France’s famed Bordeaux region studies wine’s carbon footprint

JANUARY 30, 2008—France’s celebrated Bordeaux wine-growing region kicked off “Bilan Carbone,” a project to track the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions with an eye toward bolstering environmental standards in response to growing concern about global warming, the Bordeaux Wine Board said.

“We know we produce 756 million bottles of wine per year and that 40 percent of that is exported,” Laurent Charlier of the wine board told Agence France Presse (AFP). “This study should give a clear idea of what different methods of production or shipment mean, in terms of environmental cost.”

A similar project is in the works for the Champagne region.

Bordeaux Wine Board director Roland Feredj told AFP that the project stems from France’s national environmental action plan, but he confesses there’s an economic incentive, too.

“Everyone is concerned with the costs of (wine) production, so if we can find ways of saving money and reducing carbon emissions, that would be ideal,” Feredj told AFP.

The project should prove enlightening as the carbon cost of everything is assessed in a tangled web that includes growing, bottling, labeling, staffing and shipping. It’s a complicated calculation growers and environmentalists agree.

“For example, with any of the products needed for the vineyard we need to ask, how far has this come, how much carbon was emitted in its making?,” Aymeric Fournier for the Despagne Family told the AFP. “Or take the different cars and different distances that employees drive to work. It is a very detailed calculation.”