The 2023 Complete Cluster Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley Vineyards has notes of candied cherries, cinnamon, and candy tobacco. However its defining characteristic could also be its container: a glass bottle designed particularly for reuse. Made by 3-year-old Oregon startup Revino—the primary firm to launch a reusable glass wine bottle within the U.S.—the Pinot Noir’s inexperienced Burgundy-style bottle is sturdy sufficient that it may be used, sanitized, and refilled as much as 50 occasions.
Willamette Valley Vineyards, which operates 13 vineyards throughout Oregon, started promoting 1,452 circumstances (or 17,424 bottles) of its 2023 Complete Cluster Pinot Noir in Revino’s containers final yr. The vineyard plans to place one other 1,452 circumstances—of its 2024 Complete Cluster Pinot—in Revino bottles once more this yr. Seven of its 9 tasting rooms now double as assortment factors for Revino bottles.
“We are going to take any Revino bottle again,” says Jim Bernau, Willamette Valley Vineyards’ founder and CEO. Meaning clients can drop off bottles from Willamette’s vintages in addition to another greater than 70 Oregon wineries that Revino works with, together with Bethel Heights, Cameron, Et Fille, and Remy Wines. Greater than 40 of those wineries have already got wine in Revino’s signature bottles. (The remaining wineries are nonetheless ageing their wine and can bottle in Revino containers within the coming years.)
In relation to drinks, glass is commonly regarded as the “greenest” packaging kind. Not solely is it infinitely recyclable, however not like bauxite (used for tin cans), it doesn’t require cutting down large swaths of rainforest to mine it. However as a round materials, glass is just nearly as good because the recycling efforts that encompass it. And within the U.S., these are few and much between.
Revino founders, Keenan O’Hern and Adam Rack have been critics of single-use packaging after they met in early 2022 via an MBA scholar who was doing a mission on refillable beer bottles.
On journeys to the Netherlands, O’Hern, whose mother is Dutch, had noticed residents habitually returning their beer bottles to outlets. “It’s only a lifestyle over there,” he says. “You come a beer bottle, carry it again to the store, and so they wash it and reuse it,” he says.
Rack, who labored at Portland’s Coopers Hall vineyard for practically a decade, was an early adopter of refillable beer bottles, which Coopers Corridor started utilizing in 2018. (Rack’s e-mail signature is a quote from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax: “Until somebody such as you cares a complete terrible lot, nothing goes to get higher. It’s not.”)
Collectively, they noticed a chance to create an ecosystem for reusable wine bottles, beginning of their dwelling state of Oregon. Revino, which launched in 2023, makes cash promoting extra-durable U.S.-made bottles to wineries. Retrieving and washing the bottles is included in the price of the bottles—even when meaning Revino drivers need to drive 258 miles to Quady North in Southern Oregon’s Applegate Valley.
The corporate presents wineries a ten cent credit score on future glass purchases for every bottle returned, and an extra low cost to wineries that acquire and neatly stack them in a pallet. Clients, in the meantime, can return Revino bottles from one vineyard to bottles at any return site (not simply Willamette Valley Vineyards). In Portland, that features Vino wine store, Statera Cellars, John’s Market, and others.
Revino is on observe to promote practically half 1,000,000 bottles this yr, and goals to make $35,000 in month-to-month recurring income by early 2026. Along with Oregon wineries, Revino has onboarded a handful in Napa (Frog’s Leap, Silver Oak) and Washington state, as O’Hern and Rack work to increase their mannequin to different elements of the nation. So far, Revino has secured greater than $440,000 from traders, together with a prize from the Strategic Economic Development Corporation’s Pitch Willamette.
CRACKING THE GLASS RECYCLING PROBLEM
Solely 31.3% of glass is recycled within the U.S. in accordance with the EPA. Many states don’t have curbside decide up of glass; and solely 10 states have bottle payments, which require beverage makers or distributors so as to add a deposit on all glass bottles that customers can recoup in the event that they return the containers. States like Oregon and Maine which have bottle payments have pretty excessive recycling charges. However elsewhere within the nation, many individuals simply resort to throwing glass within the trash.
Although it’s extremely recyclable, glass is an energy-intensive materials. To recycle it, glass cullet (crushed glass that’s able to be remelted), limestone, sand, and soda ash are heated to between 2,600 levels Fahrenheit and a couple of,800 levels Fahrenheit, a process that can emit toxic air contaminants when air pollution controls aren’t correctly put in.
Glass can also be heavy, which suggests it’s each costly and carbon-intensive to move. A 2014 study commissioned by the Wine Institute in California discovered that the making and transporting of glass bottles account for 29% of wine’s carbon footprint.
Revino goals to resolve these points by making it straightforward for winemakers to reuse bottles. Earlier than launching, O’Hern and Rack held conferences with dozens of Oregon winemakers to collaboratively design the corporate’s first reusable wine bottle—the inexperienced Burgundy one. Made by glass producer O-I Glass in its Kalama, Washington, and Tracy, California crops, the bottles are produced with 50% to 70% recycled materials.
Though Revino’s bottles are sturdy sufficient to resist roughly 50 washings, they weigh simply 495 grams, which is lower than some vineyard’s common bottles. Winemakers involved about their carbon footprint respect this because the lighter the bottle, the much less gas is used to move bottles to membership members on the East Coast.
Revino’s first Flint bottle—clear glass, for rosé, pinot gris, and different whites—will likely be produced by the tip of this yr, and prepared for buy by January 1. As a result of the brand new bottles are all made within the U.S., there gained’t be any value fluctuations as a consequence of Trump’s tariffs.
