About the CO2 footprint

How ecological is it to transport wines over such long distances? As a wine merchant of South African wines, we are asked this question time and again. Everyone is talking about the CO2 footprint – here you will find some explanations. First of all: there is no simple answer, the subject is too complex.

Various organizations such as the WWF or Esu-Services, an office specializing in eco-calculations, have published their findings through various channels. It is clear that transportation only accounts for part of the CO2 footprint, albeit an important part. The type of wine or grape production also plays an important role. The use of machines, water and chemicals are just a few examples.

Transportation & production of South African wines

South Africa’s production is exemplary in ecological terms – many European producers could learn a thing or two! Let’s leave the type of grape production aside for a moment and focus on transportation. Of course, the weightier transportation of wine in bottles is less ecological than the transportation of open wine, which is then bottled here. But hand on heart, wouldn’t we as consumers prefer an original wine where the producer is 100% responsible for the quality?

The picture above shows the container ship Santa Barbara, which has a 20-foot container capacity of 14,000 units. It was loaded in Cape Town on January 30 and is now on its way to Rotterdam. Also on board is a container for Savinis with 12,500 bottles of wine.
These huge quantities of goods being moved in this way make it clear that the CO2 emissions per bottle are very low – even if these ships may hopefully sail with better fuel quality in the future. From Rotterdam to Switzerland, the goods are transported by rail. In fact, wine is mainly transported by truck in Europe. This is very bad for the ecological balance, so that in comparison the wines from Europe (France, Spain, Italy) have a comparable or mostly worse ecological balance compared to the wines from Australia or California. Wines from South Africa do very well because they are also produced sustainably and in a way that respects nature.