Consumption, most analysts agree, has not been affected by the recession. If anything, Americans are drinking more wine than ever. But they are drinking cheaper wine and spending less money on it.

Another thing we might notice is fewer of those enormously heavy bottles so often used to convey that you have picked up (or tried to pick up) a wine of great status. Aside from the environmental cost of producing, shipping and disposing of these sorts of bottles, they are also more expensive. Will we see in the next few years a return to more sensible and less expensive bottles? We can only hope that the recession will add such benefits to the too-obvious consequences.

Apart from lighter bottles some producers are moving towards more eco-friendly packaging. Arniston Bay was the pioneers in creating the pouch.

This wine pouch weighs about 20 times less than glass bottles. And since the wine is made and packaged in South Africa and then shipped around the globe, the weight of the package makes a big difference to the eco-impact.

These pouches have an 80% lower carbon footprint and 90% less landfill waste compared with glass.

It seems that consumers are really taken by this value and eco-friendly wines. According to a recent Nielson Report,  Arniston Bay is the 5^th fastest growing wine brand in the UK.

Sources:

thepour.blogs.nytimes.com
And
jlduran.blogspot.com