First of all, wine is not a fresh ingredient. With the rare exception, it is not fragile. Tender greens and delicate berries will deteriorate if transported or treated to improve their shelf life. But wine is more like cheese. Both are born as ephemeral ingredients: milk and grapes. Then, through human ingenuity, they are transformed into something more stable as well as more interesting, complex and transportable. As an old epicurean once put it, “Both cheese and wine represent man’s effort to transmute the perishable into the durable.”

Throughout history most wine was consumed locally. But even in ancient times wine was a commodity, transported great distances to trade for other goods. The United States did not forgo good wine in the days before its own wine industry developed.

Wine may be portable, but its production is not. Though wine is now made in all 50 states, the quality and characteristics of a wine depend on where it is produced. So while you will have access to a fine Colorado wine if you live in Denver, if you want Chianti it must come from Chianti. The same goes for any other great wine that reflects its origins.

If local wines are not necessarily superior ingredients, other reasons remain to favor them. Certainly, the planet would benefit environmentally if fewer hydrocarbons were burned shipping wine.

But why single wine out? The carbon footprint of shipping wine can certainly be improved (by eliminating heavy status bottles, for one), but environmental fears are not a sufficient moral imperative to stop buying a diversity of wines. It’s an impossible notion for most people anyway. If New York City were to drink nothing but Long Island wine, it might consume the region’s annual production in a week.