By-Product Versus Co-Product

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“By-product” is something of a dirty word. Perhaps it shouldn’t be – but it is.

In part, of course, this is because the meat and leather industries use “by-product” as justification for industrial-scale mass production. But, as well as that unfortunate game of greenwashing word association, it’s also because it implies a certain imbalance – it suggests a single quality product and something lesser.

♻ That’s why “by-product” doesn’t really feature in Planet of the Grapes’ vocabulary. As a concept, it’s the polar opposite of how we see the world and how we see our work. Yes, our biomaterial is made from the stalks, grape seeds and skins of grapes, the parts which don’t wind up in your wine and you probably wouldn’t want to find floating in your decanter, but these are nonetheless parts of a high-quality product in the first place – they have the same origins as the grapes themselves and, having found a practical, progressive, and dare we say quite beautiful use for them, they are an objet de beauté in and of themselves.

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After all, we don’t work with vignerons in possession of generations of knowledge – decades and collective centuries of know-how on growing the very best grapes – just to scoop up their 'waste'. That’s why, from the Planet Of The Grapes perspective and from the perspective of the winemakers too, “co-product” makes a lot more sense. It is about symbiosis and synergy. Not waste.