Considerations when accounting for carbon footprint in the life cycle of wine

Carbon Footprint (CF), as a simplified LCA tool, can be of great importance for the dissemination of life-cycle information of products. The use of CF has recently increased despite some methodology aspects are still not sufficiently addressed. This paper deals with one of these: the accounting of biogenic emissions, focusing on the wine sector where several LCA and CF studies have been developed. As there are some issues to be considered when accounting for exchanges of biogenic carbon, such as forest management, agricultural practices, the inclusion of all parts of a tree, land use and land use change, soil erosion, the inclusion of the end-of-life phase, etc., no certain conclusions can yet be drawn with regard to if cork is a carbon sink or if the wine sector in general can be regarded as low-carbon.