Many winemakers have agreed to reduce bottle weights; will they now agree to a standardised bottle? And will bottle manufacturers, too? Sam reports on a recent campaign; producers take note!
Before I dive in – this week on our site we started publishing entries to our 2024 writing competition, whose theme is ‘a wine moment I’ll never forget’. There are some beautifully told, tender, sad, enlightening and joyful stories and I highly recommend you go poke around – they’re all free and we will be publishing at least one a day, sometimes two, for the next month. Also, on the site this week Julia wrote a guide to understanding wines from the Portuguese island of Pico, which is home to 92% of Azorean vineyards. I’ve read pieces about Pico before but nothing I’ve seen has come close to the depth Julia goes to. If you’re curious about Pico this is a must-read.
On to the news!
Wine-bottle reuse campaign
First, a bit of background. I’ve talked about reuse before; I’ll probably talk about it for the next decade. It is, in my opinion, one of the most important discussions happening in the wine industry. And that’s for two reasons. The first is that glass, depending on the weight of the bottle, accounts for about 31% of a bottle of wine’s carbon emissions. Whether or not a bottle is recycled has minimal impact on this because most of the energy expended in creating a wine bottle is not a result of mining the raw material (sand), but instead a result of the incredibly high temperatures it takes to melt glass or sand into liquid to mould it.
The second reason is that, despite bag-in-box and cans and all the great alternative packaging options for everyday wines, there is no alternative to glass bottles for wines meant for long-term ageing. Every other packaging option has a shelf life that maxes out at around a year.
So, what to do?
The obvious answer, and one that was regularly employed at the beginning of last century, is to collect and reuse glass bottles. According to data collected by Zero Waste Europe, reusing glass bottles would decrease carbon emissions by 85% compared with single-use bottles, by 75% compared with PET bottles and by 57% compared with aluminium cans.
But it’s not easy. In order for machinery to be able to reliably wash bottles and for bottling lines to reuse them, bottles must be standardised.
In 2023 the London Wine Fair partnered with The Porto Protocol, a non-profit working to address sustainability in the wine industry, and Sustainable Wine Solutions, experts in bottle collection and reuse, to collect 20,000 empty bottles from the fair and analyse 1,017 of them. They found that 947 out of those 1,017 bottles were different – either because of shape, weight, colour or embossment. Creating a recycling scheme capable of sorting that level of variation is impossible.
Which brings us to last week, when the Reuse Ready Campaign published an open letter to glass-bottle manufacturers asking for a unified approach to reuse. I urge you to go read this letter and to sign your name if you feel so compelled. For wine producers, they’ve also included 10 Reuse Ready steps that include things like going capsule- and wax-free and transitioning to wash-off labels.
UK wine mixed signals
On 4 July, Wines of Great Britain (Wine GB) announced that there are now 1,030 vineyards in the UK, which is a 9.2% increase in one year. In 2023, 87 vineyards and 12 new wineries were registered. In the last decade, the area under vine has increased by 123% to 4,209 ha (10,400 acres). Sales have kept pace and grew 10% in the last year alone.
But this brings me to the part of the report that should give all of us pause – and I quote, ‘This growth is even more impressive as it is against the wider trend of falling UK and global wine consumption.’ The report then goes on to say, ‘WineGB has declared 2024 to be the “year of growth”.’
Now, I don’t live in the UK. But the combination of falling UK and global wine consumption followed immediately by targeting aggressive growth seems short-sighted. Especially considering that many UK industry experts are currently advising caution due to potential issues with oversupply following a massive 2023 harvest as well as an accelerated rate of planting vineyards that will soon flood the market with more fruit.
Ontario liquor store strike
This news is fresh today – thank you to Allison Slute for bringing it my attention!
For those of you unfamiliar with Canadian liquor and wine law, it’s incredibly confusing but suffice it to say that each province governs sales differently. In Ontario, liquor, beer and wine sales are controlled by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) – the largest alcohol retailer in Canada. They have their own stores and then there are LCBO Convenience Outlets that are run by independent parties.
The LCBO contracts with the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) to staff their own stores. Recently the LCBO was in talks with the union who were demanding wage increases, more full-time jobs, protection of existing jobs, and some rearrangement of where certain alcoholic products were being offered. Talks broke down yesterday and more than 9,000 employees went on strike today. As of right now, all of the LCBO’s own retail locations are closed for two weeks. Purchases can be conducted online.
This doesn’t mean that residents can’t buy alcohol in person – there are still 2,300 LCBO Convenience Outlets, grocery stores, Beer Stores, wineries, breweries, cideries and distilleries residents can buy from. However, the strike is still very significant. It’s the first time this has happened in history, and it limits what drinkers can get their hands on. Convenience Outlets and grocery stores tend to have limited selections, Beer Stores only sell beer… which means that if you are a wine lover it seems like the best solution is to order a case directly from your favourite local winery. So maybe there’s a silver lining to this?
Australian Wine Research Institute downsizes
This is perhaps expected but is, nonetheless, a pretty painful thing. On 26 June, the Australian publication WineTitles published the news that financial constraints were forcing the AWRI to downsize. This is for a couple reasons. The AWRI’s funding is based on levies put on Australian winemakers and grape growers based on their grape and/or wine production and export sales volumes; the government then matches these levies. But because the 2023 crop is very small, the value of the levies collected and the matched funds decreased. But, at least according to one report, the main reason is because Wine Australia, who are responsible for distributing much of the funding for AWRI out of their Research and Innovation (R&I) budget, has cut those funds as a result of an independent performance review that occurred last November.
In this review, the strategy advisory firm ACIL ALLEN outlines that between 2020 and 2023 Wine Australia invested $96 million dollars in research with 40% of it going to AWRI. The report says, ‘R&I is recognised by most stakeholders as playing an important role that is valued by industry but is considered in its current form to be largely irrelevant to the industry … AWRI is seen as high-cost and inefficient in its delivery of R&I as well as its engagement with industry.’
It later says, ‘in recognition that more needs to be done to improve the impact and returns on R&I investment, Wine Australia has adopted a new outcome-based funding and co-design model for future research contracts with AWRI, CSIRO and other research partners.’
This is a complicated issue, and I don’t have enough insight into what’s expected of AWRI or how much of their budget is being cut due to decreased levies vs the new funding approach from Wine Australia. But, in my opinion, their downsizing is bad news for the entire global wine industry – because the Australian Wine Research Institute is a global resource. Nevermind that it does most of its research on Australian soil – I’ve never met a US winemaker who doesn’t look at that research. I personally have used the AWRI database for MW studies, for information on rates of additions or treatments when I worked in wineries, and for info for articles I’ve written. I’m very sad to see them forced to lay off staff and reduce the number of research projects they undertake.
This is a transcript of our weekly five-minute news broadcast, which you can watch below. You can also listen to it on The Wine News in 5 Podcast. If you have breaking news in your area, please email news@jancisrobinson.com. And if you enjoy this content and would like to see more like it, please subscribe to our site and our weekly newsletter.