Commercial sail has not yet returned, but there are interesting niche players who are doing what they can to change that. The sailing brigantine Tres Hombres recently carried 10 tons of French wine from Brest to Copenhagen for delivery to Noma, which has been rated as the “World’s Best Restaurant” for the past seven years by the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. The 10 tons of wine include wines from 13 French biodynamic winemakers. The shipment by sail is estimated to have saved close to 5 tons of CO2 emissions. The shipment was arranged by TransOceanic Wind Transport
World’s best restaurant chooses wines shipped by sail
TransOceanic Wind Transport and the “Tres Hombres” promote the revival of sail shipping. The “Tres Hombres”, the world’s only engine-free cargo sailing ship, is the symbol of this revival. She constitutes a first step that garners positive energy and proves transoceanic engine-free shipping is feasible today.
In our finite world, the revival of cargo sailing ships is inevitable. The “Tres Hombres” ships across oceans products wich raise the issue of “How will shipping undergo the energy transition?”
Dramatically reducing emissions
TransOceanic Wind Transport is a sailing freight transport company that offers a concrete and alternative solution to the problems of shipping greenhouse emissions and liquid fuel price hikes. It shows that the 4% of world emissions due to ocean shipping – about 20% of Denmark’s emissions – can be dramatically reduced by applying modern technology to the old tradition of great tall ships.
Winemakers taking part to the operation: Philippe Gourdon – Anjou ; Bruno Rochard – Anjou ; Mark Angeli – Anjou ; Francois David – Anjou ; Toby Bainbridge – Anjou ; Olivier Cousin – Anjou ; Jo Landron – Muscadet ; Guy Bossard – Muscadet ; Michel Augé – Touraine ; Sebastien Riffault – Sancerre ; Alexandre Bain – Sancerre
In the Age of Sail wine and rum was sometimes sent on a voyage just to improve the alcohol-I wonder if is this a selling point for Tres Hombres?
I suspect that the wines for Noma are pretty high end and would not either improved or damaged by the relatively short voyage between Brest or Copenhagen. If I understand correctly the wines and spirits that showed the most improvement from a long ocean voyage were the heavily fortified or distilled wines like Madeira or brandy. The same apparently was true of rums and scotches.
I used to drink a Kelt “Tour du Monde” cognac. The cognac was put in an oaken barrel and shipped around the world inside a shipping container. Each bottle had a card showing on which ship the container had been carried on each leg around the world. I cannot say how much the Kelt cognac had improved with the voyage but it was a very good cognac. Unfortunately, my local store stopped carrying it.
@Irwin: Thanks for your comment. That is true that wine and in general alcohol gets better when it is shipped by sail. You may have heard of Henry de Monfreid, who confirms in “Le pilleur d’épaves”, (1955), that « il s’agit de faire voyager ce vin selon une vieille tradition qui veut qu’il n’atteigne vraiment la perfection qu’après avoir fait une traversée sur un voilier », expressing this long-standing tradition (hence Madeira wines reputation in England in the 18/19th century for instance etc.). Indeed, wine specialists are starting to rediscover the positive effects of the swell and of long crossings.
“Selling point”, in fact, it adds to the value of the shipping – but these biodynamic wines are made without any chemicals and some of them even sold their tractors to plough etc with work horses: so it is much more because shipping by sail is coherent with their environmental approach (they prefer “forces of nature” “the elements” to “environment”) that they choose to work with us. They also are very aware of “energy transition” and “future generations” and this is also a key reason for them to ship their production by sail. The improvement of the taste is there, but this is not the main point – but in the future it will get bigger, with the “industry” realising shipping also matters when it comes to the quality of the final product.
@Rick: Thanks a lot for this post! The Kelt cognacs started shipping their production… by sail, with two barrels during the “Gotheborg”‘s maiden voyage, and they keep doing so with motor cargo vessels. More than just marketing, these high-range spirit producers are aware that “something changes”. I hope you will soon be able to find your favourite Cognac at your local store.
You are right to stress the Brest-Copenhagen voyage is relatively short (1,100 miles, departure on the 19th of July and arrival on the 12th of August, with two calls), but still the wine has certainly been shaken more than with a 30-hr lorry trip (and, before all, we calculated this saved about 5 tons of CO2).
Last October, we had loaded a few hundreds of bottles on the Tres Hombres (from Olivier Cousin, one of the main winemakers taking part to the current operation (and who, by the way, crossed the Atlantic alone on a 7-meter sailing boat about 30 years ago)). This wine has been shipped around the Atlantic for a year (Brest-Caribbean (…)-Brest-Denmark), and has now become definitely better (after professionally-organised blind tastings).
Each Copenhagen bottle has been applied a label providing that they have been “shipped by sail power – the carbon-neutral option” and which contains specific tracking codes which link to “information about the shipping: ship, product description, route, sailed nautical miles, amount of CO2 saved, logbook and photographs”, as described on http://www.towt.eu/en/id/. The wine that was shipped around the Atlantic has a specific code, an improved taste and, I hear, a specific price, too.
We are going to keep developing that – and other cargoes – so that “commercial sail returns”. Expect us in the US 😉