Two bottles of wine from Spain. Both enjoyable to drink without setting the world alight. So what makes them worth a blog post?
The answer lies in the empty bottles. The Albet i Noya was a typical bottle, nothing unusual. Until I opened the other, a wine recommended from Lidl’s Easter range. The bottle was so heavy, so unusually heavy, that I decided to weigh it. 747g was the result, compared to 427g for the other bottle which is about average for others I weighed. (This involved huge sacrifice in drinking wines, I do hope you appreciate that. As well as slightly obsessive behaviour!).
In other words, 2 bottles of the Albarino weigh roughly the same as 3 more regular bottles. In terms of shipping and the environment that must come at a cost. The more serious point I am making is that whilst we campaign for environmental awareness in terms of vineyard practice we should also be aware of the environmental cost of the finished product. In this case there was no good reason for a heavy bottle, it was not sparkling wine under pressure which would require thicker glass. No doubt thousands of these bottles were transported around, using up extra fuel and creating more emissions.
I liked the wine but I would not buy another bottle because I think I am paying for unnecessary packaging. Unnecessary damage too for my pocket and the earth. There is simply too much cost involved, time to take a stand.
amarchinthevines 
April 15, 2017 at 3:24 pm
I’m in agreement. Sometimes you do find worryingly thin bottles, from as diverse sources as Switzerland and Russia. But I’ve had enough of heavy bottles, making their producers the macho men of the wine world. Incapable of thinking.
As we are on the subject of bottles, I’m with Tom Stevenson – no clear bottles for sparkling wine please. They can be light struck so easily.
Oh, and can University Challenge Teams be restricted to undergrads and all contain at least one woman…!
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April 15, 2017 at 4:35 pm
My sister & brother in law bought us a rhododendron for our silver wedding the other day, said it was a variety that reminded them of me – named Grumpy! I am sure that’s slanderous. However, maybe we both qualify 🙂
I think it’s an Aldi thing perhaps as when I read a review on HRH’s site of these Aldi wines there was a comment about another of the bottles being very heavy. It just seems so wasteful.
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