What type of wine package does the least damage to the environment? The answer to the question is not quite as simple as you might think.

It seems obvious that glass bottles with cork closures and tin capsules would be the right thing to buy on Earth Day, since all these items are recyclable. But it may be that wine in the clunky but inexpensive bag-in-box format goes lighter on the earth.

Greenness and light carbon footprints are hot topics in the wine industry right now, as wineries, regions and the competing packaging companies shoot almost daily press releases touting their green credentials. It’s a hot topic in a lot of other industries, too, according to this USA Today article.

But with everybody patting themselves on the back there may be a whiplash effect when the issues get better sorted out. First of all, glass is heavy, and packaging wine in glass makes it a very heavy thing to transport as Tyler Colman of the Dr. Vino blog and others have examined very closely.

The heavier an item is, the more ship, train and truck fuel it requires to move it from the winery to you. That makes its carbon footprint heavier, which is bad for the atmosphere and contributes to climate change, most experts on the subject say.

Especially unfriendly are the trendy, super-heavy wine bottles that seem to weigh as much empty as they do full. These are beautiful and artistic, but any winery that sticks with this packaging is going to have some explaining to do to the public.

There is no compelling practical reason for these babies other than their heft in a consumer’s hands. Wineries can get the same protection from light and the same aging potential from a much lighter bottle.

Boxed wines count very little of their weight from the package, so liter by liter, they win the contest for the least spewing of gas and diesel fumes per mile to market.

The cork companies have seized on the green credentials of their products, pointing out how many trees and animals are saved and how much carbon is turned to oxygen by preserving and using the cork oak forests in Portugal and Spain.

The key point here is that you don’t have to cut a cork tree down to harvest the cork. Workers strip a layer of cork off the tree about once every nine years, and the layer grows back with no other damage to the tree. That’s about as renewable as it gets. Of course they do have to ship them halfway around the world to wineries in California and Australia, which must burn a lot of diesel.

Makers of other bottle closures like screw tops and synthetic corks, however, argue that their products can be manufactured closer to the wineries, using comparatively few raw materials, little energy and are recyclable, too.

Some wineries are starting to package their wines in plastic bottles like soda. I love San Pellegrino in plastic because it’s so lightweight and unbreakable, so it won’t put me off to see wine in plastic bottles. By the way, what’s more absurd than sending water around the world in heavy glass bottles? Wine is absolutely eco-responsible compared to that.

The greenest wine packaging of all is probably the refillable jug or carboy. If you’re lucky enough to live near wineries (and everyone does now because wineries operate in all 50 states, about 5,000 of them total in the US) and one of them lets you bring your own container and fill it up, then you are in a very green place. (Or at the very least you can be a wine locavore and drink the local juice.)

I believe that in California The Hess Collection Winery in Napa and Preston Vineyards in Sonoma County have offered this opportunity from time to time. Who else lets you bring your own jug?

Share This Post: