Pairing the right wine with your meal can save dinner. But what about wine that can save the planet? Well, that might be overstating things a bit, but, thanks to a new study about the carbon footprint of wine, we have some good guidelines for making the most eco-friendly choices. Tyler Colman, a wine expert and author of the wine blog Dr Vino, and Pablo Paster, brains behind the popular Ask Pablo blog, have published their findings for the American Association of Wine Economists, in a study called “Red, White and “Green”: The Cost of Carbon In the Global Wine Trade.”
Apparently, distance and size does matter. In general, transatlantic shipping is more carbon efficient than trucking long distances, which in turn is more efficient than transporting by plane. The authors identify the so-called ‘Green line,’ a geographic guideline for selecting wine, running down the middle of Ohio. For points west of the ‘Green line,’ the authors suggest, it is more carbon efficient to drink California wines. For points east of the ‘Green line,’ wines from Bordeaux will have a smaller carbon footprint, assuming bottle sizes remain the same. Speaking of size, buying larger bottles makes more green sense than half bottles, and, though many might shudder to consider this option, light packaging, such as bag-in-a-box wines (such as in the above photo), are much less carbon intensive than glass bottles. So, all those times in college you bought Franzia…you were secretly thinking about the planet.
The ‘Green line’
For more info, visit Tyler Colman’s blog, Dr Vino.
