Lighter Bottles For Entry Level Wines Is ​‘The Wrong Message’

We’re proud to be an earth-friend­ly busi­ness, and bot­tling our wines in light-weight glass has always been a big part of our story.

High qual­i­ty wines are often pre­sent­ed in heavy, waste­ful glass bot­tles and we were pleased to read a recent arti­cle in Wine Indus­try Advi­sor that reflects our vision. Take a look below to read more about a recent improve­ment in the world of wine:

Dec 2025, By Eloise Feilde

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 still wine sold in 750ml bot­tles around the world. Glass is respon­si­ble for up to 50% of the car­bon diox­ide emis­sions of any giv­en wine bot­tle. The SWR has cal­cu­lat­ed that its Bot­tle Weight Accord there­fore saves 144,428 tonnes of CO2 from the atmos­phere each year, the equiv­a­lent of 18,000 households.

Key parters of the accord were present at the announce­ment, which took place yes­ter­day (Thurs­day 19 Decem­ber). US mem­ber Whole Foods, which oper­ates more than 500 stores across the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and the UK, has com­mit­ted to have all its own label still wines in 750ml bot­tles under 420g by the 2025 vintage.

Rick Eplawy, who was rep­re­sent­ing the busi­ness, said Whole Foods has even stopped work­ing with one unnamed sup­pli­er who refused to con­form to the Bot­tle Weight Accord.

Consumer preference

Par­tic­i­pants in yesterday’s talk high­light­ed the shift that needs to hap­pen in con­sumer sen­ti­ment in order to move the cause forward.

Stan­bury com­ment­ed that while bot­tle weight ​“is only one of a myr­i­ad of fac­tors that go into con­sumer choice”, it is still an impor­tant one.

Dr Lau­ra Cate­na, a physi­cian, author and fourth gen­er­a­tion Argen­tine vint­ner at Bode­ga Cate­na Zap­a­ta, stressed the impor­tance of qual­i­ty per­cep­tion and its rela­tion to bot­tle weight.

She argued that pro­duc­ers have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to put high­er-qual­i­ty wines into lighter bot­tles. Cate­na crit­i­cised brands which are focused just on light­weight­ing their entry-lev­el wines. ​“My big con­cern is this is cre­at­ing the wrong mes­sage for con­sumers,” she said.

British multi­na­tion­al Tesco, which is also a mem­ber of the SWR’s Bot­tle Weight Accord, is tack­ling the same issue. ​“There’s the con­cept that heav­ier bot­tles make for bet­ter wine,” said Joe Old­ing, assis­tant buy­er for fruit wine, low & no alco­hol wine and small for­mats at Tesco.

The super­mar­ket has pledged to reach net zero by 2050 through­out its sup­ply chain. Beer, wine and spir­its have by far the heav­i­est pack­ag­ing of any area of the busi­ness, mean­ing the cat­e­go­ry is a key con­cern when it comes to hit­ting targets.

Tesco is respon­si­ble for approx­i­mate­ly one in three bot­tles of wine sold in the UK, and Old­ing said that light­weight­ing is a key focus for his area of the business.

Tesco has begun look­ing into how it can light­weight some of its high­er-end prod­ucts, and is focus­ing its atten­tion on sparkling wines, mov­ing from a 720g to a 600g bot­tle for its Tesco Finest Prosecco.