Signalling to consumers the quality level of a wine is certainly important, even more so in the New World that’s often devoid of more strict classification.
I don’t mind the shape of your bottles Marcus, and the bottles do convey a sense of being 'premium," but I can’t fit really fit them in my home wine fridges because they are a bit too tall to fit in all but one of the racks. That’s really my one cavil about your wines, that I can’t store more of them at home more easily.
Though on balance, that’s probably a good thing as it gives them more time to age.
Guess I am an outlier, in so much as I appreciate attention to packaging. Albeit, I would never buy a bottle because it was “heavy”. I derive a modicum of pleasure from pulling a nice heavy bottle from the cellar, wiping it down with a cloth, and admiring the craftsmanship/thoughtfulness both in and outside of the bottle. Again, it would not solely influence my buying decision, but there is something to premium packaging. If I pay $100+…I want all aspects to be premium. Just my view as a consumer!
This is the viewpoint that has been driven by the market research type thought pattern and reflects what Marcus is dealing with in product placement. The heft or size of a bottle is not a premium of anything. If we are talking about $3 wine, maybe it makes a difference. But a perception of premium due to heavy glass is the underlying “problem” to me.
I certainly sympathise with producers who use heavier bottles. As a wine producer, I’d imagine you want your customers to feel like they got their money’s worth from a wine, and while that means different things to different people, there is no doubt that aesthetics can play a big role for a non-insignificant portion of consumers, at any price point. Everything from the visuals of the label, to the heft of the bottle, and even the cork can play a role in how a consumer perceives the overall wine experience and how ‘premium’ or ‘worth it’ a wine is or was. I do think there’s likely a point where the bigger size and weight just becomes a bit sillier, more gimmicky and provide diminishing returns in how ‘premium’ it feels (surely we don’t need 3kg 750mls).
just don’t buy anything from Napa Valley. The only other place that seems to do this from my experience is South America on occasion. For some reason the Conquista Reserva Malbec had a really heavy bottle and it was like $15.00.
I emailed Sea Smoke years ago and said I would not buy any more of their TEN if the bottle size stayed the same. The next year the size was the same and I passed. I think they changed it a couple years later, but I never went back. For me it was a racking issue - they didn’t fit, and I had no shelf space to put them. Turley ended up in the same predicament. Not sure if I will go back either.
I get the perception of quality related to bottle size, weight, or shape, and have probably succumbed at some point in my life, although I am more a sucker for a label that speaks to me than bottle size/weight. But it’s not too different - a good label artist isn’t making the wine.
I would prefer that bottles not weigh so much, but not being able to fit them into my racking is the real deal breaker. A close second is having to scrape the label to get them in. I have lost my patience for that as well.
Reducing the weight of the bottle would be one of the most obvious ways of reducing the carbon footprint of the wine, the weight of glass in a shipping container is a surprising % of the total. We would be able to get more boxes into each container if the glass was lighter (total wine load is limited by weight, not volume). Better carbon footprint and of course cheaper shipping, never mind the cost of the fancy bottle.
Alternately, I recently bought some Canonica Paiagallo Barolo and was shocked by how thin and light the glass was. I was almost afraid to handle it too much.
I’d imagine that modern glass is stronger than older glass so I wonder how much of a reduction could be attained here? I’m one who really doesn’t care about the size of the bottle, and would be happier if everything just came in standard, small punt bottles. I even wonder if Champagne glass could now be reduced?
As others have noted, it’s truly a challenge - when most see a hefty bottle, there is a feeling of ‘quality’ there. I have always been more concerned with what’s INSIDE the bottle and have chosen to do what I do because of that - making things simpler all around. I know that folks may look at a lighter bordeaux bottle and feel ‘cheated’ compared to a big burg bottle that has a punt the size of your fist - I guess I’ll just have to take my chances . . .
I used to work in a retail shop with a guy who had been selling wine in the same stores for decades. He would sometimes pick up a bottle and kind of wave it up and down, commenting in this quiet, almost confidential tone about how heavy it was and how serious the wine must be. A lot of customers loved that. This guy definitely knows better, but he also knows how to sell someone a bottle of wine that costs more than they usually spend.
Champagne aside, there can be huge range in the weight of wine bottles, and I doubt it has to do with necessary strength. I once weighed the bottles of a range of Chiantis we were importing, the lightest bottle was almost exactly half the weight of the fanciest.
Funny, but when I see big, heavy bottles it makes me think that the wines are probably the same way…big, heavy, overdone and more concerned with style versus substance.
But Marcus brings up a good point. Here we are all wine people that kind of know better, but out in retail or even DTC to some extent, appearances matter. It does impart a sense of quality with a heavy bottle. And for me personally, a very shallow punt or flat bottom, signals low end to me. And often the lighter bottles also have shallow punts, to save on weight.
I can fully sympathize with the winemakers here who may not want the heavy bottles but are subject to market forces. It is very easy to take a principled stand all of the way to your bankruptcy hearing.
This issue certainly isn’t going to be fixed by small winemakers. If there was a way for the industry to frame it as an environmental issue, heavy bottles add nothing to the wine within and yet require more fuel to transport. How about a ‘green bottle’ certificate for bottles below a weight threshold or made with recycled glass.
Maybe the bottle issue should be added to Adam’s below quote from another thread:
It just so happens that Goodfellow is the largest holding in my cellar. They all sit horizontally in cardboard boxes because they don’t fit in wine racks. That obviously has not stopped me from buying Goodfellow wines. But it would be nice to be able to rack them on display. I have to label the box content with a sharpie. So my cellar isn’t that cool looking, but the contents are kick ass.
Goodfellow is quickly rising in terms of % holdings in my cellar, I’m relatively new to their wines, but have quickly become a huge fan and started hoarding plenty of their wines to drink and age.
I removed one rack in my wine fridge, and I use that to stack mags, champagne and other chubbier bottles. Does the trick given the circumstances, but it also limits the number of chubbier bottles I can store at any one time. As you aptly put it, the contents are indeed kick ass
That by no means means I plan on slowing down on my Goodfellow purchases. I lament my storage limit of those larger bottles, but as I said before upthread, that doesn’t stop me from purchasing and supporting the producers whose wines I enjoy. Most of my stuff goes directly to offsite, so I let them worry about that until they come home. Then it becomes a giant game of shuffling things around to maximise the bottles stored. Slightly inconvenient, but by no means the end of the world.
I’m on the camp of people that’d prefer bottles be a more standardised shape for simplicity’s sake, but I understand and accept that market pressures drive some of those decisions for producers.
