Heavy Wine Bottles: Why? Focus on the Juice, Please!
One of my pet peeves is the increased sizing and weights of wine bottles these days. Unconforming if you will, they force enthusiasts, distributors, wine retailers, and especially collectors alike to adjust to these big, bruising, hard to carry or store bottles making them ultimately more costly to purchase.
As consumers, buying multiple bottles and trying to carry them, nearly requires a moving company for large quantities and concerns grow when carrying one in a shopping bag. Further, collectors and those with both racks in wine storage facilities and anyone who has wine-specific storage refrigerators, they are designed with the Bordeaux-style sized wine bottle in mind and that style is designed into every storage type unit to account for size and weight. So, when I read the February 28, 2024, Vinepair article from John Sumner, “As a Major Wine Critic Calls Time on Heavy Bottles, Will Others Follow Suit?” it provided key responses from esteemed wine experts, Karen MacNeil and Jancis Robinson, well-known retailer K&L Wine Merchants, and even many wineries, pushing to refine this “obscene” growth in over-priced and invasive presentation.
Karen MacNeil announced she “would no longer write about wines packaged in heavy, thick glass.” She continued, “We do a lot of tastings. And yet again, the day before the announcement, there was this heavy bottle,” MacNeil says, referring to an obnoxiously overweight submission that had just arrived for review. “These bottles are both frustrating and really just wrong in a way.”
“The highly esteemed U.K. wine journalist and co-author of “The World Atlas of Wine,” Jancis Robinson, has justifiably railed against what she terms ‘bodybuilder bottles’ for almost two decades. She points out that bottle weights are now included in all her reviews — slinging shame at the overt heavies and praising those who virtuously embrace a more delicate packaging aesthetic.”
As Ryan Woodhouse at K&L Wine Merchants laments, “There are a lot of obscene bottles,” Woodhouse says. “The industry as a whole should start moving away from it.” And finally, an example from the winery perspective, “I had no idea we’d save that much money!” says Jason Hass, proprietor at Paso Robles standard-bearer Tablas Creek Vineyard. “It makes good economic sense.” In Sumners’ research, it turns out that “By doing the right thing environmentally, the lauded producer ended up banking a cool $2.2 million in savings over the first 14 years of its lighter-glass expedition.”
Certainly, there are reasons the wineries choose to differentiate themselves from others in the hopes to gain that higher level of fame but, I say, why can’t they simply focus on the juice and let us, the consumer, choose to enjoy their offerings? Though change in the industry is difficult, moving toward adjusting the environmental carbon footprint and making economic sense is a slow process industry-wide, it would mean they can keep our costs down and maintain our
interest in their wines.
These heavier and in many cases, also overly ornate bottles, are merely for show. If I told you that I am pouring one of your favorite wines, your thoughts and palette immediately go to the wonderful memory of that juice you so enjoyed previously; not what the bottle looks or feels like. The point is to forget prestige and focus on practicality. The wine itself is what is to be enjoyed. Doesn’t this make sense for us? Wine should be grape fun! Cheers!
