bubbly carbon footprints

Hopefully Dr Lipton will check in with actual knowledge. But as a bear of very little brain, doesn't the bubbly process just trap the CO2? Still wine produces same amount, just released to atmosphere?

Well, no. All other things being equal, a still wine and a sparkling wine will produce the same amount of CO2 during primary fermentation. However, the CO2 present in the bottle is the result of a process (either secondary fermentation or forced carbonation) that still wine does not undergo.

Still, this additional amount of CO2 is indeed going to be much less than that released during primary fermentation, so to worry about it strikes me as rather silly.

And beyond that, who cares?

You're a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff!!??

Most of the CO2 produced in making Champagne is released during fermentation of the still wine. The CO2 in the bottle is produced by adding sugar to the still wine to start fermentation again in the sealed bottle. This portion of the CO2 will be released when the Champagne is opened. The total amount of CO2 released depends on the total amount of sugar in the unfermented grape juice plus that added for secondary fermentation in the bottle. Not nearly as much total sugar is involved in Champagne as is involved in rich, late harvest wines such as Sauternes. Perhaps we should quit drinking Sauternes and switch to Champagne :-). However the situation is really much more complicated than that. What is the total energy needed to produce the Champagne including that to make the extra heavy bottle, etc. If the energy comes from nuclear or solar power, no CO2 will be released in making the glass for example. However if the power used to make the glass comes from burning of fuels, that might release considerable CO2 in producing the power needed to make the glass. However, some fuel may be burned and release CO2 to produce the equipment needed for generation of solar or nuclear power. This requires extremely complex mathematical analysis and often more research. "Common sense" reactions in such cases often turn out to be "common ignorance."

CO2 is not something bad that should be reduced as much as possible. It is necessary for plant growth, for example. The trick is to balance the CO2 content in the air so that release of CO2 is not much greater than that needed to support plant growth properly. Of course as more land is cleared, it takes less CO2 release to support the reduced population of plants. If the growth of the population were limited or reduced, there would be no need to clear more land and and there would be fewer people to release CO2. Here you open a can of worms that brings out all sorts of arguments, moral considerations, and shrill reactions from many. We are dealing with an extremely complicated problem with a huge number of variables, all of which must be quantitatively considered, in any meaningful evaluation of the status of CO2 loss or gain in the air.

France's electricity supply is over 90% nuclear, so glass produced here would have a small CO2 footprint.

I beg to differ. Let's take the typical example of Champagne. The base wine is harvested when sugar in the grapes will produce 10.5% of natural alcohol. If there is not enough sugar, then the must is chaptalized to give a 10.5% base wine. The finished example typically has 12.5%, so the total amount of CO2 is exactly the same as a wine with 12.5%.

M.

Again I beg to differ. The amount of CO2 has nothing to do with the amount of sugar in the finished wine, only with the amount of alcohol.

So the most environmental friendly wine should be Asti or sweet Mosel Auslese (5 to 7%); the least freundly Californian Zin with

M.

ie

Sorry,

M.

Yes, but what matters in environmental terms is not how much CO2 is produced in fermentation of grape juice, which is carbon neutral, but how much net CO2 is added to the environment.

Since CO2 from juice fermentation (not including added sugar!) is coming from plants that in order to produce sugar had to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, the fermentation CO2 is basically returning to the atmosphere what the plant took away. It is CO2 neutral.

What does matter is the rest, the energy to make the bottles, wash the corks, irrigate the cork trees, transport the bottles (empty and full), transport and refine the sugar or MCR, host the website, travel for promotion, etc..

On Apr 18, 10:49 am, Mike Tommasi wrote:

Again, the total amount of sugar in the grape juice and any added sugar determines the total amount of CO2 released to a good approximation. The first release of CO2 comes in fermenting the grape juice. The second release happens when the bottle is opened if the wine is a sparkling one. The third release, which I did not describe, happens when the wine is drunk and digested. The body "burns" alcohol and any residual sugar in the wine and we release CO2 to the air. Thus, to a decent approximation, the fermentation and consumption of wine is carbon neutral, as you suggest. But one can play the devil's advocate. Grape vines pruned for making good wines do not have nearly the leaf area coverage per unit of land as do large trees, for example. Thus if we pull up all of the wine grape vines and instead plant apple or pear trees, a given area of land then likely will take up much more CO2 from the atmosphere. So perhaps we need to outlaw grape wine and drink the fermented juice of apples and pears :-) . The wine that might release the most CO2 might be Tokai Essencia, since it has such an extreme sugar content. However the digestion of this wine would return the CO2 to the atmosphere, which likely would be about the same as the CO2 used by the grape plants to make the sugars in the Tokaji grapes. Since so little such wine is made and since most people will drink only very small portions of it at one time, consideration of this very extreme case is of no practical importance. Perhaps we need to change the subject to the middle ages discussion of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin :-).

I agree, but there are likely many other much more important things to consider, including burning less coal and using more solar and nuclear power, than wine making. To be most effective, you need to start with known big things.

Fermentation of grape juice is neither more or less environmentally friendly. It is completely carbon neutral irregardless of percent alcohol. The CO2 released is the same CO2 that was fixed in the grapes by the vines to begin with.

Energy was spent to move grape juice into fermenters, wine out of those fermenters, to stabilize the wine, to make the ingredients necessary for additions, finings, etc, to produce the bottles, fill the bottles, label the bottles, pack the bottles, ship the bottles, etc. etc. etc.

The fermentation of wine is completely carbon neutral. The yeast cannot release any more CO2 than carbon is present in the juice. The CO2 trapped in the bubble from the dosage results for added sugar which was refined from some plant. Also carbon neutral except for the energy spent to refine such sugar for addition.

Thus the carbonation is the least of your worries when considering your carbon footprint.

T.C.

That's what I wrote :-|