Economic and Environmental Assessment of the Wine Chain in Southeastern Spain

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors estimated the wine production chain in Spain by comparing three types of wine in order to define a model for the winery phase, the economic and environmental sustainability of a bottle of wine and what changes would occur if the origin of the grapes were changed: conventional or biological, irrigated or not.

The paper is very interesting and full of insights. The research questions are, in my opinion, very rich and although the methodology is described correctly and exhaustively, often the results of the elaborations carried out, seem unrelated. The results are too detailed and the discussion of the results is very thorough and detailed; although these are a virtue of the authors' work, sometime the connection between the three different research questions results unclear. A greater ability of synthesis and a graphical organization of the data would benefit to the flow of the speech.

The conclusions should be elaborated in particular on the implications that these results may have on marketing choices, on the one hand, and on the orientation for sector policies, on the other.

Author Response

Response from the Authors. The suggestions are so general that we don't know how to interpret them or how to implement them in the paper. The paper shows a lot of detailed information because we think it is necessary for any reader. When you use so much detail, it's very hard to synthesize more.

On the other hand, the suggestion regarding the conclusions seems correct. These have been modified, following the reviewer's instructions. We have added the following paragraph at the end of the conclusions:

 

There is a need for lines of research aimed at improving production, especially of vine varieties adapted to territorial conditions and the challenges of climate change, all seeking an adaptation that guarantees economic viability and minimizes environmental impacts. Works in this direction should support decision-making on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and, no doubt, the CAP can and must promote sustainable production throughout the vine-wine chain.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

General comments

The manuscript has genuine bases and is fairly presented. However, there are a few aspects that need to be dealt with before it is ready for publication.

Specific Comments

Title: please try to include the two pillars of sustainability that were examined in this study, in order to reflect the content in a better way.

Lines 210-211: please provide a more direct citation for the methodology LCC.

Lines 262-264: it is not clear why such methodological choices were made. Please try to justify your choices.

Section 2.3.3: it is not clear (and perhaps also confusing) why the authors decided to use both CML-IA and ReCiPe (H) LCIA methods.

Section 3.2: in the discussion the authors should also mention the methodological aspect of including or not the biogenic emissions accounting, related to the agricultural phase and the use of the cork stopper for the GW impact category. Please refer to: (1) Rives, J., Fernandez-Rodriguez, I., Rieradevall, J., Gabarrell, X., 2012. Environmental analysis of raw cork extraction in cork oak forests in southern Europe (Catalonia-Spain). J. Environ. Manage 110, 236-245; (2) Arzoumanidis, I., Fullana-i-Palmer, P., Raggi, A., Gazulla, C., Raugei, M., Benveniste, G., Anglada, M., 2014. Unresolved issues in the accounting of biogenic carbon exchanges in the wine sector. J. Clean. Prod 82, 16-22; (3) Levasseur, A., Lesage, P.,Margni, M., Samson, R., 2012. Biogenic carbon and temporary storage addressed with dynamic life cycle assessment. Ind. Ecol. 17 (1), 117-128.

Conclusions: This section appears to be too short. Please try to extend it and also include future developments possibilities for this project.

 

Finally, an English language check should be performed by a mother tongue.

Author Response

Response from the Authors.

-Title: please try to include the two pillars of sustainability that were examined in this study, in order to reflect the content in a better way.

We agree with the reviewer. It is convenient to emphasize that it is an economic and environmental evaluation. So we rename the paper as follows:

Economic and environmental assessment of the Wine Chain in the Southeast of Spain.

 

-Lines 210-211: please provide a more direct citation for the methodology LCC.

We agree with the reviewer. We have further detailed the methodological characteristics related to the LCC. We have replaced the following text:

We established the cost structure by following a methodology based on life cycle costing (LCC) (20-25).

For this other:

Within the LCC analysis, multiple indicators can be used, which must be directed towards the evaluation objectives, in each case. We apply cost accounting within the scope of the general LCC methodology, in line with various papers, both directly related to the wine chain (22, 24), and to other agricultural productions (23, 25). Other papers develop methodology in the area of LCC but that uses other indicators (20, 21).

 

-Section 2.3.3: it is not clear (and perhaps also confusing) why the authors decided to use both CML-IA and ReCiPe (H) LCIA methods.

We agree with the reviewer. In the section “2.3.2. Life Cycle Impact” text has been removed from the last paragraph (see manuscript: red and crossed out):

“However, the different types of vineyard [24] used in the sensitivity analysis (section 2.4), as well as the winery model described here, have been analyzed previously with the midpoint CML-IA methodology”

And the following text (in blue) has been added:

Thus, the CML-IA methodology has been used to identify the hot spots in relation to the potential environmental impacts of the different components of the winery model, as was done in the previous study on the different types of vineyards (García Castellanos et al., 2022). The single score according to the ReCiPe methodology has been used because it provides an easier to interpret global environmental evaluation of the final product, that is, the bottle of wine according to the different grape origins.

 

-Section 3.2: in the discussion the authors should also mention the methodological aspect of including or not the biogenic emissions accounting, related to the agricultural phase and the use of the cork stopper for the GW impact category.

In relation to this issue, it was not raised in the previous work on vineyard (García Castellanos et al., 2022), for not considering it relevant for the purpose of the study. In this paper, which is the second part of the study indicated above, even less. We sincerely believe that in the general context of the study it is neither appropriate nor convenient to raise such a discussion here.

 

- Conclusions: This section appears to be too short. Please try to extend it and also include future developments possibilities for this project.

We agree with the reviewer. We have added the following paragraph at the end of the conclusions:

 

There is a need for lines of research aimed at improving production, especially of vine varieties adapted to territorial conditions and the challenges of climate change, all seeking an adaptation that guarantees economic viability and minimizes environmental impacts. Works in this direction should support decision-making on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and, no doubt, the CAP can and must promote sustainable production throughout the vine-wine chain.

 

-Finally, an English language check should be performed by a mother tongue.

The text has been translated and reviewed by an English professional, specialized in scientific texts.

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf