Now there’s progress

It was the same wine: Australian Shiraz rosé from Sainsbury’s. It came in, confusingly, at half a percentage point less strong, at 12.5%. This, however, paled into insignificance once you picked up the bottle. It was remarkably light – much lighter than the others – and slightly smaller. But the volume was marked as identical. Also, it was slightly soft… I wondered if there was something wrong with me, but as it turned out, it was the first plastic bottle that I’ve ever seen in the usual Burgundy shape. Marked as recyclable and appropriate for outdoor summer use, as it’s light and ‘unbreakable’ (by which, presumably, they mean non-brittle), is it perhaps a marker of things to come? By sheer mechanics alone, it must be cheaper to produce and recycle, there being so much less of it. And the wine tasted the same, too, apart from its slightly weaker form. So long as that isn’t a direct result of the plastic bottle, I reckon this is a good idea for all manner of reasons. But I do like the tradition and ritual of opening a bottle of wine: taking off the lead cork-cover, twisting in the corkscrew, the familiar ‘pop’, the weight of the bottle in hand and the necessarily experienced pouring action to that familiar glugging. All this is being taken away…