Hangovers — is there anything to be done?

Many of you will have experienced the phenomenon usually called a hangover. It occurs after drinking alcohol; and it has features like: headache, dehydration, fatigue, and nausea. Basically, it is your body’s way of saying: “Don't do this again, you idiot.”  *

Every time you turn around there is someone telling you how to avoid / cure a hangover. Apart from the obvious method (don’t drink the alcohol in the first place), there have been the usual traditional herbal remedies, as well as various behavioral strategies:

• How to cure (or prevent) a hangover
• The 6 best ways to prevent (and cure) a hangover
• 7 steps to cure your hangover
• How to get rid of a hangover + 9 home remedies
• The 10 best hangover cures (and 2 to avoid)
• 18 of the best hangover cures that actually work

Indeed, the size of the global market for hangover-cure products is estimated to be $US 1.5 billion.

However, have you ever looked at the actual scientific evidence evaluating any of these claims? Of course not! Well, in honor of the Christmas / New Year period, I have done this for you, to save you the time. (My profession was that of a biological scientist; and I taught postgraduate students about the design and analysis of scientific experiments.)

Apparently, Americans drink more during holidays, and are quite likely to feel the effects of a hangover after 3—4 drinks (33% women, 23% men) (see a recent small survey). The same survey even claimed that “many would give up social media for no hangovers”. Now, that is serious!

Actually, one occasion for looking at this is the recent release in the USA of the latest addition to these lists, that I know of, which is called Myrkl. (Yes, that is pronounced as ‘miracle’.) It is produced by a Swedish company (De Faire Medical), who claim to have spent 30 years working on it. (They do not say how many drinks that adds up to.) This claims to be a type of food supplement: “Take two pills before drinking, and feel refreshed the next day” (Myrkl, the revolutionary pre-drinking pill, enters U.S. market just in time for the festive season, following overwhelming success in the UK). I have not tried it, myself.

There have been several formal overviews of scientific publications involving experiments about this topic, including:

• Interventions for preventing or treating alcohol hangover: systematic review of randomised controlled trials. British Medical Journal (2005) 331(7531): 1515-1518.
• Unknown safety and efficacy of alcohol hangover treatments puts consumers at risk. Addictive Behaviors (2021) 122: 107029.
• The efficacy and tolerability of pharmacologically active interventions for alcohol-induced hangover symptomatology: a systematic review of the evidence from randomised placebo-controlled trials. Addiction (2022) 117: 2157-2167.

Sadly, the results are exactly as I would expect them to be. None of the reviews thought that any of the experiments was particularly well done, as an experiment. The problem is, of course, getting people to take part in the experiments, and to behave in a suitable manner while in the experiment. Put formally, and therefore politely: “only very low quality evidence of efficacy is available”.

In particular, many of the suggested treatments contain one or more vitamins for which the dose exceeds the corresponding daily recommended intake level, and sometimes even exceeds what is referred to as the tolerable upper intake level. Be assured:- over-dosing on vitamins is no way to treat over-dosing on alcohol. Some products even contain NAC (What are the benefits of NAC [N-acetylcysteine]?), which is actually registered as a drug, by the US Food and Drug Administration, and is prohibited in the USA as an ingredient in dietary supplements or foods.

I am sorry to have to report this situation; but this is why you never hear of scientifically recommended hangover cures or preventions. As one of the studies concluded:

No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to practise abstinence or moderation.

One important issue here is that the amount of alcohol necessary to create a hangover differs greatly between people. Our bodies produce alcohol every day as a natural by-product of carbohydrate metabolism; and this is easily dealt with by the liver. However, above a certain amount the liver is overwhelmed. Alcohol then acts as a poison, maiming and eventually killing cells, especially those in the stomach and intestines (Body cells exact cruel revenge for indulging in too much holiday spirit). So, both causes and cures of the morning—after syndrome are highly individual.

One of the strongest effects of alcohol is dehydration, since dealing with it in your body causes you to urinate excessively; and so perhaps your best bet is simply to drink lots of water, along with the alcohol.

---

* According to the 2021 Global Drug Survey, people's biggest regrets about getting drunk are a terrible hangover, followed by saying something they wouldn't normally say, then heightened anxiety the next day, and getting into fights.

The wine industry needs to move into the 21st century

I can’t believe how behind-the-times the wine industry sometimes seems to be. Take the matter of labeling retail wine containers with their contents. If someone is selling me something to put into my body, and digest, so that it potentially becomes a part of me, I expect to be told what I am being given. But I cannot currently expect this from the wine industry. It makes me think that there might be something that they don’t want me to know.

Labeling has often been very important in the wine industry, in Europe at least. After all, the entire concept of named vineyard areas is based upon the label that you can put on the wine, not what wines you can actually make in that region. For example, the French Appellation Controlée systems refers literally to “controlled name”, not controlled wine-making. Labeling of wines has been important, in this sense, in terms of the grape varieties.

Let’s look at the current situation for wine labeling compared to other food products.

If I pick up a carton of Fresh Cream (grädde), here in Sweden, the package labeling provides me with two sets of information about the contents. First, the Ingredients consist of: Pasteurized milk. I am also told that these ingredients meet the KRAV requirements, indicating proper “ecological / organic” food. Second, I am told the Nutritional Value of the cream's components: Energy (kJ/kCal), Fat (including Edible Fat separately), Carbohydrate (including Sugars separately), Protein, Salt, and Vitamins (several listed independently).

If I look at my bottle of Swedish Christmas carbonated drink (called JulMust), I get the same two sets of information. In this case, the Ingredients are (in descending order): Carbonated water, Sugar, Caramel coloring, Natural hops, Grain malt, Citric acid, Spice flavorings, and Preservative E211. This is not exactly nutritious, but holiday-celebration drinks rarely are. The Nutritional Values do not mention any vitamins, sadly.

