Can luxury wine live without glass bottles?

by Evlyne Resnick

The first time I held a bottle of a Classified Growth Bordeaux wine was in the mid-1990s. Its weight and design delighted me: the beautiful packaging with the elegant label perfectly matched the prestigious image of the brand.

In those days no consumer, no wine producer, no green activist worried about the impact that a château brand image would have on the climate – and nobody worried about the brand image of a château if they were seen to be damaging the environment. Those days are gone. But how do luxury producers move on without sacrificing the brands and price points they have worked so hard to build up?

Extending sustainability beyond the vineyard
As early as 1987, the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Agriculture and viticulture are now having to examine exactly what this means. They, along with almost all industries, followed the path of industrialisation that began in the 19th century. It led some researchers such as the American environmental historian Donald Worster to denounce industrialisation as a misguided revolution that led people to believe, “that it is right for them to dominate the natural order and radically transform it into consumer goods, that it is necessary and acceptable to ravage the landscape in the pursuit of maximum economic production, and that only things produced by industry and placed on the market for sale have value.”

As the realisation of the harm this was causing became more widespread, many wine producers began to rethink their viticultural and winemaking techniques (Worster’s book The Wealth of Nature is an excellent resource if you would like to understand why), but almost all of them left one side of the process unchecked: the packaging.

In the wine world, the bottle is traditional and beloved – and most people believe that it is also an environmentally-sound choice.  According to Lulie Halstead, co-founder of Wine Intelligence IWSR, 59% of consumers (across Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden, the US and the UK) believe that glass bottles are a sustainable form of wine packaging. Which is far from the truth.

“Raw glass”, explains Jeff Siegel, “is made from sand, which is extracted faster than it can be replaced. It’s also heavier than aluminium and plastic and requires more energy to transport.” To add insult to injury, the recycling rate is poor: in most countries, only 13 to 40% of the bottles are recycled.

Carbon impact
Beyond this, the glass bottle is now under scrutiny for the outsized impact it makes on carbon emissions. Its weight (that tends to go from 350g to 1,500g depending on the type of wine), the label, the foil, and the cork contribute to 20% to 40% of a property’s carbon footprint, including transport. Camille Giai, director of Château Roquefort in AOC Entre deux Mers, near Bordeaux, nuanced those figures: the heaviest part of the carbon footprint of their estate is the travel undertaken by the sales team to far away destinations (Americas, Asia); the second expense is the work in the vineyard even though Roquefort is now certified organic; and last comes the transport of the bottles.

So is packaging becoming the scapegoat of the wine industry to hide more serious problems? The Bordeaux Wines Board just reported a 24% reduction in carbon emissions since 2012 with the aim to reach 46% by 2030. Three out of the five goals of its action plan are about freight transportation with the use of alternative fuels (biofuels made from grape pomace and balancing sea freight with air) and glass packaging. From 2007 to 2019 the average Bordeaux wine bottle weight has reduced by 12% – but is that enough?

The glass industry provides many solutions. After all, glass is recyclable and reusable. Circular economy is at the heart of their strategy. Annie Le Deunff, founder of Bordeaux startup LUZ Environnement is looking to encourage châteaux to reuse their glass bottles. The company will collect, clean and sterilise, and then return the bottles (not necessarily to the same producer) – with each bottle able to be reused in this way six or seven times. The technology is for now set up only on the traditional Bordeaux bottle size, and they are working with chateaux located within a 100km radius of her factory near Langon, to the south of Bordeaux. After three years work, Luz Environnement opened in April 2022, and is looking to revolutionise the way wine bottles are used in the region (just think, for example, of how this could transform the wasteful use of glass bottles during the En Primeur season).

At the same time, French company Verallia is working on increasing the use of cullet (recycled glass) in its production: it already represents 51.6%.  More producers, such as Château Roquefort, are also turning to lighter bottles, although they are not yet using it as part of their marketing, whereas at the organic Château Arcole in St Emilion, it consciously is part of their message, as their wine comes bottled in light glass with 100% recyclable aluminium capsules dyed with natural ink. Similarly Château Brown in Pessac-Léognan has offered its clients the choice of their wines coming in wooden cases or in cardboard cases, printed with biodegradable ink, since the 2019 En Primeur campaign.

Tracking alternatives
Alternative packaging is now becoming available. The can is the most popular worldwide. In the US, between 2017 and 2021, the sale volume went up by 3,800% according to Nielsen. Its adoption in France is slower, even if the first company to produce wine in can is the Bordeaux-located Cacolac, with the first one called Pink Grap, produced in 2005 by Bruno Aouanes in a venture with Château Marsan. Since 2011, Cacolac has a department specifically dedicated to canned wine, “In Can We Trust” and is building a new factory specialised in wine and alcoholic beverages in Léognan that should open this year. The company hopes to produce up to 40 million wine cans on the site, up from the current 9 million.

