A lesson from the past to move forward
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While cleaning out my mother's house, I came across a delightful bottle of wine that had never been opened. This bottle represented an important moment in the history of wine. It is a 500ml bottle, a size not typically seen today. If you were shopping for wine before 1975, you would find bottles ranging in a wide variety of sizes. For example, Mateus, once one of the most popular wines sold in the United States, was often available in 12 or 9 oz bottles. Similarly, Thunderbird and MD 20/20 commonly came in pint bottles.
Before industrialization, glass bottles were exclusively hand-blown, with the average bottle holding 600-800ml, roughly the size that could be produced with one breath. By the late 1960s, Europe had recovered from the devastation of WWII, and global trade was expanding. By the mid-70s, governments needed a more efficient way to collect taxes. With wine bottles varying widely in their sizes, standardizing bottle sizes became crucial for efficient tariff collection. In the late 70s, the US began transitioning to the metric system to align with Europe.
By 1979, the US government decided to standardize the wine bottle size to 750ml, a change that European countries soon followed, given the influence of the US market. The exact reason for choosing 750ml as the standard size remains unclear. However, an unintended consequence was that it made it easier for US consumers to shop for wine. Within a decade of standardization, wine sales exploded. While the "60 Minutes" feature on the red wine paradox certainly boosted interest, the standardization of bottle sizes also played a crucial role by allowing consumers to compare prices and understand how many servings they could get from a bottle.
The wine industry is now at another crossroads regarding packaging wine for consumers. Newer consumers seek alternative packages, including a push for single-serve and premium quality options. The wine industry initially made an error when producing canned wines and Tetra Paks in their introduction to the consumer, as they came in various sizes, from 200ml to 500ml, with no standardization. Later, large wine companies, like Gallo and Constellation, tried to standardize canned wine around 375ml cans, slightly more than a 12oz beer can. However, this attempt fell flat because they often used inferior products in the cans, which didn't hold up well outside of traditional glass bottles. Consumers were turned off, especially since 375ml is equivalent to about two and a half glasses of wine, half a standard bottle.
The typical 375ml glass format never really caught on with the typical wine drinker, in part it wasn't single-serve and not enough to share with a partner. It's right in the middle and awkwardly doesn't seem to fit in today's trend of lower consumption.
Once again, it is time for the industry to follow the current standard format that was developed many years ago for alternative packaging. Cans, Tetra Paks, and plastic should follow the current formats, emphasizing single-serve in premium multi-packs. Cans and tetra should be 187ml and packaged similarly to the 4-packs that have been around for decades. Wineries must adapt by placing their finest products in these formats, rather than reserving them exclusively for value consumers at the bottom of the price scale.
We should learn from our past to move forward.
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