If Napa Valley is the king of California’s wine regions, then the town of Lodi 100 kilometers to the east is its charming but lesser-known kid brother. Most drinkers will pass up bottles from this sunny Central Valley town in favor of vintages from its prestigious elder sibling, but a new study says that choosing the underdog may do the planet a service. To find out the environmental cost of wine grape production in the two regions, researchers conducted a life cycle analysis taking into account variables including irrigation practices, cover crops, and fertilizers. They interviewed growers and modeled 240 different production scenarios based on the variations. On average, they found that—per unit weight—wine grapes cultivated in Napa Valley require roughly twice as much energy and water as those in Lodi, while producing twice the carbon emissions. They attribute Napa’s higher environmental burden in part to its tradition of harvesting grapes by hand, which requires more equipment hours than does machine harvesting, and the common practice of reducing the number of grapes on each vine to control sugar content and boost flavor. The researchers also found that—among their hundreds of production scenarios—organic ones were more energy-intensive on average, producing more carbon dioxide than conventional production. The analysis, published this month in The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, stops at actual wine production, which other studies estimate represents roughly 20% of a bottle’s total carbon footprint.