France and Lebanon have been cradles of wine-making culture since ancient times and are ideal countries in which to experiment with grape pomace as a raw material in biogas production. A fascinating research project at the Saint Joseph University in Beirut has identified the pretreatments needed to exploit the potential of this biomass to the full. Based on nine different grape marc varieties collected from different Lebanese and French wine producers, experiments involving chemical and physical pretreatments revealed that an alkaline process is the most effective, increasing the production of biogas by as much as 60%.