Our Approach to Carbon
How we measure and offset the carbon footprint of every bottle we sell
This page is for all of you wonderful climate warriors (and worriers). Our biggest hesitation when considering building Vino Cammino was the climate impact our business would create. Shipping heavy glass bottles of wine in big fridges halfway across the world to a country that makes excellent wine, while the climate emergency continues, is indulgent, at best. But having thought deeply about this, we believe that:
- there is a climate friendly approach to wine importing (read below for details)
- these wines are unique and thrilling enough to add real value to the lives of our customers beyond locally made wine
- we should stock up on these global treasures now because who knows how much longer they will be able to be made as the traditional wine growing regions experience hotter and hotter summers (and if we are going to watch the collapse of civilisation we'd prefer to do it with a glass of Barbaresco in hand)
Estimated Carbon Footprint of our Wine
We've estimated the end to end carbon footprint for each bottle of wine that we sell. For climate accounting nerds, that means we're aiming to incorporate scopes 1-3 for Vino Cammino. We are 100% sure these numbers are wrong, but are confident that we've made enough conservative assumptions to make it more likely that we have over-estimated than under-estimated. We will update these figures annually to swap assumptions for real data, and to reflect expected industry improvements.
In the chart below, you can see our current estimates across the 4 wine (and brandy) styles we import. Organic red wine comes in with lowest impact, mostly due to avoiding synthetic fertilisers, less need for cooling during the winemaking process v whites, and lighter bottles v. sparkling wine. Cognac has a large footprint per bottle due to gas heating during distillations, but almost matches organic reds when considered at a per standard drink level.
These estimates are based primarily on a literature review combining results from 34 Life Cycle Assessment case studies for wineries in Southern Europe as well as a number of different emissions calculators for stages of the wine's life post-winery. One example of our conservative estimate approach is using the footprint of conventional whites, sparkling wines and brandy because we could not find reliable data on organic production for those styles, even though the majority of our imports are organically produced. For red wine, organic production has a 20% lower footprint than conventional production.
If we zoom in on the organic red footprint in the next graph below you can see the various contributions toward the total figure. There are 3 overweight contributors, with around 20% of the total each:
- packaging (glass manufacturing is quite carbon intensive)
- shipping from Europe to Australia (in refrigerated containers)
- storing in a temperature controlled warehouse (we have assumed an average duration of 3 months, but will monitor and adjust for actual data on this)
The last two are both significantly impacted by our decision to keep our wines at optimum temperatures for transport and storage. For e.g. refrigerated containers have a 30% higher emissions profile than regular containers. But, unlike those "bargain" imported bottles on sale at your local bottlo, we don't see the point of sourcing excellent wine only to have it's character flattened by cooking it in a regular container as it sails over the equator, or in a tin roof warehouse on a hot summer's day in Sydney.
Another example of a conservative assumption is that we have assumed our logistics partners are not offsetting any of their emissions, though most make some sort of claim to that end. We will maintain that assumption until we are confident that we have long term relationships with providers who can offer strong evidence of high-quality offsets.
We buy high quality Carbon Dioxide Removal credits to offset 100% of the estimated impact of every bottle sold
We are committed with our friends at Carbonaught to buy high quality Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) credits to offset 100% of our estimate of the total carbon footprint of each bottle sold. Those credits aren’t paying a company to avoid or reduce their emissions, nor are they used to protect or grow trees (all good things, but we wanted only the best quality credits to match the quality of our wines, and to support an emerging climate technology). Each Carbonaught credit permanently removes 1 tonne of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turns it to rock, all while improving agricultural soil health. Subject to approval by a global standards body, we expect delivery of those credits to us to commence in the second half of 2024, and will keep this page updated with further developments.
August 2024 update: with a delay to delivery of first credits due to slow moving standards bodies, we are purchasing ACCUs to offset our first shipments, rather than waiting an unknown period to secure CDR credits. This is not our preferred approach, but we think better than waiting to act. We are first in line to secure the first batch of CDR credits when they are approved!
We acknowledge the need to zero each bottle’s footprint as fast as possible, but believe investing in this type of offset is important while we press for green shipping options and encourage producers and consumers (that’s you) to consider different containers for fine wine.
P.S. If you'd like to know more detail about our estimates and approach, have some constructive feedback to share or just want to chat climate and wine, please get in touch with us at hello@vinocammino.com.au