Hoisting the Sails to Green the French Wine Industry

Two companies, one from France and one from Napa, California, use wind power to transport wine.

Have you ever considered how your wine from abroad is transported? How much carbon does it take for one bottle of imported wine to reach your local grocery store, especially from a faraway vineyard in Australia? How can those bottles shipped from so far away be so cheap? Are we externalizing the cost to the environment for future generations to pick up the tab? What about all of those other products we buy from abroad? Could there be another way that doesn’t involve burning so much coal?

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A French group called the Compagnie de Transport Maritime à la Voile with it’s initiative Fair Wind Wine has just made its most recent delivery of French wine to Ireland transported completely by wind in the historic  three-mast barque sailing vessel the Belem which was first launched in 1896. They made their first wine shipment in August 2007 and last year their wine delivery of over 60,000 bottles saved 18,375lb of carbon or around an estimated 140 grams of carbon per bottle. Similarly a small group in Napa Valley, Wine by Sail, has plans for a run of top of the line wines to San Francisco by tall ship sometime in 2009.

These two examples are what could be the beginning of a new niche of eco-friendly companies that have reverted back to the early days of trade by sailboat. A completely new industry of shipbuilders, sailors, and certifications can be conceived to fulfill this new niche that could transport most of the goods that now rely entirely on coal driven cargo ships and jet fuel powered airplanes. Add sail-powered certified to fair trade organic and it has a nice ring to it. Next is to go back to using horses instead of trucks and trains.

Photo Credit: pedrosimoes7 on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Read More on Wine by Wind Power at the Guardian.

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