Green green glass (red red wine)

Wine bottles are supplied on shrink-wrapped pallets that are guaranteed for hygiene by the glassworks. Each pallet contains between 2000 and 2700 bottles and can only be purchased whole. As a result it is always impossible to buy the exact number of bottles that are required per bottling.For a big winery continually bottling large numbers of different wines this is probably a minor irritation. For us, a small estate, bottling tiny quantities on three different days spaced throughout the calendar year, it is always problematic. In 2011 we bottled a total of around 16.400 bottles of Brunello 2007, Brunello 2006 Riserva, Rosso del Palazzone 01/11 which meant three separate bottle deliveries. More detail on these bottlings here. Our feeling is that there is no way to be entirely sure that an opened pallet, however carefully one reseals it, is truly impermeable to spiders and dust so the excess bottles are usually recycled. For those not intimately involved in the wine business, an empty wine bottle can cost between 0,20 and 0,35 Eurocents depending on the weight of the glass. But as of yesterday, our extra bottles have a new destination…. water tumblers!