Okay, so I am not going to tell you to recycle, buy only from wineries who purchase carbon offsets or solar panels, or even be literal about buying green wine - aka Vino Verde. I'm just throwing out some practical GREEN-ish thoughts, some you already do and don't take credit for yet.
Being green is a way of life and a lot of wine consumers are already being responsible without knowing it. Here are some ideas, none of them new, most you already do. Now you can take the credit for being green you have due:
1. Buy local, even if you drive to the winery, you are using so much less gas to transport your wine than if you bought a wine from France or Chile.
2. Choose a different shipping method. Ground shipping requires less fossil fuels than 2nd day or next day air, and it's cheaper. Ship wine in the spring and fall, not the high heat of summer or dead cold of winter and you won't need to rush your wine home due to weather conditions.
3. Use a vacuum pump to keep open wine fresh. How many bottles of wine have you thrown out because you forgot to drink it the next day. Well if you vacuum seal it, it will usually stay good for almost a week even on the counter, add a day or two with refrigeration.
4. Use wine in your cooking. Don't use an "off" bottle (you can't salvage that), but if you didn't like the wine as a drinking wine, or it's a bit to oxidized for you to drink, it may still have use as a cooking wine. Also, if you don't want to drink it because it has been out for a few days (see #2 for a solution to that problem) you can still enjoy it incorporated into a meal elsewhere. We all know those reduction sauces are nice, but I substitute wine for water when slow cooking a roast, making taco meat (really peppery zins are great for this), and my favorite is to pour wine into a premade spaghetti sauce (Prego becomes gourmet in seconds, just pour it all in a sauce pan and stir until it all thickens up to the consistency you desire).
5. This isn't really a suggestion for greening up your wine life, and it may sound hypocritical because I do think we all need to do more than we are for the planet. Wine is not a necessity in life it is a luxury. Therefore I think you should stress less about justifying it's greeness and enjoy it freely and openly. You should indulge now and then and become extra green in other aspects in your life. Compost, grow a victory garden, walk to the store, bike to the gym, recycle your bottles, reduce your purchases of international wines, and reuse your wine shipping boxes by giving them to traveling friends or local wineries.
Reduce your carbon footprint in every other aspect of your life so you don't torture yourself about taking that vacation to see the world or buying that bottle of wine you have your eye on. It's a balancing act, learn to juggle.
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