New bottle design promotes sustainability in Oregon's wine industry

JACKSON COUNTY, Ore. – Oregon company Revino is hoping to bring sustainability into the wine making business with the help of a new bottle design.

Winery Quady North says it’s been dedicated to making sustainable wines in the Applegate Valley ever since it first started in 2005.

“We are always looking, continually looking for new ways to reduce our carbon footprint.”

Now, it’s looking at changing the game with the help of a new bottle design.

Revino has recently created a new wine bottle prototype in hopes of making recycling easier than ever for wine makers.

“You could reuse standard bottles but part of the problem is the standardization itself,” said Revino co-founder Adam Rack.

Rack says the process would start when the company picks up the used bottles from the wineries. The bottles would then be processed and cleaned at the company’s Portland location before being sent back out to the wineries to be filled again.

“What we did was make sure these bottles are engineered to a standard where they can get reused,” Rack explained.

Right now, reusing wine bottles means having to hand fill every recycled bottle. The new design would allow wineries to refill the bottles with machines, saving time and money.

Rack says the journey to the final design was filled with discussions from around 70 wineries across the state.

“They told us what they didn’t want throughout the whole process,” Rack said. “Which I think is why people are willing to adopt these.”

Darius Price is the production manager for Quady North and its sister company Barrel 42.

He says they hope to adopt this design not just for their wines, but also the ones they produce for other clients.

“As soon as we have the molds that fit all our different brands, we will probably implement these through all of our wines if we can.”

Price says in a normal wine bottling year, Quady North can go through as many as 8 thousand cases of glass bottles.

While there are only two shapes available right now, Revino says it is working on creating designs for every bottle shape.