Climate change and wine event, a wrap!
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About 150 people attended The Nature Conservancy talk and tasting on Tuesday night–it was great to meet so many site readers! Dominique Bachelet of TNC, Scott Pactor of Appellation Wine & Spirits, and I started off a discussion about climate change and wine that then spilled into a Q&A. We all then tasted four “natural” wines provided Michael Skurnik. Although I didn’t select them, I did enjoy the wines: the Hofer Gruner Veltliner in the carbon-efficient one-liter bottle (find this wine), Mittnach pinot blanc from Alsace (find this wine), Domain de Gourgonnier’s biodynamic red from Provence (find this wine), Amber Knolls/Beckstoffer 1975 that I have seen everywhere and had no idea that the grapes are organically grown (find this wine).
Since I love maps, I added more color to the “green line” map for my slide show using Googlemaps. Although I presented it on Tuesday evening, it still has that new map smell. Check it out here.
Anyway, not much more to report here since you, no doubt, are familiar with my joint research on the carbon footprint of wine. Cruise on over to The Nature Conservancy web site and check them out if you’re not familiar with them. They’re doing good things.
One of the "seven best wine blogs." 
One of the three best wine blogs
On March 20th, 2008 at 1:04 pm ,MrTaz wrote:
We really enjoyed the event. Enjoyable, easy to swallow, yet with complex secondary and tertiary layers — a pleasant quaffer and thought-provoking experience all in one. Definitely outstanding QPR!
Great finally meeting you too!
On March 21st, 2008 at 11:07 am ,jared wrote:
Tyler, I think your research on the carbon footprint of wine is noble, but I’m finding several major errors/inconsistencies in your research paper. Have you gotten it peer-reviewed?
From the research paper:
“Compared to many other crops, grapes yield relatively little output per hectare. Grapes considered in this study yielded between 400 and 800 kilograms (kg) per hectare”
800 kg = 1763 lbs = 0.88 tons per hectare
= 0.35 tons per acre (2.5 acres per hectare).
so the paper is saying that vineyards yield between 0.18 and 0.35 tons per acre. that’s simply false.
typical vineyards in california yield 2-5 tons per acre, and vineyards in the central valley can yield up to 10 tons per acre.
am i missing something here?
On March 21st, 2008 at 2:14 pm ,Dr. Vino wrote:
Hi Jared -
Thanks for your comment. Actually this is an error from the working paper version. We caught it before submitting it for peer review. It does not significantly affect the findings since the agricultural component of emissions is small.
On March 21st, 2008 at 2:17 pm ,jared wrote:
Thanks Tyler
Where could I find a copy of the paper submitted for peer review?
On April 4th, 2008 at 5:55 pm ,Drink responsibly, not sustainably — WineEnabler.com wrote:
[...] of common vocabulary: In his post about a recent event on wine and climate change, Dr. Vino calls four wines he just had “natural”. Now, without any further explanation, I (Michael) [...]