Decades ago, almost every California winery used standard sizes of bottles, most of which weighed less than 3 pounds when filled. A case of wine, 12 bottles, weighs less than 35 pounds.
I’m not sure when this began to change, but in the last 30 years, bottles have become so heavy that they pose an environmental hazard. People have begun to get the idea that the heavier the bottle, the better the quality of the wine they are getting.
Of course, there is no truth to this. The quality of a wine has absolutely nothing to do with the weight of the bottle. But wine marketing specialists love putting ordinary wine in heavy bottles.
Ultra-heavy bottles are a relatively new phenomenon. I suspect it started with cabernet sauvignons, spread to zinfandel and then even some chardonnays are in these environmentally insensitive things. I detest this trend.
I’m not alone. A wine waiter in a Southern California cafe told me years ago that she hated them.
“I’m not real big,” she said, “and when a large party asks for re-pours and they hold their glasses out from the other side of the table, it’s not easy to pour for them.”
In the 1970s, a standard case of wine weighed 33 pounds and almost all wineries used roughly the same bottles. Bottles usually weighed 2 pounds 12 ounces. Today many cases are about 50 pounds and many bottles are 4 pounds, plus.
This puts a greater strain on the backs of retail store personnel who have to restock shelves.
Moreover, many bottles are also wider than they have ever been. A reader wrote years ago about this: “I have a built-in wine rack … Recently I observed that numerous wineries are switching to a larger-diameter bottle which no longer fits into my rack. And they are also difficult to fit in my wine refrigerator.”
One Sonoma County pinot noir producer of some fame sells its wine in bottles that are so wide they don’t fit in racks. Soon I stopped buying it.
Starting in the mid-1980s, California winemakers became conscious that thicker bottles felt better to some consumers, so we began to see many iconic wines use more glass. It coincided with the use of more gold on labels and fancier capsules. It was almost as if wineries had discovered the gimmick that sells expensive perfume: the bottle it comes in.
Also, we began to see taller bottles. The standard height of wine bottles in the 1970s was about 11 inches. Today many wineries are using 13-inch bottles.
Heavier bottles use more glass, which makes the boxes they come in wider as well. A pallet of wine typically holds 56 cases. A box that holds ultra-heavy wine bottles is so wide that a pallet can only hold 50 to 52 cases. Result: wine is more expensive to ship.
Not only can you fit fewer cases on a truck, but the added weight also increases fuel costs to move the wine to market. Which, in today’s world, is a significant drawback.
I see ultra-heavy bottles as an environmental hazard. They offer no benefit to the consumer, but needlessly cost consumers more because of added marketing costs. For more than 20 years, I have boycotted such wines.