The can has several advantages. The smaller format (from 250ml to 375 ml) can help limit drinking. It does not require a corkscrew for opening, it is unbreakable and light to transport.  They’re not perfect – although aluminium is less costly to produce than glass, it has some negative effects on the environment due to  bauxite mining. On the other hand, once produced, aluminium can be infinitely recycled. It is also gaining traction with young consumers: 48% of French wine drinkers aged 18 to 24 have already bought or will buy wine in cans – a younger demographic targeted by brands such as the Wine Star from Château de l’Ille. Those figures are similar to the 51% recorded in UK and a little further from the 68% in the US.

PET (PolyEthylene Terephthalate) bottles, in contrast, never really took off, except in Northern Europe (Norway, Sweden and Finland). The Finnish packaging company and state-owned alcohol retailer Alko sells 25% of its wine in PET bottles. It has its advantages: As PET is an inert material commonly used for food and beverage packaging, it does not react with the content and is 100% wine safe.

The latest strategy is to reuse the bottles. Damien Barton, whose family owns Châteaux Langoa and Léoville Barton in Saint-Julien, and Château Mauvesin Barton in Moulis-en-Médoc, launched the 225 wine brand produced in Bordeaux, shipped in bulk to London and once there, bottled and labelled with labels made from sugar cane residue.  Barton also partners with the Borough Market Wine Company to offer a new “Refill” portfolio including the 225 wine brand and the second wine of Château Mauvesin Barton, l’Impression de Mauvesin. The endeavour is slowly taking off: “There’s a lot of work on education”, admitted Barton during the recent Act for Change Symposium in Bordeaux, “first to understand that sustainability is not simply in the vineyard in terms of being organic, it’s much wider. And also, that it’s great to buy a sustainable bottle but it only works if you bring the bottle back.”

High-end concerns
Even producers of expensive wines (over €200) understand the need for a change – with the concern that it might not be accepted by consumers. Camille Giai from Château Roquefort admits it will be difficult to convince upscale wine lovers to switch to plastic bottles for reasons of elegance and prestige. “The packaging needs to be pleasing to the eye and gratifying for the buyer”, said Giai. Luxury wine is aspirational and the glass bottle is a critical part of the experience.

Meanwhile, he is following with interest the recent initiative of the Provence estate Château Galoupet, belonging to the luxury group LVMH: its Galoupet Nomade brand is packed in an eco-flat, ultra-light bottle weighing just 63g. Developed by sustainable packaging company Packamama, it is made from Prevented Ocean Plastic (POP, that has been collected from beaches in zones at risk of pollution) and can be recycled after use.

Future-proofing luxury
Besides the bottle, luxury packaging also relies often on the wooden case, holding three, six or 12 bottles. Wood is part of the winemaking process of high-end wines from the barrel to the case, but as environmentalists would point out, the traditional 12-bottle case weighs 16 kg. The cost of transportation of a pallet of luxury wines is obviously high for the environment. But it is also a (beautiful) tool of ageing: many wine lovers let their wine age in the original open case in their cellars, creating a magnificent display of wine and wood.

Is recycling possible here? Some caisseries (case makers) transform empty cases into works of art: CaviDéco in Bordeaux uses wine estate stamps to create small pieces of furniture, while L’Ecrin du Vin imagined a clever way to transform the one-bottle case into a lamp (see below), while Château Fleur Cardinale in St Emilion includes instructions on the bottom of their wooden cases with suggestions for up-cycling, including turning them into bird boxes.

The future of wine packaging is linked to the future-proofing of the industry. To borrow an the expression from Dr. Stéphane J.G. Girod, Professor of Strategy and Organisational Innovation at IMD business school, future-proofing means exploring, “upcoming business models, the continuous renewal of resources and capabilities and the emergence of an internal culture fostering adaptability, flexibility, and entrepreneurship.”

At the moment, 85% of wine is drunk within a few days. The remaining 15% consists of high-end wines meant for ageing: those great wines may always require a glass bottle, the only container currently providing safe and quality ageing.  Climate change is unquestionably driving innovation – but the supply chain crisis and energy crisis just might help move things along even faster, as companies look to save money at all points of production and delivery, and as glass bottles become increasingly difficult to get hold of.

We now see this at every level – glass bottle makers working on lighter bottles; printers getting more and more adept at elegant and safe label printing able using environmentally-concious materials that can age without degrading. Recycling and reusing are now part of the daily life of environmentally-conscious consumers, and increasingly they expect the brands that they care about to set an example. Sooner or later, luxury wine brands will adopt and adapt to the expectations of these new consumers. We can trust the long-term vision and the agility of luxury wine producers to recognise that this is no longer an add-on, but an essential part of their business plan.

With thanks to Eve Resnick, additional info from Jane Anson