On the other hand, my bottles of wine do not even tell me that they contain grapes. (Maybe they don’t have any actual grapes??!!) I get told that the bottle contains Sulfites (which is a potential allergen*), in a dozen different languages, and Alcohol (%). And that is it. This makes me think that the wine industry does not take itself very seriously.

Even my beers do better than this. My two current bottles of Christmas Beer (called JulÖl) both contain the same list of Ingredients (in order): Water, Barley malt, Hops, and Yeast. There are no Nutritional Values; but they both have 3.5% alcohol.

There are two possible issues here. First, why has this exemption for the wine industry been allowed to exist in the modern world? Second, what is the wine industry doing to rectify this social anomaly?

The first answer is, of course: “tradition”, which generates inertia. When we used goat skins as wine containers, we did not label them, and probably very wisely so (they were certainly not meant for long-term storage). When we bought our wine from wooden barrels in some sleazy back-street dive, the same thing applied — the less we knew, the better (and we drank it straight away). But this is the 21st century now, and those days are long gone, and wisely so, if only from a health perspective.

The second answer is, sadly, “very, very little”. This saddens me because the wine industry has adapted to the current century so well in so many ways — why not this one? I am not a young man (I will turn 65 soon), and I can remember quite a fair bit of the previous century; and so I can remember the days when no foods contained legally required labels about what the customer was getting. It literally was a case of Buyer Beware, in the mid-20th century.

However, in those days shops were shops, not supermarkets; and the person behind the counter often felt personally responsible for the quality of what was passing over the counter (in both directions!). Milk was often delivered to the house, and bread was bought fresh. Those days are gone for most people in the Western World; and in the modern world we rely on labeled goods bought from large sellers (big box and grocery store wine shelves), so that the labels are important to us, because they are all we have.

The European Union has made the decision to bring its local wine industry into the modern world. They are not doing this fast, mind you, and do not require contents labeling of wine for another year, or so. This still, however, puts them way ahead of the USA, which is only now just getting around to even studying the issue.

The EU decision was made in December 2021 (EU Regulation 2021/2117), and applies to retail products sold in the EU from December 2023. It compulsorily requires both the list of ingredients and the nutrition declaration, for wine, de-alcoholized and partially de-alcoholized wine, and aromatized wine, no matter where the source. Wine ingredients could, of course, include water, grapes, or grape concentrate (eg Mega Purple), yeast, white sugar (if the grapes are not ripe enough), tartaric acid (to increase acidity) or calcium carbonate (to reduce acidity), powdered oak (for tannins), and sulfur dioxide (aka sulfites, as a preservative). Actually, the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has approved more than 60 additives for use in wine (Why does Ridge add ingredients to its back labels?).

Unfortunately, the EU-mandated information (except the Energy value) does not have to actually be on the label itself, but can be provided electronically, such as a web link accessed via a QR code on the label. I, myself, do not have an internet—friendly phone (mine deals solely with phone calls and SMSs), and so therefore this new information will be hidden from me, in the wine-store. This is what we used to call the Generation Gap — I am from the Baby Boomer generation, not Generations X, Y or Z, and therefore was not born with a mobile phone in my hand. I can still remember Superman-getting-changed style phone booths, and the necessity for having a pocket full of coins in order to use them. So, maybe I need to get into the 21st century, too, along with the wine industry? (My wife occasionally encourages me to do so.)

As for the USA, well they can’t even agree to always tell us what the grape varieties are, let alone tell us where those grapes actually come from (Controversy erupts over label laws).** This is because alcohol is regulated by the TTB, not the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which does require label on all of its regulated products. This separation is a legacy of Prohibition, of course (This is why alcohol doesn't come with nutrition facts).

So, the authorities are continuing to be cautious (Cheers to alcohol facts labeling to finally be addressed by TTB), which I think means: “we will see how it goes in the EU, before we decide anything”. It has, however, been suggested that being forced into action would be a good thing (Wine labeling could be a blessing in disguise), especially for we poor consumers, who apparently have wildly varying ideas about what is actually in our retail wines (Winners and losers in new consumer study on nutritional and ingredient wine labeling).

Apparently, the US wine industry is in two minds about how to react to this (What’s in a label?). The issue really does seem to be concern over how the wine-buying public will react to explicitly knowing about some of wine's actual ingredients (Nutrition facts will soon appear on some wine bottles, and they might surprise you). Nevertheless, if nothing else, the wine world is becoming focused on premiumization and reduced alcohol, in a world of younger buyers. They seem to care more about knowing what they are putting in their mouths than their parents and grandparents did (wine drinkers are currently characterized as mainly 40-65+ years old). I think that the wine industry should be eager to tell these youngsters, rather than reluctant.

---

* Sulfite allergic reactions are usually suggested to be uncommon, rather than more obvious ones like histamines (What gives you a wine hangover? It’s probably not the sulfites). They are singled out for mention because when there is a reaction it can be very serious, particularly among asthmatics (Why do i get headaches from wine?).

** The new concept of blends from different countries (Is ‘borderless’ wine the future?) emphasizes the need for clarity.

Increase in U.S. per capita wine consumption / expenditure this century

I have written before about the relationship between how much wine people drink and how much they actually pay for it (The cost of wine consumed differs greatly between countries); and I will return to that topic again soon. However, before then, I will look at one particular country: the United States of America.

What I will do here is look at the relationship between per capita wine consumption versus per capita expenditure on wine, throughout this century. As a quick preview, Americans have consistently increased both their consumption and their expenditure, per person, through time.

The data that I have used come from the Annual Database of National Beverage Consumption Volumes and Expenditures, 1950 to 2015, by A.J. Holmes and K. Anderson (Wine Economics Research Centre, University of Adelaide, July 2017). Tables 1.17 (Wine consumption per capita, in liters of alcohol) and 1.22 (Wine expenditure per capita, in $US) contain the information that we need.

