Bonterra launches zero carbon wine by buying carbon credits

Californian organic winery launches Bonterra, claiming to be the first organic winery to go carbon neutral.

While there are quite a few non-organic carbon neutral wineries including Hardys, Mudhouse, Banrock Station, Echo Falls and Kumala, Bontererra claims to be the first organic.

They published their carbon footprint for a typical bottle of wine as 1.5kg per bottle. Broken down, 37.2% of Bonterra's emissions are derived from packaging and materials, mainly the glass bottle, 25.2% from shipping, 16.5% from production, 16.1% from farming and grapes, and 5% from employee commuting and travel.

To achieve this they purchased 9,823 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, while we don’t know the exact numbers, 1 tonne of carbon offset in the California carbon credit market is $34.64 and on that basis, each bottle's 1.54kg of carbon would cost $0.05 to offset.