Ben Canaider
You cannot tell, but this bottle is plastic. The pitch is to the drinker with a conscience. Tempted?
Photo: Melanie Faith Dove
WOLF Blass has just released a new brand called Green Label. Two wines - a 2008 Crisp Dry White and a 2008 Cabernet Shiraz. Both have screw caps, both taste like ordinary commercial wine and both cost $16.99. So far, so same-same.
But one detail sets them apart; they come in plastic bottles. Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, the sort of plastic we put yoghurt and milk in. Blass' owner, Foster's, claims this is an Australian wine first, but Queensland winery Sirromet launched a PET-bottled wine called First Step in January.
Sirromet winemaker Adam Chapman says that so far PET-packaged wine is popular with sporting groups and the boating fraternity.
Eventually, he predicts, Australia will follow Europe and Britain, where PET wine bottles are now 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 says.
Environmental responsibility? Foster's and Sirromet are both keen to play PET's environmental angle, and in Blass' case it goes like this. The labels say that each bottle "makes for 29per cent less greenhouse gas emissions" and is "36per cent lighter in weight". And these claims have been substantiated by an independent third party using a life-cycle assessment.
Foster's says the aim of this assessment is to quantify "the cumulative environmental impacts from all product stages from grape growing, winemaking, wine packaging and bottling, product use, disposal and recycling".
What PET bottle makers such as Visy and Amcor have identified is that, when compared with a glass bottle's life cycle, PET reduces packaging weight per litre by 84per cent (a standard glass bottle weighs 515grams, a PET wine bottle weighs 51grams), uses 19per cent less energy, produces 78per cent less solid waste, and emits 52per cent less greenhouse gas.
So, in short, PET bottles seem like a clear winner. But the National Packaging Covenant Secretariat, a voluntary industry/government initiative committed to improving the environmental sustainability of packaging, is non-committal.
A covenant spokesman says there is still not enough evidence to substantiate claims regarding the sustainability of PET versus glass. And that might be a problem for any wine drinker keen on recycling, as evidenced by PET wine bottles' recent outings.
Blass' experiments with PET wine bottles in Canada and Britain in 2006 were not embraced by consumers. "Sales didn't meet our expectations," says Green Label's "brand ambassador" Oliver Horn.
But Foster's insists it's not abouttaste, saying its Green Label wines deliver "the same quality, taste and consistency as Wolf Blasswines in glass".
But the white and red blends in PET are not available in any other Blass glass-bottled range, so there's no easy point of comparison.
In Canada and Britain, Blass did not play the environment angle as strongly or blatantly. Canada wanted plastic bottles to help offset its huge exported recycling bill, and Britain, through supermarkets such as Tesco, had aggressive environmental policies regarding packaging.
So the wholesale demand for these bottles was there. It's just that wine drinkers didn't buy them.
Horn agreesthat there is a needto change consumer sentiment.
"When you talk to people about this new bottle they say, 'Isn't glass more environmentally friendly? Isn't plastic made from oil?', because that's the perception," hesays. "But once you demonstrate - through the life cycle assessment of the PET bottle - that this new bottle is better for the environment thanglass, that it produces 29percent less greenhouse gasemissions, then they areveryquickto understand.
"Our research has shown us that 96per cent of consumers are environmentally aware."
There have been health concerns surrounding PET, the latest from Germany's Goethe University, which this year released research into estrogenic compounds found in PET and their effect on snails. Twice as many embryos were found inside the snails living in PET than in glass. The exact compounds are yet to be identified, so the research is so far inconclusive, but one researcher commented that she had started drinking tap water again.
Blass denies any chemical leaching in its new bottles. "It is food-grade PET," says Horn. "There's no leaching in any way. We interrogated our bottle suppliers over this. We also carried out lab and olfactory tests over 12months. There was no evidence of any chemical leaching or any change in smell or taste."
Some rival wine producers, however, are wary of embracing plastic, at least in 750millilitre bottles. McLaren Vale's Ben Riggs, the winemaker behind the Galvanized Wine Group and such wines as Woop Woop, The Black Chook, and Mr Riggs, says plastic bottles "just don't do it for me".
He says it is the look and the feel of PET bottles that's the problem - and a hesitancy to move away from glass, which has been so effective a vessel for wine for so long.
That said, Riggs has put plenty of wine into plastic bottles. "We do it for airlines, and lots of it, in the 187millimetre bottles. And, more than 12months after bottling, the wines are still fine, so I don't think there's an issue with wine quality."
As for chemical leaching, Riggs says "all you can do is go on what the bottle manufacturer tells you, but not too many of us seem to have a problem with all the soft drinks and foods packaged in plastic, do we?"
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