The result for the United States is shown in the first graph, for the years 2001 to 2015. Each point represents one year, located vertically based on the amount of money (in $US) spent on wine during that year per person, and horizontally based on the liters of alcohol consumed as wine per person. Several of the years are labeled.

The main pattern in the data is clear — Americans, on average, increased their wine consumption and expenditure pretty much by the same amount every year. Does this surprise you? (Remember: this is per person, not the total for the whole country — the wine-drinking population has grown, but this has no effect in the graph.) Interestingly, the consumption and expenditure increase together — Americans are not “drinking better” now compared to earlier, but are still spending roughly the same amount per bottle as they were before (they are just drinking more bottles).

There was only one exception to this pattern: the year 2009 involved a drop in expenditure but not volume, followed by a return to the same increase the next year. Most of you will remember (not fondly) the Global Financial Crisis of 2007—2008. This was reported as the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression (1929). Instead of taking to drink, Americans (and many others) cut back on their drink expenditure but not volume. However, they apparently recovered pretty quickly, compared to the situation a century earlier.

Lest you think that increasing wine consumption per person is inevitable in the modern world, we could look at a comparison country, to see what happened there. An obvious comparison would be one from the Old World, with its long tradition of wine consumption, so why not pick France? This next graph shows exactly the same information as above, but this time for the French people, up until 2015.

As you can see, things are quite different. Note, first, the dramatically different scales for the two graphs — French consumption and expenditure both greatly exceed those of Americans. The USA has a long way to go!

Furthermore, there was uncertainty in consumption for the first 8—9 years of the century, but it has been all downhill since then. The GFC obviously had an effect in 2007 and 2008; but it is almost like the French then gave up at that stage, and started to drop the idea of drinking quite so much wine, altogether. Once again, the volume and expenditure dropped together, so that the people drank the same quality of wine, just less of it.

It is certainly a pity that the available data end in 2015. It would be interesting to see how the patterns have continued in recent years. For example, we are told that: U.S. wine sales have been in a slump in recent years, with a 5.2% decrease in overall wine sales year over year (according to Nielsen IQ). In particular, it has been reported that currently: Consumers choose to drink less to save more (a key economizing strategy for rising inflation). However, we are also told that Premiumisation continues, implying that more is being spent per bottle, but with  fewer bottles.

Similarly, in France wine consumption has continued to decline. In 2020, the national consumption was only three-quarters of what it had been in 2007 (Statista). Apparently, wine is now seen as a more occasional indulgence, rather than a daily necessity (Why are the French drinking less wine?). The younger generation may well think that they drink less but better, if their expenditure has not decreased as much as the volume.

Wine versus beer consumption, worldwide

Alcohol consumption is typically characterized as being via intake of either wine, beer or spirits. This is so, no matter how much or how little alcohol is actually consumed. I have touched on this topic before, by ignoring spirits, and thus focusing on wine and beer (Beer countries and wine countries). In that case, I looked at per capita consumption in 2015, for 47 countries. It is time to update this a bit, and study percentages instead of volume.

I have had a look at the data for 2018, as contained in the Annual Database of Global Wine Markets, compiled by Anderson,  Nelgen and Pinilla. Tables 53a (Wine's share of total alcohol consumption volume) and 53b (Beer's share of total alcohol consumption volume) contain the information that we want, for each country.

Note that we need to standardize the data for each country, in order to deal with different population sizes and demographies, as well as standardizing for alcohol content, since wine has up to three times as much as beer. So, the data refer to the percentage of national alcohol consumption that is made up by wine and by beer.

The result is shown in the graph, for 48 countries. Each point represents one country, located vertically based on liters of alcohol consumed as beer during 2018, and horizontally based on liters of alcohol consumed as wine during 2018.

I have labeled 29 of the countries, for discussion; I have also colored (rather than labeled) the three Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden). The pink line indicates equality of consumption — the countries above the line consume more alcohol via beer than wine, and those below the line consume more alcohol via wine than beer. There are 14 countries in the latter group, plus New Zealand sitting pretty much on the fence.

As expected, there is generally a negative relationship between beer and wine consumption — the more wine you consume then the less beer that you can consume (since beer + wine + spirits must add up to 100%). There are however, a few countries in the bottom left-hand part of the graph, which consume very little wine, and do not make this up with all that much beer consumption, either. That is, spirits make up a lot of the alcohol; but remember, these (mostly Asian) countries actually consume very little alcohol at all, even spirits. On the other hand, the countries just to the right of China (in the graph) are: Bulgaria, Russia, and the Ukraine — these do consume a lot of spirits rather than either beer or wine.

As we might expect, a few well-known wine-producing countries are in the bottom right-hand corner of the graph. However, the four unlabeled countries in that region are: Greece, Morocco, Switzerland, and Uruguay, which are not big wine producers. Did you expect Morocco, even though it does not consume much alcohol at all, to drink more wine than beer? (Perhaps the lingering French colonial influence.)

The Scandinavian countries (in pink) are pretty close to the line of equality, along with Hungary and New Zealand, plus Algeria (unlabeled). Scandinavia has principally been a beer-drinking world (after they stopped drinking honey mead, long ago); but things have changed a lot in recent decades — this has a lot to do with having government-owned wine retailing (see: Wine monopolies, and the availability of wine). Nevertheless, Sweden is actually known to beer producers as a great market for boutique beers (there are even beers that are sold only in Sweden and their homeland) — at this time of the year, we have become awash in Christmas beers.

Note, also, that Australia and the United Kingdom are not all that much more in favor of beer than is New Zealand. The USA, on the other hand, is distinctly more in favor of beer; and this matters commercially, given that it has the third-biggest population on the planet. South Africa is even more in favor of beer, in spite of its thriving wine industry.

