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FacebookNext Big Thing: wine in plastic bottles
Friday, August 29, 2008
Move over, screwcaps. Step aside, boxed wines. The Next Big Thing to hit the wine world may well be plastic bottles. And with Americans buying and lugging home more wine than ever, we wine enthusiasts might just be ready to embrace anything that will lighten our load.
Boisset Family Estates has announced it will ship 25,000 cases of Beaujolais Nouveau wines from its Mommessin and Bouchard Aine & Fils French wineries in plastic bottles to North America this fall, joining the small but growing number of wineries using plastic rather than glass.
It's about money, of course, but it's also about the environment, the French wine company says. Wine bottles made from polyethylene therephthalate, or PET, the familiar "No. 1" plastic, are shatterproof, easily recyclable and so much lighter than glass that they will reduce weight of the air-shipped wine by 42 percent — and freight costs by 33 percent, the Boisset folks say.
And some of the savings will be passed along to us: According to Boisset's local wholesaler/distributor, the reduced shipping costs will translate into an $11.99 price tag in Ohio for the Bouchard 2008 Nouveau — $3 less than the 2007.
And the company says that PET packaging produces 50 to 60 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than glass throughout its life cycle. "It just makes sense also from an environmental point of view," Boisset's president, Jean-Charles Boisset, told Wine Business International. "Why on earth are we still bottling these wines and shipping in glass?"
Well, why indeed?
Some of these "new twists in packaging" are being credited with a jump in wine consumption and spending in the U.S. Overall wine consumption in the U.S. rose 3.2 percent in 2007 to 292.1 million cases, according the Beverage Information Group's recently released 2008 Wine Handbook.
The freshly compiled 2007 figures mark the 14th consecutive year of case gains, which the folks at the Norwalk, Conn.-based Beverage Information Group say indicates "positive long-term health and sustainability for the wine industry overall." In addition, the amount of money American consumers spent on wine at retail outlets peaked at $27.9 billion last year, the report says.
"If wine continues to grow at these levels, the U.S. will surpass both Italy and France to become both the largest wine market and biggest wine importer in the world by the end of the decade," says Eric Schmidt, the company's manager of information services.
Packaging trends are helping to fuel the surge, as consumers show greater acceptance of boxed wines and screwcap closures, company officials said.
And soon, it appears, they'll be buying more wines in the same type of plastic that holds those one-liter soda pop.
What will they think of next?
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2258 or mfisher@DaytonDaily News.com.
