In Conversation With... Caroline Merrell, Jackson Family Wines

Climate change isn't a distant risk for the wine industry. It's already reshaping how great wine gets made. Few companies understand this better than Jackson Family Wines, a global producer headquartered in California with a long track record of climate leadership (including co-founding IWCA). Caroline Merrell, Senior Director of Sustainable Winemaking, answered a few of our questions about making sustainability a value driver, where innovation is opening new possibilities, and what it really takes to scale climate action across a large, multi-region organization.

Let's start with something a lot of sustainability champions inside wineries are grappling with: how do you make the case for climate action as a value driver, rather than just a cost?

At Jackson Family Wines, we've moved away from framing this as sustainability versus the bottom line. The projects that last are the ones that do both, cutting emissions and creating value at the same time. Energy efficiency is the clearest example. Every kilowatt-hour we don't use is a cost we avoid and carbon we don't emit. Other moves are essentially cost-neutral, like switching to renewable diesel, where we lower our footprint without adding expense. Once you start looking for those win-wins, you find them everywhere.

Resilience works the same way. It's really about proactive preparedness. Climate change, water scarcity, and supply-chain volatility are already pressuring wine production. Reacting to those pressures after the fact costs far more than preparing for them now. Investments in regenerative farming, water reuse, and renewable energy protect the long-term productivity of our vineyards, and protecting productivity is protecting the business.

Packaging is another good illustration. Lightweighting our glass, or using less material per bottle, reduces both the glass we purchase and the fuel needed to ship it, so the environmental win and the operational win move together.

There's also a growing market behind all of this. Consumers care more than ever about how their wine is made, and demand for environmentally responsible wine keeps rising. That gives sustainability a role well beyond managing risk and cutting costs. It has become a source of growth for us, and often the reason a customer chooses us in the first place.

There's so much we could ask about, given Jackson Family Wines' climate leadership. Could you share one recent initiative you're especially proud of?

Since January 2024, we've been running a first-of-its-kind pilot with Barrel Wise, monitoring barrel temperatures across three of our key barrel buildings, part of an inventory of more than 200,000 barrels. The idea is to use the barrels themselves as a kind of thermal battery. We cool the barrel rooms when solar energy is abundant during the day, and the barrels then hold their temperature steady overnight. That keeps the wine in ideal condition while shifting our energy use away from expensive, high-demand grid hours. It's a good example of how a sustainability solution and an operational efficiency can be one and the same.

That's a great example of technology and innovation at work. Where else do you see technology shaping the future of climate action in wineries?

I'd point to a couple of areas that aren't necessarily revolutionary, but where meaningful oppportunities still remain.

The first is battery storage and microgrids. We've built a strong foundation here, with more than 28,000 solar panels now generating roughly 36% of our electricity. The next frontier is storing that energy so we can rely on it around the clock and move further off fossil fuels. That will take continued investment and technology that's still maturing.

The second is electrifying vehicles and equipment. In the vineyard, we've been exploring electric tractors, which is an innovation area that captures both the promise and the limitations of technology well. The technology is exciting, but range, charging, and fit for our specific operations are still real hurdles. We see the same on the distribution side, where zero-emission trucks and charging infrastructure aren't yet available at the scale we'd need. We're actively pursuing partnerships in both areas, because we'd rather help shape these solutions than wait for them to arrive. At the same time, market conditions in wine are challenging right now, so we have to stay realistic about what's possible for our industry partners. Distributors, for instance, are just beginning the journey toward zero-emission trucks and the infrastructure that long-haul trucking and shipping will require.

Beyond your own goals and values as a company, what's driving climate action in the wine industry right now: is it more top-down regulation, or bottom-up pressure from customers and partners?

It's really a mix of all of them, and they reinforce one another.

On the regulatory side, requirements are intensifying quickly, from California's climate disclosure rules to European sustainability reporting. Companies increasingly have to measure and report Scope 1, 2, and Scope 3 emissions. We've stayed ahead of that curve through our science-based targets, our participation in the UN Race to Zero, and our work with International Wineries for Climate Action, which requires rigorous GHG accounting and third-party verification.

There's definitely commercial pull, too. Trade and supply-chain partners now expect verified emissions data as part of their procurement criteria. Partners like Walmart are asking suppliers to help reduce their Scope 3 footprint, and being able to show verified progress, such as cutting our emissions intensity 27% since 2015, strengthens those relationships and keeps us competitive.

But some of the most important momentum comes from inside the company. We intentionally shifted our sustainability strategy from top-down to bottom-up, giving individual departments ownership of their priorities. When the people closest to the work, in the cellar, the vineyard, and logistics, are the ones spotting solutions, they tend to find the most effective ideas that both save money and cut emissions. Positioning sustainability as the team that uncovers those win-wins, rather than a mandate handed down, has been powerful. Many of our best practices have come from our own people, whether that's installing a new rainwater capture system to save water or identifying a smarter packaging solution.

Scaling climate action across a business as large as Jackson Family Wines can't be simple. What have been some of the biggest hurdles?

Sustainability is already deeply embedded in our culture, so for us the work is less about starting the conversation and more about sustaining and deepening it in every role, from cellar to sales, as the organization grows. Training and cross-functional working groups have taken us a long way, but keeping that momentum alive across a large company takes continuous effort.

A bigger structural challenge is regional variation. Our vineyards span very different climates and geographies, and a practice that works in one place doesn't automatically translate to another. What improves soil health in Mendocino may not have the same effect in Santa Barbara. So we run site-specific trials to adapt regenerative farming to local conditions, then work to scale those learnings thoughtfully. The same regionality shows up in our Scope 3 work, where we're coordinating across many vendors and suppliers, each with different data and practices, which makes consistency hard.

The upside is the scale of influence that comes with our size. We're one of the largest solar generators in American wine, for instance, and we can fund research and share what we learn in ways that lift the whole sector. We collaborate with UC Davis and the Regenerative Viticulture Foundation on vineyard and winery trials, and we help mobilize other producers to act, most visibly by co-founding International Wineries for Climate Action and through our involvement with sustainability programs across California and Oregon, including Oregon's Low Input Viticulture and Enology (LIVE).

In the end, so much of this comes back to who we are. As a multi-generational, family-owned company, our commitment to the land is personal and built for the long term. The Jackson family's dedication to sustainability has never wavered, and their passion sets the tone for everyone who works here. When that kind of commitment comes from the very top, it inspires the whole company to keep going further.