June 6, 2025 — The Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR) is happy to announce the forthcoming creation of a brand new accord protecting glowing wine bottles. Following the very optimistic uptake globally for its nonetheless wine Bottle Weight Accord, launched in November 2023, the SWR recognised the chance to deal with extra bottle weights in glowing wines and Champagnes.
SWR’s Analysis and Requirements Director, Dr Peter Stanbury says:
“We now have greater than 20 member signatories to our Bottle Weight Accord, who between them account for over 2 billion bottles of nonetheless wine produced and offered globally. The glowing wine class is a extra complicated one, as glass security is a key consideration the place liquids are underneath strain. Nonetheless, we’re assured we will suggest targets throughout totally different glowing wine kinds which might profit producers, merchants, retailers and others, not simply in decreasing their carbon emissions, but in addition of their backside line. Heavier glass prices extra to provide, extra to ship, and with taxes such because the UK authorities’s EPR (Prolonged Producer Accountability), extra to deliver to market. The place producers are utilizing bottles heavier than our ‘secure’ suggestions, pointless EPR charges are doubtlessly being incurred. By the use of comparability, in its first yr of operation, the nonetheless wine BWA eliminated almost 120,000 tonnes of glass from the wine provide chain. Had that every one been charged on the UK EPR charge of £240/tonne for glass, that might equate to over £28m in EPR charges.”
Engaged on a relative ‘clean canvas’, as there’s a lot much less analysis into the subject of glowing wine bottle weights in comparison with these of nonetheless wines, the SWR has recognized 4 key segments of the glowing market: evenly glowing wines, tank fermented and carbonated wines, Champagnes, and different glowing wines the place the secondary fermentation takes place within the bottle.
Consideration within the latter classes is required due the extra complexity of how maturing bottles are turned (riddling) and saved, typically over a few years, on their sides, which locations further stress on the pressurised bottles.
Timeline for the brand new accord
SWR plans to share the analysis and the varied goal weights which it has recognized on the finish of July 2025 and can then invite glowing wine producers, importers and retailers to join these. As Peter Stanbury says, “as soon as we establish examples of the place lighter-weight bottles are, and have been safely used, by glowing wine producers at scale and over a time period, we will confidently set these weights as a practical goal.”
Extra element and member suggestions will probably be featured in a forthcoming webinar on 12 June at 4pm BST.
About SWR
The Sustainable Wine Roundtable (SWR), an unbiased world platform devoted to advancing sustainability within the wine business. We’re a membership organisation with greater than 130 members reflecting the entire wine provide, and working globally. Its function is to catalyse change in sustainability within the wine sector. This consists of the Bottle Weight Accord talked about right here, however the SWR additionally give attention to sustainable viticulture, labour requirements and are at the moment creating a device to permit comparability of the sustainability traits of various packaging codecs.
Concerning the Bottle Weight Accord
A key motion space for the SWR is its Bottle Weight Accord (BWA), launched in November 2023 by which companion firms decide to decreasing the typical bottle weight of nonetheless wines to 420g / 75cl. This accord now covers round 2 billion bottles throughout all kinds of world companies.
Members embrace: Alko, Catena Institute of Wine, Endeavour Wines, Lidl GB, Bare Wines, Systembolaget, Terra Vitis, Tesco, Vina Concha y Toro, Entire Meals Market, The Wine Society.
Included with this launch: A brief report on the Glowing Bottle Weight Accord. events ought to register for the forthcoming webinar: From Nonetheless to Glowing: What’s subsequent for the Bottle Weight Accord on June 12