The difference between wine-producing and non-producing countries is particularly obvious for South America. Argentina (producing lots of wine) is well to the right in the graph (consuming lots of wine), while Brazil (producing very little wine) is way to the left (consuming very little wine), with Chile (unlabeled) half-way in between (in both aspects).

Clearly, this graph indicates where the wine industry could usefully put in some effort, in terms of attracting customers. In particular, there is clearly more work to do by the United States wine-makers!

How do so-called alternative wine packagings compare?

Last week I wrote about the idea that Wine packaging is going to change, sooner rather than later. This is simply because glass bottles are the wine industry’s biggest contributor to Global Climate Change — it makes up at least two-thirds of the so-called “carbon footprint”. Therefore, it is the part that most needs to change if the industry is going to make a move towards sustainability.

The obvious follow-up question is then: what are the package options, and how do they stack up against each other? This is what I will cover here, by looking at each type.

It is important to start by noting that it is both the manufacture and the transport of the bottles that create the issue — glass bottles involve a lot of heat to be made, and they are heavy to transport; and both of these produce a lot of carbon emissions. This is why we need to consider alternatives to using new (standard) bottles for every wine vintage.  Mind you, the current shortages of glass bottles may force us anyway (Spiralling costs are blowing wine buying rules ‘out of the water’).

Refilling your own bottles

To me, it is obvious that we should start with this option, as re-use is always superior to recycling. We also get control of a lot of the transport, since we do it ourselves, and we decide what we are going to store our wine in (and thus drink it from). The idea is for us to go ourselves to the retailer (or producer), and have them fill up the containers we bring with us. Obviously, if these are glass bottles then they should be ones that we have used before, and then thoroughly cleaned, rather than us bringing new ones each time.

There is nothing intrinsically new about this idea, since some parts of the world already do this for supermarket hygiene products like soap and shampoo. There are already a number of such systems currently being used for alcohol, although they seem to exist only in retailers principally designed for this purpose. One obvious issue for retailers is the floor space required for a refill station; and deciding on a suitable bottle closure is not straightforward either (And now for something completely different).

Nevertheless, a couple of examples of refill bottling schemes for spirits were discussed at the recent Vinexposium (What’s the future of alternative wine packaging?). At the moment, one scheme has "around 20% of people return the bottle to be refilled", although 80% is the target. As an example for a winery, LJ Crafted Wines has patented a device that’s inserted into the barrel, from which they sell all their wines directly. It takes 3-4 months to sell the wine, so it needs to be kept fresh in the opened barrel for that length of time. * There is also an Australian company called ReWine, which uses its own versions of Flextanks to transport wine in large quantities directly from a winery to its warehouse facilities, to then subdivide into a unique barrel system for customers to have their bottles filled and refilled, dispensed under nitrogen with 30% CO2 (And now for something completely different). It also uses a Nova Twist closure, because you can’t re-use a screw-cap.

Return bottles to be re-used

The obvious next alternative is to have the producers and retailers re-fill the used bottles. That is, the bottles are returned to the retailer, and the producer cleans and re-uses them. Otherwise, it is basically the same as the previous section. This seems a bit more likely in practice, than having us re-fill them ourselves, as we simply return them the next time we visit the retailer. Indeed, a recent Rabobank report suggests that returnable, refillable bottles are not only the most sustainable packaging solution, they could also become the most economical.

At the moment, here is Sweden we have returnable glass bottles for many brands of beer (The change at Systembolaget that many missed). The bottles are marked as returnable, and we pay a small refundable deposit on them. Sadly, of the 32.6 million liters sold in 2021, an estimated 86% of the bottles were not returned. This system obviously needs improvement, before being applied to wine bottles.

There is nothing unusual about such a system, of course, in many places around the world. However, in places like California, many aluminum, plastic and glass containers have a refundable recycling fee, but many don’t — whether the bottle fee applies depends as much on what the bottle holds as what it’s made of. Nevertheless, the California bottle fee is to apply to wine and spirits in 2024; and a similar Proposed container deposit scheme expansion rattles NSW wine industry.

PET bottles and aluminium cans

I might as well lump these two together, even though some drinkers might feel that there is a psychological difference in drinking from each of them. The idea, however, in both cases, is that these are food-grade containers (just like glass), and that they require much less energy to produce, and they can be recycled conveniently (but not re-used, as can glass). Perhaps the most practical suggestion is that these can be used for wine that will be consumed in the shorter term than we might expect for glass bottles (up to a year?); and let’s face it, that is actually most wines.

As noted above, here in Sweden we pay a deposit for all of these containers, whether from the supermarket or an alcohol retailer. That deposit is credited to us when we next visit a supermarket, as there are machines conveniently placed next to the entrances. We get a receipt, which we can cash in the supermarket, or have credited to our supermarket bill at the check-out. I noted last week that the Nordic retailers are leading the way forward (Can the Nordic monopolies turn the drinks world green?), and this is one of the ways.

The issue here, of course, will be to get wine drinkers to drink from a can (just like beer drinkers), or be persuaded that a PET bottle can contain high-quality wine. This sort of thing can be done, of course, as the wine-makers of Clare Valley (in South Australia) showed, when they unilaterally switched from corks to screw-caps for their 2000 vintage (Clare Valley celebrates 20 years of the screwcap revolution). Indeed, it has been reported that cans saw the greatest increase as a proportion of wine packaging market in the 2010s (A changing environment for wine packaging).

In this regard, Garçon Wines, based in the U.K., has been using flat bottles made from pre-existing and recycled PET plastic, with some success (And now for something completely different). A similar bottle has been developed in Australia, by Packamama (Eco-bottle targets wine industry’s carbon hotspot). Also, it has been reported that Miguel Torres Chile will switch to flat PET bottles in Sweden.

