Just when consumers have (or have not) adjusted to screwcaps as the superior cork replacement, there's an emerging alternative to glass bottles: PET bottles. PET is the material used for soft drink bottles. The Queensland winery Sirromet has launched a range of wines packaged in these plastic PET bottles – and a good thing, too.
If wine was invented today, I doubt it would be bottled in glass. Glass bottles have benefits – they have reasonable thermal properties (i.e. bottled wine changes temperature more slowly than in a PET bottle), tinted glass reduces UV damage to wine, and they are relatively cheap. However, glass is obviously very fragile and extremely heavy (a growing issue given the global distances wine is sometimes transported).
For traditionalists wanting their wine to come in bottles – rest assured, PET bottles are not going to replace glass any time soon. A key barrier to change is that wine bottlers have big investments in glass bottling lines. But we will see more variety in wine packaging in coming years.
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