World: Lighter bottles for entry-level wines is the wrong message

Producers need to put high-quality wines into lighter bottles to shift consumer perception around bottle weight, Dr Laura Catena argued at a Sustainable Wine Roundtable talk this week. Eloise Feilden reports. The Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR), an independent platform created to improve sustainability in the wine industry, launched its Bottle Weight Accord in October 2023. The accord followed a six-month study into bottle weight reduction co-funded by SWR retailer members including Finland’s Alko, Lidl GB, Systembolaget in Sweden, The Wine Society and Whole Foods Market in the US. Its initial target was to reduce the current average bottle size for 750 ml still wine bottles among its retail members from 550g to 420g before the end of 2026. Now, just over a year on from its launch, the SWR has 1.5 billion bottles under the accord. In a webinar detailing the progress made by the organisation in 2024, research director Dr Peter Stanbury said the accord therefore covers 5% of all ...