Organic vs. conventional wine production: a comparative multi-year environmental LCA study in central Italy

Comparative assessments of organic and conventional wine have reported divergent results and are largely based on single production years. This study evaluates and compares the environmental impacts of a 0.75 L bottle of conventional and of organic wine over three consecutive years. Using Life Cycle Assessment, the analysis covers all phases from raw material production to the farm gate. Primary data were collected from an Italian winery for 2022–2024, years with different climatic conditions, levels of field operations and grape yields. On average, the organic bottle shows higher impacts than the conventional one in 14 out of 18 impact categories considered. Differences are modest but systematic and mainly reflect more field operations, higher diesel use and lower yields in the organic vineyard. In both systems, glass bottle production is the dominant hotspot in most of the impact categories. Organic viticulture shows a clear advantage in terrestrial ecotoxicity, due to the absence of specific synthetic fungicides. For marine ecotoxicity and human non-carcinogenic toxicity, differences are marginal, indicating broadly comparable performance. The comparison further shows that the gap between systems varies with climatic conditions, input profiles and yields, with rainier years associated with more field operations but not necessarily with higher impacts when management is adjusted. Overall, neither production system is environmentally superior across all impact categories. Organic management improves toxicity-related indicators but performs worse in climate- and resource-related categories, while conventional management shows the opposite pattern, highlighting the value of multi-year, multi-indicator LCAs to capture trade-offs in viticulture.