Paper bottles

I have put this in a separate grouping because of potential issues with recycling; but otherwise this is simply part of the previous group. There are different variants for "aseptic cartons", from waxed cardboard boxes, such we use for milk or cream, to more sophisticated systems. Some people are excited by examples of this option (Kate Hawkings on the future of alternative wine packaging):

it’s a bag-in-box but in the shape of a normal wine bottle. Made from 94% recycled (and recyclable) paperboard with a recyclable liner, it’s around a fifth the weight of a glass bottle, has a sixth of its carbon footprint and, crucially, is pleasingly tactile to use and to hold.

The issue, for me, is the extent to which cardboard / paper and plastic packaging actually gets recycled, in practice. Worldwide, we (usually) pay no deposit fee, and so recycling is entirely optional. Here in Sweden, we have a very efficient system (we have two trash cans collected, one of them with separate sections for plastic and paper packaging). Sadly, it is often reported that the subsequent treatment of plastic packaging, for example, is not the best — indeed, it has been claimed that, even though 85% is recycled, much of this goes to China, where it is placed in landfill. Cardboard is apparently dealt with much better.

Bag in box

Most wine drinkers are familiar with this one, so I don’t need to say much. Way back in 1964, an Australian wine-maker (Thomas Angove) decided to adapt the way in which battery acid is transported, immediately recognizing its potential for wine drinking. The main subsequent trick was to put a tap on the bag (in 1967), rather than a clothes-peg. For our purposes here, it is basically a plastic bag inside a cardboard box, so its manufacture and disposal advantages are pretty much as discussed above.

One of the extra advantages of this packaging style is the size of the container. Larger containers have less packaging per unit of content, and these commonly contain 3–4 liters of wine, which exceeds that commonly used for the alternatives discussed above. So, they compare very well in terms of sustainability (Economic and environmental sustainability of wine packaging systems).

The main practical issue is that it has been adopted principally for inexpensive wines in large amounts. So, the task of getting premium wine drinkers to use it will be a major undertaking. Apparently, “only 37% of regular wine drinkers consider bag-in-box to be a sustainable form of wine packaging” (When in Rome is on a mission with alternative wine packaging).

Light-weight glass bottles

Having considered the above options, what if we decide to continue using glass bottles, at least for premium wines? After all, glass is considered to be good for long-term storage (a decade or two?), as well as for sparkling wines. Otherwise, a heavy glass bottle is simply a subjective image that some people associate with high quality contents.

Alko, the Finnish national alcohol retailer, has categorized wine bottles weighing less than 420 grams as “environmentally friendly packaging” — after all, a 330 g glass bottle will protect wine equally well as a bottle weighing several kilograms (Wine bottles: a heavy price). Recently, an industry collaboration in Australia released a lightweight Reverse Taper bottle weighing 420 grams, which is 195 g less than the standard Reverse Taper bottle, and this equates to an 18% reduction in emissions (Premium wine packaging gets a sustainable makeover).

Things are somewhat different for sparkling wines, since there is internal gas pressure. Currently, the champagne house Telmont is testing the lightest champagne bottle, but this only takes the standard 835 grams down to 800 g. So, things do not look too sustainable in the sparkling wine world.

There is at least one U.S. vineyard that long ago converted its entire line of wines to lightweight glass bottles (Fetzer Vineyards converts to lightweight glass bottles). In the process, they expected to have “an average annual decrease of 16 percent in glass usage, a reduction of some 2,100 tons, and a 14 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions, an estimated 3,000 tons of CO2”.

Different bottle shapes, etc

So, what if we focus on transportation rather than the manufacture? In that case, it is the shape of the bottle that can be improved, as well as its weight. Here, flat plastic bottles are an example of the new wine packaging that is being launched globally; and watertight wood-fibre packaging has also been developed in Finland (New winds in wine packaging: lightweight and environmentally friendly). I am not so sure about the latter; but a container that fits in your hip pocket has long been seen as a good thing by certain alcohol consumers.

This issue combines of course, with wine tourism, as Robert Joseph has pointed out (Heavy bottles and wine tourism - and their carbon footprint). Tourism generates a lot of CO2, and so the products sold to them should be as environmentally friendly as possible. **

Furthermore, transporting bulk wine is more sustainable than bottled wine, since it does not involve the retail package at all; and it is continually increasing (Global trade of bulk wine reached historical levels in 2021). All that has to happen is for consumers to learn to associate the bulk stuff with high quality (Drinks trade must change its attitude to bulk wine) — apparently, premium bulk is gaining in share (Bulk rides high as global trade in wine grows).

Conclusion

There are thus lots of options for the wine industry to move forward, into a more sustainable future. Many of these are discussed further in the International Wineries for Climate Action (IWCA) 2nd Annual Report. However, it has been noted that corporations might well embrace sustainability (in theory) but still struggle to act (in practice). Nevertheless, the wine industry is much better placed for a sustainable future than things like cryptocurrencies, for example (New York governor signs first-of-its-kind law cracking down on Bitcoin mining)!

---

* Thanks to Alan Goldfarb for alerting me to this.

** According to Wine Australia, less than half of all people who visit wineries are motivated to taste and buy wines. So: Think of visitors as ‘wine tourists’ — not wine consumers.

Wine packaging is going to change, sooner rather than later

Occasionally (ie once a month), some pundit starts to pontificate about the future of the wine industry, using some sort of crystal ball. They opine on different wine styles (eg natural wines) and upcoming regions (or old countries re-born), or consider the increasing importance of wine coolers and other mixed drinks (RTD). They also worry about inflation, rising competition from cannabis farming, and continual government investigations of distributors and retailers.

