In last week’s blog I wrote that I was going to try and work out how to be an ethical wine drinker. It seems from the comments I’ve recieved online and in person there are lots of people who would genuinely like to know about this one.
I embarked on some research and found that there are a few things to consider. This week I’m going to think about the environmental effect of wine making and next week the effect on people.
Ingredients – Is it organic? Back in the clothing challenge I looked into what ‘organic’ meant. Wine can, of course, be made organically by treating grapes nicely! Until 2012 the difficult thing with wine was that, in Europe, it couldn’t legally be labelled as ‘organic’ but rather ‘wine made from organic grapes’ allowing the process to involve non-organic treatments. These rules have now been changed to cover the entire wine-making process which in turn means a lot more organic options on the shelf (though there’s still some questions about this). Vintage Roots specialise in organic wines and I’ll come back to them next week. But it seems if you are concerned about the impact of wine-making on the environment organic is a good way to go.
Where’s it from – carbon footprint?
I was fairly surprised to find out that the UK is the world’s largest importer of wine. Wine is arriving in various way to get into our glass. Distance travelled matters, but almost as important is mode of transport. Generally people seem to agree that shipping is better than roads which itself is better that air. A study in 2007 found that, for people living in New York, it was ‘greener’ to consume a glass of French wine that had been transported by sea, than a glass of Californian wine transported by road (this fact makes my head hurt a little)! Tesco have switched to trains and barges and claim to have cut CO2 by 80% by doing so. The problem is when you are stood in a shop looking at a bottle there is no way of knowing how it’s got there due to no legislation, making the decision really tricky. One option would be to avoid wines from Australasia and South America as they are most likely to have clocked up the ‘food miles’ but mostly you seem to have to take a bit of a punt or do a lot of research.
So this week I’ve learnt the best option for the environment is a seafaring organic wine, next week I’ll consider the effect of who’s put it in the bottle!