Green Wine (25 June)

My thanks to Mark Cohen for much of the research behind this article.

Growing grapes for wine is about as green as you can get but wineries are always looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint further. That’s a good thing! But wineries are not the only ones looking for ways to reduce our footprint on this planet, and that’s also a good thing. Anything we can do to lessen our impact on the environment is positive, but there are some real, harebrained ideas out there, and this is one of them.

“Pastor Lofty” runs Ashronia Community Services in Perth. Essentially it looks like the main “business” of this charity is two op shops in Perth called “Rags to Riches,” although their web site does indicate other areas of interest and activity. The one that was drawn to my attention was grandly titled, “Ashronia Christian Cadet and Mission Ship Association. They intend to build a 200ft Barquentine sailing ship called “The Sovereign of the Seas” in Freemantle. Although it will be replica, it will be fitted will all the modern day technology and fitting. No old wooden masts here, it’s going to be stainless steel. Hydraulic winches and modern accommodation are all part of the plan. You get the idea.

So what’s this got to do with wine you ask? Lots! They have sent out an email to some wineries and distributors. In part, it states….

“France Ships Their Wine by Sailing Ship

At the start of this month 60,000 bottles from Languedoc, France have been shipped to Ireland in a 19th-century barque, saving 18,375lbs of carbon. This three-masted barque Belem, which was launched in 1896, the last French merchant sailing vessel to be built, has sailed into Dublin following a voyage from Bordeaux that has lasted four days. The wines were delivered to Bordeaux by barge using the Canal du Midi and Canal du Garonne, which run across southern France from Sete in the east, via Beziers in Languedoc.

Each bottle carries on the label the message "Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet". Although the whole process will end up taking up to a week longer than a flight, it is estimated it will save 4.9oz of carbon per bottle, move 50 trucks off the road every week and cut carbon emissions by 80per cent. The additional time taken also compliments the ageing process inherent in the wines maturing . The Tesco Supermarkets in Britain have already started moving the cargo via canal last October ferrying wine by barge from Liverpool to Manchester along the Manchester Ship Canal. This newTesco cargo service involves three journeys a week, delivering an estimated 600,000 liters of wine on each journey along the 40-mile stretch of the canal.

This development has created a great deal of interest with some 250 wine producers in Languedoc alone, keen to use his ships delivering "green" wines. But despite the time involved in transporting it, the wine has remained relatively cheap, at between seven to twenty pound per bottle.

Australia to Ship Australian Wine by Sailing Ship

A Western Australian organization approached Frederic Albert the founder of the French sailing barque. They requested that a West Australian sailing ship could be used to transport Australian "green " wines via other ports of call on passage to the United Kingdom to deliver some 450 tons of the best 'green' wines, using as natural a product as possible to distributors in countries like the United States of America, United Kingdom, New Zealand, South America and Canada. A return cargo of non-perishable foods from various supermarkets would be delivered back into the FoodBanks of Western Australia to be distributed out to the poor and needy. Frederic Albert considered this to be an excellent idea.

So our organization, Ashronia Christian Cadet & Mission Ship Association, is seeking interested parties that can sponsor our request for financial assistance to build a new 200ft sailing Barquenting called the Sovereign of the Seas. We also need vineyard producers and distributors that can supply their wines for transport to overseas destinations on commercial freight rates. This will be a huge saving of carbon emissions in transporting 450 tons per cargo to world markets. This cargo of some 900.000 bottles of wine will be a saving 135 tons of CO 2 carbon emissions. This would be a sound solution for the future as carrying freight by sea is an eco-wise investment. It uses 75% less fuel than shipping or road haulage which contribute sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere.

By comparison, a long sea voyage from Australia to the United Kingdom - a voyage of some 120 days - would reduce co2 emissions equivalent to that which 30 cars produce in a year.
Now this is something worth toasting with a glass of wine! It's also been found that a sailing ship on a passage will experience, under sail, plenty of pitch and roll which contributes to the taste of the wine being fuller, more open and apparently palpably advanced by the constant motion on a fairly rough crossing. These several factors have evidently pleased the customer in the United Kingdom as sales have increased 5 fold……”

As I said and idea that decreases energy use is worth exploring, but it has to also be feasible and based on both fact and reality, not pie in the sky, lofty-ideas that don’t have a chance in hell of being floated. (Bad puns intended.)

Firstly, this venture will cost megabucks, I wonder if the good Pastor has the ability to raise the money, but more importantly, if he does, the ability to manage the process. The first thing I would question is the numbers and conclusions quoted about energy saving contained in the email.

It states that moving 60,000 bottles from Languedoc to Ireland would save 18,375 pounds (8,352 kg) of carbon. It would be about 3.5 truck loads of wine. That means that each truck would leave approximately 2,350 kg of carbon in the atmosphere.

According to a House of Commons report, a litre of diesel produces 715 g of carbon. The average semi would use approximately 64 litres per hundred kilometres. So if for the purposes of this exercise it was possible to drive from Languedoc to Dublin, which is less than 1,000 km (plus channel crossings) the trucks, on each journey should pump out about 700 kg of carbon. Allow for the channel crossings and it would be say 1,000 kg, and that’s being generous. That 1,000 kg is still less than half the figure quoted. So, from what I can see the potential savings are vastly overstated. That’s point one.

