Cotswold Hills is the first English wine to be sold in sustainable flat wine bottles, with the vineyard at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, where it's produced, being the first in the UK to trial the product.
Students at the university led the project, which has made a small run of Cotswold Hills 2021 English white wine available in the new eco-friendly bottles, celebrating how the English wine industry can help to create a more sustainable future.
Aiming to give RAU students a chance to gain enterprise and employability skills, including learning about vineyard management, grape varieties, wine production, marketing and finances, the 100 per cent recycled PET bottles were supplied by the award-winning Suffolk-based Packamama, which is keen to support the UK wine industry.
Its innovative flat bottles are responsible for around 50 per cent less emissions than the typical round glass wine bottles.
RAU's student lead for the project, Hugo Sain-Ley-Berry-Gray, said: 'As students of food and agriculture, we are conscious of the carbon footprint associated with the industry. For the wine sector, glass bottles account for a high percentage of these emissions.
'Eco-flat wine bottles offer Cotswold Hills a product that aligns with our sustainability objectives. Reducing the weight and changing the material of our bottles is a step in the right direction to solve an existing problem. As new entrants into the industry, this was an opportunity we were keen to explore.
'Packamama's eco-flat wine bottles provide an exciting opportunity to innovate and reduce the emissions of our product. Being the UK's first vineyard to trial this format is exciting and we hope to inspire others to explore this option.'
Business Development Manager at Packamama, Judith Candy, said: 'The students involved in this project at the RAU represent a generation of eco-conscious young people who will not accept high carbon footprint products given the climate crisis.
'As such, it has been a pleasure to support their endeavours in creating a local and sustainable product through supplying our lower carbon footprint bottles. As a British start-up, it is also very motivating to see our Packamama format used for an English wine for the first time and we hope it is the start of a long-lasting collaboration.'
Head of enterprise and employability at the RAU, Katherine Duke, added: 'This is an incredible project and we at the RAU are really excited to be the first English wine producer to use these new eco-flat bottles.
'We are thrilled to be launching these in the run up to Christmas, as not only are these bottles better for the environment, their innovative flat design is ideal for online gift purchasing, as they can be posted through a standard letterbox.'
Anyone who wants to get their hands on a flat wine bottle can buy direct from RAU students at Cirencester Advent Market on Saturday 26 November 2022.
