Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Wine on Tap, Part 2

In follow-up to my recent post about a Michigan winery serving wine on tap from the tasting bar, the New York Times has an article asking if this is becoming a trend or is just a phase.

Let's hope so. As someone who is aggressively trying to reduce my environmental impact, I am getting increasingly discouraged by seeing the quantity of bottles wineries go through just in the tasting room. I can't imagine the waste makes them happy either.

A question I have been meaning to ask, and hopefully one of the winemakers who reads this can answer-are the bottles consumed at the tasting bar recycled by the winery?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Typically, wine bottles cost from $6-$12 a case wholesale, depending on style/type.

Used wine bottles would have to have all labels removed and be properly sterilized. Plus, most wineries use different style bottles for different wines and you generally have to run one style at a time on the bottling line. So now we're warehousing them until we have enough to run.

So, re-using wine bottles at the winery level is probably not cost effective, but good glass recycling is always a good idea.

rick