Plastic bottles aim to remould wine industry
August 10, 2009
The ubiquitous 750-milliliter glass wine bottle is starting to get competition from a plastic upstart, both on retail shelves and at a few restaurants.
The bottles carry a “use by” date — plastic doesn’t provide quite the same seal as glass — and as such aren’t likely to find their way into the cellars of serious wine enthusiasts. For those who aren’t as picky, however, the wine is likely to cost less. And oenophiles say that the taste will be the same.
At AKA a Bistro in St. Helena, in California’s Napa Valley wine country, owner Robert Simon will begin pouring a Cabernet Sauvignon out of plastic bottles this month for wine-by-the-glass customers.
Peralta Winery will sell him 1-liter plastic bottles for the same price as a 750-milliliter glass bottle. That means he can sell two extra glasses for about $7 to $8 each. And he won’t have to worry about the help breaking bottles.
EnVino, a plastic wine bottle venture in Burlingame, Calif., notes that the containers weigh about one-eighth of a typical glass wine bottle and take up 20% less space. That enables winemakers to save fuel by shipping 30% more wine per truck, said Patrick Field, a partner in EnVino.
Plastic containers are also used for the 187-milliliter single-serving wine bottles sold on commercial airlines and available at many supermarkets. But cost pressures are expected to accelerate the trend.
Although the wine industry is steeped in tradition, plastic bottles aren’t the only change affecting consumers. Screw-top bottles — once associated with cheap, sweet wines — are finding their way onto more higher-end vintages.
For more details, please visit http://www.latimes.com/
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