We spent three months searching for a new wine bottle to lower our carbon footprint. We discovered an industry full of innovation, but painfully slow when it comes to consumer adoption.
Every natural winery wants to produce wine that is kinder to the environment. We work every day to build a better ecosystem in and around our vineyards, so it follows that we should apply the exact same philosophy when packaging and shipping our wines to customers.
Classic Bordeaux Grand Cru bottles weigh 600 to 650 g empty, before being filled with 750 g of wine. This means a single filled bottle easily weighs 1.4 kg. When you consider that even a small winery might ship 10,000 bottles around the world, you quickly realise that the single biggest impact you can make is by cutting down bottle weight. However, you also have to consider the materials used, where the packaging is manufactured, and whether the end consumer can actually recycle it.
We began by looking for the lightest wine bottles in production. This led us to an innovative brand in the USA making recycled PET (plastic) bottles lined with a nanolayer of glass, weighing just 150 g per bottle. The glass lining ensures the wine never touches the plastic, and when sealed with a traditional cork, the wine should age in the exact same way as in a conventional bottle.
This massive weight saving was compelling, and we were excited to showcase it to our trade buyers. However, we faced considerable pushback. Even though buyers saw the environmental upside, they were convinced consumers would be reluctant to buy them because plastic looks less premium and shows scuff marks after transit. Without buyer support, we were unable to progress to a trial run.
Switching strategies, we looked for the lightest recycled glass bottle available, eventually finding one that weighed just 290 g. Unfortunately, that introduced new shipping challenges. Lighter bottles are made of thinner glass, making them far more prone to breakage, especially during international transit. To compensate, we would have needed to overhaul our shipping boxes and add extra protective packaging, significantly increasing the cost per bottle. Again, we were told that consumers would not pay the premium required to make it happen.
In the end, we partnered with a local glass producer making a bottle that is roughly 85 g lighter per unit, maintaining a classic shape with no loss of durability. While I am disappointed that we could not push the boundaries further this year, given our current production volume, this change will still save roughly 1.5 tonnes in total shipping weight across the world, which is a genuine win.
Although we could not find the perfect lightweight bottle this year, I am inspired by the rapid innovation happening in eco-packaging. Next year, we plan to push it even further.