Wine Packaging: barrels of fun or just a container ?

Barrel room at Château Angludet

There seems to be a developing debate about various new wine packaging methods and whether they will be adopted by consumers. There are also claims that one method is 'greener' or more 'sustainable' than another.

It is debatable whether any modern wine packaging technique, be it bottle, carton, bag in box, aluminium can, might be green or sustainable in any way. All of these containers demand the use of lots of technology and lots of energy. Transporting wine around is also expensive, despite the claimed weight savings of, say, the new wine cartons. All of these packaging methods, however, are very effective and do help preserve the wines, which reach us just as they were when they left the winery.

I take a more old-fashioned view.

I like the glass bottle; an ideal inert container that protects the wine from light (if you use the correctly coloured glass) and excess oxygen, allowing slow maturation. Labels can give personality and character as well as information. Good quality corks allow some ingress of oxygen, and are proven to allow wine to be stored safely for many years. Screw cap closures can preserve young fruity wines, particularly whites, and deliver them as aromatic as when they went into bottle.

Oak (or other wooden) barrels and tanks, amphorae and qvevri are probably fairly friendly to the environment in terms of carbon emissions and recyclability and personally I like them for the craft and sense of history which goes into their manufacture.

The amphorae and qvevri demand the use of firing techniques to produce, as do the wooden containers to some extent, but all are intensely traditional in nature and will always be able to be made whatever technological changes may occur. You can imagine winemakers using these sorts of containers since wine was first produced and I find the idea of this bond across the ages most attractive.

The wine pouring forth from these ancestral vessels is also organoleptically intriguing in a way it cannot be when made in shining wine factories using the most modern techniques (although good wine is also made in these). There is still a sense of occasion to be experienced in the opening of a glass bottle stoppered with a natural cork that just cannot be felt when pulling the ring on a can.

Perhaps one day we will again experience the excitement of wind powered vessels sailing up the Thames laden with barrels of Bordeaux wine, just as our ancestors did.