and more—may be rich sources of revenue, all on their own. For example:

• Food scientists at Cornell have found that the grape skins, seeds and stems left over after pressing can be a healthy replacement for the antibiotics routinely added to chicken feed. Just a half-percent of grape pomace in feed can nearly match traditional antibiotics’ performance, improving weight gain, feed efficiency and gut health in broiler chickens.
• Researchers at New Zealand’s Lincoln University are getting promising results testing grape pomace and pruning waste as sources of biochar and compost for vineyard soils.
• UC Davis scientists are using genomic selection to develop tomato and grape varieties whose altered pectin or sugar profiles could increase the volume and purity of high-value nutraceutical extracts in their pomace.
• A new housing project in Brooklyn features pathways and playgrounds paved with ground corks from New York City restaurants’ waste wine bottles.

Some of my favorite grape research projects come from scientists who turn a problem on its head. To me, these valorization efforts fall in that category. By addressing the industry’s consumption and economics issues from a different angle, these innovators offer something that’s in short supply for most grape growers: if not a potential new source of income, then hope that there are people working to solve their most pressing challenges. Both may come from unexpected places.

Donnell Brown
President