French vineyard owners are returning to a slower pace of life by starting to export their wine by sailing boat - a method last used in the 1800s - to reduce their carbon footprint.

Later this month 60,000 bottles from Languedoc will be shipped to Ireland in a 19th-century barque, saving 18,375lb of carbon. Further voyages to Bristol, Manchester and even Canada are planned soon afterwards.

The three-mast barque Belem, which was launched in 1896, the last French merchant sailing vessel to be built, will sail into Dublin following a voyage from Bordeaux that should last about four days. The wines will be delivered to Bordeaux by barge using the Canal du Midi and Canal du Garonne, which run across southern France from Sète in the east, via Béziers in Languedoc. Each bottle will be labelled: 'Carried by sailing ship, a better deal for the planet.' Although the whole process will end up taking up to a week longer than a flight, it is estimated it will save 4.9oz of carbon per bottle.

Frederic Albert, founder of the shipping company Compagnie de Transport Maritime à la Voile (CTMV), said: '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.'

With French wine exports booming following a number of difficult years, Albert said some 250 producers in Languedoc alone were keen to use his ships.

The 170ft Belem, which was first used to transport chocolate from South America and is named after a Brazilian port, is the first of seven planned to be working by 2013. Seven private investors have contributed 70 per cent of the business's start-up costs of £40m. Bank loans have provided the rest.

'There is a lot of interest in green investments in France,' said Albert. Ships will return to France with an equivalent tonnage of crushed glass for recycling into wine bottles at factories in Bordeaux and Béziers. Despite the time involved in transporting it, the wine should also remain relatively cheap, at between €7 and €20 a bottle.

Albert said he would make sure that only the greenest wines would travel by sea. 'We chose the best wine in the area, but it must also be made in a sustainable way, using as many natural products as possible,' he said, adding that delivery times to Ireland and Britain had been calculated using historic charts. 'We had someone who studied a century of weather conditions to work them out,' he said.

Albert said his fleet would also be used for advertising in the ports they sailed to. He said: 'There will be tastings on board. The Belem can hold around 100 guests, so there will be plenty of room for importers to promote their wines.'

While the French are pioneering the export of wine by sailing ship, the British have already started moving it via canal. Last October Tesco started ferrying wine by barge from Liverpool to Manchester along the Manchester Ship Canal. The move took 50 lorries off the road every week and cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent, Tesco claimed. Tesco's new cargo service involves three journeys a week, delivering an estimated 600,000 litres of wine on each journey along the 40-mile stretch of the canal.

The containers of wine from Australia, California, Chile and Argentina are then transported to a bottling site half a mile away, where they are packed for Tesco supermarkets across Britain.