Wine Options Include Sustainability

By Kurt A. Eichsteadt
Editorial Assistant

With all the earnest discussions about carbon footprints and greening, let’s take a look at a lighter subject: “green” wine consumption.

The impact an individual’s wine consumption has on the environment is relatively small, but there is the old saying, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Drinking green wine is about reducing the carbon footprint. Carbon footprint is “a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.”

Two heavyweight academics (Pablo Paster and Tyler Colman) have published a study of the carbon footprint of wine production and consumption, “Red, White and ‘Green,’ the cost of Carbon in the Global Wine Trade,” for the American Association of Wine Economists. Paster is a sustainability engineer and Colman operates the Web site “Dr. Vino.”

Here are the highlights of their research.

There are two parts to green wine: manufacture and transportation.

The production of green wine falls into three categories: organic, biodynamic or sustainable. Organic wine comes from a vineyard that has been certified organic or uses mostly organic farming techniques and has added sulfites. The vineyards also encourage a predator-pest balance, use compost and other crops between vines for biodiversity.

Biodynamic wine comes from vineyards where the entire property, not just the vines, is involved in the process.

Sustainable farming is an umbrella term for a variety of environmentally friendly and socially responsible practices, such as using plant cover instead of herbicides.

Organic farming has lower greenhouse gas impact, but the difference between organic and non-organic is small.

The process of fermentation releases carbon dioxide and nothing can be done about that. But wineries can do other things, like using solar and wind power and planting trees on the property or elsewhere through carbon merchants to help offset CO2 production.

Transportation, on the other hand, makes a big difference. Shipping wine bottled at the winery is really about shipping glass with some wine in it. Bigger bottles are better (more carbon friendly) because the glass to wine ratio is less.

Shipping wine in bulk and bottling it close to the point of consumption lowers the carbon impact.

The authors found that there is a “green line” running down the middle of Ohio. To the west of that line, it is more carbon efficient to consume wines from California.

To the east, it is better to consume the same size bottle of wine from Bordeaux, which benefits from container shipping and a shorter truck trip.

So drinking wine without agrichemicals from bigger bottles or wine that has traveled fewer miles is more carbon efficient.

But the authors suggest that to have real impact, wine drinkers should do other things that have carbon offsets — like avoiding bottled water.

Now that you have your green wine, here’s a way to open it beyond the traditional corkscrew. The Web site www.e-corporategifts.com offers Cork Pops III, which uses a low-pressure cartridge to remove the cork without harming the wine or the environment.

It’s the official “green” wine opener and it costs just $28.