Talk About Alternative Wine Packaging!

Previous postings in this space have highlighted alternative wine packaging. Which usually means BIBs (bag-in-box), Screw-caps, composite corks, or glass T-tops. Never has it meant empty milk cartons, cider bottles or "gasoline" containers. Until now.

In today's wine news is the fact that the French (ever the wine innovators?) have adopted these dispensers in their supermarkets. I applaud the change! Any Wine Merchant worth his/her salt will support anything that encourages the consumption of a sensible amount of wine on a daily basis as part of our regular meals.

Of course, such bulk dispensers (which sometimes use the same "measured volume" technology we only see at the gasoline pump) have been commonplace across Europe, but as far as I know, only in the local wine/agricultural cooperative , such as this one we recently visited in Spain (see image). Today's news story was the first time I've heard of such dispensers working their way into local grocery stores. I'm pleased to see that French authorities have NOT adopted our nation's penchant for pandering to to the extreme ends of the alcohol-averse bell curve.

[caption id="attachment_1309" align="alignright" width="224" caption="Dispensing wine at the local Co-op, Spain's Montsant region"]Dispensing wine at the local Co-op, Spain's Montsant region[/caption] Would that our neo-prohibitionist lawmakers see the wisdom of encouraging the consumption of such moderate-alcohol beverages in favor of "the demon's rum" - Carry Nation's term for anything distilled. The curious wine student will note with interest that this was Thomas Jefferson's argument for exempting wine and beer from our early nation's sin taxes. Maybe we should take a bit of wisdom from one of our country's founding fathers.

Read more about it here (if you read French) - http://www.reserves-precieuses.fr/laCuve/laCuve.html

Cheers! Dave www.davethewinemerchant.com
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