Your Favorite Bottle of Wine Is About to Get Lighter — Here's Why

The future of wine feels light. Here’s why that’s a really good thing.

While on a quest for an eco-friendly wine, you might seek out something labeled as organic, or perhaps search for wineries with sustainable practices. But when was the last time you considered the container?

Although you can’t always judge a book by its cover or a wine by its label, you can learn a lot about a wine’s eco-impact via its vessel. “Between one-third and half of the total carbon footprint of wine comes from the bottle alone,” says Dr. Peter Stanbury, the United Kingdom-based research director for the Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR).

Why your favorite bottle of wine will likely weigh less in the next 3 years

The SWR is based in London, but has retailer, winery and industry expert members around the globe, including Whole Foods Market, Lidl and Richard Branson’s Virgin Wines. The organization certainly doesn’t include the entire winery world, but with such large players involved, even subtle changes can make a significant difference.

According to Dr. Stansbury, in the past, two key hurdles have been standing between the wine industry and trimmer bottles. The first is the fact that wine brands and sellers thought that consumers would immediately perceive that heavier bottles signify a better wine. Secondly, wine bottlers and makers thought that lighter bottles are always more fragile. 

During 6 months of research prior to the debut of SWR’s Bottle Weight Accord—a bottle weight reduction pact that involves all of those aforementioned retailers—in October 2023, Dr. Stansbury and the SWR team found that both of those were false.

“There is no link in consumers' minds between the weight of a bottle and the quality of the wine in it,” Dr. Stansbury explains. “There’s also no reason why lighter bottles will be more fragile. Many growers have used bottles even lighter than 420 grams for ages with no problem.”

With this intel in tow, and knowing that any change performed collectively among the SWR members has the potential to impact more than 250 million wine bottles, Dr. Stansbury and team cemented the plans for a lofty and laudable goal: All who join the Accord will reduce the average weight of the 750-milliliter still wine bottles they sell from 550 grams to 420 grams by the end of 2026. This involves collaboration between wineries, retailers, bottlers, glass manufacturers,and in the end, consumers, to keep investing in the wine after it’s sold in a lighter bottle. (Chances are, you might not even feel the difference.)

This 25 percent drop in bottle weight will reduce the overall carbon footprint of the wines sold by the participating retailers by about 12 percent and will save more than 23 million kilos of carbon, according to the SWR.

“It’s better for our planet. It’s also something the consumer can be a part of, like recycling or buying sustainably-grown produce. Our consumers want to make the purchases that make them feel like they are contributing. By purchasing wine in lighter glass, they will be,”  said Jeff Turnas, senior vice president of Global Culinary for Whole Foods Market.

This is one subtle yet substantial step in the marathon that is addressing the eco-impact of wine packaging;In the future, the SWR aims to focus on paper bottles and aluminum cans that are, like glass, also recyclable, but are much lighter and resource-intensive to ship.

What does the wine bottle of the future look like?

Many wineries who are not officially part of the SWR are doing their part, too. Case in point: Brooks Wine in Amity, Oregon. In 2012, they switched to bottling the majority of their wine in 595-gram bottles to 467-gram ones. 

“At the time, there were fewer glass companies that offered lighter glass, so finding a source was difficult. Once we found one — Eco-Glass — the steps were pretty seamless. The glass doesn't change what's inside the bottle and it doesn't change our winemaking,” said Janie Brooks Heuck, managing director of Brooks Wine. “We figured that if we could make a more sustainable choice, what was holding us back?”

Having a close relationship with the glass manufacturer and bottler is key. The team at Alois Lageder winery in Italy’s  Alto Adige region experimented with a Swiss glass manufacturer for months to develop a lightweight, stable bottle that met their aesthetic standards.

“With such a low bottle weight, it was crucial to ensure that all 420 grams of glass were distributed evenly across the entire surface. With inconsistent thickness, the glass would be too thin and fragile, and the bottles would break. In the end, we managed this very well,” said Alois Clemens Lageder, the sixth-generation owner of Alois Lageder.

Rather than keep their tested-and-perfected formula under lock and key, Lageder verified that their new bottle design is “intentionally not patented so that many wineries can follow.” Because wine — and savvy sustainable strategies — are best when shared.