When you write a weekly wine column, inspiration can flow from a number of places. Usually, it’s a great bottle of wine or a compelling story about a winemaker or sommelier who sparks the fire.
But this week, the source was a little different. On a spring Saturday, I thought I would take a little trip over to the Pitkin County Solid Waste Center — better known as the “Town Dump” — and deposit the many empty wine bottles that have collected dust for much of the winter in my trash shed.
As I do not have trash pickup at my rural mountain abode, I find that I frequently venture to said dump every month or so to deposit my used bottles. It’s usually a couple of cases’ worth, and it’s a relatively easy task to take the empties, stack them in leftover boxes, put them in the trunk of my car and deliver them to the single-stream glass and box pile at the Solid Waste Center. Easy-peasy.
However, due to circumstances that have prohibited me from going to the dump since well before Christmas, I discovered a rather hefty number of wine bottles in the shed that needed to be deposited. How many? Well, how does 89 bottles sound? Yeah, it sounded like a lot to me as well as I counted each and put them into a pair of extra-large leaf-and-lawn bags. When I went to pick up each bag to put them in the car, they were more than a trifle heavy.
So it was that as I drove down the highway with my bags of bottles in the boot of my car, I began to do numbers in my head. And a column was born.
My first thought was: How much have I been drinking? From Christmas Eve until April 11, the day of my trash run, there were 108 evenings. That means, if I consumed a bottle a night, I would have opened a bottle all but 19 days since Christmas. When I added in a few gatherings with friends where more than one bottle was opened, often considerably more than two, and noted that my wife imbibes a glass or two with most of our meals, the math says that I drink, on average, just under two 5-ounce glasses a day. I’m not proud of it, but remember, I am a professional.
Now, according to the Center for Disease Control, that amount, two standard drinks daily, would be on the top end of their “moderate” consumption rate for men and is more than the recommended amount for health purposes. The CDC defines a “standard” drink as equivalent to 5 ounces of wine with 12% alcohol, 12 ounces of beer with 5% alcohol or a shot of 1.5 ounces of liquor or distilled spirts (80-proof liquor) — 80-proof means the liquor has 40% alcohol. They also have this sobering statement on their website: “In fact, compared to not drinking, drinking alcohol in moderation may increase your overall risks of death and chronic disease.”
That noted, I began to consider just how much the 89 bottles in the back of my car weighed. After all, it was a task to load them up and tote them to the dump. Turns out, the weight of an empty bottle depends on a lot of things. The average 750 ml bottle of a mass-produced wine weighs in at just under a pound when empty. But there are wines, consider some Napa Valley cult cabs or Italian Super Tuscans of prominence, that use heavier bottles with the intention of exhibiting a sense of prestige. And then there are Champagne and sparkling wines, which require thicker-glassed, sturdier bottles to deal with the internal pressure of the CO2 gas which creates the bubbles. These bottles can weigh twice as much as an average bottle. So, my 89 empties, most of which were in standard bottles, weighed in at, call it, just under 100 pounds. A pretty substantial trash haul.
Of course, that got me to thinking about what those empties weighed full of wine when they left their place of origin and began their journey to my door. Wine is slightly denser than water, and 750 ml of the liquid weighs about 1.65 pounds. So, figure on at least 2.65 pounds per bottle. That’s 240 or so pounds, which was shipped first from a vineyard to a distributor, then to a retailer and finally to my door.
It’s hard to put an exact figure on the carbon footprint of a single bottle of wine. A carbon footprint measures the amount of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, that are generated in the production and distribution of a product. And as is the case with any farmed and processed food or beverage, there are various impacts to the environment in growing, harvesting and making wine.
But with wine the carbon costs of producing and shipping heavy bottles added up to make a moderate agricultural footprint much larger. Glass bottles are made from silica sand, soda ash and limestone that are mined for making glass. These ingredients are heated to 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit to melt them. The processes of acquiring raw materials and creating the heat are carbon intensive.
And domestic wines are generally distributed via trucks that take them on the interstate system across the nation. Imported wines are sent via container ships across the ocean before also being disseminated for delivery across the lower 48 states largely by truck. In both cases, transportation increases the carbon impacts of a given bottle of wine. Lighter bottles and recycling are often cited as means by which the carbon footprint of the wine industry can be reduced. But thus, far less than 40% of wine bottles make it into recycling and few producers have opted for glass alternatives or lighter bottles.
Perhaps I should think a little less on my trips to the dump.
Dining and Cooking