Paper Wine Bottles?

Glass wine bottles are heavy, making them expensive to ship and subject to breakage. They are a big part of a winery's carbon footprint. Only about 30% of glass gets recycled in the U.S.

In March, I had a post wondering if aluminum might be the answer to replace glass wine bottles. This time we'll look at paper wine bottles.

 

Cardboard bottles!

 

Who

Frugalpac, a company in England, has come up with a way to turn pre-cut flat cardboard into a wine bottle. A machine will bend the cardboard to create the wine bottle and insert a plastic liner. They claim you can't tell the difference in taste. This liner is probably similar to what is used in box wine.

The Monterey Wine Company in California has one of the Frugal bottle assembly machines used to shape the bottles. They are a custom crush facility, essentially a wine production cellar where you can rent space to make wine.

Your first question might be why paper bottles if we already have box wine? In the wine biz it's all about shelf space in the retail market. And shelves are made for 750 ml bottles.

The Good

• They use recycled cardboard. The carbon footprint is one-sixth of glass bottles.
  
• The flat pre-cut cardboard can be shipped to near where the bottles will be filled, saving on shipping costs.
  
• The cardboard bottle weighs one-fifth of a glass bottle.
• The wine should be less susceptible to heat and light in cardboard as compared to glass.
  

The Not So Good

• The wines won't last as long as they would in glass. The company estimates one year for white wines, one and a half for red.
• The bottles don't look as nice as a glass wine bottle.
• The assembly machines look big and expensive. 
• In the U.S. anyway, a glass bottle with a cork equates to a better wine. Cardboard will have a difficult time catching on with many consumers.
  

 

The Unanswered

• Do the cardboard bottle assembly machines fill the bottles, too? That's not clear, but they're not calling it a bottling line.
• What's the total cost for a filled and "labeled" cardboard container compared to a glass bottle?
  

 

The Future

Because of the expense of the bottle assembly machine and the short life of the wine in these containers, I expect we'll see these with large wine companies selling relatively inexpensive wine. If they catch on, you might see businesses spring up that print and assemble the bottles for smaller wineries -- just like there are businesses that make glass bottles and wine labels now.

It won't completely replace glass with the short shelf life, but the vast majority of wines are consumed in less than a year from bottling. I would think you'd want a Best By Date or a Filled Date on the bottle, though that won't be required by U.S. law.

The assembly machine

Sources

CBS News

Frugalpac

Thanks for the tip, Jim