There cannot be a single or uniform approach by the wine industry to climate change

The wine industry, on the whole, has tried to Be a Good Citizen, by caring about its affect on the world’s climate. All agricultural products have a so-called Carbon Footprint, which is an attempt to measure how well this is being done.

There have been several review articles discussing this topic over the past 15 years, and it is worth looking at some of them here, to try to clarify where the wine industry currently stands. After all, 2023 was apparently the warmest year recorded globally, so we do need to take things seriously; and the potential health effects of wine are not the only important thing (There is much medical evidence that wine consumption is good for your health).

According to Wikipedia:

A carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) is a calculated value or index that makes it possible to compare the total amount of greenhouse gases that an activity, product, company or country adds to the atmosphere ... A product’s carbon footprint includes the emissions for the entire life cycle. These run from the production along the supply chain to its final consumption and disposal.

That last part, about the life-cycle, is important. The affect of the wine industry includes growing the grapes, making the wine, packaging the wine, transporting the wine, consuming the wine (hopefully!), and disposing of all of the refuse from these processes. As has been noted: The drinks industry has a huge carbon footprint: there are solutions.

One of the first good reviews of the topic was that by:

Tyler Colman, Pablo Päster (2007) Red, white and “green”: the cost of carbon in the global wine trade. American Association of Wine Economists Working Paper No. 9.

The authors note that:

Climate change is altering a wide range of human activities, including wine making. While wine may appear to be one of the most natural alcoholic beverages, it is not without carbon inputs and emissions, which contribute to the very change in climate that is altering both wine and wine making.

One of the most important points made in that paper, especially at that early stage, was that not all countries have wine industries that are equivalent to each other, in terms of their impact. The authors produced this next graph, showing the carbon use of six different wine-producing regions, illustrating that some regions produce twice as much carbon as others.

This effect happens at all six of the listed wine-industry life-cycle stages, but some are far worse than others. In particular, the authors emphasize that it is shipping that can be the killer. They note:

To underscore the fact that not all transportation miles are alike, many New Yorkers may be surprised that holding bottle mass constant, it is more “green” to drink wine from Bordeaux (1.8 kg carbon) with a long sea voyage as opposed to a wine from Napa (2.6 kg) with a long truck trip.

A decade later, this next review appeared:

Flavio Scrucca, Emanuele Bonamente, Sara Rinaldi (2018) Carbon footprint in the wine industry. In: Environmental Carbon Footprints, pp. 161—196.

They further emphasize the different components of the wine-industry life-cycle stages, and refine the estimates of seven different components of what they call a “generic wine bottle” (they have added Vineyard Planting as the extra component). They provided this next graph, where the carbon footprint is in units of kgCO2/bottle. Note that the two biggest components are Packaging Processes (mainly glass bottle production) and End-of-life Processes (including landfill disposal, reuse, recycling), followed by Viticulture (including use of pesticides and fertilizers, and diesel consumption for field activities).

They further emphasize the global variability in the estimation of the size of the carbon footprint, by comparing nine different red wines, as shown in the next figure. The carbon footprint of some wines is twice that of other wines, indicating that there can be no single global response by the wine industry to climate change. The components of the life-cycle for each wine need to be assessed independently, and appropriate adjustments made if deemed necessary.

Finally, a recent review article appeared:

Cornelis van Leeuwen, Giovanni Sgubin, Benjamin Bois, Nathalie Ollat, Didier Swingedouw, Sébastien Zito, Gregory A. Gambetta (2024) Climate change impacts and adaptations of wine production. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 5 pp. 258—275.

These authors are particularly interested in the opposite situation to the above: what effect climate change will have on the wine industry. They produce an interesting stylized map, with each of the major wine-producing regions as a hexagon, as shown in the next figure. They consider two scenarios for climate change: an increase of up to 2 degrees (celsius) and up to 4 degrees (both of these are reasonable current estimates). They then evaluate the suitability of each region to continue making wine under each of these scenarios, as well as for new regions to become suitable.

The important thing to note is that the warmer a region currently already is then the less suitable it will be for future viticulture. This basically means that wine-making is going to move north in the northern hemisphere. You will all soon be drinking Scandinavian wine, quite happily!

The authors produced a second map in the same format, showing drought projections for the wine-making regions under the same two warming regimes. Their conclusion from this is what you would expect: the drier a region already is then the drier it is going to become. We therefore need to start developing drought-tolerant grape-vines now, which produce the wines we want but can do so in the climates as they will soon be.

Certificates of social and environmental responsibility (like organic or biodynamic credentials) have become important markers for wineries (Why are wineries around the world seeking this certification?). However, there has to be action as well, which will always be visible on The Bottom Line. One obvious recent example of moving forward is: New glass alternatives lower shipping costs, carbon footprints.