It’s been over a hundred years, but soon a three-masted, 19th century barque will transport 60,000 bottles of French wine from Bordeaux to Dublin. And this is just the beginning for vintners in the Languedoc region.
The 170 foot Belem, launched in 1896, spent many years transporting choclate from South America, and gets it’s name from a Brazilian port. It will be the first of seven three-masted vessels planned to be in service by 2013, all apparently slated to transport French wines as far as Canada.
Frederic Albert, owner of the ship, is quoted by The Guardian as saying, “My idea was to do something for the planet and something for the wines of Languedoc. One of my grandfathers was a wine-maker and one was a sailor”.
The delivery by ship will take longer than a flight, but Albert says it will save 18,375lb of carbon.
Each bottle transported by the Belem will be labelled: “Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet”.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
Max Lindberg
My home state is Illinois, and my hometown a little railroad/farming community named Galesburg.We lived on a small farm during my high school years and I became very aware of nature and it's wonders. I loved the out of doors, working with animals, plowing fields and harvesting crops. Those were very good years.After a stint in the Army during the Korean war my broadcasting career took off at the local radio station, a 250 watt "teapot" as it was called in those days. My first job was as an engineer, then the ham came out and I became an announcer/newsman, graduating after several years to a larger market and a stint as a TV journalist/photographer. Cold, wet weather led me to the southwest where I've lived for most of the last 40 years, with a couple of years out to have fun working as a private investigator in San Francisco, and a few years working in Las Vegas hotels and casinos. In all, its been a real ride.After retiring a few years back I became fascinated with the efforts being made to find alternative energy sources. I've watched our environment deteriorate during my lifetime, and now it's my chance to join the chorus of intelligent and caring individuals making a difference one day at a time.
6 Responses to French to Ship Wine by Three-Masted Barque
Click on a tab to select how you'd like to leave your comment
How long is this ship going to take to get to the US? There may be some back orders on Bordeaux wine soon..
Le Copy Cats.
Seems a Texan had the ideal first with coffee.
You can find lots on the internet and E-bay by searching El Lago Coffee
Fred
I enjoyed this post & would like to link to it from my wine related website. Hope that’s ok
Hi,
I live in italy so we have the luxury of having many good wines available in our internal market, moreover it’s actually possible to purchase it directly from the producer.
i like this idea very much, it would be a good idea to extend it to other non expiring goods, for many of witch having to wait a few days more is not that critical.
I’m a boy scout chief and i take my boys from time to time sailing on small wind boats on our lakes, it’s actually quite fun, and you perceive a new sensation of speed, i would propose this to any person who likes team sports, you don’t have to be a genius to govern a small boat as long as there is at least one expert on board, it’s wonderful for bonding the team, as physical exercise, and achievable speeds basically all depend on how good the team work is.
you have both my thumbs up for this project ^_^
That’s amazing. I want to go buy that wine and support this idea.
How cool! I was fortunate enough to sail on a two-masted ship for two weeks on a school program. We were deck hands and took on a great deal of responsibility. It was a great experience (and yes, I did actually get to shout “land ho!”). I just wish they had something like this when I was in college – what a cool summer job!