The New Old Wine Bottle Technology

Wineries are the investment banks of the drinks aisle.

Unlike the more free-wheeling and boundary-pushing world of distilling and brewing, the tradition-bound wine industry is not known for its embrace of the new.

Unfamiliar grape varieties, untested terroirs, novel farming techniques and new-fangled packaging are frequently regarded with dark suspicion by both producers and consumers – sometimes for decades – before gaining anything that resembles broad market acceptance. 

So it shouldn't perhaps be shocking that while most producers – and many big-spending wine lovers – are loathe to put (or find) their Grands Cru in cans or boxes, many are seeking greener alternatives to the one-off bottle. (There are, it must be said, notable exceptions that show that this the embrace of boxed and canned wine may finally be here).

Because here's the thing. It has been broadly accepted that biggest contribution to a wine's carbon footprint comes, not from vineyard or cellar practices, but from the energy deployed during the manufacturing and transportation of the glass bottle itself, from factory to end-drinker. Conservative estimates say that glass bottles account for about 29 percent of a wine's carbon pollution, but other estimates posit that the bottle is responsible for up to 70 percent of a wine's impact.

And it is becoming increasingly clear that steps both large and small must be undertaken today if we want to ensure the future viability of viticulture. The latest dire report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underlined the urgency many have been feeling of late to do whatever we can as individuals and industries to reverse climate change.

In 2019, the IPCC warned the world that curbing emissions by 43 percent by 2030 was necessary to avoid increasing temperatures to the point that it would be challenging for humans to survive in certain regions of the world. But instead of cutting back, we are on track to increase carbon emissions by 10.6 percent. With the world set to raise temperatures by 1.5 degrees Celsius, we are dangerously close to the 2 degree disaster zone that would see half of the world's current wine-growing territory wiped out.

Winemakers are, in delightfully fogey fashion, embracing greener pastures without abandoning their love of all things olden.

New wine in old bottles

Across the world, a movement toward reusing wine bottles is gathering force. In some ways, it seems strange that it has taken so long. But in reality, it hasn't – we just abandoned the practice when technology, convenience and abundant supply allowed us to.

During periods of acute bottle shortages and hardship – economic collapse, wars – it became necessary for imbibers to bring their used and washed bottles to producers for refills when they were out. In most wine-growing regions of Europe, the concept of people bringing in old bottles to producers for refills is hardly new, and is still casually practiced.

It just hasn’t been widespread and commercialized until now.

City Winery, which just opened its 14th location in Grand Central Terminal on November 1, officially launched a reusable wine bottle program that gives participants a $5 credit towards their next bottle. (Once returned, the bottle is washed and sanitized, then refilled).

"We see it as an opportunity to encourage commuters who would easily be able to return the bottle the next day to take this step, but human nature being what it is, we also knew they’d need an incentive," says Michael Dorf, founder and CEO of City Winery.

Dorf also knew that the $0.05 return offered by recyclers wouldn't cut it. The data backs up his intuition: only about 31.3 percent of glass containers get recycled in the US, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

"So we're like, 'let's go with a $5 return program'," he says. "That's enough to move people to not leave the bottle on the train. We hope it helps create a cycle of consumer behavior that changes the way that people think about they’re going to drink wine at home. And we realize it will never replace a bottle of great wines that needs 10 years in the cellar. It’s meant for young, fresh wine."

Eventually, Dorf says he could see City Winery replicating the model at its other spaces in Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville, Washington DC and beyond, all of which feature functioning wineries and culinary and cultural event spaces. City Winery isn't alone.

Diana Snowden Seysses, a winemaker at Burgundy’s Domaine Dujac and Napa's Snowden Vineyards and Ashes + Diamonds, is offering her dry-farmed Santa Cruz-grown biodynamic Merlot for $40, and actively urging customers to bring the bottle back for washing and refilling.

