Four Winds Vineyard has released Australia’s first ‘circular wine’ in collaboration with Hyatt Regency Sydney and food waste innovator Goterra.

The initiative sees food waste from the Hyatt Regency consumed by black solider fly larvae and recycled onsite into a rich frass, or fertiliser, which nourishes the grapevines that are used to produce Four Winds Vineyard’s new ‘The Circular Vintage’ series.

The inaugural wine – Four Winds Vineyard’s 2025 Circular Vintage Shiraz – is being poured for the first time this week in the Hyatt Regency’s restaurant and lounge bar. A Circular Vintage Riesling will be introduced to hotel patrons in September.

In the circular production process, 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 then 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.

Four Winds Vineyard, which won the prestigious Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy for its 2023 Shiraz in the 2024 Melbourne Royal Wine Awards, is located in Murrumbateman, NSW.

Four Winds CEO Sarah Collingwood and Goterra founder Olympia Yarger

Four Winds CEO Sarah Collingwood said: “We loved the idea of being able to return nutrients to the soil rather than having them end up in landfill.

“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 Circular Vintage Shiraz is a typical cool-climate shiraz with distinctive white pepper and spice characters. 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.”

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, said the beauty of the process is that nothing is wasted.

“This is the first time our system has been used to support wine production,” Ms Yarger said.

“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.”

Hyatt Regency Sydney Executive Assistant Manager Nitin Kumar said: “Partnering with Four Winds Vineyard on an Australia-first initiative like this allows us to showcase wines with a story that resonates well beyond the glass."