Filed in archive Wine News by tammy on June 27, 2007

Of course, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and that is one of the great things about the blogosphere. As citizen journalists, we can say what we think and the whole world wide web can take it or leave it, but as I've mentioned here before, the whole melting icebergs tomorrow because we are driving to a lunch date today is, I think, I tad over the top.

I felt the same way when I read about this British journalist that suggests we all drink wine that is closer to home so that we can save the planet. How about the Brits just stop drinking wine all together? They could drink beer instead. I bet that would save at least one Glacier.

From British Journalist's Environmental Advice Angers New Zealand Wine Producers:

Anna Shepard, who writes the green-friendly wine blog the Eco-Worrier for U.K. newspaper the Times, recently published bullet points for Britons concerned about the environmental impact of the products they buy. Among Shepard's advice: "Buy a bottle of French wine instead of a New Zealand vintage." Her reasoning was that transporting wines from France results in fewer greenhouse gas emissions because of the closer proximity.

Of course, that didn't sit well with New Zealand's wine producers, many of whom participate in a sustainable-agriculture initiative designed to reduce the environmental impact of winegrowing. Even New Zealand's Trade Minister, Phil Goff, weighed in on the issue.

"Our basic concern with the food-miles issue is that it is looking at only one aspect of the energy budget for production, marketing and sales of a product," said Philip Gregan, CEO of New Zealand Winegrowers, a group that represents New Zealand's grape growers and wine producers. "Focusing just on transport, as food miles does, is not the way forward."

Nonetheless, Shepard's blog entry didn't come out of left field. Consumer demand for carbon-footprint information on products is growing in Britain, according to the U.K. Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra). Defra is currently working on creating a unified system of measuring the food miles of various products, including wine, in case the government intends to someday require that information on labels.

"It is very difficult to develop such a system, to track a product's individual carbon miles from cradle to grave, from conception to disposal," said Penny Fox, a spokesperson for Defra. "For a product such as wine, [the system] would need to factor the energy to harvest the grape, to making the wine, to bottling it--everything until the bottle is emptied and finally recycled."

According to Gareth Edwards Jones, a professor of agriculture and land-use studies at the University of Wales and a leading researcher on food miles, wine shipped by sea has a much smaller carbon footprint when compared to trucks and, especially, airplanes.

Here's a link to Eco-Warrior by the way.
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