Life cycle assessment of an Italian sparkling wine production

The environmental impacts of food products and methods to identify and minimise those impacts are drawing the attention of producers. Wine producing firms are particularly interested in these topics in order to demonstrate that along with the quality of the product they are also committed in developing a proper environmental management of the production chain. To meet the requirements of an important Italian wine producer the environmental performance of a sparkling wine made by a winery of a Trentino province, has been investigated. This paper presents the results of the a life cycle assessment (LCA) applied to an Italian sparkling wine from vineyard operations, winery activities from grape crushing to bottling, and to packaging. The main objective of the study was to quantify input flows of raw materials and energy in order to detect the environmental impacts associated with output flows and releases at any stage, from cradle to gate, of wine to evaluate the environmental performance. Furthermore, quantification of environmental impacts enables the identification of the hot spots of the activities and stages and the definition of management practices to improve environmental performance.