Two Canberra businesswomen have created Australia’s first ‘circular wine’, and it’s not your average drop
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The award-winning Four Winds Vineyard in Murrumbateman and food waste innovator Goterra have partnered to release Australia’s first ‘circular wine’.
It’s the illustration of a black soldier fly on the label of Four Winds’ brand-new shiraz that gives the first clue that it’s not your average drop.
In fact, the humble fly is what allowed the two Canberra businesswomen behind the project to create the Circular Vintage series.
It just took conscripting millions of larvae to get the job done.
Also created in partnership with leading hotelier Hyatt Regency Sydney, the initiative sees food waste from the hotel consumed by the larvae and recycled onsite into a rich fertiliser.
Nourishing the vines that produce the grapes that return to the hotel in the form of the new The Circular Vintage series, Four Winds Vineyard CEO Sarah Collingwood says the project aligned perfectly with the ethos of the family-run vineyard.
“We loved the idea of being able to return nutrients to the soil rather than having them end up in landfill,” she explains.
“For us, this was about finding a practical way to close the loop between food, farming and wine and we’re incredibly proud to put our name to The Circular Vintage series, which shows that innovation and quality can go hand in hand.”
The inaugural wine – Four Winds Vineyard’s 2025 Circular Vintage Shiraz – is a typical cool-climate shiraz with distinctive white pepper and spice characters.
Poured for the first time on May 1 in the Hyatt Regency’s restaurant and lounge bar, there are also plans to introduce a Circular Vintage Riesling to hotel patrons in September.
“We are equally excited about the Riesling, which has been hand-picked recently and has the delicate citrus and floral flavours you come to expect from a Canberra District Riesling,” says Sarah.
The production process is anything but simple.
Organic waste from the Hyatt’s kitchens goes directly into Goterra’s specially built Modular Infrastructure for Biological Services (MIB) unit in the hotel’s basement. Resembling a shipping container the size of a single car space, the MIB is filled with millions of black soldier fly larvae that eat their way through the food scraps, excreting nutrient-rich frass.
The fertiliser is used on Four Winds Vineyard’s vines while the maggots (having doubled their size daily during a seven-day feeding frenzy) are used as protein for poultry and pet food.
Goterra CEO Olympia Yarger – who originally partnered with Hyatt Regency Sydney in 2024 to install the robot-controlled maggot farm as a way of sustainably managing the hotel’s food waste – says the beauty of the process is that nothing is wasted.
“This is the first time our system has been used to support wine production,” she explains.
“Using insect frass to nourish vines creates a solution that benefits the vineyard, the hotel and the environment, and opens the door for new thinking across the wine industry.”
An Australia-first initiative that showcases wines with a story that resonates well beyond the glass, the wines can be found the Hyatt Regency Sydney’s restaurant and lounge bar – the very place where their story began
But for those interested in trying the wines without taking a trip to Sydney, there is also a small number of bottles available on the Four Winds website.