However, we do not need a crystal ball to realize that one thing for sure in the future is going to involve reducing the so-called “carbon footprint” of producing and selling wine. The world has finally gotten the message, after at least a century (You were first warned about global warming 110 years ago), that we are rapidly creating a world that we cannot easily live in. The blanket of carbon and nitrogen compounds that currently surrounds our planet has got to be reduced, and sooner rather than later. * Otherwise, Climate Change will simply increase in effect, with extreme weather events becoming ever more frequent and harmful (eg. floods in some places and droughts in others). **

So, there is now a lot being written about the word "sustainability", although it has been noted that “the term is often misused and rarely completely understood” (What does sustainability in wine actually mean?). There are, however, formal initiatives such as Sustainable Winegrowing Australia, which try to develop usefully sustainable systems. (NB: there are several others of these, as well.)

The SWA has released their 2021 Impact Report, which describes one general approach. Sadly, while it does talk about reducing “excess packaging”, it fails to mention that packaging is itself the biggest issue of all. To this end, it was recently noted (The new old wine bottle technology):

It has been broadly accepted that biggest contribution to a wine’s carbon footprint comes, not from vineyard or cellar practices, but from the energy deployed during the manufacturing and transportation of the glass bottle itself, from factory to end-drinker. Conservative estimates say that glass bottles account for about 29 percent of a wine's carbon pollution, but other estimates posit that the bottle is responsible for up to 70 percent of a wine’s impact.

So, there seems to be no doubt that wine packaging, in general, is going to change, from now on. The fancy stuff may still be packaged in the old way, by the high-status producers; but the stuff that the rest of us drink will either be in reusable bottles or not in bottles at all. For example:

Across the world, a movement toward reusing wine bottles is gathering force. In some ways, it seems strange that it has taken so long. But in reality, it hasn't — we just abandoned the practice when technology, convenience and abundant supply allowed us to.

Even British wine professionals (>50 of them) have gotten the message (Leading wine professionals sign letter calling for alternative packaging), that:

switching from glass to alternative formats could save ‘well over a third of the carbon footprint of wine consumed in the UK’ – the equivalent of taking 350,000 cars off the road overnight. Alternative formats, such as boxed wine, canned wine, kegs, paper bottles and pouches, all have much a smaller carbon footprint than glass.

However, we have known all of this for at least a decade. That is, the information needed for us to be proactive has already been available to us. Nevertheless, only recently does it seem to have become important for producer actions to be proposed. That is (Thirst for sustainability permeates the wine industry):

Vineyards and wineries are increasingly considering how to adopt more sustainable practices in every aspect of how they farm, the products they create, and the services and methods they utilize. The list of factors that can be altered to allow for increased sustainability range from vineyard farming practices to the winery workings, to the distribution of the final packaged goods.

Perhaps the most comprehensive presentation of the available packaging options, and their environmental “costs”, appeared a dozen years ago (August 2010):

Nordic Life Cycle Assessment Wine Package Study

This was prepared on behalf of Systembolaget and Vinmonopolet, the two national alcohol retailers for Sweden and Norway, respectively. This is one of the advantages of having national retailers (see also Wine monopolies, and the availability of wine), that co-ordinated action can be taken (unlike, for example, in the U.S.A., with its fragmented market and notoriously problematic three-tier system).

The report is nothing if not both comprehensive and detailed. There are 180 pages of data tables and graphs, along with oodles of text. The bottom line about packaging is very simple, though:

The comparative analysis has been performed on five indicators: global warming potential, air acidification, abiotic depletion, primary energy, and water consumption ... Most of the environmental impacts of a packaging system are related to the following aspects: primary and secondary packaging, distribution, and end-of-life [waste management] ... Most of the environmental impacts are related to the production of the raw materials used in the packaging systems. The most important contributor is primary packaging, [and] glass seems to be the most impacting system for all the indicators studied in the comparative analysis.

Given that this report emanated from Scandinavia, it should come as no surprise that it is the Nordic retailers who are leading the way forward (Can the Nordic monopolies turn the drinks world green?). *** There are five national alcohol retailers involved:

Sweden’s Systembolaget, Finland’s Alko, Norway’s Vinmonopolet, Iceland’s Vínbúðin and the Faroe Islands’ Rúsdrekkasøla Landsins have collectively announced a plan to become beverage business leaders in sustainable development. The specific target is for 2030 CO2 emissions to be half their 2019 levels. This will involve actions at every stage of the production, packaging and distribution processes, and will involve consumers as well as industry professionals.

That is, these retailers are putting their money where their mouths are. What about everyone else in the wine industry? It is easy in northern Europe to take collective action, but the rest of the world may not find it quite so straightforward, without official government mandates. From now on, though, so-called “alternative packaging” (eg. What is the future of alternative wine packaging?) will no longer be just theoretical alternatives.

---

* Excess nitrogen in wastewater is just as bad, from both human urine and faeces. For example: Eating too much protein makes pee a problem pollutant in the U.S.

** The Russian government seems to be the only one currently claiming that Climate Change will be of benefit to them; but in practice this seems to be an unlikely outcome (A hotter Russia). By the way, did you know that: Climate change is making it more expensive to insure art?

*** Nordic = Scandinavia (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) + Finland.

Can you tell the difference between Australia and New Zealand (wine)?

Last week, I made a few observations about the relative behavior of Australians and New Zealanders, with respect to alcohol consumption. For example, the New Zealanders were reported to drink more often, but the Australians were more likely to get drunk, and then regret this outcome.

This comparison is relevant, because, in general, there is actually not all that much cultural difference between the two countries, at least compared to other English-speaking countries, such as Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, plus the United States of America. However, in the wine world there are considerable differences, which I will look at here.

