• Reusing wine bottles: A company called Wine Bottle Renew wants to change the Americans recycle wine bottles. Its plan, based on European practice, is to sanitize old bottles for re-use. That could save wineries 10 to 40 percent in the cost of bottles, uses 25 percent less water, and reduce the bottle's carbon footprint by as much as 95 percent, say company officials. Its goal is to clean 1.5 million to 2 million cases each year. This idea, which has failed in the U.S. before, may have better luck this time. One of its backers is Jackson Family Wines, whose labels produce 5 million cases of wine a year. That's quite a financial incentive for the system to work.
• Are wine buyers trading down? Most studies of wine sales during the recession have reported that consumers have traded down; that is, bought $10 wine instead of $15 wine and $20 wine instead of $30 wine. Not so, says a new study by The Nielsen Co., which reports that more than three-quarters of consumers surveyed said they did not change their alcohol purchases because of price. Of that group, one-quarter said they were buying less and about one in eight said they buy the same products, but wait until they go on sale. I'm not sure how to interpret this, given that it contradicts so many other reports, including figures from Nielsen. At some point, do we have so much data that we can interpret it any way we want?
• Europe says no to organic wine: The European Union has rejected a proposal to create an organic wine category, reports Decanter. Currently, European wines can be labeled "made with organic grapes." The proposal would have limited sulfites and additives, and banned winemaking techniques such as the spinning cone, which removes alcohol from wine.
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