The email states that moving the wine by sea from France to Ireland would move fifty trucks a week off the roads. How? That claim does not make any sense.

As far as the Australian content is concerned, it states the ship rolling around in the swell is good for the wine. It may be good for inexpensive stuff, but it would not be good for quality wine that was built to age. It also doesn’t takes into account the effect the heat will have on the wine when it crosses the equator. Nothing like a month (or more) of baking hot days to cook wine.

The good Pastor also thinks that “relatively cheap,” is between seven and twenty pound per bottle. Seven quid is at the lower end, but twenty quid, or $50 isn’t relatively inexpensive, but then I don’t think about building boats, which I guess provides a different perspective as to what is “relatively cheap.”

Mark Cohen emailed Pastor Lofty with a few questions about this proposed plan. Amongst other things, the Pastor states….

“The 200ft sailing vessel that we want to build has to be built in a special design to carry 450 tons of green wines in cases on pallets protected and secured so that the cargo cannot move in any direction, but be a complete bulk mass as sometimes the ship lean over 35 to 45 degrees in heavy weather, but be also designed of ease once in port to off-load by using its own equipment, as again the whole ship from rigging, hull, cargo holds and living spaces will be designed in a much newer construction that will be ten times safer than its traditional early century sailing ships.

At this moment we do have a commitment from one vineyard in South Australia to supply us with 19,000 cases of Green wines for the UK and America markets on a continues basis, with 6 other vineyards will support us with wines ranging from Western and South Australia to New South Wales and New Zealand, but other we would welcome from Australia and we are seeking a return wine cargo from UK-European markets back to ports of call to Australia.”

Sounds good? Yes it does, but as Mark pointed out there is one slight miscalculation here. Not that a slight miscalculation is likely to interfere with the plan. In the first email, and on their website, it states that 450 tons of wine cargo is equal to 900,000 bottles. No doubt that’s what they have done the planning on, assuming there have been any planning at all. Unfortunately 450 tons is approximately 336,000 bottles. That’s only a shortfall of potentially sixty two percent of possible revue from shipping the wine. That’s nothing to worry about.

And there are two other factors to consider. The first is that as it will take far longer for the wineries to get paid, but that may not be such a big deal. The real other concerning issue is insurance of the wine. Will they be able to get it insured, let alone at a reasonable price?

If this was April 1, I would think the whole thing an elaborate joke.

 

 

Feel free to submit your comments!

From Murray Paterson: Thursday 26 June

 

A container (20ft) will generally hold 1900 +/- six bottle cases – or 950 +/- 12 bottle cases. A case is usually calculated at 18kg.

The plus or minus bit is simply that shave a millimetre of each dimension of a carton and you can get a surprising number of extras into the container.

This container costs in the order of say $6,000 to ship to UK – or $6.00 a 12 bottle carton, in round figures .

The carbon footprint of this carton is pretty nominal – there are lots of boxes on a box-boat, indeed I am assured by Grove Mill Wines (the first CarboNZero winery in this part of the world), that it is less than a tenth of that (per unit) of shipping the same carton from Italy/Spain on the back of a truck. Sheer volume carried on a ship compared to one container on a truck.

Now let us look at the sailing ship. It is aimed at carrying 450 tonnes of palletised wine – in a 200 foot hull.

A pallet is 56 x 12 bottle cartons and weighs (generally) one tonne; in other words 450 pallets. Sorry, this does not compute. There seems to be a lot of wasted space.

Cutty Sark was also about 200ft and about 40ft in beam. She was about 2000 tons displacement – and from memory this meant she could carry about 800/900 tonnes below deck. Her best speed was probably higher but I think she used to make the voyage Sydney/London in less than 70 days. Keep in mind that Cutty and Thermopylae were clippers, built for speed – the steel ship and barquentines were much larger and carried more cargo.

As an example – but just keeping to one that is still afloat, the Esmeralda. She is about 350ft x 40ft beam and displaces about 3,600 tons. In other words proportionately about the same as the Cutty Sark – with engines and propulsion gear adding weight. When she visited Auckland, I went aboard she had, at that time about 3,000 square metres of sail, which they were so proud of driving her at something like 17 knots!

Sponsorship will be needed to fund the construction – or there will be no way this barquentine could compete commercially – one assumes steel construction and 120 days a voyage indicates that the proposed vessel will be well under-rigged as even using 10 knots as the mean speed (240 nautical miles a day) 120 days is 28,000 miles. Sounds like head-winds all the way to me.

Your comment on the tropics is very valid. Without using the engines (which they wouldn't do, of course), they could be days in the Atlantic doldrums, so refrigeration is obviously intended. So much for saving carbon.

The reverend gentleman seems to be living in cloud cuckoo-land. Or perhaps he is just closer to God than this mere mortal.

TORB Responds:

Or as Mark Cohen said, he has been into the sacramental wine.

 

From Mark Cohen: Friday 27 June

 

 

11000 containers of wine x 1100 cases per container x 12 bottles = 14.5 million bottles. Go beat that pastor
 

 

Copyright © Ric Einstein 2008