Are You a Green Oenophile?

Demeter USA is the current certification body for biodynamic farms, a process which lets the farm be as close as possible to its natural wilderness state. The planting calendar even works in conjunction with the astronomical calendar. There are currently 105 wineries certified by Demeter USA.

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Top Green Wine Tips
How Biodynamic Agriculture Works

While non-organic, mass produced wines add sulfites to their wines in order to chemically preserve the wine for a longer period of time, some sulfites do occur naturally in your wine. Look for "no sulfites added" on the label verses false claims like "sulfite-free." And a little hint—often those added sulfites are what cause that throbbing head ache the next day.

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How to Go Green: Wine
Emeril Expert Clip: Meet the Whole Foods Market Wine Expert II

If you are vegan, you must read labels. Look for "vegan-friendly" on the label. Some vintners will use fining agents for color and flavor, including egg whites, casein, gelatin and isinglass (a fish product). Vegan-friendly wines use alternative fining agents such as bentonite clay.

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Recycle Your Corks with ReCork America
Check Your Wine Labels

Well-known wine writer Natalie MacLean is in favor of more information on labels, pointing out that the U.S. government allows more than 200 additives in wine. In order for the consumer to make a proper decision on what to buy they need all the facts and currently wine labels don't provide them.

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8 Tips for a Smooth Organic Vineyard Trip
Buy Green: Organic Cabernet Sauvignon

According to the winery's Web site, it is actually easier to be organic in Chile, due to the dry summers and a "nearly complete absence of plant disease." Additionally, the hand-picked grapes are grown, pruned, and harvested under the certification of BCS Oko-Garantie, then fermented in native yeasts to use less sulfur.

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Use Grapes to Prevent Cancer
Getting Green Wines from 4 Great Wine Regions

The California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance brings together more than 50 regional vineyards and wineries, all of whom work to produce high-quality grapes while being good stewards of the land and habitats. But there is still a lot of work to be done considering that currently there are 2,275 vineyards operating on 529,000 acres of land in California.

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Wine In A Box: The Greenest Way To Drink?
Fog Mountain Makes First California Wine Sold in PET Bottles

That's right, it takes three years for a vineyard to be certified organic and currently 28 vineyards are certified by CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) in California. The process adds about ten percent production costs to the vineyard before it’s all said and done.

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Green Wine: By the Numbers
Green Wine: Getting Techie

Many factors led to these findings but the largest factor was that shipping has the least impact of any mode of transportation followed by trucking, and then air freight. So a wine trucked from California is often worse, in terms of transport emissions, than that Bordeaux that was shipped across the ocean.

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Wine Carbon Study Says East Coasters Should Drink French
Put a (Wine) Cork in it!

Cork is a renewable resource that comes from the Cork Oak Tree. Pablo wrote that at the age of 25 the tree's bark can be harvested every 9 years, for a period of around 200 years. While the cork is growing it is sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and the financial viability of cork growers helps provide long term habitat protection for countless species. According to an independent LCA study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers corks are the most sustainable wine closure, and another study of wine closures showed that a cork resulted in 8 grams of greenhouse gas emissions, compared to 16 for a synthetic cork, and 52 grams for a 35 percent recycled aluminum screw cap.

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Organic Cork Versus Synthetic Cork
Cork Mosaic Tiles

In 2006 New Zealand's Grove Mill winery established itself as the first carbon neutral vineyard. The winery has worked to reduce their carbon footprint and offset the remaining emissions through the CarbonZero certification program. Green initiatives include habitat restoration, greywater recycling, and using organic mulch as fertilizer.

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Grove Mill Winery: World's First Carbon-Neutral Wine
TreeHugger Picks: Carbon-Neutral Everything