In Sonoma, Caren McNamara has founded Conscious Container, in a bid to "collect all unwanted, used or rejected wine bottles for washing and reuse or up-cycling", noting that 75 percent of glass in the US ends up in landfills. After a few pilot programs, McNamara has started recruiting wineries in the Bay Area willing to send their excess wine bottles her way to be cleaned and distributed to smaller wineries at a discount.

Conscious Container has also designed six standard bottles in multiple colors that can be washed and reused up to 20 times, with the goal of eventually having wine consumers drop off their bottles at locations around the region to be refilled and reused.  

In Colorado, Sauvage Spectrum Estate Winery & Vineyard’s winemaker and co-founder Patric Matysiewski is watching their wine-on-tap program slowly grow.

"We implemented a growler program in August of 2021 as a way to reducing our carbon footprint, but also encouraging our local following to save money," he says. "We offer growlers for $7 and then fills and refills for between $24 and $30, depending on the wine."

He said the reception was tepid at first, but once locals realized the growler didn't compromise quality and saved money, they were in.

Introducing the luxury keg 

Another eco-friendly rediscovery for the industry is the concept of offering – and enjoying – wine on tap.

"The concept of offering wine in kegs isn't new," says Bruce Schneider, co-founder of Gotham Project with Charles Bieler. "Winemakers all over the world have offered wine from barrels and some form of tap for hundreds of years. We were just the first company to perfect the technical aspects of offering wine in kegs, and we were the first ones to offer appellated wine in kegs."

Schneider's grandfather was a bootlegger, and his parents were distributors at the Allo-Best/Kasser Company in New Jersey.

"I actually spent my college years working summers in the family business, and began working with wine on tap in the 1980s," he says. "But when Charles and I decided to launch Gotham, it took us a while to really perfect the process. Because kegs last 40-plus years, there's a huge opportunity to conserve energy. From life cycle analyses we've conducted, for each glass of wine you serve on tap versus from the bottle, you have at minimum a 35 percent reduction in carbon output. And if you think that that one keg is the equivalent of 26 bottles, you start to get an idea of how much carbon you can save."

Bieler and Schneider knew the technology was up to the task, but they were concerned about broad industry acceptance, especially because they were focusing on the "geekier side of wine".

"We introduced kegs at Skurnik's annual portfolio tasting in March of 2010, and were honestly expecting people to laugh at us," Schneider admits. "But people loved it. Our first customers were Terroir and DBGB, and within six months, we were in a dozen accounts."

Prior to Covid, Gotham sold 25,000 kegs of premium wines from all over the world (like the 2017 Del Buono Sangiovese from Tuscany, the 2020 Katas Tempranillo from Rioja, the 2020 Baumgartner Grüner Veltliner from Weinviertel in Austria, and the 2020 Laurent Dufouleur from Mâcon-Villages AOC in France) to 40 states.

"But Covid hammered us," Schneider says. “"Most of our customers shut their doors. It wasn't pretty. But now we are back up to about 75 percent of where we were, and growing quickly once again."

He says he sees a real appetite among both restaurant owners and consumers to do more easy-to-implement things like putting wine in kegs, which, he says, "save money and help the environment".

Thus far, Gotham has eliminated 6 million 750-ml bottles with the wine-on-tap program, Schneider says.

City Winery, meanwhile, already sells most of its wine on tap.

"About 75 percent of our wine never goes into bottle," Dorf says. "We’re selling about 2 million glasses a year from wine on tap. With that and the reusable bottle, we're really excited to see how this could scale. Could we set up a filling station in a corner of a gas station in the Hamptons over the summer, for example? A place where you can return on your way home, or stop by and fill up for the weekend ahead. We are talking to people in the Virgin Islands about that too, and considering having a boat that goes from dock to dock as a refill station."

Enjoying a glass with a side of saved energy and cash is better for all of our bottom lines, not to mention our existential angst. And judging from the latest batch of doom and gloom headlines, another wine bottle shortage is coming. So it may soon be not just a matter of doing the right thing, but doing the only thing we can.

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