‘Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle!’ is an old sales adage that has logged a lot of miles over the years and helped push a lot of products. Now it would seem that a growing number of wineries are using their own form of sizzle to sell their steak by packaging their top-end wines in ultra heavy glass bottles that are not only more expensive to make but are environmentally unfriendly.
Recruits to the “Heavy Bottle Brigade” are showing up holding 
both white wines — mainly California Chardonnay — and red wines. Meaningless deeply punted bottles, that when filled with wine weigh up to a jaw-dropping 68.8 ounces (That’s more than four pounds!) appear to be reserved for a winery’s top-end Cabernet Sauvignon or red Meritage, but a recently sampled, full 750ml bottle of Sonoma County Chardonnay weighed in at a hefty 58.3 ounces. By comparison, a standard 750ml bottle filled with wine weighs between 48 and 50 ounces.
Here are but a few recently sampled wines nominated as members of the Heavy Bottle Brigade: Dry Creek Vineyard, Russian River Valley DCV10 Chardonnay 2006; Dry Creek Vineyard, Dry Creek Valley The Mariner Meritage 2005; Dry Creek Vineyard, Endeavour Cabernet Sauvignon 2004; Barnett Vineyards, Spring Mountain District Rattlesnake Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2006; Galante Vineyards, Monterey County Red Rose Hill Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, and the soon-to-be released Parallel Estate Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. And these are just the ones that I’ve come across recently, so there’s little doubt that there are many more of these unnecessarily extra-heavy glass wine bottles prepared to strain the supports of your wine rack.
Why all this fuss — you might ask — when surely there is a more 
important nit to pick, such as the obscene levels of alcohol in far too many of today’s finished wines? Because the heavier glass bottles have everything to do with marketing and nothing to do with wine quality. In these times of increasing concern about the environment, using non-standard heavy glass bottles is irresponsible to the environment, not to mention to the wine consumer who will ultimately pay the increased cost for this expression of ego.
The increased impact on the environment through the use of heavier glass wine bottles includes, but certainly is not limited to, these concerns: More glass requiring more raw materials and production; more weight requiring stronger cartons meaning more paper-based materials; more shipping weight requiring more fuel to move the trucks that carry the empty bottles from the glass plant to the winery. These are real concerns that should be the responsibility of every winery owner and winemaker with a positive eye to a better future and not just the present-day bottom line.
Responsibility also falls to the wine consumer and wine trades person. If, as a wine buyer, you believe that the quality of a California Cabernet Sauvignon is somehow better if it arrives on your table in a heavy-weight glass bottle with a deep punt, then you need to reassess your thinking about wine quality. Just as price is not important to wine quality, neither is packaging and wine marketing; they are both a means to sell a product, that’s all.
6