It’s a bit of a worry when one of the world’s biggest retailers reveals it has converted all its small bottles of wine into plastic packaging. Marks & Spencer says it has done this “in a bid to help the environment”.
There are 19 wines, red, white and rose, now sold in 250ml bottles. Six per cent of the giant Brit business’s wine sales is now in the little bottles – apparently that is 100,000 of them a week. M&S says the new bottles, made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), are 88 per cent lighter than glass bottles and use less energy in their manufacture.
This sort of thing has been going on here in a small way for years. Airlines and mini bars supply a good deal of their wine in small plastic bottles. Sirromet and Wolf Blass recently put some of their output into bigger, 750ml plastic. This does not appear to have caught on to any great extent. Yet. The Wolf Blass plastic-bottled wine, released in May last year, was called Green Label.
There were two wines – a 2008 Crisp Dry White and a 2008 Cabernet Shiraz. Blass’ owner, Foster’s, claimed this was an Australian wine first and tell us the Green Label is still available “from all major sellers of wine”. Queensland’s Sirromet launched a PET-bottled wine called First Step in months earlier, in January 2009. Sirromet winemaker Adam Chapman said at the time that PET-packaged wine was popular with sporting groups and the boating crowd.
Eventually, he predicted, Australia would follow Europe and Britain, where PET wine bottles were quite common. “The spread of PET bottles for wine will be as inevitable in this country as the spread of screw caps over cork, but it will take time –- and First Step is our way of testing consumer interest in buying wine that makes a statement about the importance of environmental responsibility through its packaging and production,” Chapman said.
But there is one place where to his considerable displeasure, your reporter has encountered wine in a plastic bottle – the Performing Arts Complex on the South Bank. I go there fairly often and had until recently made use of the system under which you may place your request for half-time refreshment and find it ready for you when the time arrives.
That is no longer an appealing option because the wine you get when you Interval Order comes in a plastic container, from which you unscrew a piece out of which you have to drink – a plastic bottle and a plastic glass. Don’t like it. Now have seats on the end of a row and hurtle out at interval to reach the bar before the herd and buy decent drinks in respectable glasses.
Now I reckon you might enjoy some of the comments added to the on-line report of the M&S doings: “What insanity is this? Plastic more environmentally friendly than glass? And just where does all this plastic come from????? oil wells like the one that’s gushing thousands of gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico right now! That’s where! And then there’s the con that is “plastic recycling. The aluminium cap, by the way, is fully recyclable!”
“Been able to buy wine in plastic bottles here in France since I arrived here in 1981, now it’s possible to buy spirits, whisky, gin, vodka etc, in small single drink plastic sachets in strips of 5 or doubles.” A
nd your reporter’s special favourite: “My life-long standard has been to not to urinate in swimming pools, read the Guardian or drink wine out of screw-top bottles. Simple recommendations which have stood me in excellent stead and ones that I have passed-on to my children and grand children.”
Splendid chap!
Back in the real world, Long Flat has put its new vintages into lighter-weight glass bottles You may remember Long Flat as a popular product from Tyrrells.
It went elsewhere some years ago. The new people aim at “providing trusted wines with consistent quality at an economically-friendly price”. Leading the release of the new vintages this year are the two most popular wines from the range: Long Flat semillon sauvignon blanc 2008 (pictured) and cabernet merlot 2008. And one new to the range, Pink moscato 2009. All three have a price around $9.90.
Made in Moscato d’Asti style, this wine has a relatively gentle six per cent alcohol with a frizzante character and delivers the natural fruity, spice aroma and flavour of the muscat grape. A small splash of shiraz adds a soft pink colour and a dash of raspberry. But wait, there’s more.
The new lean and green vintages come with an environmentally-themed promotion. While stocks last, each bottle will carry a seed stick, Parsley, Basil, Chives, Thyme, Tarragon, Oregano. We are assured they can be grown on a window sill or out in the yard, Try the semillon sauvignon blanc with mussels in white wine and parsley or the cabernet merlot with Basil Chicken Cannelloni.
braylin@bigpond.net.au
