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Worried
about climate change, organics, and wine’s carbon footprint? You are not
alone. Martin will be discussing wine and sustainability on the Moncreiff show
on Friday 29th February at about 3.20pm.
The
was a climate change and wine conference in Barcelona the other day which
attracted over 350 attendees from 40 countries so no doubt there was a lot of
hot air along with carbon used in creating the event and assembling the
visitors. Al Gore did his bit for reducing gases by using a satellite link to
address the delegates and may even have recycled an old speech. See
here for yourself. Joking aside he spent a lot of time answering questions
and explaining future climate perils.
Apparently
speakers discussed how the climate is changing and what it will mean for wine
producers. It seems that in a couple of decades Southern England will be
producing (even more?) fine sparkling wine while Denmark, Holland and China will
be making some smart wines and Bordeaux had better start planting hotter climate
varieties like Syrah.
In
researching this I found an excellent American paper on carbon footprint and
wine called Red,
White and ‘Green’: The Cost of Carbon in the Global Wine Trade by. T. Colman
and P. Pastor.
It’s
pretty technical but some salient points are that:
- Growing
grapes and then fermenting them is carbon negative as growing the plants
takes more carbon out of the atmosphere than is put in by using tractors and
chemicals and the gas given up during ferment.
- Organic
farming creates marginally less carbon than conventional.
- Transport
is the biggest contributor to carbon emission. /trucks/planes emit carbon in
roughly the following ratio per kilometre 1: 5 : 11.
- Glass
adds the next most with recycled creating less than new glass but not if it
has to be transported long distances.
- Alternative
packaging such as plastic, bag in box, tetrapack or just glass magnums
reduces carbon emissions as does bulk shipping to bottle in the market
consuming the wine.
The
paper gives examples of total carbon footprint when shipping to America from
various countries but, and here I’m guessing,, for transport to Ireland, we can
roughly say its about 1.8kg to 3.00kg per 75cl bottle depending on the type of
bottle, distance and mode of transport. So, you’d think shipping wine in glass
from New Zealand would have the highest carbon use, but what about the fact that a large
percentage of their electricity comes from hydro electric power and the wine is then
shipped by sea? Paptently it's tricky to pin down individual wines.
The
authors claim it all adds up to wine contributing to 0.08% of the world’s
carbon emissions. If you are worried about carbon perhaps you should give the
weekend break in Barcelona a miss and buy a bag in box wine instead.
With
all this in mind we’ll taste three organic wines, one from an American
producer claiming to be the first Californian carbon neutral winery. It’s
Parducci Sauvignon Blanc 2006 from Mendocino at €17.50 from Redmonds of
Ranelagh, O’Donovans in Cork, Thomas’ of Foxrock and Skibbereen Food and
Wine Market. Unlike most Californian Sauvignons it thankfully has no oak, but a
fruit basket full of flavour including an array of citrus and maybe peach and
melon. Interestingly the winemaker is Paul Dolan formerly of Fetzer who has done
more for organic grape farming in the USA than anyone else. And yes his family
is Irish, four generation back, as far as I can tell.
We’ll
also taste Villa Masera a dry Northern Italian white from M & S at €7.99,
proving that organic doesn’t have to be expensive. Finally we’ll have Coyam
2005 from O’Briens at €15.99, which is usually recogniswed as the best
Chilean organic from highly regarded and long-time committed organic winemaker
Alvaro Espinosa. It’s a rich blackcurranty five grape blend led by Syrah and
Cabernet.
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