As an aside, back at the beginning of the last century, when Australia was being federated, to shake off the unwanted British yoke (officially, January 1 1901), the New Zealanders were offered the golden opportunity to become a state of Australia. They declined. This was unforgivable; and it has not yet been forgiven, even after a century. There is nothing better for Australians than beating the New Zealanders at any given sporting event, for example.

Therefore, it really rankles when we expat Australians read a report like this:

Little known. Since 2016, the U.S. has imported more wine from New Zealand than from Australia (by value) --  and the gap has been growing. In 2021, imports from NZL were 88% higher than those from AUS.

This is illustrated in the following graph (from the AAWE). New Zealand wine exports to the USA have been continually on the increase in value since 1992, while the Australian export values peaked in 2007, and have continually decreased since then. The point of equal US import value was in 2016.

This raises several questions. First: What is wrong with those Americans? After all, they are clearly wrong! Can’t they tell New Zealand wine from Australian wine? Surely not!! *

A second question relates to wine volume, as opposed to value. After all, the NZ increase may simply be that they are charging more for their wines. I will not go into this one here, but will, instead, look at another question: some declining Australian export values to other countries.

The obvious country, in this regard, is China. It has been noted that:

Australia exports wine to over 100 markets, but in 2020 the top 5 markets (Canada, China, Hong Kong, United Kingdom and United States) accounted for 75% of total wine export volume and 77% of export revenue. China was the largest in value terms, accounting for 33% of export revenue and ranking third in volume (after United Kingdom and United States) at 13%.

Well, all of that changed. This next graph shows the value of Australian wine exports to China plus the rest of the world, since 2002 (from Winetitles Media). Note that it indicates that Australian wine export value peaked at the end of 2007 (just as we saw for the USA, above), then declined until mid 2013, increasing again thereafter. It also shows that the largest component of the latter increase was exports specifically to China — so, that is where Australian wine went after the post-2007 declines.

The China exports peaked in 2020 and then (quite literally) crashed in 2021. Part of this decline has been a general decrease in wine consumption in China. This is illustrated by the AAWE graph showing that “from its peak in 2017, China’s wine consumption has decreased by more than 45%”. That is a pretty serious reduction.

However, the main reason for the vinous disaster has been the Chinese claim that the Australians had been dumping wine in China — ie. insisting that in order to receive this particular wine then the Chinese importer also had to buy this other wine as well (whether they wanted to or not). This has lead the Chinese to impose import tariffs of more than 200% on all Australian wine, in retaliation. **

Hence the crash, when combined with declining consumption. However, even in 2021 Australia still managed to be 5th in the value of wine imports in China, although 7th in volume (China’s wine imports 2021), after falling from a clear 1st place (see the table below).

It is therefore sad to note that: New Zealand wine export value hits all-time high. [Expletive deleted.]

A final question is: What are Australians doing about this? It has been noted that: Australia’s wine stock levels rise following 12 months of challenging global conditions; as loss of sales has not been compensated by reduced production. Indeed, the current vintage definitely has problems (Vintage 2023 not business as usual), concerning:

how winegrape growers can prepare for changes to their income when faced with oversupply issues, increases in shipping and freight costs, the ongoing impact of China’s wine trade tariff, and market values dropping, particularly with Shiraz and Cabernet sauvignon varieties.

Which winemaker would you rather be, just at the moment: an Australian or a New Zealander?

---

*  In case Californians are wondering where their water has gone in the past few years, they should check out the reports of unusual floods that have occurred in south-eastern Australia during exactly that same period of time; and then think about the clockwise flows of air around the edge of the northern Pacific Ocean. A drought does not mean that the water has disappeared, but instead that it has gone somewhere else.

**  The alleged dumping was merely a point of political discussion, until an idiotic Australian politician suggested (in public) that China should be officially investigated about the origin of the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Almost immediately, the tariffs were announced by an offended Chinese government. Indeed, no-one had suggested that the USA should be investigated about the origin of the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009, nor the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918 (the biggest pandemic on record); so why finger the Chinese this time? (Both flu viruses arose in Kansas,)

Alcohol usage (and over-usage) around the world

You may never have heard of it, but there is a survey called the Global Drug Survey, which has been conducted annually since 2012. This year's report should be released in another month, or so. However, the results have not differed much for the past couple of years, so a look at last year’s results could be informative. Clearly, alcohol is one of the drugs studied.

This is claimed to be the world’s largest drug survey, intended “to promote honest conversations about drug use, and help people use drugs more safely regardless of the legal status of the drug.” The interest is not in the levels of use, per se, but in a comparison of use patterns and trends.

Available online are the Global Drug Survey 2021 Key Findings Report, and an Executive Summary. Here, I will extract some of the information as related solely to alcohol. In 2021, there were 32,000 respondents, from 22 countries (each with >160 participants). About one-third of the respondents were from Germany, followed by New Zealand and the United States.

Let’s start with rates of drug use. Here are the percentages of the 32,000 people who had used each of the listed drugs during the previous year. Clearly, alcohol predominates; but cannabis and tobacco both get more than 50% usage. Compare this to my youth, when huge numbers of people smoked tobacco, but no-one admitted to smoking cannabis, except university students!

As far as alcohol is concerned, the majority of the respondents were categorized as low-risk drinkers (on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, developed by the World Health Organization). This does not mean that people do not like a drink, or two. This next graph shows the number of days on which alcohol was reported to be consumed within the previous 12 months, for several of the countries.

There is nothing too unexpected there. The French drink on average every 3 days, and the Hungarians every 4 days. However, the Germans are below the global average; and the New Zealanders drink notably more often than do the Australians.

There is also, of course, the matter of getting drunk — defined as “having drunk so much that your physical and mental faculties are impaired”. This next graph shows the number of occasions, within the previous 12 months, reported by members of several of the countries. The survey average was 9 times, which is about once every 40 days.

