Life Cycle Assessment of Red and White Wines Production in Southern Italy

In the last years, the wine production industry has gradually focused its attention in the improvement of the product quality rather than in the production of great quantities. This tendency has allowed the entrance in the market of various small wine producers that have developed new product trademarks of good qualities on a small scale. Recently, the environmental sustainability is establishing to determine the product quality. In this study, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out to compare the environmental impacts and the energy efficiency of four kinds of wines made by a small producer in the southern part of Italy. The system boundary covered the industrial life-cycle stages of wine production. In particular, in this paper, four stages were considered: vinification, bottling, packaging and waste disposal treatments. The aim of the work is to compare the environmental impact of a high and medium quality wine (either in the case of white wines or in the case of red wines) to understand how to address the production toward a higher sustainability. The analysed products have been realized using different processes and different raw materials, depending on the specific characteristics and kind (red or white) of produced wine. The materials and energy consumption and the emissions to air, soil and water were reported to the chosen functional unit (1 bottle of Italian wine). The data were analysed using SimaPro 8.0.2 software and the Ecoinvent database, in accordance with the reference standard for LCA (i.e., ISO 14040-14044) to identify environmental key performance indicators (KPIs).