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In France, winegrowers are forced to find solutions to the shortage of glass bottles. The war in Ukraine is disrupting supplies, which is forcing winegrowers to adapt and find solutions.
For several weeks, a question has been bothering Élodie Fazembat, winemaker at Château Haut-Pradot (Gironde), and her husband: will they have enough bottles for their 2023 harvest? Last year already, they had not been able to supply themselves in time. The glass crisis had turned their certainties upside down, and they had to adapt. “We had to push back a bet [en bouteilles]in particular for the white and the rosé, which harmed us for the marketing“, she explains.
The return of the deposit
This year, she was able to anticipate. But the crisis continues, and she had to make choices and change the model. Its new bottles do not solve all the problems. The vats from the 2022 harvest must be emptied in time to take care of the 2023 vintage. In a shed, the instructions have been brought up to date by Romain Lirot, development manager of the “Reverredire” collective. Producers, distributors and consumers drop off their empty bottles at collection points, then the team washes, stores and redistributes them. Since the glass crisis, requests have exploded: the collective manages 80,000 bottles in 2023, compared to 5,000 in 2020.