While we are still debating about the pros and cons of using screw caps on the glass bottles, there is news that many wineries in California are already selling lower end wines in plastic bottles, an innovation where India seems to have already taken  a lead with Vino label from Indage already being bottled in plastic containers, writes Subhash Arora

‘How about a bottle of the '02 Chateau Plastique? ‘ opens an article in LA Times. An inauspicious beginning of the article, since the 2002 vintage in a plastic bottle would have been already in the grave, correctly assuming that the wine would have been a cheap, young drinking ordinary wine.

The regular 750 mL glass wine bottle has started getting competition from the plastic upstart, both on retail shelves and at a few restaurants, according to the report.  The bottles carry a "use by" date. The plastic doesn't provide good seal as glass and are not likely to find their way into the palates and cellars of serious wine lovers.

For those who are on a budget, the wine is likely to cost less. And oenophiles say that for wine that hasn't ‘expired’, the flavour will not change much.

At AKA, a Bistro in St. Helena, in Napa Valley, owner Robert Simon will begin pouring a Cabernet Sauvignon out of plastic bottles this month for wine-by-the-glass customers. Reason is simple; the Peralta Winery sells a 1-liter plastic bottle for the same price as a 750-milliliter glass bottle. He figures that besides the saving in cost, he won’t have to worry about breakages in bottles.

EnVino, a plastic wine bottle venture in California says that the containers weigh about one-eighth of a typical glass wine bottle and take up 20% less space. That enables winemakers to save fuel by shipping 30% more wine per truck. New Leaf Wine Co. in Napa is testing sales of wine packaged in the plastic EnVino bottles. A small test in Northern California's Nugget supermarket chain last year claimed to be successful.

Change in bottles will initially have problems of changing the bottling line. Fred Franzia, owner of Bronco Wine Co., says he needs high-speed bottling for his $1.99 Charles Shaw wine, the Two Buck Chuck. "Plastic would just blow off the line. But it will come. They will figure it out," Franzia said.

Restaurants are the main targets for the likes of Peralta Winery. They don’t think consumers are ready to buy wine in plastic bottles at stores. At a restaurant, however, most people ordering a wine-by-he-glass may not even be aware that the glass of wine they ordered came from a plastic container.

The bottles have a special layer designed to keep oxygen from permeating the container and destroying the wine. But it's not the iron-tight seal that glass provides, so bottles will come with "use by" dates.

In India, where the consumers are still in the cork-mindset, any miniscule chance a plastic bottle would have had, has been nipped in the bud with the cheap Vino that was introduced a couple of years ago by Indage Vintners.  However, the cost factors in favour of the plastic bottles, may eventually change the mind set of the producers and the new breed of budget conscious wine drinkers- for wines costing under Rs.200. These wines will have a shelf life of a few months.

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