News from the Vineyard

Trapping CO2 For a Cleaner Wine Industry

July 14, 2021
by Edouard Bourgeois

The wine industry is not often portrayed as a major pollutant and distractor of earth’s ecological balance. However, even organic, biodynamic and the sometimes polarizing “natural” wine producers cannot be entirely “green”, as Vincent Dauvissat himself reminded me on a recent trip to Chablis. “We all are polluters” he declared. From my own small experience of working in a renowned winery in Beaujolais, I remember the colossal quantities of water we would use to constantly clean the equipment, the price to pay for not using synthetic cleaning chemicals, which can almost seem ironic.

But amazing people follow amazing ideas, like our friend Diana Seysses of Domaine Dujac in Burgundy and Snowden Vineyards in California. Diana was featured in a recent, eye-opening article on SevenFiftyDaily this week where she talks about capturing the CO2 naturally produced by alcoholic fermentation and re-using it. After experiencing the wildfires of California at her family estate and then the historical frost episode of this past April in Burgundy, she found even more motivation to develop the strategy of carbon capture. “During vinification each year, winery buildings are full of pure, clean carbon dioxide—and we just blow it out the windows. I believe the ventilation of our wineries is a wasted opportunity” she explains.

This is a great article where Diana explains her journey in trying to make the process of carbon capture work. The pros and cons of such a process are exposed with raw humility but unbreakable passion.

Read the article on SevenFiftyDaily here

A tank for CO2 trapping and storing