Everyone knows that wine comes in bottles: but is a bottle a standard that conveys much? Traditionally there are ten bottle sizes ranging from a quarter of a traditional 750ml to 20 traditional ones. They have names like Split, Magnum, and Imperial. They provide from one to 100 glasses. Some are Biblical like Balthazar, named for one of The Wise Men, or Nebuchadnezzar, a King of ancient Babylon.

Wine in boxes are more environmentally friendly packaging, and they last longer after opened, containing from 1.5 to 3.0 liters. Recently a promoter sent boxes of Gratsi Old Country Red and Old Country White wines- a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Sauvignon Blanc. They were tasty and the $40 price for a 3.0L box is equivalent to four bottles of wine at $10 each. They are European-style wines, and worth a try. However, your local grocery store probably has a dozen or more boxed selections, and some in Tetra Pak, made from a paperboard product not unlike a milk carton, but with plastic and aluminum lining.

Wine bottles range from very efficient to bulky overweight bullies. The weight of the bottle is pure marketing machismo. This column is our 126th edition; bottle weight discussion has previously been sliced and diced. One wine that was the heaviest regular bottle in our cellar-one of the few we order Direct to Consumer; was recently noticed in a local grocery, it is now distributed in this state, and the bottle weight is more efficient- a good economic solution to the shipping dilemma.

Champagne bottles are a different matter, but they are bulky to maintain structural integrity, after the wine is bottled carbon dioxide builds pressure; about three times the air pressure inside automobile tires, and early attempts in the 18th century at bottling, often resulted in exploding bottles and entire racks of wine. Many of the finer producers in California have trended to lighter bottles.

It might be blasphemous to say, but a bottle based on the Two Buck Chuck design, of Charles Shaw, sold by Trader Joe’s at $2.99, is probably the most efficient bottle on the market. It has thin sides with no bulky punt at the bottom and generally comes in a modified “Bordeaux” high shoulder design. Bottle efficiency is important for several reasons, the most significant being the transport of bottles is usually the largest portion of the wine industries carbon footprint- not to mention the production of glass requires temperatures of over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and if recycled another round at 3,000 degrees- thus wine bottles are not typically recycled today in the United States.

Supply chain issues have come to the forefront in bottle technology. Some winemakers cannot get enough bottles. The price of glass is a commodity and it can spike, and limit the quantity of bottles, produced economically in the market. It is easy to shrug off the problem, but the end effect is if winemakers cannot get bottles in a timely manner, the wine may spend too much time in oak barrels, and the taste profile of one's favorite Cabernet Sauvignon or Chardonnay may develop an undesirable heavy smoky oak character.

One producer in Argentina reported the shortage has caused a six-month delay in bottling. Alternative packaging is not a proximate short-term solution, however, long-term planning should consider the possibility of this phenomena returning. Over a year ago, this column mentioned a paper-based bottle, Frugal Pac’s, Frugal Bottle developed in England. Made from over 90% recycled paperboard, with a food-grade plastic pouch that seals the wine from oxygen, it has a much lower carbon footprint, at about 1/3rd the weight of a typical bottle.

The business model allows the customer to produce the bottle on-site, and the cost is comparable to that of glass bottles, with proprietary machines licensed to individual producers. The day that column was printed, we got a phone call that the caller ID could not decipher, and on a whim it was answered, a British accent opened with, are you the chap that wrote about our new bottle design, I was wondering why my email box had exploded with requests from around the world.

We talked a while, and a promise to visit next time in London evolved, the facility is actually in Ipswich. The wine market is becoming a small world, within our larger world.

Contact Robert Russell at rob@rlr-appraisals.com