Sorry if this has been asked before. Not sure exactly how much CO2 is in a bottle of bubbly, but there's enough to maintain a pressure of about 6 atmospheres.
My question, in two parts: in these days of global warming what effect does the opening of a bottle have on the world's carbon footprint?
If it is significant, should we foreswear the drinking of fizz?
Cheers!
Martin
You're a tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff!!??
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
16%.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..
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 :-|
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