Moreover, those Australians in the survey managed about twice the global average rate, with the Danes and Finns not that far behind, along with the Americans. The Germans, Spaniards and Italians clearly drink in moderation, along with the New Zealanders. That is, Australians drink less often than New Zealanders, but when they did drink they were more likely to keep drinking.

After getting drunk, it is always possible to feel regret about this activity. This next graph shows the percentage of occasions on which the participants “wished you had drunk less or not drunk at all.” This generally seemed to vary between about one-fifth and one-quarter of the occasions.

The Danes and Finns seem to have the fewest regrets, in spite of leading the way in drinking, while the Australians regretted much more — maybe this is why they drink less often than New Zealanders — they drink less often but get drunk more often, and then regret it. The Irish and Poles had the most regrets.

There must, of course, be a reason for having regrets, and a number of reasons were provided, as listed in the next graph. Each person was asked “to think back over the occasions they have regretted getting drunk and select their top three reasons for why this happened.” The graph shows the percentage of people who selected each reason as first, second or third. The lesson here is not to drink your alcohol too fast, nor to mix your drinks.

Getting drunk is never recommended. After all: 1 in 5 deaths of US adults 20 to 49 is from excessive drinking; and even: In young adults, moderate to heavy drinking is linked to higher risk of stroke. Worse still, we have been told that the: Alcohol death toll is growing, due to the ongoing pandemic.

You can have a drink or two, but not five or six.

Recent trends in wine drinking in the USA

Before the current pandemic, the USA was the world's largest consumer of wine. However, this was not because your “average” American drank wine. No, it was because the USA has the third largest population in the world (the United Nations lists the USA behind only China and India, although quite a long way behind). So, back in 2016, for example, the USA was listed as only the 48th country, based on Annual wine consumption per person, way behind places like Portugal, France and Slovenia (in each of which more than 50% of national alcohol consumption is wine).

Things have, of course, changed since those days, particularly decreases; and I will look at some of those changes here.

I will be talking about wine in the USA, but as a quick aside, it has also been reported that over recent decades there has been a “seemingly perpetual decline in consumption of France’s national drink” (Why are the French drinking less wine?). The industry has its ups and downs, but in France it seems to be slowly but continually down.

Actually, the part of the French wine industry going “down” is what they call “country wine”, the inexpensive everyday (literally, in France) tipple consumed when relaxing. * That is not far from what is currently being reported in the USA, as well, where it is the bottom of the market that is having a hard time, currently.

There has been the expectation that Robert M. Parker Jr has previously been the prime force behind wine preferences in the USA (What Are Americans drinking?). However, that has been slowly changing, with “increased social conscious consumer demand for products tied to non and low-alc., sustainability, and organic” (Beverage alcohol buying trends reflective of growing consumer consciousness). More importantly, though, Americans are drinking less alcohol, in general (Americans are consuming fewer AlcBev drinks per week), and price has come to the fore (2/3 of consumers cutting back on BevAlc purchases because of inflation). Indeed, we are even told that: Financial constraints blunt consumers support for sustainability.

So, it seems to be inflation that is the current issue — wine prices are going up, but our incomes are not. However, if we look at this point with respect to wine, it is not always true that wine prices are determined solely by inflation (Why wine is actually cheaper after inflation). Here is a graph based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (via Mashed). It refers to the average cost, per month, of: “Wine, red and white table, all sizes, any origin, per 1 liter (33.8 oz.)” (Data Series ID: 720311).

The data start (horizontally) at the beginning of 2019, and run monthly until the present. The black points represent the actual price (vertically). The pink points are the increase in price calculated based on the reported monthly inflation (from US Inflation Rate ). So, when the pink line is above the black line, then US wine has not increased in price as fast as inflation would suggest; and when the pink line is below the black line, then wine has gone up in price faster than we would expect from inflation alone.

As you can see, both situations have occurred in the past few years. Up until October 2020, Americans were doing well (average wine price stayed below inflation), but then things went really bad. The pandemic started in January 2020, but by October its effects had really settled in; and things stayed that way for a year, as wine prices peaked. However, for the next half-year, things were pretty much as we would have forecast way back at the beginning of 2019 (wine price = inflation price). Since April, prices have dropped and then risen again — and it is the increase over the past 4 months that the current media discussion is all about, as wine prices are now as high as they have ever been.

The basic issue here is that not all effects on wine price are reflected by inflation. For example, there are currently: “supply-side shortages of crucial ingredients and packaging materials, lower yields of raw materials brought on by summer droughts, and skyrocketing energy costs” (Alcohol beverage industry facing “unprecedented” challenges but remains resilient). Both the pandemic and the war in the Ukraine are usually fingered as the prime causes of disruptions, while drought is a particular problem in the USA. **

So, where does that leave us? Well, current US wine prices are actually less than we would have forecast 3 years ago, given the US inflation rate since then. That, however, does not make the wallets of American wine drinkers feel any better. So, it has been noted that the U.S. table wine market remains sluggish, but above $15 brands thrive. In other words, it is the cheap stuff that is suffering:

As the on-premise sector continues its slow but steady recovery from the pandemic, the U.S. wine market is expected to eke out another gain in dollar terms in 2022, but volumes will fall for the second consecutive year.

Interestingly, it seems that the extreme upper end is actually doing very well: Inflation shelter? Super-premium is the place to be. As a pensioner, I don’t really need an inflation shelter, but I really could do without inflation eating away at my pension. Wisely, I have stashed away some wine over the years, and so I can continue to drink well for the foreseeable future (but not super-premium).

---

* You should check out this old advice: No more than a litre of wine a day, recommends a 1950s French sobriety poster.

** The Ukraine war, for example, has had a dramatic effect on European Union energy costs, and particularly in the United Kingdom. Here in Sweden, electricity prices recently peaked at 3.5x last year's prices.