On our Austria tour in September, we visited Birgit Braunstein in Burgenland, a biodynamic producer and tasted some of her delicious wines. Her focus is on sustainability, and her entire range is bottled in bottles weighing only 420 grams. It is still rare to come across higher-quality wines in such light bottles.
We will therefore, with interest, follow a new project initiated by The Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR), an environmental forum for the wine industry where the Swedish and Finnish alcohol retail monopolies Systembolaget and ALKO are two of the founders.
Due to launch in October, the SWR “Bottle Weight Accord” aims to reduce the bottle weight of wine bottles. The goal is initially to reduce the current average bottle weight among SWR’s retail members from 550g to 420g before the end of 2026. SWR has done an in-depth study on wine bottle weight reduction co-financed by SWR’s retail members Alko (Finland), Lidl GB (UK), Systembolaget (Sweden), The Wine Society (UK) and Whole Foods Market (USA).
Read more sustainablewine.
Read: more on wine and the environment in BKWine’s book Organic, Biodynamic and Natural winemaking.
