Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

packaging of wine most often involves bottling, but alternative packages are proliferating. bottles are still by far the most popular form of wine packaging, not least because glass is inert and tasteless so, unlike other packaging materials, has no effect on the wine even over decades. It does have the disadvantages of being very fragile, relatively heavy, and uses up considerable natural resources during manufacture and transport. See boxes, cans, cartons, kegs, plastic bottles, and pouches, all of which are made from other materials.