Glass

Abstract

Abstract A decade ago, screw caps and other alternative closures were being developed, and argued over, as maybe improvements over cork for keeping wine in the bottle. Now, the bottle itself is in question. The wine industry has yet to get over the embarrassing and unsustainable idea that the weight of the bottle is proportional to the quality of what’s inside. However, alternatives to glass are becoming increasingly viable precisely because heavy packaging is expensive: for producers, for consumers, and for the planet. This chapter reprises “the great closure wars” and the relative merits of corks, screw caps, and technical closures, and argues that bags-in-boxes and cans present wineries with similar choices about how best to preserve wine. Glass bottles may remain the gold standard for protecting wine quality over time, but when most wines are drunk young, how much does that matter?