Notes From The Winemaker

Stainless Steel Wine Packaging

Yesterday a friend who is working on a new restaurant project wrote to ask what I thought of serving house wine out of a barrel. In Italy I've had some pretty tasty house wines that were served out of some sort of cask. Almost invariably these wines were simple, food-friendly and fresh. I enjoyed them, and have more than once wondered why most of the cheap house wines dispensed here in the US mostly, well, suck by comparison.

Part of the reason may be historical, and some is surely driven by what large producers think are the expectations of the "average" wine drinker. But the average palate is changing. And new wine packaging is gaining acceptance (I'm hardly the first person to post about this). And some of this new packaging could, I believe, finally make European-model house wine a reality.

I believe that the quality of most bulk boxed wine-like beverages produced in the US, um… "could be better" -- perhaps these wines have have more than a little grape concentrate incorporated both before fermentation and before bottling -- not really a recipe for quality. I believe many American consumers would welcome something unadorned, crisp, fresh, alive and with moderate alcohol, but the long distances wine has to be transported in the US seems to have selected for the evolution of cheaper, commodified, more processed wine-like beverages.

The improving quality of wine-in-a-box has been promoted ad nauseam -- I hope it's actually happening. I think it would be cool to have a bag-in-box of something relatively inexpensive, reliable and actually fun to drink at home. Some day I may even try one of the new offerings -- but only because I like the idea of "relatively inexpensive, reliable and actually fun to drink" -- NOT because the packaging is "greener."

Our colleague Tyler Colman wrote in the New York Times last year about wine-in-a-box, arguing for the desirability of this packaging based on its lighter weight. In this column he cites that 5.2 pounds of carbon dioxide is emitted in the transport of a bottle of wine from Napa to NYC (20% greater than the 4.4 pounds he cites in the recent National Geographic piece I just posted about -- I wish this guy would pick a figure and stick with it!) and notes that transporting the same volume of WIB emits "about half" that amount. OK -- 2.6 pounds of CO₂ per 750mL is still a lot. The fact is that liquids are heavy, and every commercial liquid sometimes has to be transported by truck. I think the focus on the ecological cost of transport alone is a canard, and if the upstream eco-costs of manufacture and the downstream eco-costs of disposal/recycling were properly accounted for, glass probably still looks pretty good compared to bag-in-box.

I'm no expert in Life Cycle Assessment, but I'm pretty sure that bag-in-box and similar alternatives: Tetra-packs, "juice boxes", etc. do have significant manufacturing costs and limited disposal/recycling options. This is definitely not the case for stainless steel packaging, which has nearly unlimited reusability. Recently some unusual new options for delivering wine in stainless are being offered.

I'm interested in the model being pursued by the Natural Process Alliance: make clean, fresh whites, pack them in re-usable stainless steel bottles (see below) and deliver them to customers located within so many miles of the production cellar -- like milk used to be delivered.


The NPA whites are made with minimal intervention. This means they are very much "alive" but have a more limited shelf-life -- also sort of like milk. I have not tasted them, but look forward to doing so. Friends have told me the Pinot Gris is tasty.

But for some, including my friend involved in the new restaurant project, the good old Cornelius keg may be the best answer for packaging and delivering Euro-style house wine.


These kegs are instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever slung soda in a bar or restaurant, and also to many homebrewers. There's millions of these kegs in circulation, and a mature infrastructure for their supply, cleaning, transport and use.

It's hardly like I am coming early to this party -- Eric Asimov drops some pretty well-known names in his Times column from 4/7/09, including Brewer-Clifton, Melville, Stephen Ross and Flowers. To be sure, I need to talk with some of the winemakers involved, and the restaurateurs who are serving from kegs as well -- I would be surprised to find that the systems are perfectly trouble-free, and want to know the caveats.

I also need to model the costs for wine produced specifically to go into kegs. Compared to our bottled wines destined for aging I envision different farming, yields, picking dates, winemaking inputs, and latency in fermenter, tank and barrel -- and minimal warehouse costs. There will be capital costs for kegs and equipment to clean and fill them. Keg storage, labor, marketing, order fulfillment and customer service costs will be different and have different timings than for cased/bottled product. Ultimately I want to know that I can supply a satisfying consumer experience at a reasonable price.

So yeah, I'm interested, on a number of levels: the challenge of growing and making the wine is stimulating, the potential to develop a revenue stream that is less cyclical and has lower COGS than that from bottled vintage wine is attractive from a business standpoint, and the very idea of a light fresh house red in reusable packaging appeals to my wordview. We'll see, OK?

posted 4/24/2009 06:52:00 AM