CARBON BALANCED the new buzz word?

• It is difficult to overestimate the importance of global climate change. Growing fears surround scientific findings. The now broad consensus that greenhouse gasses ( GHGs ) are contributing to global climate change, the previously unprecedented increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels over the last few years and records showing that the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1990 all point to the problem.
• Consequences of climate disturbances range from famine, drought, disease and mass migration in the developing world, mass flooding of low lying regions and the disappearance of many island nations. In the France we are already beginning to see more extreme weather conditions such as intense rainfall, flooding and droughts.
• My concerns extends, however, far beyond the impacts on our own vineyards and subsequently the wines we are committed to making our own little contribution to the effects of global warming.
• Being Carbon balanced is about assessing the emissions that are associated with La Colline, reducing the emissions as far as possible and offsetting emissions that are unavoidable.
• Carbon sequestration plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. Green plants remove (sequester) carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.
• They extract carbon dioxide from the air, separating the carbon and oxygen atoms, returning oxygen to the atmosphere, and using the carbon to make biomass in the form of roots, stems, and foliage. The net numerical difference or flux between carbon sequestration and release can be viewed as measure of the relative contribution to biomass to the carbon cycle. World flux is thought to provide a net sink of about 0.7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide/year.
• Our vineyardof 18,75 ha has an estimated of standing biomass of 75 tons or 4 tons per ha of Total DW. The vineyard consumes 150 tons of carbon per year (8t/ha Total CO 2) and our 3,4 ha of oak wood land consumes 1360 tons of carbon per year (400t/ha Total CO 2) However our annual crops fix less than 15 t carbon/ha/y, and much of that is returned to the atmosphere as CO2 within 12 months.
• We produce about 115-163 tones of carbonper year (120-170 kg's /hectoliter). Which is largely covered by our carbon sequestration. The major part is in traveling(15-30% )then the bottles them selves (18-23%) use a lot of energy in their production. This is followed by the diesel fuel for the tractors (11-20%) then our electricity for the winery mainly use (2-11%) . Smaller percentages but significant are printing and cartons at (7-13)% Road fright to our clients can be from (2-20%) but this is very difficult to quantify as we sell on a ex cellars basis.
• How ever we can still make efforts to be less productive of carbon emissions by using light weight bottles, better insulation of buildings, think about flying less frequently and using the train more, sharing cars for traveling within europe and simply buying locally grown and produced food and products.