Packaging wine in the 21st century

By Jamie Goode | 10th April 2025

We associate wine strongly with the container that it comes in. Think about wine, and we envisage it in a bottle, which we open using a corkscrew and then pour into a wine glass. Yes, wine is the liquid inside, but it’s also more than this. But for most of the history of wine, it was never sold in a glass bottle. Glass was expensive, and there was no easy way to seal it. Glass bottles were used as early as the 17th century for wine, but this was only as an intermediary, where the wine was taken from a bulk container, such as a barrel, put in a bottle and then taken to the table, and the bottles were re-used. There’s an interesting collection of old glass bottles from the 17th and 18th centuries at London wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd. I find them really interesting. There’s also quite a lot of discussion about why wine bottles have punts: the best explanation I’ve heard is that when you blow a glass bottle by mouth, there’s a bead that forms at the point where the molten glass breaks off. If the bottom of the bottle was flat, then this bead would make it less stable on the table. Adding a punt makes the bottle able to stand up nicely even if there are minor imperfections in the manufacture. 

But as soon as glass bottles became more affordable, and a reliable (ish) way of sealing them was devised (the cork), wine changed considerably. Suddenly it was possible to sell and transport wine in bottle, and perhaps more significantly, ageing wine in bottle in a cellar became an option. And this is how the modern notion of fine wine came to be. The best wines improved if they were laid down in a cellar, and this became the holy grail of wine consumption: drinking mature wines that had developed positively in a cool, dark cellar. 

Currently, most wine is sold in a bottle, with a capacity of 750 ml. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, we associate wine strongly with the bottle it is sold in. But bottles are quite heavy, and they are breakable, and they have a horrible carbon footprint, especially if the wine is bottled at source then shipped across the world to its target market. Heavy bottles can weigh as much as 900g, and the average weight of a bottle is around 500g. The wine itself sometimes weighs less than a bottle. And bottles are often sealed with a cork and capsule, or a screwcap. These create recycling issues and have carbon footprint implications. Corks need a tool to get them out of the bottle, which is not consumer friendly. 

Because of this there has been a lot of discussion about a more modern way of packaging wine that has a lower carbon footprint and creates less waste. It has proven tricky to find the right answer, partly because of technical issues, and partly because of consumer preferences. But we need to think seriously about what packaging wine in the 21st century might look like, because too many wines are being bottled when they don’t need to be.

One solution is an old one. I was in a winery in the Rhône last year where they had what looked like a petrol pump. But it was a way of dispensing wine. You bring your own container, weigh it, then fill it with wine, and weigh it again to see how much wine you have taken, and you pay by the litre. I remember my parents buying wine like this in Spain on holiday. Of course, this isn’t fancy wine, and you need to drink it fairly soon after it has been dispensed, but this is great for carbon footprint.

Bag-in-box wine has been around for a long time. And it does have a certain slice of the market. Bizarrely, many boxes with wine in have pictures of the wine in bottle on them: this reassures consumers that they are getting the same wine brand, just in a different packaging. And while most box wine is cheap, there are some producers like California’s Tablas Creek who are offering quite expensive wine in this format. The Wine Society in the UK bought some of this last year, and it sold well, even though at £69 for a three-litre box it was quite an investment. The limitation of bag-in-box is the shelf life: although the bag has a metallized layer that reduces oxygen transmission, the tap is made of plastic and this allows some oxygen to get in. Image is also an issue: some people don’t like the look, and pouring a glass from a plastic tap isn’t very glamorous. But the wine does stay fresh for quite a while once the packaging has been opened, unlike bottled wine. So, if you are disciplined, you can enjoy a glass a night for ages.

Another format that has attracted attention of late is the can. Of course, we are used to drinking soft drinks from cans, and canned beer has been a thing for a while now. Both are very popular. The challenge with wine is a technical one: if wine, which almost always contains some sulfur dioxide, comes into contact with the aluminium of the can wall, then it’s big trouble. Eggy-smelling hydrogen sulfide is produced, and this spoils the wine. So these cans need to have a special lining to stop this happening. It also reduces the shelf life of the can. Metal is actually quite good for wine quality in that it doesn’t allow oxygen in, so it’s a shame that there is this issue. But from a standing start a few years ago, there are now lots of canned wines on sale in supermarkets, and this is an environmental plus.

Talking of oxygen, this is one reason that plastic wine bottles haven’t really taken off. Plastic allows oxygen to diffuse through it, and this reduces the shelf life of the product. Wine is particularly sensitive to oxygen. The other issue with plastic is that it’s plastic, which is very uncool at the moment. But the advantage of plastic is that it is lightweight. Small plastic bottles are popular for single serves, such as on airlines. But we don’t see a lot of wine in 750 ml plastic bottles. 

One alternative to bottles that I think works really well is the KeyKeg, which holds the equivalent of around 25 bottles and is used by restaurants and bars for wine on tap. This clearly requires some infrastructure: the restaurant needs to be kitted out with the taps. But it’s great for wine quality, and some very fancy wines are available in keg. The benefit for the customer is that if they order wine by the glass, they know it is going to be in good condition and not from a bottle opened three days previously. The benefit for the restaurant, aside from happy customers, is less wastage and not having to uncork and then recycle 25 bottles. This is a big advantage. Another way of using wine on tap is to fill carafes and bottles before taking them to the table, so customers still get the experience of pouring a glass. This works well.

So, wine packaging for the 21st century. It’s a lot more diverse than it used to be. But there is a danger with moving to alternatives to glass, and that is that wine is at risk of commoditisation. And this is at a time when the wine industry needs to increase profitability, not sell wine ever more cheaply.