Decanter magazine reported yesterday that Wolf Blass is launching two wines in plastic bottles in Australia next week – the first 750ml plastic bottles in Australia.
The wines are intended to appeal to environmentally conscious consumers. “[An] independent assessment – ‘from vineyard to bottle disposal’ – had shown the wines produced 29% less greenhouse gas emissions than wine packaged in glass bottles.”
Read the full story here:
Decanter: Wolf Blass launches first plastic bottles in Australia
I’m no expert on this but I’ve have assumed it was the other way round and that plastic bottles were less environmentally friendly. Can’t the glass ones be re-used more easily?
Also, I can’t really imagine people wanting to buy wine in a plastic bottle. Can you imagine going round to a dinner party and handing a plastic bottle of wine over to your hosts? I can’t.
Can’t the glass ones be re-used more easily? Yes, they generally can – but I think they also require more energy overall to produce, clean, and recycle. Plus of course they’re heavier to transport. It all adds up.
But I have to say I agree with you as far as the aesthetics are concerned – I don’t think many restaurant-goers would be impressed if the sommelier produced with a flourish… a plastic bottle. It would somehow feel like an inferior product. I suppose there might already be a big enough market among environmentally aware consumers, but I doubt whether a big breakthrough is in the offing for a few years yet. (You watch – it’ll happen by the end of the year now…)
I think plastic bottles would have to be very much for home consumption or kept behind bars for retail. (Much as wine boxes seem to be very much a feature of office parties.)
I can see pros and cons.
No, I wouldn’t take a plastic bottle of wine to a party. But I might well stash one in a suitcase just in case we can’t find a good watering hole on arrival at our destination.
Yep, I’d be a bit miffed to be served wine in a plastic bottle in a restaurant.
Why? Because of a perception of it being cheap and low quality. It’s not so long ago that we all looked down on screw-caps, now it’s quite usual for wines (even some pretty good wines) to come with the screw-cap. It can even be advantageous sometimes if you’ve forgotten to bring a corkscrew.
As long as it doesn’t affect the taste of the wine, I think perceptions will change and it may well become the norm. Not for the great vintages, of course, but for general consumption of younger wines.
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