Red wine: carbon footprint per kg (about one litre)
Live factor value
1.27 kgCO2e per kg (about one litre)
Source: Agribalyse (ADEME/INRAE, France), 3.1 (revision 1). Factor set agribalyse-3.1-r1.
Red wine's footprint is modest for the liquid itself — the live figure is below. Vines are perennial, need no annual ploughing or replanting, and grow outdoors; fermentation is a biological process that needs little added energy. The wine in the glass is not where the emissions are.
The bottle is a different matter. Wine glass is heavier than most food packaging by convention rather than necessity, and heavy glass has to be manufactured and then moved across continents. A lighter bottle, or wine shipped in bulk and bottled near the market, changes the delivered total more than anything happening in the vineyard.
Worked example
A 750 ml bottle of red wine: 0.75 × 1.27 = 1 kgCO2e.
Measure your own with the free food calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- Is boxed wine lower-carbon than bottled?
- Per litre, yes — a bag-in-box uses far less packaging material than glass and weighs less to transport. The wine itself is unchanged.
- Is organic wine lower-carbon?
- Organic viticulture avoids synthetic fertiliser, which is a real term in the vineyard footprint, but yields are often lower per hectare. Agribalyse publishes one average rather than splitting by certification.