When we buy a bottle of wine, it's what's inside that matters. But how about what's around the wine: glass and an enclosure? What are the impacts of these packaging components?

It is known that 2 to 3 percent of wine bottles with natural corks (cut from cork tree bark) are tainted by trichloranisole (called TCA for short) which produce an aroma akin to wet paper or dirty socks. Increasingly wine producers are going to alternative bottle closures. The main products are:

Screw caps - These are aluminum caps that are screwed on around the neck of the bottle. Stelvin is the most common brand. These, however, are used mostly for lower tier wine products.

Synthetic corks - These are processed products shaped like bark corks and made to look similar. The two leading products are DIAM, which is made from ground cork that has been washed and CO2 treated, and Nomacorc which is derived from sugarcane biopolymers. 

Glass stoppers - A few wineries use these, Eight Bells, located in Seattle, in particular. They are inserted in the bottle neck. and then foil covered. 

The trend away from cork will continue, except for the highest end wines whose corks are of the highest quality and individually inspected. It ia predicted that within a few years, less than 20% of wines will have natural corks. This includes imported wine, especially French, which are increasingly enclosed with synthetics. 

The other part of the wine bottle packaging (aside from the label which is a visual and informative component) is the container, usually glass, which is not an easily recyclable product. Glass can be melted down, but not easily made into a recycled product. So uses for glass containers are limited and much glass ends up in landfills. Here are possible uses for glass and some glass alternatives:

Crushed glass - Some glass gets mixed with asphalt for paving ("glasasphalt") but only so much glass can be mixed in.

Ground glass - I have seen the operation of machine purchased by our friends Ted and Joyce Cox that crushes bottles into glass the consistency of sand, reducing the volume of one wine bottle into one pound of glass sand. The sand is also amorphous unlike the crystalline silica from which the bottle was made. This increases the usefulness of the product. It can be more easily used in glasasphalt and in other possible applications such as sandbags, concrete intermixtures and more. Experimentation is under way for more applications. 

Alternative packaging - Aluminum cans are increasingly being used to package wine. These are mostly in the half bottle (375 ml.) size and for lower tier products. I have tried a few from 14 Hands that are of respectable quality. Aluminum is easily recyclable and there is a market for recycled aluminum cans. Plastic has the disadvantage of a weak market for recycling. How about reusable bottles? When I was in college in the 1960s, beer came in glass "longneck bottles" which could be returned to the brewery for refilling. The problem with wine bottle reuse is the multiplicity of glass colors and sizes. It would be great if a large winery such as Chateau Set. Michelle were to standardize its bottles and take them back for reuse.

Locally, in Walla Walla, we are working on this problem, such as what the Coxes are doing with the help of Philippe Michel and others. As Philippe put it, we are trying to help in a small way.