Environmental impact analysis of a Chilean organic wine through a life cycle assessment

The food system is responsible for critical environmental problems around the world. The wine industry, having a global scale, is accountable for part of these impacts. Organic wines have been developing fast in the past decade, nevertheless there is still lack of research on this vitiviniculture practice, especially in productive countries outside Europe. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the impacts of organic vitiviniculture in Chile by utilising the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. A cradle-to-market attributional LCA including viticulture, vinification, bottling, and distribution was executed on one of the main wines produced and commercialised by the largest organic winery in the world, representing a reliable recreation of the productive and operative processes involved. The environmental impacts were calculated for all impact and damage categories of the ReCiPe 2016 methodology, using primary data from the company, and modelling it in SimaPro.