Lighter bottles: Nuova tendenza?

Nuova tendenza means "new trend."

I'd like to think I've done my small part to convince wine producers to put their juice in lighter, cheaper, more eco-gentle bottles.  Just yesterday I received emails from two producers in the Veneto who took my complaints about heavy, showy, ego-gratifying bottles to heart.  (Here's the link to the post:  Click.)  

Lucia Raimondi, whose Villa Monteleone ripasso San Vito will soon be available in the New York area, wrote:

Your recommendation to Italian producers (to use lighter weight bottles)  got me thinking.    I just want you guys to know that as of the next bottling I will be using the same bottles for the San Vito and the Santa Lena.  Shipping weight of San Vito will be about about 40% less.  The cartons will also be the same which will facilitate shipping, the shape of the San Vito cartons was kind of odd and made stacking in the pallet difficult. 

I wrote back marveling at how influential I was.  Lucia's reply:

Reasonable people are always influential.  I read mondosapore all the time and you got me thinking.  The weight matter made absolute sense and I do not think people are going to think the wine is less good because it is on a lighter bottle, and it would cost you and me less.  I just wish our Consorzio would let us bottle the Santa Lena with screw caps.
  

I added the underscoring to underscore Lucia's justified wish.  

This is an excellent example of an Italian producer's getting over the local notion -- a ludicrous one -- that an outsized, heavy bottle signifies "importance" and "quality."  It signifies many things, as I suggested in my April post, but not that.  And I will restate my position on screwcaps:  they are good and entirely appropriate for wines that are meant to be drunk young and fresh, and a Valpolicella Classico like Lucia's Santa Lena is a perfect candidate for such a closure.  (Santa Lena will be available here from Labor Day.)

Thanks to Angelo Peretti's picking up my April post and running with it in an Italian-language redaction and commentary -- here's the link to his article -- another producer from that area, Carlo Nerozzi, sent me an email last night.  He's thinking about lighter bottles too, especially as he's keen to export to the States. He understands that imposing bottles don't impress people here, and that we don't have a strong prejudice against screw caps, not since highly popular New Zealand and Australian wines in particular have got us used to them.

An attractive, eye-catching label that gives you some sense of the stuff inside the bottle -- labels are the important sales and marketing factor here, not the heft of the container.  

As to practicality, I imagine that a light bottle is a blessing to warehousemen, sommeliers, waiters, busboys and trash collectors the world over.  A 40% weight reduction is a boon to all.