How plastic can be fantastic for a bottle of wine

he ‘Galoupet Nomade’ bottle has just been released with a price tag of €25 and is already making a name for itself with its plastic packaging. This seems particularly iconoclastic for a premium wine with an environmental agenda...

Jessica Julmy: First, let’s take a step backwards. When I joined the project, we were starting with a blank canvas. The vineyards had to be replanted, the winery had to be refurbished, etc. At Moët Hennessy, our rationale regarding group responsibility is to take the time to invest and go out on a limb by viewing things differently. We commissioned research to measure our carbon footprint and this showed that 40% of the carbon footprint of a still wine estate comes from the packaging. We can farm the vines organically, roll out agroforestry projects and reduce water and energy consumption in the winery, but if we don't deal with the problem of packaging, our right hand is undoing what our left hand has done.

We carried out a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of the different types of packaging to produce actual figures about which materials are the ugly ducklings and which ones are not so bad. For the Cru Classé, which is an age-worthy wine, we chose glass, but reduced its carbon footprint with a lighter bottle (under 500 grams) and green glass; transparent glass is new, whereas green glass can be 70% recycled. For the second wine, which is designed for early-drinking, we explored the range of possibilities and had a choice between PET and boxes.

PET is already a shock to the system, boxes would have been even more so...

I can’t tell you the reactions I got! Boxes are great, but the problem is that you have to separate the cardboard, the plastic bag and the tap. You can never be sure that consumers will go to the trouble of doing that. So, we preferred the simplicity of 100% recycled and 100% recyclable PET. There are several types of plastic, and we opted for the PET solution from the Prevented Ocean Plastic (POP) association, which collects plastic gathered along the coast. I dream that there will be no more plastic waste at the seaside, and that we will have to look for another source of plastic, but I fear that this won’t happen overnight...

The solution we chose is developed in England by Packamama, which manufactures it in England using plastic that has no impact on the quality of the wine (nor migration). The LCA allows us to compare materials at the production stage (consumption of water, electricity, etc.). This is still very complex and relies on assumptions, such as recycling by consumers. There is no perfect solution for bottles. I am all ears if someone has a better option. Sometimes we look for the perfect solution and come up against a wall because there isn’t one at the moment. We need to evolve, test and unblock our chakras – this bottle gets the conversation going.