Jim Tumbls.

Well here it is again, and my favorite topic (wine) can  be used for this year’s theme of Water for Blog Action Day 2010. A wide-open topic, I’m sure many folks are going to be commenting on the poor access to drinking water in developing countries, or contaminated sources of water that surround nearly all of us in the world. There are many subtopics which can actually emphasize what an important topic it is. Granted, my topic won’t really help any of these people direction (increasing water supply here probably won’t help the African woman walking miles just to get several gallons of drinking water for her family), but it’s something to consider and leads into a more general theme of how much water it takes us to make stuff.

There it is… nearly 1,000 liters of water required to make a liter of wine. I’m actually surprised that it isn’t higher having worked in a winery or two at harvest time! And no, none of that water actually goes into the final product. It’s the irrigation (if the vineyard irrigates), water to support power plants (which is also significant and worthy of its own blog post), and most especially the sterilization and cleanup. One thousand liters of water to produce one liter of wine. That’s 120 liters to make one glass. Wow.

Rather than regurgitate more facts, figures, and remedies here, I’ll just link to several interesting sources:

http://wineindustryinsight.com/?p=1415
http://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticle&dataId=60129
http://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticle&dataId=60133
http://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticle&dataId=60131