O’Hern and Rack are closing on a wash facility within the Portland metro space and have bought a high-end German Seitz bottle washer. Till that facility comes on-line, wineries like Willamette Valley are storing the empty bottles, which is able to finally be cleaned by Revino, after which offered again to wineries at a reduced value.
Willamette Valley pays $12 a case of 12 bottles for its Revino bottles, which is greater than the $9.20 that Bernau says he pays for a case of bottles from Saxco bottles, made in Kalama, Washington. That stated, with the ten cent low cost that accomplice wineries obtain on future glass purchases for every bottle returned, Bernau will get a reduction of $1.20 per case on his subsequent buy of bottles.
A further two-cent credit score per bottle is added if the vineyard is prepared to gather and neatly stack a full pallet of returned bottles for Revino to select up. This brings the associated fee per case to $10.56—nonetheless $1.36 greater than the Saxco case. Bernau isn’t involved concerning the value distinction as a result of he is aware of he’s doing the fitting factor by maintaining glass out of landfills. “Ultimately, if Revino can persist with this, there will likely be price equivalency,” he says.
With glass bottle prices continuing to rise, Revino might pencil out sooner relatively than later. “If you consider it, the glass wine bottle has worth already,” Rack says. “Pint glasses at a restaurant or wine glasses are used lots of of occasions. These bottles don’t break whenever you throw them within the trash as a result of they’re so heavy and thick—however [people still] throw them away. They usually’re gone. There’s worth there!”
MORE WINE VARIETALS, MORE BOTTLE STYLES
There have been earlier makes an attempt to create a rewash system within the Willamette Valley, however the scale has at all times been too small and the duty of amassing bottles too daunting. Additionally, some winemakers have been reluctant to half with their varied bottle kinds, in accordance with Pat Dudley, a founding father of Bethel Heights vineyard. However Dudley says winemakers’ attitudes are beginning to shift as they see their clients demanding extra sustainable types of packaging.
“I believe there was sufficient push in that course that winemakers are beginning to really feel obliged to surrender that silliness concerning the bottle weight and the bottle form,” she says. “Let your label be your model!” Revino’s clear Burgundy-shaped bottle for rosé is on observe to debut later this yr and the corporate has plans for different kinds sooner or later.
Rack and O’Hern are energetic members of the PR3 alliance, which is creating the one international commonplace for reuse. Members embody environmental nonprofits just like the Clear Water Fund and Surfrider in addition to authorities entities like Seattle Public Utilities and the San Francisco Environment Department. (Corporations like Clorox and Goal are additionally members.) Rack is a part of the washing requirements work group.
Revino additionally has formidable enlargement plans, however Rack says they wish to develop their infrastructure on the West Coast earlier than increasing additional east. “Among the wineries in Napa have been taking a look at reuse for nearly a decade, desirous to determine it out however they didn’t know how you can do it on their very own,” Rack says.
Revino can also be launching some pilots with a number of Napa wineries to “back-wash” their present bottle line, which is able to each create one other revenue stream for the corporate and permit the wineries to see how excessive their return charges are.
“This will even assist us current ourselves to coverage specialists down there and traders,” O’Hern says. Ultimately they’d like to open a California wash facility to cater to that market. “That’s the entire purpose,” he says. “We don’t wish to have this hub and spoke facility. We wish these to be localized to the areas that we’re amassing and washing in.”
MARKETING THE REUSABLE BOTTLE
Willamette Valley’s Bernau says the choice to work with Revino was a no brainer. “From the start, we’ve been targeted on environmental stewardship,” he says. Based in 1983, Willamette Valley Vineyards is licensed via the Low Input Viticulture and Enology (LIVE) program and its Bernau Property Winery is licensed biodynamic.
In 1990, Bernau turned the primary Oregon winemaker so as to add a 10-cent bottle credit score to all his labels. The vineyard’s property tasting room within the Salem Hills has been a group level for wine bottle returns ever since. “For the reason that 1989 classic, our first classic, we’ve been educating our clients to carry the bottles again,” Bernau says.
Revino makes use of design to assist this effort. The primary iteration of its bottles had the phrase “Refillable” embossed alongside the heel and an embossed impression of the state of Oregon on the punt (the dimple on the backside of a bottle). The second model says “Reusable.” And since Revino is already increasing into neighboring states, the Oregon form will likely be changed with a tracing circle, a logo for reuse.
Revino can also be getting taking part wineries to alter their labels to incorporate language that claims “Reusable Bottle” with a QR code that leads shoppers to Revino’s returns web page.
Bernau says that clients have been enthusiastic concerning the vineyard’s refillable bottles. The Revino marketing supplies, that are on all Willamette Valley’s tasting room bars, have turn out to be a speaking level and even sway some clients to order the Complete Cluster Pinot Noir, in accordance with the vineyard’s property basic supervisor Spence Fogarty.
“They really feel they’re a aware shopper,” he says. “After which they’re proven the bottle—which has a singular form and the [imprint of the] state of Oregon on the underside. They really feel that they’re doing their half.” The tasting rooms provide another incentive: For those who carry six empty Revino bottles in, you get a free flight.
Bernau says because the complete cluster was launched in August, he’s already acquired 12% of the bottles again. That’s practically double what O’Hern and Rack had forecasted for the primary yr. “ these early indicators, it’s actually fairly thrilling seeing the quantity of participation,” Rack says.
