When It Comes to Sustainable Packaging, These 5 Wines Are Winning
When we think about sustainable wine, we tend to consider growing practices. Were the grapes farmed organically? Does the vineyard preserve biodiversity? We might even zoom out to the winery itself: whether it recycles, uses solar energy, conserves water. But those of us roaming the wine aisle may think about this lowest-hanging fruit the least: the container our wine comes in.
Across the industry, winemakers are beginning to adjust their packaging in a more sustainable direction, from choosing lighter-weight bottles to swapping out foil capsules (that’s the industry term for the sleeve on top of a bottle). While I gravitate toward a well-designed label as much as the next wine enthusiast, I admit I’ve never given much thought to the rest of the bottle. Packaging might not seem like a big deal, but it turns out that factors like bottle density and wax seals have outsize impacts.
Take glass bottles, which make up an overwhelming majority of the wine market. Almost half the weight of a case of wine comes from the bottles rather than the wine itself. Transporting these hefty bottles across the country—or across the world—leaves a sizable carbon footprint. “Glass is about 40 percent of the carbon footprint of the bottle of wine—it’s huge,” says Nicolas Quillé, Master of Wine, sustainable packaging advocate, and chief winemaking & operations officer at Crimson Wine Group.
Winemakers also have to contend with consumer likes and dislikes. “The classic reason that [winemakers choose to stick with traditional packaging] is that they think consumers are not ready for a different container, and that they associate the weight of a bottle with the quality of the product,” Quillé explains. In other words, lighter bottles are not always an easy sell, let alone alternative containers like Tetra Paks or the aluminum cottle (yep, that’s “can + bottle”). But last year Crimson Wine Group reduced the weight of its bottles by 13 percent across the board and sales held steady.
Despite concerns, plenty of winemakers around the country are shifting their packaging choices in a greener direction. If you’re wondering how to find and identify wines that look out for the planet—not only when it comes to production, but also packaging—we found five delicious and sustainable picks for you.
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1/5Belle Glos Dairyman Pinot Noir
What’s wax have to do with a wine’s environmental impact? Using wax seals instead of foil capsules, which tend to be made with aluminum or tin, makes bottles easier to recycle. A wine bottle’s wax top will melt and evaporate in the recycling process, while foil has to be removed as an additional step before the glass can be recycled. The even larger environmental impact: cutting back on the amount of mined materials—not to mention processed and shipped after extraction.
In some cases, winemakers are doing away with the capsule entirely. Back in the day the covering protected corks from being nibbled by insects or rodents, but otherwise the capsule—or lack of—doesn’t impact taste or quality. Still, if you like your wine with some sort of cork coverage, try Belle Glos’s complex and ruby-red Dairyman Pinot Noir, which uses a wax seal. Need a tip for how to open it? Most wine keys come with a little blade attachment. Use that to run around the tip of the wax cover to reveal the cork, and then open as normal. If you’re in a rush (fair!) soft wax seals can be opened without any maneuvering (but you run the risk of wax bits falling into your wine)—just stick the corkscrew through the wax, twist, pull, et voilà.
2/5Inman Family Endless Crush Rosé
Inman Family Wines was the first luxury brand to use all screw cap closures. Since launching her business, Kathleen Inman has worked with glass suppliers to find the lightest possible bottle that accommodates her closure of choice. Over time she cut bottle weight down from 650 to 468 grams. With an annual production of about 4,200 cases, the switch saves Inman over 20,000 pounds of glass per vintage, which she says also saves fossil fuel thanks to wine that’s lighter and more efficient to transport.
“Consumers often think a heavier bottle equals a higher quality,” Inman explains. “There is a pull between market perceptions of packaging versus doing the right thing for the environment. But my goal has always been to have the nicest looking—but lightest weight—bottle I could that was produced domestically.”
Inman’s labels are also made of recycled materials and use water or soy-based inks, which print well on recycled paper and biodegrade faster than petroleum-based inks. And rather than using industry standard foam shippers to transport the bottles, the winery has opted for 100 percent biodegradable packaging material.
As for the rosé inside? It’s balanced and crisp, with a touch of minerality.
3/5Fetzer Chardonnay
A lighter footprint isn’t just about lightweight bottles; it’s also about bottle shape as well as where those bottles are shipped to and from. As Quillé points out, where glass comes from—whether it’s imported from China or Europe or the next state over—is impossible for consumers to know by looking at a bottle. “Yet it’s maybe one of the most impactful pieces of information,” he adds.
At least when you drink Fetzer’s Chardonnay, you can rest easy knowing the winemaker has reduced emissions by cutting down on shipping distance, switching from a manufacturer based in France to one in Chile. They’ve also worked with the glass manufacturer to trim bottle weight. The team slimmed down the Burgundy-style bottle used to house this Chardonnay by almost 15 percent, a change made possible by altering the shape. The new design requires less material to form individual bottles and reduced areas of harsh glass-to-glass contact between bottles during shipping, which means they no longer have to fortify them with extra glass to prevent breakage.
All of this is part of Fetzer’s efforts to do right by the planet (and produce a crisp and fruit-forward Chardonnay to boot).
4/5Bigsby’s Folly Rosé of Grenache
That can/bottle specimen you’re looking at is the cottle, a hybrid container that co-owner of Denver-based Bigsby’s Folly Marla Yetka envisioned after seeing Budweiser’s new aluminum bottles. Yetka and her husband, Chad, created the cottle to offer a lighter container that’s easy to transport, reseal, and recycle. Their design was the first of its kind in the wine industry, according to Bigsby’s Folly.
Canned wine joined the scene a handful of years ago. Lighter to ship and made from recyclable aluminum, these single-serving wines make up a growing sector of the market. But at 500 milliliters, Bigsby’s Folly is in a league of its own. The cottle is two thirds the volume of a typical bottle—in other words, perfect for sharing with a friend at a picnic. The Yetkas’ specially designed cottle is made from recyclable aluminum and fully lined inside to keep the wine from coming into direct contact with the metal.
Like other alternative containers, the cottle has the potential to take on a much bigger slice of the market. The downside? It’s not great for long-term storage. “Today I think glass is the only solution for that type of wine,” Quillé says. “But we could argue that maybe only 10 percent of the market needs glass, and everything else could be in a package that is much lighter and has a lower carbon footprint.”
It’s not like a cottle of this small-batch, made-for-summer Rosé of Grenache will last long anyway. Bring it to an outdoor concert, enjoy it with a friend, and then toss the container into a recycling bin.
5/5Snoqualmie Chardonnay
Snoqualmie is one of the largest certified-organic vineyards in Washington, but the winery didn’t stop at growing practices. Snoqualmie’s glass bottles rank as some of the lightest in the wine industry, clocking in at just 397 grams (compared to the typical 500 to 550 grams). This shift to a lighter bottle has an outsize impact: According to Snoqualmie’s website, it’s cut its shipping carbon emissions by 13 percent.
After lightening its bottle load, Snoqualmie also swapped out the traditional cork and foil capsule. It opted for an alternative made from bio-based polyethylene that’s derived from sugarcane—a renewable resource—and water-based inks. You can trace the benefit of a sugarcane stopper all the way back to the soil. As the crop grows, it does double duty by sequestering carbon. (Though it should be noted that traditional cork, which hails from old-growth forests, also plays an important role in natural carbon capture and conserving biodiversity.) The result? A reduction in Snoqualmie’s capsule carbon emissions by 80 percent. We’ll raise a citrusy Chardonnay to that.
