Oh clients love single-serve cans for beer, cider and increasingly so for wine. The problem is formation of H2S (rotten egg aromas/flavor)— so you need to really dial down the SO2 at canning (possible premox, so limit production for quick consumption), but even then you also need to use the appropriate liner in the can. And even then some H2S is formed and thresholds are do low, it doesn’t take much for it to be objectionable.
Here’s a [research paper on the topic.]. It’s a real issue. I looked into all this for my cider and decided against it.
The brewery had two issues. First, the aluminum bottles were ugly and top heavy in your refrigerator. The second was that the bottles didn’t hold up well under bottling. They ended up damaging too many of the bottles in that process.
Rick, for beer and cider, producers would be pasteurizing instead of using SO2 correct? Also, the pH is much higher than wine and I should have mentioned this an one of the factors leading to H2S in canned wine.
I love the idea, but I think it will be tough to implement broadly.
When I lived in Germany, beer and pop bottles were re-usable. The system was pretty wide spread and accepted, but even so, it meant an extra trip / step for the consumer. I am sure their were additional hurdles for the breweries as well. Deposit was something like 25 cents per bottle and a couple of euros for the case - over 15 years ago!
The US is much more spread out than Germany, which makes the logistics of reclaiming the re-usable bottles much more difficult. On top of that, I think that on-average we Americans are much less likely to re-use / recycle than the Germans.
As owners of a very small winery in OR, when this article came out, the wife and I discussed how implementation might look for us. From our perspective, their needs to be a lot more detail laid out about the mechanics of the system and who is responsible (pays for) what.
Good points. For wineries in Oregon (WV— not sure about other AVAs) Revino will pick up ALL your glass recycling and refillables. If you have a tasting room, the idea is that this provides one additional incentive for your club members and other clients to return on a regular basis.
I don’t know any craft brewers that are pasteurizing. We filter some of our beers, others we don’t. That’s actually more of visual thing. I would rather leave some yeast in the beer as protection against oxidation. Additionally, we are using a specific yeast strain in a way that drives out any potential competitors. Also, keep in mind that our level of sanitation is significantly better than any winery I’ve visited.
It doesn’t take a year for wines to go south in can. There’s no such thing as a wine that is stable in an aluminium can with any of the major liners on the market. This isn’t an intractable problem but it is a mostly unsolved problem. Once you’ve tasted wines from a can side by side with a bottled example you see the difference and you see how bad the wine in a can is. I have almost never had a wine from a can that tasted correct.
I’ve seen wines go south in can in less than two weeks. Some cans are better than others but after 4-6 months almost all of them show problems.
If anyone is interested in learning more about the origin, development, and future plans of Revino reusable wine bottles, The Oregon Wine History Archive Podcast just posted two episodes featuring interviews with the founders of Revino, Keenan O’Hern and Adam Rack. I thought they were pretty interesting. I was especially interested to learn that they want to grow beyond the Pacific Northwest and take Revino national.
Thanks-- looking forward to checking these out. I did decide to go with the Revino bottles! I like everything about this new approach; not least of which will be that all my local clients will be saving their bottles. We will offer to pick them up for reuse and this creates a great incentive for a reorder ; )
I know you put a winking smiley in your comment, but I’m glad that you see a financial incentive in adopting this. Saving the Earth is great, but winemakers still need to put food on the table. A financial incentive—whether opportunities for re-orders, or customer demand—is a necessary ingredient to seeing reusable bottles adopted.
@David_Patte Related, what time of year do winemakers place their bottle orders? In the Fall? It might be worth registering some “customer demand” with some of the wineries I (we?) frequent.
Wouldn’t in any given vintage and bottling you only recoup a small fraction of the bottles? Some people won’t have consumed them, some are out of state or not local, some will simply recycle them, etc, etc. Even with a dedicated push to collect bottles from a previous vintage and an active and unusually responsive customer base that will save these in a way that’s different from all their recycling what’s the best possible return rate? 15%? Even that seems crazy high. It seems that mostly this will be a regular glass company with some small fraction of re-used bottles in the stream. Am I missing something about either recycling or human nature?
Yes, I am definitely thinking about this as a win-win for wineries. For the folks with tasting rooms it’s also an encouragement for clients to return with their empties (from any of the participating wineries) and seems like this is one more way to encourage them to be regular customers. (Not just the occasional purchase for “special occasions” — I feel like we are always pushing folks to enjoy life to the fullest and consume only the wines (and food) that you enjoy— don’t settle for lower quality on a weekday night; make every meal exceptional. Life is short!
(Revino has a map of the participating wineries where clients can drop off.)
In terms of timing, there is certainly a big push right now to bottle before harvest if that’s the style a winery is looking for, and also for winery space implications. Then over vintaged reds and whites, and quick-to- market whites and rosé will have a peak bottling season of Feb to Spring.
That might be true overall Jim. But I can tell you that my regular local clients —the folks I really care about— order every 2 to 6 months and they are super excited. So these folks will be100% return/re-use…. a few are cellaring but most are not.
For all the out of state folks, I still feel great about a bottle that is 100% from recycled glass, produced locally in Kalama WA, using the region’s electricity which is about as clean as possible (hydroelectric/wind). No more China glass, shipping across the Pacific, and that also is likely to have been made at a facility using coal-based electricity. I won’t even bring up possible labor abuse issues. (Not saying that Revino has the corner on local glass options, but it’s there.)
That’s great. A 100% return rate seems improbable, however. I think the recycled part is great. I worked for OSPIRG, Greenpeace and was the CFO for a small recycling company before I got into wine. I do think that the re-used part of all of it will have a hard time breaking double digits at any point in the near future.