The lightest screwcap bottle ever made should hit UK shelves early next year.
The 300g bottle is undergoing trials at UK bottling specialist Kingsland and should be available in January 2010.
Tesco will be the first retailer to move its entry level wines to the lighter bottle. Other major retailers including Asda and brand owners have registered their interest.
Nicola Jenkin, drinks category manager for the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), which launched the initiative, told decanter.com, ‘Lighter bottles have been technically viable but the wine community didn’t want to use them because they didn’t look right. We’ve worked really hard at the design – it had to be a bottle producers wanted to use.
‘We believe this is the first screwcap bottle in the world at 300g,’ she added.
The Bordeaux-shaped bottle is aimed at large volume brands bottling their wines in the UK. According to WRAP, more than 200m litres of wine are shipped in bulk and bottled in the UK.
The average weight of a wine bottle in the UK is around 500g.
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Written by Rebecca Gibb
