We have been following Bedrock Winery’s work to help lower the carbon footprint of the wine industry. We wrote about their boxed rosé this spring (which incidentally we loved down to the last drop!). It was definitely a bold move. This month Morgan Twain-Peterson & Chris Cottrell announced in Bedrock’s newsletter the change they are making in glass bottling. Again a significant move but one we hope buyers will embrace and more wineries will adopt. CONGRATULATIONS BEDROCK!

Frankly we never felt wine bottled in ridiculously heavy glass bottles was somehow superior. It’s more difficult to pick up and absolutely costs more to ship. There are some winemakers who will argue that the wine ages better in them, hmmm, I’m not so sure. Besides, the majority of wine consumers today are wanting to purchase wine that is ready to drink requiring little or no time stored.

Here is an excerpt from Bedrock’s newsletter:

First, we have moved to a much lighter glass bottle for all our wines.  For those who have had the 2021 Old Vine you are already familiar with the claret bottle, an elegant but light mold that sheds nearly 42% of the weight from our former bottle. This will lighten the case weight by 8.8 pounds and pallet weight by 492 pounds. Additionally important, this is a mold that our glass supplier assures us will continue to come primarily from glass plants nearby rather than other global epicenters of glass production such as Chile, Mexico, China, and France.  This is important both because it lessens the number of emissions used during transportation, but also because domestic glass uses a higher percentage of recycled glass (up to 60%). As more and more studies have made clear that glass bottles are a leading contributor to the wine industry’s carbon footprint, we felt that it was time to move to a lighter mold to both lessen our environmental impact and hopefully encourage other wineries to do the same. There is obviously some risk associated with this decision. For many years, heavier bottles have been used by wineries to signal higher quality product, and moving away from that association takes some adjustment. I admit that for a long time, we also associated the tactile feel of a nice heavy bottle with quality, but two things have changed my mind: the irrefutable facts about carbon footprint, and encouragement from many mailing list members that showed us the perspectives are evolving. Since we sell the vast majority of our wines to our mailing list, we are hoping people will enjoy the lighter lift of a Bedrock case. Personally, I already have greatly enjoyed how much easier it is to move cases around in the cellar and have started to dread moving around the old mold. Our guts tell us that this decision will feel like a no-brainer in a couple of years, even if it took us working through some angst to get to this moment.

Salud!

Note: Bedrock worked with Winery Sixteen 600 to package 100 boxes of their wine! YAY!!!