Could it be that the wine-packaging we're used to -- a glass bottle sealed with a cork -- is headed for the recycling bin of history? Recently, natural cork largely gave way to artificial stoppers. Then screwcaps started to replace those tubular stoppers. Next there were wines in Tetra Pak.
Now there's something called PET, which actually doesn't have anything to do with the furry beasts that populate wine labels, but is essentially a soft plastic (polyethylene terephthalate, hence PET) bottle. The Wolf Blass wines reviewed today are the first PET-packaged wines to appear in the LCBO.
What's it all about?
Let's remember, first, that bottles and corks haven't been around all that long. Thousands of years ago, wine was stored in earthenware jars and later (in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome) in amphorae, which were clay vessels with pointed bases and carry-handles.
They fell out of use about 2,000 years ago, and were replaced by wooden barrels. Barrels are now used for storing and aging wine, but through to the 20th century they were used for shipping wine, too. When you bought wine, you went to a wine merchant with your own container and the wine was drawn out of the barrel.
Bottles for storing wine came on the scene in the 1600s, but each bottle was individually blown and expensive. Only in the 1800s could they be made in standard sizes and shapes so that standard-shaped seals, like mass-produced corks, could be used. They were still quite expensive, though, and it wasn't until the 1900s that ordinary folk would buy wine in a glass bottle sealed with a cork.
So what many people think of as the "traditional" format (a word usually used as an argument against change) is quite recent.
The latest challenge to it is the PET bottle, and it's brought to us by Wolf Blass, a producer that had already rallied to screwcaps for nearly all its wines. (The PET bottles are screwcap-sealed, too.) PET is an inert plastic that doesn't taint wine. Some of the advantages of PET over glass are that PET doesn't break (I dropped one on my kitchen floor to test it, and it doesn't) and that it's easily recycled. It's also much, much lighter than glass, which saves energy in transport.
In other words, PET has many of the advantages claimed for Tetra Pak, but it has this additional advantage: it looks like a "traditional" bottle. You can actually see the wine, too, which is probably important to some people.
I have to say that the debut wines from Wolf Blass look very good in their PET outfits. The bottle is shorter than a standard bottle, but it's slimmer, too (work that one out) and the labels are stylish. They will attract consumers who are put off by the garish (and in some cases just hideous) designs on some Tetra Pak wines.
I'm not totally enamoured of all the innovations in wine-packaging (thank God wine in cans didn't take off!), but the PET initiative looks like a good one.
Four wines today, two in screwcap-sealed PETs, one in a screwcap-sealed glass bottle, and one in Tetra Pak.